# In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics



## innerdude

I think we're all pretty familiar with the basic argument of The Alexandrian's treatise on dissociated mechanics.

Namely, that a mechanic is "dissociated" when the character inside the game world--NOT the player rolling the dice and eating Doritos, _but the avatar acting within the game construct_--has no reasonable explanation for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic. 

He gives several examples in the essay, so I don't want to repeat them here, but his presentation of the premise is fairly ironclad--if you create a rule and the characters have no reasonable explanation for how and why it "works" inside the game world, the mechanic is dissociated. 

(What isn't as ironclad is the _effects_ of dissociated mechanics and whether or not it produces the type of gameplay players enjoy. Let me repeat--what I'm saying is that the theory itself is solid; opinions on the actual effects of dissociated mechanics vary wildly. It's entirely possible for players to ignore the effects of dissociated mechanics and still have a great time playing a game that uses them. And it's entirely possible that some players either don't mind them at all, or actually prefer them over other styles.)

I bring this up because in another recent thread, which one I can't exactly recall, several posters were complaining against the theory itself, stating that Justin Alexander's essay was little more than a pot shot at 4e. 

Let's be clear--Justin Alexander is pretty up front with his opinion that 4e is his least favorite iteration of D&D. But that alone doesn't mean the theory itself is incorrect, or that 4e doesn't make liberal use of dissociated mechanics, as Alexander defines them.

The reason I bring this up, however, isn't to elevate The Alexandrian or excoriate 4e. The real point is that I think the theory of dissociated mechanics is important, because it makes apparent the difference between an RPG, and other kinds of games, which is at its core a sense of _simulation_. 

We've all heard certain factions of RPG players claiming that RPGs either can't, or shouldn't try to "simulate reality," or that somehow "simulationism" has no place in a world of elves, dwarves, and Boots of Mighty Poopsmithing +7. 

But here's the thing--if you take away the "R" and the "P" from "RPG," all you have left is a _game_, an arbitrary system of rules that control a limited set of outcomes. The second you attach "RP" to an existing "G," you are naturally, inherently, and necessarily attaching some form of _simulationism_ to the game. 

The reason roleplaying works at all is that it's founded in a simulation of _human interactivity_. When playing an RPG, we inherently accept that the characters in the game world have the ability to make choices, and the choices those characters make will be based on how they--through the function of the RPG rules being interpreted by the player--are able to react to the world around them. 

You can have a crazy, off-the-wall, messed up world with flying purple dinosaurs, talking screwdrivers, and three-foot-tall shoeless people with hairy feet, but the point of the "RP" in an "RPG" is to _simulate _how a person/alien/elf/orc/sentient object of nebulous proportions interacts with that world, and to explore the consequences of doing so. If a game doesn't include that element, it's not really a _roleplaying _game, but a game of some other kind. 

The Alexandrian's point is that dissociated mechanics can, when used in specific ways, inherently destroy that sense of interactive simulation. Even if your world DOES have flying purple dinosaurs and talking screwdrivers, it's still possible to create rules mechanics that dissociate from that reality. 

If the rules force exigencies upon the characters and game world that have no connection to the world itself, but are arbitrarily imposed "because the rules say so," you're breaking the simulation of character interactivity. The character--again, via the rules being interpreted by the player--can no longer successfully say, "I see and perceive that consequence X will necessarily follow choice Y." 

The Theory of Dissociated Mechanics is important for RPGs because it proves that it's never a question of whether an RPG is a "simulation" or not. It's a question of what the simulation is modeling, and how accurately or inaccurately the rules portray that model. 

As a consequence, complaining that a game is too "simulationist" or too "gamist" is a bit of a misnomer. What people are really saying is either, "I don't like the simulation model you've presented for the game world," or "I don't think the rules model your simulation all that well" (and often both). 

And at their core, the vast majority of disagreements about RPG rule sets can essentially be boiled down to one of those two things.


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## Elf Witch

Up until a few days ago I had never heard of this theory. But when I read the blog it was like a light bulb going off in my head. 

It put into words one of my issues with how some of the things in 4E just turn me off.

I remember having a conversation with a friend who really likes 4E and asked him to describe a power, I don't remember which one, in story terms. 

He really had a hard time doing so. 

It makes it easier for me to say I don't like the dissociated mechanics then trying to go into a long explanation of I don't like these powers because they make me feel like I am playing a game instead of being immersed in the world.


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## Pentius

I wouldn't call this piece a Theory on disassociated mechanics.  It's a term that he defined.  The definition is correct in that he coined it, which it makes it quite a challenge to be wrong.  He defines the term, and then he uses it to bash 4e.  He actually goes on to blur the lines with his own term, using it to describe Wushu's disassociated mechanics before he decides, "Wait, no, I like Wushu, so in Wushu, they're scene-based resolution mechanics, and are good for the game."

I am going to end this post, because at this time of night, I do not have the temperance and civility to discuss it in a manner befitting ENworld.  I may or may not be able to do it after a full night's sleep.  Suffice to say, noting the date of this article, it is the Prototype Edition War Troll, freshly risen from the Primordial Internet, that no troll has yet to best, to my knowledge.


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## innerdude

I don't deny that Alexander uses it primarily as a blunt force instrument to attack 4e's design paradigms--but if you read my post, that wasn't the point. 

Do "dissociative mechanics" work the way he says it does? Absolutely. Do we all agree on what the effects of that are? Not remotely. 

To me, the real point wasn't to evaluate the merit of the theory as applied to any particular ruleset, it was to point out the theory is a proof of a larger point that RPGs in general are by their very nature a simulation. 

What kind of simulation, and how well the rules support that simulation will vary wildly from system to system, but the fact is, you're simulating SOMETHING, because you have to account for character choice and interaction. 

Meaningful representation of those interactions means that the character--filtered through the player's mind--must have the ability to rationally make choices based on their understanding of the consequences.  

The Theory of Dissociative Mechanics is thus more important than its application to any one ruleset.


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## Bluenose

What a load of rubbish.



innerdude said:


> The reason I bring this up, however, isn't to elevate The Alexandrian or excoriate 4e. The real point is that I think the theory of dissociated mechanics is important, because it makes apparent the difference between an RPG, and other kinds of games, which is at its core a sense of _simulation_.




So, RPGs all have a sense of simulation at their core, and other games don't. Is that what you're claiming? You're actually claiming that every single computer flight simulater, tabletop wargame, and board game isn't actually trying to be a simulation, regardless of how well it matches reality and what the designers may claim. 



> We've all heard certain factions of RPG players claiming that RPGs either can't, or shouldn't try to "simulate reality," or that somehow "simulationism" has no place in a world of elves, dwarves, and Boots of Mighty Poopsmithing +7.




D&D has never taken simulation as it's primary objective. Other RPGs have. Toon, for example.



> But here's the thing--if you take away the "R" and the "P" from "RPG," all you have left is a _game_, an arbitrary system of rules that control a limited set of outcomes. The second you attach "RP" to an existing "G," you are naturally, inherently, and necessarily attaching some form of _simulationism_ to the game.




So, back to the "Only RPGs are real simulations" line. And they *have *to be simulations, with no alternative.



> The reason roleplaying works at all is that it's founded in a simulation of _human interactivity_. When playing an RPG, we inherently accept that the characters in the game world have the ability to make choices, and the choices those characters make will be based on how they--through the function of the RPG rules being interpreted by the player--are able to react to the world around them.
> 
> You can have a crazy, off-the-wall, messed up world with flying purple dinosaurs, talking screwdrivers, and three-foot-tall shoeless people with hairy feet, but the point of the "RP" in an "RPG" is to _simulate _how a person/alien/elf/orc/sentient object of nebulous proportions interacts with that world, and to explore the consequences of doing so. If a game doesn't include that element, it's not really a _roleplaying _game, but a game of some other kind.




So, if you're going to interact with a world in an RPG it has to be in a simulationist manner.



> The Theory of Dissociated Mechanics is important for RPGs because it proves that it's never a question of whether an RPG is a "simulation" or not. It's a question of what the simulation is modeling, and how accurately or inaccurately the rules portray that model.




The Theory of Dissociated Mechanics are a complaint that someone don't understand how a particular result is arrived at, and extends takes that to an assumption that therefore it is not simulationist. If the result is accurate to the action that is being modeled, then that result is simulationist even if you do not understand why. 



> As a consequence, complaining that a game is too "simulationist" or too "gamist" is a bit of a misnomer. What people are really saying is either, "I don't like the simulation model you've presented for the game world," or "I don't think the rules model your simulation all that well" (and often both).
> 
> And really, the vast majority of disagreements about RPG rule sets can essentially be boiled down to one of those two things.




Not every game, and I include RPGs in this, is written with the intent of being a simulation in the sense that you'll have a full understanding of how a result is arrived at. For that matter, a highly detailed system that makes it perfectly clear how a result is arrived at, when that result is patently inaccurate, is just as much a killer of simulation as any dissociated mechanic.


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## Pentius

Alright, I'm going to have another go at this.

I see what you're trying to start a discussion on, and it could be interesting(unless we get all edition wars up in here, which is a totally different type of interesting).  There's something I think it feels like you miss in your layout of the issue.  You define an RPG as a simulation of the game world, specifically with the rules modeling a game world, and I think that while that is a valid way of playing, it is not the only valid way of playing.  Another way, which 4e works very well for(and was arguably designed around) is that the rules exist not as a simulation of the game world.  The concept is that the game world exists(I use the term loosely, since the game world is fictional) outside of the rules.  It has it's own physics, or lack thereof.  The rules, instead of modeling the world, act as a set of tools by which the players interact with the world.  The rules only really apply when the players are involved, because their existence is as those tools.  A lot of things in 4e sort of 'snap into place' when viewed this way.  It doesn't take the RP out of RPG, per se, it just changes the way the player, the rules, and the game world interact, with the end result still being that a player takes control of a character within the world, and guides that character through the game.

[/ramble]

EDIT: Wrecan, of the WotC boards, is more elegant in his phrasing than I.  I think he says it best.


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## Tonguez

Bluenose said:


> What a load of rubbish.
> So, RPGs all have a sense of simulation at their core, and other games don't. Is that what you're claiming? You're actually claiming that every single computer flight simulater, tabletop wargame, and board game isn't actually trying to be a simulation, regardless of how well it matches reality and what the designers may claim.




Um no I don't think innderdude said that at all. What he did say was that RPG are about taking on a particular "Role" within an "imagined world" and then modelling interactions within that world. A Flight simulator might also by this definition be an RPG whereas Chess is not (Chess I beleive is not a simulation)

However Pentius does bring up an interesting view about 4e mechanic as toolset rather than game model, which I can accept as a better counter argument


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## Doug McCrae

Some might say that 4e's daily and encounter powers are more simulationist than 3e. In 3e a PC with min/maxed tripping could easily succesfully trip an opponent every round, whereas in 4e this would only be happening once per fight. In real fights we tend not to see the same maneuver used succesfully over and over again. Opponents take defensive measures, openings only occur so often, and so forth.

It's true that the 4e mechanic is more dissociated in the sense that the PC doesn't know he can do this only 1/encounter or 1/day, unless we enter Order of the Stick territory. But this demonstrates that simulationism is not the same thing as associated mechanics.

Another point is that D&D has always had dissociated mechanics/play:
1. Choosing a PC's race
2. Hit points
3. Saving throws
4. Xp for gold
5. Certain classes being banned from wearing particular types of armour or weapons
6. Handwaving the boring bits - travelling to the dungeon, shopping for equipment
7. Use of reported speech
8. Starting a PC's career on completion of his 1st level training rather than from birth

If a lack of dissociation is the key feature of a roleplaying game then we must accept that LARPing is a truer form of rpg than tabletop because in LARP the player is less dissociated from his character. Some LARPers do indeed take this view, I believe.

I've always treated combat in rpgs as a sort of separate mini-wargame. In fact I had an epiphany regarding this while playing Champions in the early 90s, my exact thought was, "It's a wargame!" It's particularly noticeable with rpgs that have very rules heavy combat such as Champions, 3e and 4e, but it's true to a large degree of combat in all rpgs. I think this is because any time the players interact with the rules, talk about the rules, think about the rules, then they are dissociated from the game world. "The rules get in the way of the roleplaying" is a common saying amongst rpgers in my area, a criticism of rules heavy games, and I pretty much agree with it. One could even say that non-turn based computer games, by hiding the mechanics and operating in real time are less dissociated than tabletop rpgs, which are of a much more 'stop and start' nature.


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## Plane Sailing

Bluenose said:


> What a load of rubbish.
> 
> .




Lose the attitude or you'll be taking a holiday from posting here.


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## Elf Witch

I really don't want to get into an argument over gamist vs simulation. And which edition had more.

I don't think the example of a fighter who has min/max trip and having the_ chance_ to do it over and over breaks the 'realism" barrier for me. In my imagination I can see him doing it and each time he may have done this trip a little differently. 

It makes more sense to me that a person who is trained and specialized in trips would be more successful than someone who is not.

This once a day power is what I have an issue with. If someone is the greatest martial artist ever why can he only trip once a day? That is the disconnect for me. 

And that added to some other things is a deal breaker for me.


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## Herremann the Wise

Pentius said:


> ...It doesn't take the RP out of RPG, per se, it just changes the way the player, the rules, and the game world interact, with the end result still being that a player takes control of a character within the world, and guides that character through the game.
> 
> [/ramble]EDIT: Wrecan, of the WotC boards, is more elegant in his phrasing than I.  I think he says it best.



Excellent link: I think that numerocentric versus protagonocentric discussion a very balanced and informative discussion on the issue at hand, while Justin Alexander's is equally informative. I enjoy 4e but there *are *things about it that drive me a little nuts; particularly when the flavour does not mesh with the mechanics used to represent that flavour. Essentially, I am a mathematician and will always be a mathematician. Numbers are how I find the game informs me most fluently and I will always prefer that style of play. That is how I get into my roleplaying mode most efficiently (as strange as that may seem). As such 4e is a little like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole for me but heh... it's still fun and that's the main thing.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## UngainlyTitan

I went through a phase of looking for realism in combat back in the day, I never really found it and lloking back I am pretty sure that if I found it I would not have liked it.

I think that Doug McCrae's insight that all rpg cpmbat is a mini wargame is pretty accurate and wargame combat are abstractions. No-one has the time or patience to simulate it out at squad level if they are gaming at Army gorup level. Most logistical considerations are abstracted out more or less completely.

If hte outcome from turn to turn roughly matches what happedend historically people are generally satisfied.

I feel the same way about rpg combat, if the final narrative that emerges when the combat is resolved is some kind of the approximate match for what one would expect from the genre than I am happy.

I particluarly like 4e combat because one can map the power uses to what one might see in the movie of the scene.


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## Umbran

innerdude said:


> He gives several examples in the essay, so I don't want to repeat them here, but his presentation of the premise is fairly ironclad--if you create a rule and the characters have no reasonable explanation for how and why it "works" inside the game world, the mechanic is dissociated.




It is ironclad because it isn't a premise, it is a definition of the term as he's using it.  "I'm going to call mechanics that don't have in-game explanations 'dissociated mechanics'" is not something one can poke logical holes in.


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## Aberzanzorax

You define dissociated as "the avatar has no reasonable explanation for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic"

I think there are two levels of dissociated within that definition. The first is that no explanation is provided for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic. 4e does this (and does it well) often. Some find this a nice feature of the edition, and prefer to create their own fluff for it. 

For instance, imagine a power that slides a foe 2 squares on a hit. The game may not provide the in game explanation. I can, as the player, decide that I've moved in such a way that the foe had to move back or get hit. Or I can decide that he was intimidated. Or I can decide that I magically pushed him. I can choose to be consistent (I'm always intimidating) or I can mix it up (sometimes it's a feint, sometimes it's magic). Some people really enjoy this freedom, some do not, but I do think it is a level of dissociation that is not damning in any way.


Then the second level of dissociated, I do think can be problematic. If a rule is such that one can't explain it, no matter how hard they try, then it is not a rule that promotes roleplaying. By definition, I am unable to roleplay it if I cannot explain what it does. The presence of such rules does not make a game not-a-roleplaying-game, but it does hinder roleplaying by definition. I'll agree with others that all editions of D&D have had some rules like this.


As far as simulationism goes, I don't think that's the right word here. Narrativism is equally useful for this discussion (and also isn't the right word). Without finding a single word, I think what is important is that when I do something in an RPG _I need to be able to describe what I did, without using any rule in the description_. That's not inherently simulation nor narration...it's, quite simply, roleplaying.


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## LostSoul

innerdude said:


> Namely, that a mechanic is "dissociated" when the character inside the game world--NOT the player rolling the dice and eating Doritos, _but the avatar acting within the game construct_--has no reasonable explanation for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic.




I'm not sure that's a good summary of dissociated mechanics.  The players can always decide what's reasonable knowledge for the character.  The players can decide that hero points make perfect sense to the character, and that a melee attack roll makes no sense to the character.

I'd have to read the essay again, though.


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## Elf Witch

Aberzanzorax said:


> I think there are two levels of dissociated within that definition. The first is that no explanation is provided for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic. 4e does this (and does it well) often. Some find this a nice feature of the edition, and prefer to create their own fluff for it.
> 
> For instance, imagine a power that slides a foe 2 squares on a hit. The game may not provide the in game explanation. I can, as the player, decide that I've moved in such a way that the foe had to move back or get hit. Or I can decide that he was intimidated. Or I can decide that I magically pushed him. I can choose to be consistent (I'm always intimidating) or I can mix it up (sometimes it's a feint, sometimes it's magic). Some people really enjoy this freedom, some do not, but I do think it is a level of dissociation that is not damning in any way.




Forgive me if I get this wrong I have not looked at 4E since six months after it came out and I don't have access to any books. But don't these things like the power to slide a foe a once an encounter or once a day power? 

Which brings me back to the disconnect that I have of why don't you ever get better with it. 

While I don't think the skill system is perfect in 3E I like the you can feint or intimidate. You can put ranks in them and get better at them.

When I played 4E with the daily powers on, it reminded me of chess and how the different pieces move. I felt like I was playing a wargame which I used to do back in the old days.   

It really effected the experience for me. In mental health dissociation is a term used to describe losing touch with the real world. I felt dissociated from the game world by the rule set of 4E. 

I can usually picture what is going on in game in my head even if we use miniatures when I think about the combat later I see it in my head as if I am watching a movie. I could not do that in 4E game.


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## Aberzanzorax

Elf Witch said:


> <snip>I can usually picture what is going on in game in my head even if we use miniatures when I think about the combat later I see it in my head as if I am watching a movie. I could not do that in 4E game.




I'll try to address your whole post, but I'm not really the person to defend 4e. I too have similar issues to you in this regard, but what I'm saying is that they're not necessary issues, in a sense.

The paradigm of encounter and daily powers is not an avatar issue, it's a player issue (and one that I share with you, please don't feel that I'm judging you). By that I mean the avatar does whatever they do and it can be described in the world. The player is the one who "knows" that the avatar cannot do it more than once. The avatar doesn't "know" that, in a sense...it just chooses to do it when cinematic.


I guess I'm saying that it's not the things you can't do within the rules that most matters, it's the things you DO do that need to be describable.


But, like I said, I'm hung up on this too, you'd likely get a better answer from someone who is not. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is an excellent poster who approaches gaming/4e from a different direction than I, and his style fits with a sort of "the rules support the story" approach rather than my "the rules define the story" approach.

If it's not clear, I'm having trouble putting concepts to words.


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## Imaro

Doug McCrae said:


> Some might say that 4e's daily and encounter powers are more simulationist than 3e. In 3e a PC with min/maxed tripping could easily succesfully trip an opponent every round, whereas in 4e this would only be happening once per fight. In real fights we tend not to see the same maneuver used succesfully over and over again. Opponents take defensive measures, openings only occur so often, and so forth.




I'm going to disagree with this.  Take boxing, a boxer doesn't kick, trip grapple, etc.  and they are trained specifically to dodge and block punches.  Yet in most (because someone may know of an exception) boxing matches more than one punch is landed over and over again.  Now you could claim they are different punches, but then I never imagined a character using the exact same way of tripping over and over again so they are different trips as well.


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## Njall

Imaro said:


> I'm going to disagree with this.  Take boxing, a boxer doesn't kick, trip grapple, etc.  and they are trained specifically to dodge and block punches.  Yet in most (because someone may know of an exception) boxing matches more than one punch is landed over and over again. * Now you could claim they are different punches*, but then I never imagined a character using the exact same way of tripping over and over again so they are different trips as well.




That's precisely the point, though. During a match, you're not just throwing punches: you're formulating a strategy, looking for an opening and throwing a jab when it's appropriate. 
Why aren't you just punching the other dude in the face over and over, since that first jab landed so easily? Because now you won't catch him off guard again with the same feints, and you can't just throw another punch with the same effect.
So, you have to try something else: maybe trip him, or try some different feints, or keep your guard high while you wait for another opening, and so forth.
 That's something that AD&D or 3e can't simulate at all, for example: most combat oriented characters have a few select tricks that they're good at, and that they use over and over because not doing so would be suboptimal when not outright suicidal. 
In such a system, combat is fairly repetitive ( I won't say that it's boring, because that's another matter entirely ), unless you're just using suboptimal options for the sake of it.
That's why "I'll use an encounter power that blinds my opponent now" ( or, if you prefer it, "I'll throw some dirt in his eyes and try to stab him while he's recovering, and next turn I'll try to trip him") feels closer to actual fighting than "I guess I'll just disarm him again, this round" for some of us. 
It's just a matter of perspective, I suppose.


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## Elf Witch

Aberzanzorax said:


> I'll try to address your whole post, but I'm not really the person to defend 4e. I too have similar issues to you in this regard, but what I'm saying is that they're not necessary issues, in a sense.
> 
> The paradigm of encounter and daily powers is not an avatar issue, it's a player issue (and one that I share with you, please don't feel that I'm judging you). By that I mean the avatar does whatever they do and it can be described in the world. The player is the one who "knows" that the avatar cannot do it more than once. The avatar doesn't "know" that, in a sense...it just chooses to do it when cinematic.
> 
> 
> I guess I'm saying that it's not the things you can't do within the rules that most matters, it's the things you DO do that need to be describable.
> 
> 
> But, like I said, I'm hung up on this too, you'd likely get a better answer from someone who is not. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is an excellent poster who approaches gaming/4e from a different direction than I, and his style fits with a sort of "the rules support the story" approach rather than my "the rules define the story" approach.
> 
> If it's not clear, I'm having trouble putting concepts to words.




I understand the whole avatar being different than the player. The avatar does not know they can only do this once a day, the player does.

For me as a role player I find it difficult to reconcile this. 

I know there are rule things in 3E like say power attack. I am making a player decision to choose to do this because I am hoping to set up a cleave. My avatar doesn't know this at that point I am being very gamist. 

But for some reason a gamist approach like that does not pull me out of the game. 

I have a hard time putting this into words. I very aware that you have to be careful because there are certain buzz words that just ignite edition wars. 

I know this buzz word sets off people but the daily powers feels like a video game or a board game. The daily powers kind of remind me of Cosmic Encounters and how each of the races has a special power to bend the rules. I love Cosmic Encounters but I don't play it the same way I play RPGs.

I would prefer a game that had less dissociated mechanics.


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## Imaro

Njall said:


> That's precisely the point, though. During a match, you're not just throwing punches: you're formulating a strategy, looking for an opening and throwing a jab when it's appropriate.
> Why aren't you just punching the other dude in the face over and over, since that first jab landed so easily? Because now you won't catch him off guard again with the same feints, and you can't just throw another punch with the same effect.




Depending on the skill level of the person you can just punch someone over and over again in the face... it happens in UFC matches all the time.

Going further with the example of the boxer... against an average joe he is probably going to throw numerous punches faster and more accurately than average joe can dodge them or block them. A fighter who has spent a majority of his time training to trip is going to be able to trip someone who hasn't numerous times and with great accuracy. What doesn't make sense to me is that I wasted all that training and the ability to trip someone only comes up once in any given fight... and I can still mess it up. It seems to me a warrior wouldn't waste his time learning something like that.





Njall said:


> So, you have to try something else: maybe trip him, or try some different feints, or keep your guard high while you wait for another opening, and so forth.
> That's something that AD&D or 3e can't simulate at all, for example: most combat oriented characters have a few select tricks that they're good at, and that they use over and over because not doing so would be suboptimal when not outright suicidal.




You do realize that most real world fighters don't utilize a ton of different moves... and many, though admittedly not all, are actually specialists.



Njall said:


> In such a system, combat is fairly repetitive ( I won't say that it's boring, because that's another matter entirely ), unless you're just using suboptimal options for the sake of it.
> That's why "I'll use an encounter power that blinds my opponent" ( or, if you prefer it, "I'll throw some dirt in his eyes and try to stab him while he's recovering, and next turn I'll try to trip him") feels closer to actual fighting than "I guess I'll just disarm him again, this round" for some of us.
> It's just a matter of perspective, I suppose.




I can agree that it's perspective on what you want out of fights. To me 4e martial fights feel like purposefully coreographed action cinema fights like those found in a standard popcorn action movie. They don't feel gritty or real to me... which is not to say that I don't enjoy them if I want the action movie feel. 

On the other hand martial characters in Pathfinder feel more real to me and my players, yes if I've trained to be the best tripper, disarmer, grappler, or whatever I would continuously be trying to use it... Chuck Lidell is always throwing punches, Royce Gracie was always grappling, etc. What makes that exciting is in the facing of different foes in different environs who may or may not be able to counter your strategy with their own specializations... and what you do when your tactic is sub-optimal in a particular fight, like facing foes from a distance, since in specializing so strongly you have made a conscious choice against being well rounded.


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## RainOfSteel

innerdude said:


> I think we're all pretty familiar with the basic argument of The Alexandrian's treatise on dissociated mechanics.



Before right now, I had never heard of this.



> But now we have a 4th Edition which, due to its dissociated design principles, requires you to create hundreds (or thousands) of house rules.



This if fundamentally incorrect.  No house-ruling is _required_.  The author just wants to in order to create an explainable power-milieu association.  There is a difference.

The author then covers that exact thing, stating that you don't have to house-rule, and follows it up with:


> At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game.



This is also rather flimsy.  You can easily carry on with role-playing whenever you want, in or out of combat, regardless of the mechanics.  Pretending Role-Playing is somehow dependent on the mechanics asserts that Role-Playing is based on Roll-Playing and I don't buy that.

Perhaps the author can only experience role-playing through fully milieu-explainable mechanics in all aspects of the played character, and 4e doesn't do that.  If 4e's particular format doesn't connect well for the author, that does not establish that the author's views are necessarily correct for anyone else.

Perhaps there is some dissociation involved in 4e's mechanics.  Exactly how much that affects Role-Playing is up to those playing.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Aberzanzorax said:


> I think there are two levels of dissociated within that definition. The first is that no explanation is provided for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic. 4e does this (and does it well) often. Some find this a nice feature of the edition, and prefer to create their own fluff for it.
> 
> For instance, imagine a power that slides a foe 2 squares on a hit. The game may not provide the in game explanation. I can, as the player, decide that I've moved in such a way that the foe had to move back or get hit. Or I can decide that he was intimidated. Or I can decide that I magically pushed him. I can choose to be consistent (I'm always intimidating) or I can mix it up (sometimes it's a feint, sometimes it's magic). Some people really enjoy this freedom, some do not, but I do think it is a level of dissociation that is not damning in any way.
> 
> Then the second level of dissociated, I do think can be problematic. If a rule is such that one can't explain it, no matter how hard they try, then it is not a rule that promotes roleplaying.



Although it's not a black-and-white "either-or" issue. If a power has some mechanical result that might seem to be disassociated from fiction, then when there's a will there's a way to create the fluff for it.

It's not simply a question of "Can I or can I not justify it in a fictional way".

Rather, the question that bothers me is "How easily or smoothly can I justify it in a fictional/cinematic way?" and "How often can I do that almost every time it comes up?". It's about degrees and likelihood.

The second problem for me is what other dissassociations follow after the fluffing. So if "push 2 squares" is fluffed as a magic battering ram, then a) why is the target never, ever stunned or dazed or knocked prone or something else that would seem to narratively follow from that fluff description, and b) why can that magic battering ram never, ever be used on objects? I'd imagine those things to follow or possibly follow, but it never does by the rules, which means that the fluff (whatever fluff I come up with) is more-or-less inconsequential.


----------



## MichaelSomething

Elf Witch said:


> I would prefer a game that had less dissociated mechanics.




Then I can assume you have added the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society into your 3.5 game?

There's always GURPS and Riddle of Steel as well.


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## UngainlyTitan

Elf Witch said:


> I understand the whole avatar being different than the player. The avatar does not know they can only do this once a day, the player does.
> 
> For me as a role player I find it difficult to reconcile this.
> 
> I know there are rule things in 3E like say power attack. I am making a player decision to choose to do this because I am hoping to set up a cleave. My avatar doesn't know this at that point I am being very gamist.
> 
> But for some reason a gamist approach like that does not pull me out of the game.
> 
> I have a hard time putting this into words. I very aware that you have to be careful because there are certain buzz words that just ignite edition wars.
> 
> I know this buzz word sets off people but the daily powers feels like a video game or a board game. The daily powers kind of remind me of Cosmic Encounters and how each of the races has a special power to bend the rules. I love Cosmic Encounters but I don't play it the same way I play RPGs.
> 
> I would prefer a game that had less dissociated mechanics.



I am someone that likes 4e and 4e combat but I am not sure that we can have a meaningful conversation of the combat rules because I think we are coming at this from radically different prespectives.

I do not believe that D&D combat in particular (but I think it applies to most rpg combat) map to anything that happens in a fight.

Boxers for instance can hit a particular spot (like say, the point of your jaw) with a high degree of repeatibility, if you are doing nothing to stop them or simply not capable of doing so relative to their ability.

So my problem with D&D combat back in the day were the metronomic nature of the round system, the abstract nature of hit points and AC and the complete inability to set up the finishing blow, or for that matter to reliabily end a fight quickly.

It was after playing over the years I came to the comclusion that the to hit die rolling largely does not matter. It is not what makes a fight memorable. It is the tactics, like where some one stands in a bottleneck to split the enemy force in to more managable chunks. Or some has the ability to go nova and finally the lucky criticals that one shot an enemy.

Now one of the things that I like about 4e combat is that daily encounter and action points allows one to set up finishing move and are new opportunities to set up more memotable combats. I am coming to the comclusion that they have reduced swingyness too much and that 4e combat would benefit from the re-introduction of critical die damage multipliers rather than the max damage method they currently use. 
I am toying with the idea of intoducing that in a new campaign I am planning.

So in brief, if when I look back on the combat after it is resolved the outcome seems reasonable I am satisfied and if someone got to do something clever to turn the tide or save the day during the combat i am happy but not to be overly concerned with the details.


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## Yesway Jose

MichaelSomething said:


> Then I can assume you have added the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society into your 3.5 game?



That's one standard counterargument.

The standard counter-counterargument is that it's not "either-or", it's not a choice of "historically and realistically accurate" vs status quo. Options exist inbetween, often very satisfyingly so.


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## Greg K

MichaelSomething said:


> Then I can assume you have added the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society into your 3.5 game?




There is also the Book of Iron Might which uses a handful of effects (e.g., stun, push back, hinder movement) and modifiers (e.g., Target gets a saving throw, you open yourself to an AoA) rather lots of separate encounter or daily powers.   It gives a lot of sample maneuvers as examples, but unlike 4e you get the building blocks to build on the fly and can, therefore, make sure things make sense. The player describes what they are trying to do and the DM can quickly use the effects and modifiers to adjudicate it.


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## Crazy Jerome

Elf Witch said:


> I understand the whole avatar being different than the player. The avatar does not know they can only do this once a day, the player does.
> 
> For me as a role player I find it difficult to reconcile this.




Here is the problem with the whole theory in a nutshell. In this case, it is not the mechanics that are "disassociated", but that what you bring to the table makes them seem that way to you. This is, I want to strongly emphasize, neither good, bad, nor indifferent. It just is. 

But if you take that next step, and say that avoiding this defines being a "roleplayer", (i.e. anyone avoiding the result must not therefore be roleplaying), and then take from this unsupported and unproved assertion (by the essay or anyone thus far that supports it) the illogical jump (even if the assumption were supported or granted for sake of argument) that the issue lies in the mechanics and not the people ...

If you do all that, you've gone from niche interesting concept on the relation between people and rules to territory where you can't help but be offensive to some people. Sorry, that's just the way it. It is identical to the "Brain Damage" part of Forge theory--taking an unproven assertion, reasoning too narrowly from it, and then expressing it in an offensive manner. I have more respect for Edwards version, though, since his was at least honest in its expression. So for the essay itself, add that dishonesty to the balance of what I'm about to say.

Fundamental to having a fair discussion of 4E with 4E players is coming to an understanding of why that essay claims way too much ground for what useful light it brings to a subject. If someone can't do that, then we have a fundamental disconnect on this issue that is going to cover many(though certainly not all) discussion, and will be at the heart of many disagreements. There is often no more point in going on, until this is resolved.

I really think that someone who agrees with the essay, more or less, should make an attempt to rewrite it without all the baggage, and certainly without the fatal term. Starting over from the beginning, with a person who didn't have an axe to grind, might produce something worthwhile.

So for me this is a marker. It isn't personal. It is a matter of practical time. Trot out the term in support of your point, and I know it is a waste of my time to continue the discussion. I'd rather it not be that way, as with Forge theory, if you can get beyond the "brain damage" parts, there is some useful discussion to be had. You can't, however, have that useful discussion with a Forge follower that hangs too tightly to that "brain damage" section.

Instead of defending the theory, it needs rescusing from its originator and its more rabid supporters.


----------



## BryonD

Bluenose said:


> D&D has never taken simulation as it's primary objective. Other RPGs have. Toon, for example.



You are using a very narrow straw man definition of "simulation", and then you are adding loaded phrases like "primary objective".  If you can't use the terms in a manner that fits the conversation, then you really can't offer anything to add to the conversation.

I am a big fan of the 3E/PF ruleset and the strong affinity for simulation gaming provided by it is a big part of that.

You options are:
1) Look like a fool by telling me that my experiences do not exist.
2) Waste time on straw men
3) Start contributing
4) Let it go, enjoy your game, and ignore posts you can't relate to.


----------



## chaochou

As a theory it looks pretty suspect to me.

Just the opening example, contrasting the use of an AD&D fireball spell with a 4e rogue 'trick strike' is riddled with problems.

He says of the fireball caster: "But they could tell you what a fireball is..."

He then asks a totally different question of the Trick Strike user: "Since when did a swashbuckler have a limited number of feints that they can perform in a day?"

So here's a basic piece of sleight-of-hand in the argument. He says the fireball user can tell you what a fireball is. Well, by the same token the trick Strike user can tell you what a feint is.

So the Trick Strike user can't explain, without reference to the rules, why he can only do this maneouvre once a day.

Can the wizard explain why he forgets his fireball spell having cast it?

And here's the crunch - the reality is that neither can tell you anything. Neither exists outside of the minds of people at the table, and those people provide the reasons. Neither the wizard nor rogue are seperate entities who can explain anything.

The wizard is as disassociated from the rules of AD&D spellcasting as the 4e rogue is from Trick Striking. Both are contructs of the players and rules which created them. It's bizarre to then pretend that those constructs can justify their own rules to their creators.


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## BryonD

Imaro said:


> I'm going to disagree with this.  Take boxing, a boxer doesn't kick, trip grapple, etc.  and they are trained specifically to dodge and block punches.  Yet in most (because someone may know of an exception) boxing matches more than one punch is landed over and over again.  Now you could claim they are different punches, but then I never imagined a character using the exact same way of tripping over and over again so they are different trips as well.




Agreed.  Having a character built around a concept be able to TRY to use that ability whenever they want makes a lot more sense than arbitrarily saying "once and only once" per encounter.

And really this is just one tiny example of the design philosophy.  The mechanics inform the concept rather than the concept informing the mechanics.

There is no conceptual reason for tripping to be limited to once per encounter.  That is purely a mechanical consideration.  So the story becomes the follower.  

When things like this happen in the 3E rule set it is because the concept informed the mechanic to work that way.  Your wizard only has one 6th level spell a day?  That is because the quasi-Vancian spellcasting concept suggested that.  

I'm sure there are examples that could be cited from 3E where the same system issue does exist.  I certainly don't claim it is anywhere near flawless.  But if there are examples, and the concept doesn't drive them, then I'll agree that they are bad.  But at least it is not a root design element of the game.


----------



## howandwhy99

I'm not a fan of dissociated mechanics, but I do agree they can be made to work wonderfully if those _are_ the rules.  Rules in and of themselves inhibit immersion in the fantasy world.  Chess is a fantasy world of kings and queens, bishops and knights. The rules, however, are not helping anyone tell a quality story in narrative terms or immersing players in that reality. 

So rather than play with rules designed with an eye towards enabling a group of people to craft a quality narrative, or perhaps rules for an abstracted strategy game with story incongruously attached, I prefer a reality puzzle game - a game where the actions of that reality are the patterns interacted strategically with. Computer-simulated reality games operate very similarly. The game Portal is an excellent example. Only table top puzzle games operate with one person repeating the puzzle's code from behind a screen.  This code represents concepts with particulars attached to different semantic meanings.  Want more detail? Add more singular conceptions to the vocabulary incorporated into the puzzle. 

In my case, the whole idea is for the code to be as similar with its connections to the connections of the original concept covered by the word as possible. However, it also needs to be as elegant and streamlined as one can make it to enable quick and enjoyable play. Ironically, this elegance actually feeds into the enjoyment of the players as they discern its beauty over the length of the game. The design also should incorporate the most common game activities players enjoy (e.g collecting and counting resources, memorizing where everything is, evaluating resources on hand, accounting for time, planning several moves ahead, etc.)

A good puzzle maker will include high complexity within a simple design, just like Chess. But unlike Chess this designer is tying elements to word definitions (best taken from a dictionary), so "associated design" must be addressed, which, fortunately, simulation games have a long history of doing.  

For an example, think of the blueprints of a Rubik's Cube behind a screen.  
P: "I move side 4 of the Rubik's Cube 180 degree counterclockwise" 
DM "Okay, let me tell you the new configuration," rather than "Do 10 push ups and you can tell me what that means."  
Resolution mechanics are not involved.


----------



## Yesway Jose

chaochou said:


> The wizard is as disassociated from the rules of AD&D spellcasting as the 4e rogue is from Trick Striking. Both are contructs of the players and rules which created them. It's bizarre to then pretend that those constructs can justify their own rules to their creators.



I don't think it's bizarre. In any good fantasy or sci-fi novel, the author creates an imaginary construct, decides what conditions would naturally follow, and tries to maintain consistency within that fiction. If it's doable in fantasy literature, I don't see why it's a laughable or impossible goal in RPGs.


----------



## I'm A Banana

I immensely dislike the wrought iron fence made of tigers jammed between gameplay and story in a LOT of (especially early) 4e stuff.

It's gotten quite a bit better more recently (Essentials!), but it has this massive burden of the past to recover from, and its own design considerations don't often help it much.

I don't want to feel like some disembodied id who vaguely directs actions while the mechanics do whatever the hell they want to do on their own, without my input. 

I want to _imagine that I am telling the story of a fantasy hero_. 

Mechanics that are divorced from story gleefully remind me at every step that I'm just rolling dice on the character's inevitable journey to killing whatever the hell is in front of it. I'm pushing the A button in a cinematic JRPG. The maths don't care about what my imagination wants, and they'll tromp all over it in order to get from "Arg, goblins!" to "The goblins are ded!" if that's what works mathematically. 

Anyway, I've gone on about this before.


----------



## chaochou

Yesway Jose said:


> I don't think it's bizarre. In any good fantasy or sci-fi novel, the author creates an imaginary construct, decides what conditions would naturally follow, and tries to maintain consistency within that fiction. If it's doable in fantasy literature, I don't see why it's a laughable or impossible goal in RPGs.




That's not what I'm saying.

The Alexandrian argues that a mage could describe a fireball to us, the roleplayers. That's like arguing that Frodo can explain to Tolkien what Bag End looks like, that James Bond can explain to Ian Fleming why his gun just jammed.

No rpg character, or fictional character, can explain or describe or think anything. We provide their words, their thoughts and their existence. To pretend otherwise and then build an argument on it is, as I said, bizarre.


----------



## Yesway Jose

chaochou said:


> That's not what I'm saying.
> 
> The Alexandrian argues that a mage could describe a fireball to us, the roleplayers. That's like arguing that Frodo can explain to Tolkien what Bag End looks like, that James Bond can explain to Ian Fleming why his gun just jammed.
> 
> No rpg character, or fictional character, can explain or describe or think anything. We provide their words, their thoughts and their existence. To pretend otherwise and then build an argument on it is, as I said, bizarre.



But Frodo *could* describe Bag End to us, of course not to us directly, but indirectly to the reader (say, via a short story about Frodo and Gandalf), thus communicating to us what Bag End is like in a believable way.

Conversely, a Diablo avatar in the Diablo game could not communicate to us (say, as part of a conversation tree with an NPC avatar) why he's unable to jump over the boulders at the edge of the map (unless it's some sort of self-referential parody).

While no one D&D edition is perfect, a 4E wizard would have great difficulty describing in-game why his Essentials Hypnotism spell can only seize control of people's minds to either attack somebody or move and nothing else whatsoever.


----------



## chaochou

Yesway Jose said:


> But Frodo *could* describe Bag End to us, of course not to us directly, but indirectly to the reader (say, via a short story about Frodo and Gandalf), thus communicating to us what Bag End is like in a believable way.




Only if you believe that Frodo can write short stories about himself.

If that's the case there's no more I can say.


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## Greg K

chaochou said:


> Only if you believe that Frodo can write short stories about himself.
> 
> If that's the case there's no more I can say.




Well, some writer's claim that their characters write themselves and take the story in a different direction than they had intended.


----------



## Yesway Jose

chaochou said:


> Only if you believe that Frodo can write short stories about himself.



I don't see the need to be so literal. Imagine a good sample size of 100 Tolkein fans and ghost writers imagining how Frodo would describe Bag's End, and imagine how those stories could share some very similar threads.


----------



## Gentlegamer

Greg K said:


> Well, some writer's claim that their characters write themselves and take the story in a different direction than they had intended.



Tolkien didn't know who Strider was when he introduced him during the LotR manuscript. The character grew as he wrote.


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## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> While no one D&D edition is perfect, a 4E wizard would have great difficulty describing in-game why his Essentials Hypnotism spell can only seize control of people's minds to either attack somebody or move and nothing else whatsoever.




"The spell gives control of the target's muscles, at a gross level. I can't make them talk, the level of manipulation required is too fine for such a simple casting, but I could make them walk around or swing a weapon in a pattern they've practiced enough."


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "The spell gives control of the target's muscles, at a gross level. I can't make them talk, the level of manipulation required is too fine for such a simple casting, but I could make them walk around or swing a weapon in a pattern they've practiced enough."



Can you control the target's muscles so that they drop an item? Stand still? Fall prone?


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## Pentius

Don't have time to make a lengthy post, I just wanted to chime in that only tripping or pushing or sliding once per encounter or day assumes that your character isn't specializing in that move.  If you wanted to make a Fighter that used trip(4e's version being an attack that knocks prone) every turn, you could.  If you wanted to make someone that focused on pushing or sliding, and did it over and over, you could.


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> Can you control the target's muscles so that they drop an item? Stand still? Fall prone?




"The muscles in the hands are too small for me to affect. Standing still, well, that's easy. If someone's trying to run out of the room then I can stop them doing so with no problem. Falling would be harder. When I take control of someone's muscles they are tense, and it's not really practical to make them relax enough to give way. I suppose it would be possible to make someone fall by going over something, but that's obviously situational."


----------



## chaochou

Yesway Jose said:


> I don't see the need to be so literal. Imagine a good sample size of 100 Tolkein fans and ghost writers imagining how Frodo would describe Bag's End, and imagine how those stories could share some very similar threads.




Surely we can just ask Frodo for the definitive description - in the same way, according to the Alexandrian, we can ask a wizard to describe a fireball and ask a rogue why he can only use his power once a day?

Why the need for the fans and writers - unless it's actully the fans and writers doing the describing?

If the 'theory' had been honest, it could have simply said "A disassociated mechanic is one that I can't - or don't want to - conceptualise."

Instead his prejudices get wrapped up in a load of, frankly, garbage about wizards being able to describe things *on their own*. Being able to explain things to us *on their own*. Like Frodo without an author. It's pure bunkum.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "The muscles in the hands are too small for me to affect. Standing still, well, that's easy. If someone's trying to run out of the room then I can stop them doing so with no problem. Falling would be harder. When I take control of someone's muscles they are tense, and it's not really practical to make them relax enough to give way. I suppose it would be possible to make someone fall by going over something, but that's obviously situational."



"Why can't they tensely sit down? One doesn't have to be relaxed to sit. Here, I'm doing it right now. All my muscles are clenched and yet I am nevertheless moving down to the ground."


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> "Why can't they tensely sit down? One doesn't have to be relaxed to sit. Here, I'm doing it right now. All my muscles are clenched and yet I am nevertheless moving down to the ground."




"If your knees are bending then all your muscles aren't clenched. It's the quadriceps, I believe, or that's what some of those muscle-bound sword-swingers call it. Their's tend to be rather hefty."


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "If your knees are bending then all your muscles aren't clenched. It's the quadriceps, I believe, or that's what some of those muscle-bound sword-swingers call it. Their's tend to be rather hefty."



"Wow, I didn't realize that taking control of someone's mind make them THAT tense! Very interesting. It's funny, though. I'm picture this warrior -- he's slicing and dancing through the battlefield, his wrist and fingers deftly spinning his sword, and suddenly you grab his mind, and he suddenly almost bizarrely locks up all Frankenstein-like (still surprises me, the very thought, I never learned about that from other mages before) and yet you can still get him to attack. I imagine that his attacks are clumsy and easy to parry, him being so tense and locked up and all."


----------



## I'm A Banana

> "If your knees are bending then all your muscles aren't clenched. It's the quadriceps, I believe, or that's what some of those muscle-bound sword-swingers call it. Their's tend to be rather hefty."




*Can* you justify it? Sure, why not. Human beings have justified weirder stuff for fun, profit, and religion.

But why the nine hells should I have to? I've got better things to do than to write fluff for the designers. Fluff that they're fully capable of doing themselves if they took their brains out of the number-cloud for half a second and thought, "Wait a second, _does this make enough sense_?"

Effect-based design like that is boffo for balance, since the designer has total control over the limited uses of the ability and they don't have to worry about anything unexpected or surprising happening at all.

Of course, IMO, it's regular bollocks for _fun_, since loosing control and having unexpected and surprising things happen is part of what fun is. And it's bollocks for immersion, since it gets the chronology of physics entirely backwards. "Here's the result, you figure out how it happened" is _not how the world works_, so it's not good for imagining how this imaginary world works. There's no cause and effect, it's just effect, effect, effect, and I suppose you can interrupt that chain of effects and hypothesize about the cause if it makes you happy, but since those causes have no effects themselves, it's basically pointless.


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> "Wow, I didn't realize that taking control of someone's mind make them THAT tense! Very interesting. It's funny, though. I'm picture this warrior -- he's slicing and dancing through the battlefield, his wrist and fingers deftly spinning his sword, and suddenly you grab his mind, and he suddenly almost bizarrely locks up all Frankenstein-like (still surprises me, the very thought, I never learned about that from other mages before) and yet you can still get him to attack. I imagine that his attacks are clumsy and easy to parry, him being so tense and locked up and all."




"I told you, I don't take control of their mind, I take control of their muscles. If I want to make them swing at somebody, then I only need control for a moment, just enough time to get one swing off. After more than a moment, they start to fight me and their muscles become tense, which is why I can't make them move fast. No doubt you're going to suggest I should use that moment to make them fall down, but they are after all in the middle of a fight, expecting to have to swing a sword. It's perfectly practical to make muscles do something that they are ready to do anyway, but very few people are standing around on a battlefield waiting the opportunity to fall down."


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "I told you, I don't take control of their mind, I take control of their muscles. If I want to make them swing at somebody, then I only need control for a moment, just enough time to get one swing off. After more than a moment, they start to fight me and their muscles become tense, which is why I can't make them move fast. No doubt you're going to suggest I should use that moment to make them fall down, but they are after all in the middle of a fight, expecting to have to swing a sword. It's perfectly practical to make muscles do something that they are ready to do anyway, but very few people are standing around on a battlefield waiting the opportunity to fall down."



"Are you SURE you're a real mage? I read the Official Wizard's Tome and it clearly states: 'Your piercing gaze and whispered word let you seize momentary control of your enemy’s mind'. If that's not enough, the spell is actually called 'Hypnotism', not muscle control. The definition of hypnosis is not Control of Super Tense Limb Muscles Only.

Secondly, I just tried it again, I clenched all my muscles, even my quads, so that I can't bend my knees right. Then I tipped my ankles slightly back and I almost toppled backwards. You can't tell me the spell cannot control ankle muscles, otherwise, you'd never get them to walk in the first place.

I don't understand what the victim's expectations have to do with anything. If YOU take control of THEIR muscles, you call the shots. Their expectations of suddenly falling down or not are irrelevant.

I don't know, boss, your explanations are a bit fishy, to tell you the truth. Are you under some sort of coersion, or something you're not telling me? You can be honest with me, boss."


----------



## Bluenose

Kamikaze Midget said:


> *Can* you justify it? Sure, why not. Human beings have justified weirder stuff for fun, profit, and religion.
> 
> But why the nine hells should I have to? I've got better things to do than to write fluff for the designers. Fluff that they're fully capable of doing themselves if they took their brains out of the number-cloud for half a second and thought, "Wait a second, _does this make enough sense_?"
> 
> Effect-based design like that is boffo for balance, since the designer has total control over the limited uses of the ability and they don't have to worry about anything unexpected or surprising happening at all.
> 
> Of course, IMO, it's regular bollocks for _fun_, since loosing control and having unexpected and surprising things happen is part of what fun is. And it's bollocks for immersion, since it gets the chronology of physics entirely backwards. "Here's the result, you figure out how it happened" is _not how the world works_, so it's not good for imagining how this imaginary world works. There's no cause and effect, it's just effect, effect, effect, and I suppose you can interrupt that chain of effects and hypothesize about the cause if it makes you happy, but since those causes have no effects themselves, it's basically pointless.




Unexpected and surprising things happening is not what D&D magic is about. It's extreme reliability is one of the things that makes it most unlike most magic in fiction and myth. And the nature of cause and effect is clear; a spell was cast and it has a particular effect. It's not as if there's any particular fluff attached to all spells in earlier editions. Things just happen because the spell says they happen. Try describing a Fabricate spell in terms of what people see happening, based on the fluff in the books.


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> "Are you SURE you're a real mage? I read the Official Wizard's Tome and it clearly states: 'Your piercing gaze and whispered word let you seize momentary control of your enemy’s mind'. If that's not enough, the spell is actually called 'Hypnotism', not muscle control. The definition of hypnosis is not Control of Super Tense Limb Muscles Only.
> 
> Secondly, I just tried it again, I clenched all my muscles, even my quads, so that I can't bend my knees right. Then I tipped my ankles slightly back and I almost toppled backwards. You can't tell me the spell cannot control ankle muscles, otherwise, you'd never get them to walk in the first place.
> 
> I don't understand what the victim's expectations have to do with anything. If YOU take control of THEIR muscles, you call the shots. Their expectations of suddenly falling down or not are irrelevant.
> 
> I don't know, boss, your explanations are a bit fishy, to tell you the truth. Are you under some sort of coersion, or something you're not telling me? You can be honest with me, boss."




"Maybe some people do it that way, making an enemy suddenly think the person moving up next to them is a foe, or giving them a sudden thought that they need to move in a particular direction. But I'll tell you what, let's just say it's magic, and since magic violates a whole host of the laws of physics and biology without people batting an eyelid about that, that will have to do as your explanation."


----------



## I'm A Banana

> Unexpected and surprising things happening is not what D&D magic is about.




This is the same game with ricocheting lightning bolts and fireballs that backfire on the party and charms that make someone your "friend" (whatever that means) and divination spells that give misleading information and summoning spells where the demons rebel against you?

At any rate, if surprising and unexpected isn't involved in D&D magic, then neither is _fun_, and I'll take D&D's calculus-spells and throw them off the boat with the accounting spreadsheets and the level grinding and the armor vs. weapon tables. It'll just be me and the wandering prostitute table, sailing into the sunset, because saucy wenches are apparently more fun than violating the laws of reality in this game. At least there's some risk there! 



> It's extreme reliability is one of the things that makes it most unlike most magic in fiction and myth. And the nature of cause and effect is clear; a spell was cast and it has a particular effect. It's not as if there's any particular fluff attached to all spells in earlier editions. Things just happen because the spell says they happen. Try describing a Fabricate spell in terms of what people see happening, based on the fluff in the books.




"I wiggle my fingers and turn those trees into a house. Or maybe a ship. Or maybe just ten thousand toothpicks that I then jam into ten thousand olives for this cocktail party I'm throwing." 

Of course, we can't have that in a balance-obsessive game, since there's no telling _what_ those toothpicks could be used for! Cocktail parties are potentially a balance problem for some DMs!


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "Maybe some people do it that way, making an enemy suddenly think the person moving up next to them is a foe, or giving them a sudden thought that they need to move in a particular direction. But I'll tell you what, let's just say it's magic, and since magic violates a whole host of the laws of physics and biology without people batting an eyelid about that, that will have to do as your explanation."



"I wish I could swing that way, boss, but I can't. See, the original point was that mages like yourself might explain what you were doing on all those fantasic adventures, spin an engrossing tale to regular folk like myself. But in the end, it all comes out confused and mysterious-like, and you throw up your hands, and just say it's magic. That doesn't work, though, if I want to hear a good story of what happened, as if I was actually there, as if I were in your head and knowing what it's like to be a mage. Mayhaps I'll go off to another land, where wizard-bards tell a good coherent story and where a Hypnotism spell is a REAL hypnotism spell and not some misnomer. So long, boss."


----------



## Bluenose

Kamikaze Midget said:


> This is the same game with ricocheting lightning bolts and fireballs that backfire on the party and charms that make someone your "friend" (whatever that means) and divination spells that give misleading information and summoning spells where the demons rebel against you?




The only one of those that isn't entirely calculable beforehand is the divination magic, which specifically has a mathematical chance of failing. That's not to say that a lightning bolt ricocheting and affecting members of your party is a good thing, but it's entirely predictable if you have the relevant information. 



> At any rate, if surprising and unexpected isn't involved in D&D magic, then neither is _fun_, and I'll take D&D's calculus-spells and throw them off the boat with the accounting spreadsheets and the level grinding and the armor vs. weapon tables. It'll just be me and the wandering prostitute table, sailing into the sunset, because saucy wenches are apparently more fun than violating the laws of reality in this game. At least there's some risk there!




The laws of reality in this world allow magic to work. They also mean that people don't miscast spells (unless affected by other magic) unless they're casting a spell more powerful than they'd normally use from a scroll. There's no question of someone trying to cast a fireball and making a mess of it, with the spell ecploding somewhere they didn't intend it to, or pushing themselves beyond their normal limits to cast an unusually powerful spell despite the risks, or any of the other things that seem to happen with quite some frequency to magicians in fiction.



> "I wiggle my fingers and turn those trees into a house. Or maybe a ship. Or maybe just ten thousand toothpicks that I then jam into ten thousand olives for this cocktail party I'm throwing."
> 
> Of course, we can't have that in a balance-obsessive game, since there's no telling _what_ those toothpicks could be used for! Cocktail parties are potentially a balance problem for some DMs!




This does of course have economic implications. But discarding those, how do you get from a grove of trees to a wooden house? Personally I don't think it matters, the magic spell has a defined effect, get on with the game, but that's not something that people who believe in dissociated mechanics that have no in-game explanation want to see.


----------



## Njall

Imaro said:


> Depending on the skill level of the person you can just punch someone over and over again in the face... it happens in UFC matches all the time.
> 
> Going further with the example of the boxer... against an average joe he is probably going to throw numerous punches faster and more accurately than average joe can dodge them or block them. A fighter who has spent a majority of his time training to trip is going to be able to trip someone who hasn't numerous times and with great accuracy. What doesn't make sense to me is that I wasted all that training and the ability to trip someone only comes up once in any given fight... and I can still mess it up. It seems to me a warrior wouldn't waste his time learning something like that.




In D&D, you don't face average joes, usually, though. 
If your fight involves an "average joe", he's probably a minion, which kind of makes the point moot. 



> You do realize that most real world fighters don't utilize a ton of different moves... and many, though admittedly not all, are actually specialists.



Wait. Most boxers and MMA fighters don't use a ton of different moves because nonlethal fighting puts quite a bit of constraints on what they can and cannot use; in addition, it's usually "unarmed dude vs unarmed dude", and you're usually fighting someone that's roughly your size.
And, again, they're not really using the same technique again and again; they're often using variations of the same technique ( something you can actually simulate in 4e as well... just take a host of powers that trip or grapple and you're set).
If you take a look at a swordfighting treatise, though, there's quite a bit of moves, pins, grapples, unarmed strikes, as well as counters, fighting stances and so on. How you fight depends a lot on who you're facing.



> I can agree that it's perspective on what you want out of fights. To me 4e martial fights feel like purposefully coreographed action cinema fights like those found in a standard popcorn action movie. They don't feel gritty or real to me... which is not to say that I don't enjoy them if I want the action movie feel.
> 
> On the other hand martial characters in Pathfinder feel more real to me and my players, yes if I've trained to be the best tripper, disarmer, grappler, or whatever I would continuously be trying to use it... Chuck Lidell is always throwing punches, Royce Gracie was always grappling, etc. What makes that exciting is in the facing of different foes in different environs who may or may not be able to counter your strategy with their own specializations... and what you do when your tactic is sub-optimal in a particular fight, like facing foes from a distance, since in specializing so strongly you have made a conscious choice against being well rounded.



The problem is that some tactics are pretty much always effective, while some aren't. Sure, if you create a disarm monkey, you're going to suck against everything that uses natural weapons, and if you create a trip monkey you're going to suck against large or huge opponents with decent dex scores, but if, for example, you just optimize your damage output you're pretty much set. 
Focus on stunning ( there's a high level feat in the APG, IIRC, that lets you stun things pretty much at will ) and you'll never suck; take some archetypes and, again, you're never going to suck no matter the opponent and despite the fact that you're "overspecialized".
Again, this is probably a matter of taste, but 4e combat doesn't look that cinematic to me, compared to 3e... not when you can pretty much do the same things in 3e ( except you can do them over and over again rather than once in a while), and it's not like a tricked out character can't do some crazy stuff in 3e as well...


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> "I wish I could swing that way, boss, but I can't. See, the original point was that mages like yourself might explain what you were doing on all those fantasic adventures, spin an engrossing tale to regular folk like myself. But in the end, it all comes out confused and mysterious-like, and you throw up your hands, and just say it's magic. That doesn't work, though, if I want to hear a good story of what happened, as if I was actually there, as if I were in your head and knowing what it's like to be a mage. Mayhaps I'll go off to another land, where wizard-bards tell a good coherent story and where a Hypnotism spell is a REAL hypnotism spell and not some misnomer. So long, boss."




"While you're there, get them to explain how a Hold Person spell paralyses people without it affecting their lungs, and find out why they can't make it so it does. Also, get them to explain how a Fireball doesn't set anything on fire, how injuries and dying and healing magic interact, why I can never learn just one thing at a time, and how it is that someone who never picked up a weapon in their life nevertheless becomes much more competent with every weapon in existence simply because they've learnt to cast more magic. I'm sure that won't be problem."


----------



## Dunnagin

These are my opinions, I hope they are not taken as edition bashing... they are simply my tastes.

3.5/Pathfinder: I've found this rules sets very complex to DM, it takes much more time to plan, and limits my ability to DM "on the fly" (the manner I prefer to DM, it allows me to let players explore what they want more easily). The granularity of the options in this rules set does give a lot of mechanically aligned flavor, but sometimes details are so complex that it slows game play (via cross referencing in the rules). I am sure that once you have played using this rules set for a number of months it becomes easier (much like mastering a video game like Starcraft), but I'm an older guy with less time on my hands, I want to get into the game easily and also use rules that allow new players to pick up the basics quickly so we can focus on the storyline. One cure for this is adventure paths, but if I accept that as my best option based on the rules set, then I also accept that I run stories written by other people... that means I lose my favourite part of DMing.

4th Edition: Disassociated mechanics are odd, whether that term is accurate or not, who knows. To explain further, when a Mage has a mechanic called "Blink" (minor teleport), and a Rogue has a "Quickstealth" ability which does the exact same thing... then I feel the pursuit of balance has sacrificed flavor to achieve it's goals. This quickly made me feel that I could just assume an "optimized character build" and no matter what my class or race I would have the same chance to hit using my chosen method, do essentially the same damage, etc. etc. In addition to this, the flavor of this edition felt wrong for me, terminology like "powers" and mechanical descriptions which evoke video game special effects as opposed to LOTR or Conan didn't really help me imagine world I wanted to create, or play in.

Also, both systems do not discourage "role play" (again, if that can even be defined clearly), but both systems do focus heavily on mechanics. I prefer simple broad mechanics that allow myself and my players to define and execute our own strategum based on circumstance, as opposed to finding the optimal preset combo for a given encounter.

Example: Can my Paladin use a Holy Strike Feat or Power versus some evil Orcs, sure... the rules tell me to do it, it damages Evil creatures optimally... but I often find when I play a more open game, my players may lure the Orcs onto a ridge and start a landslide knocking the Orcs off the cliff... they may try and dupe the Orcs by impersonating their Evil Diety using fog and a cow horn to their advantage... they may realise this type of Orc is Lawful Evil and challenge the leader to Single Combat.

The other rules sets mentioned do not ban this type of play, but neither really focuses on it either. Once you delve too deeply into the pit that is fiddly mechanics, I think you may lose some potential for thinking outside of these mechanics and creating an engaging quirky, comical and very unique game for your players.

What I like about role playing is the freedom to adventure... to few rules or to simplistic rules can break suspension of disbelief... many and overly detailed rules can lead to a "mathy" focus (generally saying "look at the math options", not "look at the situational options").

I think the various editions have given us many cool things... I think each edition has also changed the focus of play. I am well aware of where I want my game focus to be... the other styles of play I have mentioned are not wrong, nor are they "not fun"... but I prefer a DMing simple rules set and giving as much freedom to players as possible. To achieve this, I have customized my particular game to focus on these goals... since my final goal is to have fun with friends.

In closing... I have no preference... I will steal good ideas from any game


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> "While you're there, get them to explain how a Hold Person spell paralyses people without it affecting their lungs, and find out why they can't make it so it does. Also, get them to explain how a Fireball doesn't set anything on fire, how injuries and dying and healing magic interact, why I can never learn just one thing at a time, and how it is that someone who never picked up a weapon in their life nevertheless becomes much more competent with every weapon in existence simply because they've learnt to cast more magic. I'm sure that won't be problem."



"Firstly, calm down, boss. I didn't mean no offense. Please don't use your Muscle Control... I mean, Hypnotism to make me hurt myself.. oh wait, you can't do that. I guess I'm safe enough, so I'll say it plainly.

I understand that we live in a strange, strange world. But all that strangeness, it's all relative, right? In the conversation that I was having with a lad from Manchester (wherever that is!) which you interrupted, I admitted that no place is perfect. So I may never find my ideal Hypnotism spell, but I figure I could find one that's a whole lot better than the piss poor excuse of a spell that you learned, pardon my foul language.

What I mean to say is, it's all relative. A Hold Person spell that does what it says but lets people breath vs a Hypnotism that doesn't even do what it implies. Two wrongs don't make a right. huh?"


----------



## Elf Witch

MichaelSomething said:


> Then I can assume you have added the Codex Maretialis and A Magical Medieval Society into your 3.5 game?
> 
> There's always GURPS and Riddle of Steel as well.




I draw heavily on A Magical Medieval Society for my games.


----------



## chaochou

innerdude said:


> I think we're all pretty familiar with the basic argument of The Alexandrian's treatise on dissociated mechanics.
> 
> Namely, that a mechanic is "dissociated" when the character inside the game world--NOT the player rolling the dice and eating Doritos, _but the avatar acting within the game construct_--has no reasonable explanation for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic.




As I've said in previous posts, characters within a game can not explain anything. They cannot think anything without their players deciding they think it, they cannot explain anything without their player explaining it, they can not act, move, eat, see, hear or exist without the players calling them and their actions into existence. They are not independent entities, but extensions of the people imagining them.

But the theory uses the pretense that there is an independent wizard - with his own logical explanation of a fireball spell - as a rhetorical device to shift the blame for the author's failings onto a game he doesn't like.

He asks the 1e/2e/3e wizard (that is, he asks himself) how fireball works - and tells himself that it's logical.
He asks the 4e rogue (that is, he asks himself) how a daily power works - and tells himself he doesn't understand it.

But because he's disguised the question to himself as one asked of a 4e rogue, now he says: "Haha! 4e is to blame!"

Once you see through that trick, the whole 'theory' falls apart.

All his theory says is a 'disassociated mechanic' is one he can't, won't or doesn't want to conceptualise. Had he said such a thing, it might actually have been useful to someone, somewhere. It's not such a bad concept for a game designer to bear in mind.

As it is, the entire 'theory' looks little more than an attempt to make the author's prejudices sound like objective analysis.


----------



## Elf Witch

chaochou said:


> As it is, the entire 'theory' looks little more than an attempt to make the author's prejudices sound like objective analysis.




I agree that it was obvious that the author had an axe to grind. 

But some of what he said made sense at least to me as a way to describe some of what goes on in 4E.

I sent the link to several gaming buddies and my son and asked them what they thought of it. Some of them don't like 4E and some play it as their game of choice.

Basically some of the replies I got back were like mine finally a simple way to explain why we don't like 4E for our gaming experience. 

The 4E players agreed that yes they could see the concept as a way to describe some of the rules. 

The difference between the groups was that the 4E fans felt that it did not hurt their enjoyment of the game and in some ways improved it, and the 3E fans did.

Maybe because we are friends we didn't automatically jump to the conclusion that anyone was attacking our game of choice. Or making the assumption that you can't role play in 4E.

I do wish someone would write a blog on this without the emotional baggage that the author did. Because I do feel that it is a good concept in a way to explain some of the rule set in 4E.


----------



## Dunnagin

I find that the article on Dissociated Mechanics makes sense on context of various Degrees of Disassociation.

I like my chili a bit spicy, but not super spicy... and yes this is a matter of taste.

I also don't mind a degree of dissociated mechanics, but not overly so. Also, when I see this dissociation driven by a mandate of "balance", it can sacrifice some of the oddities that I enjoy in games.

Here's a balanced mechanic gone too far, just an example:
A Fighter is good at fighting, so gets 3 Attacks per round and does 1d0 Damage with each attack... yeah that makes sense.

I also need a Rogue... but I want it completely balanced, so I can give the Rogue more attacks with less damage... or fewer attacks with more damage.

If I keep doing this with all classes... I begin to wonder why I bother choosing a class at all... none seem unique.


----------



## AeroDm

Crazy Jerome said:


> Here is the problem with the whole theory in a nutshell. In this case, it is not the mechanics that are "disassociated", but that what you bring to the table makes them seem that way to you. This is, I want to strongly emphasize, neither good, bad, nor indifferent. It just is.




I think this is insightful and I agree that an article with baggage is an issue. What if we changed the thrust from "dissociated mechanics" to something like... "Game mechanics that help align the vision of the player to the reality of the character can oftentimes facilitate the roleplaying experience." It is still touching on the same ideas that (my reading) of the article was pointing at, it just does so with less absolutism and provides a better rationale for why this is the case.


----------



## Elf Witch

AeroDm said:


> I think this is insightful and I agree that an article with baggage is an issue. What if we changed the thrust from "dissociated mechanics" to something like... "Game mechanics that help align the vision of the player to the reality of the character can oftentimes facilitate the roleplaying experience." It is still touching on the same ideas that (my reading) of the article was pointing at, it just does so with less absolutism and provides a better rationale for why this is the case.




Well that sure is a mouth full. 

I think one of the reason we coin one or two words to describe things is that it is easier.

Dissociated mechanics does not have to be a bad word. It is a good description if you don't add emotional charged baggage to it.


----------



## Oldtimer

Justin doesn't like 4e, so he's trying to rationalize why no one should like it. It's not a theory, it's a diatribe.

On the other hand, there is a valid reason why some people has a hard time with 4e. I'd like to borrow terms from meta-physics and differentiate between Immanence and Transcendence i RPG systems.

In an immanent rule system, events are described from the character's actions are resolved through appropriate game mechanics. In a transcendent rule system events are described from player choices and narrated into character actions.

In an immanent system, like 3e, the player might decide that his character is trying to pull on the rug the villain is standing on in order to make him fall down. Then the DM finds some suitable mechanics to resolve the action.

In a transcendent system, like 4e, the player chooses a power that causes the target to fall prone when hit and narrates it as pulling on the rug the villain is standing on.

Some people are simply more accustomed to starting from the character and working outwards and dislike starting with the game's mechanical elements and working inwards. But neither is more dissociated than the other.


----------



## Dunnagin

Oldtimer said:


> In an immanent system, like 3e, the player might decide that his character is trying to pull on the rug the villain is standing on in order to make him fall down. Then the DM finds some suitable mechanics to resolve the action.
> 
> In a transcendent system, like 4e, the player chooses a power that causes the target to fall prone when hit and narrates it as pulling on the rug the villain is standing on.




So... if I use an Immanent System (which I do not believe 3e is) then I can resolve any action by simple adjudication and assignment of rules.

If I use a Transcendent System, I can only perform action explicitely outlined by the provided rules.

I like Immanent!


----------



## AeroDm

Elf Witch said:


> Well that sure is a mouth full.
> 
> I think one of the reason we coin one or two words to describe things is that it is easier.
> 
> Dissociated mechanics does not have to be a bad word. It is a good description if you don't add emotional charged baggage to it.



Right. That wasn't intended to be replacing the term, but the meaning of what the term is trying to address. Hence the phrase _"What if we changed the thrust from "dissociated mechanics" to something like..."_ It keeps the term but loses the baggage.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Oldtimer said:


> Some people are simply more accustomed to starting from the character and working outwards and dislike starting with the game's mechanical elements and working inwards. But neither is more dissociated than the other.



In some other threads, this was labelled as "fiction first" vs "rules first". Those threads consisted of pages upon pages of vigorous debate over whether or not "rules first" resulted in disassociation between rules and fiction. The length and breadth of those debates would seem to deny that the statment "neither is more dissociated than the other" can be claimed to be objective fact.

Disclaimer: Following my own advice, this isn't black-and-white "either-or". Every rule that tries to quantify fiction into numbers and probabilities is going to have some level of disaassocation. It's just a question of degree of disassociation, and what is the tolerance level for your gaming group.


----------



## M.L. Martin

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Effect-based design like that is boffo for balance, since the designer has total control over the limited uses of the ability and they don't have to worry about anything unexpected or surprising happening at all.




   I know effects-based design. Effects-based design was one of the first things I discovered when stretching beyond D&D, and many of the systems I own material for and would like to try (HERO, M&M, Tri-Stat, Savage Worlds) are effects-based systems.

   4E _is_ an effects-based system--but it's a low-resolution one, or what might be called 'low definition, low trust'. I don't think the problems that it has caused some folks lie in the effects-based foundation, but that the game does not provide the more rigorous mechanical definition of HERO, nor does it encourage allowing special effects to play a greater part like HERO's special effects can at GM's discretion, M&M's emphasis on descriptors or power stunting, or Savage Worlds' encouragement of power trappings having some mechanical effect. 

   Of course, since one of the overriding principles of both 3E and 4E's design appears to have been "Try to keep as many of the PC abilities under the rules and free of DM adjudication as possible," this may not be a surprise.


----------



## BryonD

Nineball said:


> 5) Your experiences exist differently from your recollection.



No, that is NOT an option because he is talking about MY experiences.  I accept his experiences as real and quite different than mine.  



> 6) You have always - _always_ - played with heavily dissociative mechanics for as long as you have played D&D.  But you ignored them.  You can't or won't ignore equally "dissociative mechanics" in 4e for whatever reason.  This causes you to assume that the "dissociative mechanics" you ignored - be it consciously or unconsciously - never existed in the first place.



There is the concept called "relative".  I have numerous times comments on issues where 3E could be better in this regard.  But 4E very intentionally lurched in this direction.  And, more importantly, the design concept behind 3E attempts to avoid this while 4E actively embraces it.  Which IS NOT to say that this is bad.  Only that it is different.  And not what a lot of people like.  A lot of people LOVE it.  But a lot see it as a serious flaw as well.



> 3e is a bad simulationist game.  Anyone _who is not a 3e fan_ can tell you that.  Heck, plenty of 3e fans can tell you that.



Oh, I agree that a lot of non-3E fans will say that.  Of course, I've had a lot of 3E haters tell me about how their eyes bleed or they get migraines at the thought of trying to run 3E.  

I agree that 3E CAN be run in a manner that ignores simulation.
I also agree that some people clearly find keeping up with running 3E in a manner that embraces the simulation to be stressful and not fun.

But when you tell me about my game, you are simply amusing.  You have no idea what happens in my game.  And your statements about it are wrong.



> Your experiences are, of course, your experiences.  They are your _subjective_ experiences, and they are colored with your ignoring of "dissociative mechanics."  They never stopped existing, you simply stopped noticing them.



Do I get to start telling you what you are ignoring in your games?  Are you going to go on record right now and say that I can decree anything I want and you will accept that as truth?  
I didn't think so.

It appears you have a deep NEED to believe that I'm ignoring things.  Which is pretty telling.

I do experience issues in 3E that I wish were better.  In a few cases I've actually house-rules to fix them.  In some cases it is better to grin an bear it.  But the great majority of the time, these issues don't come into play.  Again, if you (a) stop trying to tell me about myself and (b) stop trying to put relative issues in only black and white categories, then, just maybe, you will see the distinction.

And if all you have as an argument is to tell me that I don't know about my own games, then you are lost.  But, that is true the moment you try to insist that there are not significant differences between the games here.


My 3E simulation games ROCK.


----------



## BryonD

I'm curious Nineball.

Can you offer a serious, thoughtful justification for why someone might love 3E and yet find 4E completely unsatisfying?

You just happen to be the latest in a growing pattern of 4E myrmidons who seem to find the simple idea that 3E is the game of choice of a lot of people to be enraging.

I mean, I'm an edition warrior.  I admit it.  Happily.  It's fun.

And I love 3E and find 4E unsatisfying.  But I consistently admit that 4E does do the things it set out to do.  It is a great game at doing what it intends and it is clear that a lot of people love it for that.  That is great.

I used to be disappointed that my apples had been replaced with oranges and apples were no longer "in season".  But Paizo fixed that for me.  Everyone should be happy.

I'll happily argue all day long about what 3E does and does not do and what 4E does and does not do.  But it still comes down to different strokes.  Play what you love.

But when I offer critical comments about 4E, they reference particular elements of the game system relative to my personal preferences.  I've never told anyone that their experiences don't exist.  That is a really bizarre position to be taking.


----------



## billd91

chaochou said:


> He asks the 1e/2e/3e wizard (that is, he asks himself) how fireball works - and tells himself that it's logical.
> He asks the 4e rogue (that is, he asks himself) how a daily power works - and tells himself he doesn't understand it.
> 
> But because he's disguised the question to himself as one asked of a 4e rogue, now he says: "Haha! 4e is to blame!"
> 
> Once you see through that trick, the whole 'theory' falls apart.
> 
> All his theory says is a 'disassociated mechanic' is one he can't, won't or doesn't want to conceptualise. Had he said such a thing, it might actually have been useful to someone, somewhere. It's not such a bad concept for a game designer to bear in mind.
> 
> As it is, the entire 'theory' looks little more than an attempt to make the author's prejudices sound like objective analysis.




You're missing something in your rebuttal. The dissociative part isn't that the rogue can use this daily power of feints and motion to make his opponent dance to his tune, it's that the rogue's ability to tap that particular power occurs only once per day. That's the problem with 4e in this particular post.

The reason that the fireball is less dissociative is because the PC has more choice about it. He can prepare that "daily" power multiple times as long as he's sufficient level to manipulate that kind of power. His ability to tap that power is more directly associated with his own will to use that power as he sees fit.
I think the rogue's daily power (and all martial dailies) would be better served, and less dissociative, if they weren't separate from the encounter powers. If each encounter power had a "boosted" level of performance related to the base encounter power but a bit better, and the PC had a limited number of boosts to use per day, then the power would be less dissociative than your typical martial daily. The character doesn't lose the skill he so cleverly shows in 4e only once a day, he still has it as a trick to pull out with each new encounter (before his target gets wise to his tricks), it's just that he occasionally does better with it.


----------



## Elf Witch

Nineball said:


> The only reason this is odd is because for so long EN World was a place where you could say "3e is a better game then 4e," but you could not say "4e is a better game then 3e."  That former made you a fan; the latter, a "fanboy."




You really need to get off the cross because someone needs the wood.

Both sides have said some pretty insulting things to each other and the mods have tried to stop all of it.

I have been told by some 4E fans when I say 3E is a better game then 4E that I am gronard, afraid of change , that I am angry at WOTC and bitter, fatbeard and other insults that I don't recall at the moment.

Why can't you accept that some people just don't like the direction the game went in? 

It is like you want us to admit that we like a crappy game then it will be okay in your book if we like it. I don't go around saying 4E is a crappy game I say that I don't enjoy the mechanics of the system. And I try and explain what it is about it that I don't like.

Some 3E fanboys were major asshats over the change but so was some 4E fanboys. Neither side has the monopoly on behaving like jerks.


----------



## pemerton

Aberzanzorax said:


> pemerton is an excellent poster who approaches gaming/4e from a different direction than I, and his style fits with a sort of "the rules support the story" approach rather than my "the rules define the story" approach.



Thanks!



Aberzanzorax said:


> The paradigm of encounter and daily powers is not an avatar issue, it's a player issue (and one that I share with you, please don't feel that I'm judging you). By that I mean the avatar does whatever they do and it can be described in the world. The player is the one who "knows" that the avatar cannot do it more than once. The avatar doesn't "know" that, in a sense



I think this is right.



Pentius said:


> the rules exist not as a simulation of the game world.  The concept is that the game world exists(I use the term loosely, since the game world is fictional) outside of the rules.  It has it's own physics, or lack thereof.  The rules, instead of modeling the world, act as a set of tools by which the players interact with the world.



So is this.

[MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has been making the point that the PC _isn't real, and doesn't literally know or do anything_. The stats and abilities on the character sheet are, primarily, tools for the player to use to play the game. Because the game is an RPG, the main way the player plays the game is by engaging the ficitonal situation via his/her PC. That is why many of the stats and abilities on the character sheet pertain to things that the player can have his/her PC do. (I don't want to say that this is _inherent_ to roleplaying, but I think it is pretty central to most RPGs.)

But it is a further question whether the rules that govern a player's deployment of his/her PC must _also_ be rules that model the ingame, imaginary causal processes of that PC.

RQ and Classic Traveller are two well-known RPGs that come closest to this sort of simulationism. As some have pointed out, 3E comes close in some places but not others (turn-by-turn combat, for example, and associated notions like "full attack", clearly are not simulationist in this sense - the constraint of taking turns is not something that exists within the fiction - only the participants in the game know or care about turns.)

4e has more of these mechanics which are addressed to the player, but do not model ingame processes. But it doesn't follow that no one at the table knows what is happening in the gameworld, nor that the fictional characters can't be imagined to narrate their own biographies. It also means that the 1x/enc or 1x/day limits on some abilities are not necessarily part of a PC's biography. The rules constraint operates on the player, not the PC. That is, it's not necessarily the case that a PC fighter _can't_ perform a sweeping blow more than once in five minutes. It's just that s/he never does.

An issue that [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] has raised in many threads on these boards is a different one from that of so-called "dissociated" mechanics, namely, _does adjudicating action resolution in the game require the real-world participants to know what is happening in the fiction?_ I agree with LostSoul that if the answer to this question is "no", then we're sliding from an RPG to a boardgame/wargame. But I think that, in the case of 4e, the answer to the question is "yes" - although the sorts of fictional details required are different from what they might be in other games (eg position is very important, precise swordplay technique used is not that important).



ardoughter said:


> It was after playing over the years I came to the comclusion that the to hit die rolling largely does not matter. It is not what makes a fight memorable. It is the tactics, like where some one stands in a bottleneck to split the enemy force in to more managable chunks. Or some has the ability to go nova and finally the lucky criticals that one shot an enemy.
> 
> Now one of the things that I like about 4e combat is that daily encounter and action points allows one to set up finishing move and are new opportunities to set up more memotable combats.



To my mind, _this_ is what encounter and daily powers in 4e are about. The design intention is pretty clearly that, if the GM builds encounters according to the guidelines, and the players do their best to engage those encounters using the abilities on their character sheets, than a dramatically satisfying combat will result.

Whether or not this design goal has been achieved is a different question (in my experience it has been, but others' experiences seem to differ).

Whether or not the action resolution mechanics operate without the participants needing to engage the fiction is also a different question (in my experience this is not the case, but again others' experiences seem to differ).



Pentius said:


> Wrecan, of the WotC boards, is more elegant in his phrasing than I.  I think he says it best.



That's a good post (and makes me feel more sane - someone else has noticed the indie influence on 4e's design).

Wrecan's comments on falling damage and damage remind me of this passage from Maelstrom Storytelling (p 116):

A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. . . focus on the intent behind the elements in a scene, and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character . . . The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities . . .  Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.​
There is something similar also in HeroQuest 2nd ed (pp 72-74):

Resistances [that is, DCs] are determined relative to the PCs' collective ability ratings . . . Resistances are usually asssumed to have all complicating or mitigating factors built into them. Even when the PCs re-encounter a previous obstacle, you can change the resistance directly if . . .  dramatic or pacing reasons indicate that this is the most entertaining choice. Make sure that you describe changing conditions so that the change in difficulty appears believable . . .​
This is how I run skill challenges in 4e. The fact that combat works in a different, and more simulationist, fashion contributes to what I regard as the biggest flaw in 4e's action resolution mechanics, namely, the lack of guidance on how to integrate skill challenges with the tactical resolution system.



MichaelSomething said:


> There's always GURPS and Riddle of Steel as well.



I would have thought that Spiritual Attributes in TRoS are "dissociated mechanics", in that - from the point of view of the PC - the use of bonus dice from SAs does not correlate to any particular thing that the PC is doing when egaged in a passionate rather than more pedestrian conflict.


----------



## chaochou

billd91 said:


> You're missing something in your rebuttal. The dissociative part isn't that the rogue can use this daily power of feints and motion to make his opponent dance to his tune, it's that the rogue's ability to tap that particular power occurs only once per day.




I'm talking about this definition of dissociated mechanics:

_When       I talk about "dissociated mechanics", I'm talking about       mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are       mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations._

I don't see how it's missing something to point out that characters are not capable of giving functional explanations of anything. It's a nonsense definition, followed by nonsense examples.

And 'mechanics which have no association with the game world'? Who creates association? Or fails to create association? Whose game world are we talking about? It's just a way of saying 'dissociated mechanics are ones I can't / won't conceptualise'.

I dont think I missed anything. By the definition provided there are no objectively 'dissociated mechanics'. Just individual decisions over whether to - and if so how to - rationalise, explain or interpret.


----------



## Dunnagin

I think if someone says "a dagger does 1d4 damage and a sword does 1d8 damage" the actual accuracy of this system based on various circumstances can be argued. Daggers may pierce armor more easily at close range and thus be more damaging, a sword may deflect harmlessly off this or that... those types of debate.

The point is though, my mind can associate a small sized dagger with a small die (d4) and a physically larger weapon with a larger die (d8). This is a short leap of logic.

If a mechanic says that a thief or a fighter can perform some action which doesn't align to thieving or fighting at all... something similar to teleportation (you just appear somewhere else), then you begin to lose me.

This is like saying that a normal Dagger now does "1d4 and resurrection once per day", which is fine... you'd say it's a "magical dagger"... so my mind wants to take 4e "powers" and say "these are magical fighters and magical rogues".

Also, they try to keep the damage output across classes close to one another... so my rogue and mage can keep up with a fighters damage output.

The end result, for me is a system where "we are all fightery magicy and we just do it because our powers balance any rules gap".

I'm not a big fan of this type of design imperative.
It seems really forced.


----------



## Elf Witch

Dunnagin said:


> I think if someone says "a dagger does 1d4 damage and a sword does 1d8 damage" the actual accuracy of this system based on various circumstances can be argued. Daggers may pierce armor more easily at close range and thus be more damaging, a sword may deflect harmlessly off this or that... those types of debate.
> 
> The point is though, my mind can associate a small sized dagger with a small die (d4) and a physically larger weapon with a larger die (d8). This is a short leap of logic.
> 
> If a mechanic say that a thief or a fighter can perform some action which doesn't align to thieving or fighting at all... something similar to teleportation (you just appear somewhere else), then you begin to lose me.
> 
> This is like saying that a normal Dagger now does "1d4 and resurrection once per day", which is fine... you'd say it's a "magical dagger"... so my mind wants to take 4e "powers" and say "these are magical fighters and magical rogues".
> 
> Also, they try to keep the damage output across classes close to one another... so my rogue and mage can keep up with a fighters damage output.
> 
> The end result, for me is a system where "we are all fightery magicy and we just do it because our powers balance any rules gap".
> 
> I'm not a big fan of this type of design imperative.
> It seems really forced.




This is a great example. I know that balance is a key theme in 4E and some people really like that. I don't like it to the extent that they took it. I feel as if they had to add a lot of mechanics that really don't make sense to me just to make sure everyone has something awesome to do every round.

My son said to me that 4E reminds him of how a lot of little league sports teams have taken the route that everyone gets a trophy.   

My group played 4E to see how we liked it and our opinion was that it was to bland. Full disclosure here my group has never felt that there was an issue between casters and non casters. We really didn't mind grapple.

We have some house rules that fix certain issues we see. For example we think fighters are boring out of combat so we changed the skill system to get rid of cross class skills by using a feat called applied learning. The feat taken at first level makes all skills class skills.

I do agree that 3E RAW is hard to balance for a low magic campaign so we tweak it for that or play a different system.


----------



## Dunnagin

I've always kept a different balance in mind while DMing I guess.

Let's say I have three players, and they want these characters:
A sly con artist thief who like to gamble
I thug of a fighter who just like to hit stuff
An overly curious mage who loves fiddling with magic

I'm not worried as much about combat balance, as I am the balance of "stage time".
So I think up some plot thread like (oversimplified example):
The thief has (what he believes to be) a useless magic item, which he sells to the mage (this is how the two meet). The mage realizes it is a "summoning stone" and gradually fiddles with it until it releases a demon! This leads to a series of events... of course the fighter will get to smash critters and things... but the balance is in giving each player the story they envisioned (they gave me the basic hooks, I give them the details).

The rest of the adventure has ample trap disarming and con artist opportunities for the thief... lots of arcane tidbits and oddities for the mage... and of course things to smash (which is also fun) for the fighter.

This, to me, is not only a complete game... but it helps a story unfold.

Systems which have hundreds of options for combat (3e) and systems which are designed to balance combat (4e) both focus on combat... and we all know, there is way more fun to be had than just combat... or at least, building players up to have a reason for combat. 

I think game design, game mastering and playing can contain a lot of expressive storytelling... instead of a focus on "solid combat mechanics"... I wish games focused more on telling good stories... this is why I like or dislike certain movies... and games are just another form or entertainment for me, so why not be a bit artful.

Instead of arguing over which system handles combat better... perhaps we should analyze what factors outside of combat mechanics... or any mechanics actually... make the game fun.

Non mechanical items such as... world building, plot threads, motivations, character backgrounds, etc.
While we argue about which type of initiative mechanic makes the most sense... are we forgetting storytelling? I kind of hope not.


----------



## Gantros

Doug McCrae said:


> Another point is that D&D has always had dissociated mechanics/play:
> 1. Choosing a PC's race
> 2. Hit points
> 3. Saving throws
> 4. Xp for gold
> 5. Certain classes being banned from wearing particular types of armour or weapons
> 6. Handwaving the boring bits - travelling to the dungeon, shopping for equipment
> 7. Use of reported speech
> 8. Starting a PC's career on completion of his 1st level training rather than from birth




Just wanted to point out that none of these are examples of dissociated mechanics, as defined in the Alexandrian essay.

#1, 6, 7 & 8 are examples of _metagaming_, in which out-of-game information or resources (such as player's knowledge of the pros & cons of various races, or DM's knowledge of when interesting events will and will not happen in the game world) are used to affect in-game decisions.  It's a bit of a stretch to call these "mechanics" at all, since they really represent different ways of using various rules rather than actual rules themselves.

The rest are examples of _abstracted_ mechanics, in which a range of various factors and circumstances are rolled up into a simplified numerical value for the sake of convenience.  HP and Saving Throws each represent a character's ability to avoid serious harm or death through a combination of skill, experience, natural ability, luck, fate, divine favor, magical assistance, etc.  XP for gold made the assumption that adventurers who amassed large amount of wealth had faced and overcome many difficult challenges to do so.  Armor and weapon restrictions assumed some combination of cultural and practical factors.

All of the above mechanics still have a direct association with specific behaviors and outcomes in the game world.  Take HP for example.  It is directly affected by a character's experience level, class, and ability scores, all of which are things an avatar would have some awareness of.  It also degrades as a character absorbs blows, gets tired, or presses their luck repeatedly - again all things the character could feel and understand.  So when a player uses HP to make informed decisions about when to flee or continue fighting, or whether or not to jump off a 20' cliff, we can easily envision the character making the same decision based on the same set of information.

Contrast this with 4e daily powers, which dissociate the mechanic (i.e. how often you can use the power) from any meaningful factors or circumstances a character would conceivably be aware of or able to influence in the game world (such as skill level, experience, fatigue, luck, or prior preparation).  The mechanic allows the player to make informed decisions about when to use it, but provides no explanation of how the character would arrive at the same conclusion.

Also I don't think it was being asserted that 3e and earlier editions were free of dissociated mechanics, but rather that in 4e they appear much more frequently and so are a bigger problem for those that find them undesirable.


----------



## pawsplay

I was initially inclined to disagree with the position, as summarized in the OP, but after reading the article in its entirety, I think I agree more than I disagree. Clearly, 4e abstractly the entirety of combat to a greater degree than 3e abstracts even some individual attacks; even "shifted" targets exist in a nebulous, mathematical environment where diagonals don't exist, and in fiction, it may be you who is moving when you shift your opponent. The noting of the Oberoni fallacy is dead on; "dissociated" mechanics do force you to potentially houserule amost every round of combat if someone tries to actually interact with the roleplayed elements. 

I'm not sure I agree that "dissociated" is a qualitive distinction I would use, though. I think I would think of it more in terms of fiction-first to the extent that you wait so long to immerse, you never actually immerse. While the player is, psychogically, dissociated, the mechanic itself is more... does it need a different word than simply "cumbersome?" The mechanic is too complex, too demanding, too distracting from the action, and asks you to wait too long to answer the question, "what is going on here?" In that way, it's not too dissimilar from any other rule that's a PITA.


----------



## the Jester

Edit: Never mind, I'm just testy.


----------



## fuzzlewump

Dunnagin said:


> If a mechanic says that a thief or a fighter can perform some action which doesn't align to thieving or fighting at all... something similar to teleportation (you just appear somewhere else), then you begin to lose me.
> 
> This is like saying that a normal Dagger now does "1d4 and resurrection once per day", which is fine... you'd say it's a "magical dagger"... so my mind wants to take 4e "powers" and say "these are magical fighters and magical rogues".
> 
> Also, they try to keep the damage output across classes close to one another... so my rogue and mage can keep up with a fighters damage output.
> 
> The end result, for me is a system where "we are all fightery magicy and we just do it because our powers balance any rules gap".
> 
> I'm not a big fan of this type of design imperative.
> It seems really forced.



I agree with these ideas. I challenge you, however, to find me the fighter and rogue powers that resurrect, or anything of the sort. There might be an oddity here and there, just like in any edition and in any game (Come and Get It comes to mind, but even that was errata'd to be a Str vs. Will attack), but overall you'll find Rogues and Fighters not creating Webs, Grease, Fire Walls, or Stinking Clouds, but Wizards do. You'll find them doing heavy damage, imposing an effect or starting a stance or what have you.

I definitely buy the appearance of homogeneity, just like someone unknowing would say 3E Fighters and Rogues look the same, but in reality they play differently. The edition difference is the gap between complexity of Martial and Arcane was decreased considerably, but it actually remains. Stinking Cloud vs. Brute Strike for example.


----------



## Dunnagin

I've just searched for my 4th Edition Players Handbook... but it is lost in a pile somewhere... so instead I will pose a question.

Balanced combat is often touted as the biggest perk of 4th edition D&D.
So... are you saying that the various Powers in D&D 4th are so vastly different from one another that they cannot be balanced properly? Or are you stating that the powers are fairly similar so it can be (and is) balanced quite closely?

The mechanics are all generally focused on combat... so if they are balanced, they are measured to have similar outcomes (this ability does 2d8 damage... this one does d12 & a d4... both read differently but the average damage outcome is 9pts of damage).

So is it balanced? or imbalanced?
Which do you prefer?

When I find my 4th PHB I'll dig up examples.
In essence... the selling point of "balanced combat" was not a selling point to me for three reasons:

1. Combat is not the primary focus of my game
2. I think perhaps Fighters should be the best at fighting (imbalance on purpose)
3. If the game showed less focus on Combat Balance then it would have more room for non combat abilities that Rogues, Mages & Clerics may have

That sums up my thoughts... I do reserve the right to be wrong, I've been wrong before and I have learned a lot from being so.


----------



## innerdude

Okay, I haven't read anything past page 3 today (it's what happens when  you spend most of your Saturday helping your father-in-law build a  storage shed in his back yard). 

But I do want to clarify a few things about what some earlier posters  said, specifically what I AM SAYING, and what I AM NOT SAYING.

1. I AM SAYING that I affirm the validity of the Theory/Definition of Dissociated Mechanics. 

Some have come on saying, "Well, the Alexandrian doesn't PROVE anything.  All he does is define a term that he came up with himself." 

Since when did coming up with something "yourself" somehow make the idea  invalid, or the thought less valuable? The fact is, he defines a term  that clearly applies to pen-and-paper roleplaying, and does so in such a  way that demonstrates its application in a number of situational  contexts. 

That said, the definition isn't the Theory. The theory could be stated  as, "Dissociative mechanics have an effect on the perceptions and nature  of RPG system resolution." 

You can argue this point, but Justin Alexander makes a pretty strong  case that dissociative mechanics DO, in fact, have an effect on the way  RPGs play, and the way they resolve in-game situations. 

You can argue what those effects are, how much impact they have on  gameplay (lots, or very little), or how particular mechanics may or may  not be "dissociative," but arguing whether it's _real _is the weakest of positions to take. 

2. I AM NOT SAYING that the effects of dissociative mechanics will be  the same for all individuals, groups, or rules systems. In fact, part of  my original point in bringing this up at all wasn't to start an Edition  War, is was to affirm that the definition of Dissociative Mechanics has  a real effect on the way we perceive the games we play. 

3. I AM SAYING that all RPGs are "simulative" in nature. Any time a  player is expected to make a game decision in the context of a _character_,  you are necessarily requiring that character--through the  interpretation of the rules as presented to the player--to have some  real, valid, rational way of making decisions within whatever milieu  they exist.

This is a _simulation_ of human rationality--you are creating a  situation, or framework in which a rational subject must interpret the  consequences of a choice and its resulting effects. 

4. I AM NOT SAYING that any other type of game must be simulation.  Clearly poker isn't a simulation of anything. Croquet isn't a  "simulation." The rules mechanics of American Football aren't  "simulating" anything other than American Football. Stating that my  original post is invalid just because "not everything is a simulation"  is a strawman.  

5. I AM NOT SAYING that other things can't also be simulations. Clearly,  Microsoft Flight Simulator is a very lucid attempt at simulating  commercial airplane flight mechanics. Battletech is a simulation of what  would happen if 60-foot tall robots with frikkin' laser beams shooting  out of their frikkin' hands were real. 

But they're not RPGs. Or at least are not _intended _to be. If you  and a buddy want to play Microsoft Flight Sim while pretending that  you're Leslie Nielsen and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar flying a 747 in the movie _Airplane!_,  more power to you. 

Some might take such a statement to mean that in fact dissociative mechanics  aren't real. "Ah hah! You just admitted that you CAN completely  separate 'simulative' from 'narrative' aspects." 

No, that's not what I did. What I did was state that the _narrative_ is a construct, and the existence of that construct is based on the mechanical assumption that Microsoft Flight Sim represents _some ability of the characters to interact within that construct. _

_Airplane! _as a movie is funny precisely because it recognizes this fact--that rationally, no sane person would allow Leslie Nielsen's character anywhere near the cockpit of that plane. If you change that sense of rationality--that in fact, there's no reason at all that Leslie Nielsen can't pilot that plane into harmonious safety--the entire tone of the movie shifts.

When characters interact with NPCs (or each other) inside the game world construct, the combat mechanics most definitely have an affect, because they are a key factor in how any given entity _would respond in a given situation_. 

One classic example is when a player decides, "My character's a  brute, an uber-powerful fighter who is enormously large, and  intimidating." 

Great, cool, wonderful--but who determines how the rest of the world _reacts_ to that uber-fighter? Typically a combination of the rules and the GM. And that construct has to have some basis for _simulating_ what happens when your character interacts with someone or something else capable of rationally responding to it. 

It's impossible to separate fluff and crunch completely, because the  "fluff" controls your character's place in the game construct, which  sets up the basis for other entities' rational response to who and what  the character _is_. 

The whole point of an Intimidate check, for instance, is that it _assumes that an intimidate check has some point of reference for its effects_.  Big, large, imposing, dangerous, or charismatic people have a  psychological affect on those they interact with, and an Intimidate  check is designed to simulate this. 

If you take away an intimidate check, and make it, "Well, the GM says I  have an opportunity to intimidate someone, but he/she just decided it  happened," that process is still based on an assumption that  intimidation is a real psychological phenomenon. 

BY THEIR VERY NATURE, an RPG must necessarily assume that when entities  interact with characters, both the characters and entities have some  basis for rationality. Whatever that basis is, whatever shape it takes,  it imposes a "simulative" aspect on gameplay. 

And ultimately, dissociative  mechanics are a problem because they damage that ability for  character/entity rational response.


----------



## Dunnagin

Nineball said:


> None of the above.
> 
> Mechanics are different *and* balanced.
> 
> 
> 
> You are being far too focused on damage.  There's a _lot_ that goes into the fight other then who has the biggest damage dick.  Controlling areas, debuffing and buffing enemies, moving your allies or the baddies around, harrying them and keeping your allies safe, personal safety, all of this comes into play.
> 
> 
> 
> It sounds to me like your ideal game is one in which there is individual shine rather then group shine or mixed.  That is to say, there's "The Fighter Moment" and "The Wizard Moment," but nary shall the two cross or combine.  That sounds less like D&D to me and more like Shadowrun, though as I understand it OD&D can play like that too.




I use damage as an example because it provides a very basic example from which one can extrapolate other branches of a system. I assure you I am not focused on genitalia while I game (I do allow called shots though).

The examples you note are all combat related (controlling, buffing, debuffing, etc.). My point was that if the game rules revolve solely around combat the I personally find it can cripple the narrative elements.

I do indeed want each character to shine... just like Sgt Rock & Easy Company... or the A Team... or other groups with mixed skills... I want each player to interact with the world in a way that they enjoy (which may not be combat)... I think this is rather thoughtful of me, don't you? I mean I try really hard to keep my players engaged and entertained, and much of it has nothing to do with buffing, debuffing, damage or genitalia.

"Nary the two shall cross" is not actually accurate to what I was saying at all... I believe my statement was that a class called "Fighter" perhaps should be the best in combat (i.e. Fighting)... it seemed like a straight logical line to me.

Maybe I have become disassociated?


----------



## Dunnagin

Yes, I do love OD&D, that is true.

Characters did have niche skills... not only did this encourage players to focus less on combat, but it also meant "balance" in an adventure was up to the DM.

The cheesy A-Team example works here... Hannibal comes up with a plan... Face seduces the receptionist at the front desk of the military base while Murdoch hacks into the computers and finds out where the missiles are kept... B.A. then goes and punches the guy guarding the missiles and steals them so everyone is safe.

Yay! A story is told... ok not a great story but the A_team never had great writing, it was a weekly TV serial.

My point is, only B.A. "shines" at combat... but it doesn't matter, because without the team, B.A. would simply fail... so they work together to solve a problem and every wins because they all played a part.

Also, the summary of an evening of gaming is not just out takes from a fight... the fighter holds off the owl bear, while the mage dispels magic on the locked door so the thief can pick the arcane lock properly and let them escape... this seems like a completely acceptable game to me... and my players.

In some cases, the folks playing Rogues and Mages don't even want to fight... since they see it as "not their thing"... so I accommodate them.

So I totally admit, you have me pegged... I do love a good combat yep... but it's not the whole story, there are so many more colors in the palette I just have to use them.


----------



## Gentlegamer

Dunnagin said:


> In some cases, the folks playing Rogues and Mages don't even want to fight... since they see it as "not their thing"... so I accommodate them.



My M-Us and Thieves who rolled 1s on their initial hit dice wanted nothing to do with combat of any kind. 

I usually had hirelings or charmed servants do the combatin' on their behalf.


----------



## Dunnagin

Your quote from Gary Gygax ums up my opinion as well:

_From my perspective wanting less in the way of rules constraints comes from being a veteran Game Master who feels confident that more good material comes from imagination and player interaction with the environment than from textbook rules material._


----------



## Hussar

Dunnagin said:


> Yes, I do love OD&D, that is true.
> 
> Characters did have niche skills... not only did this encourage players to focus less on combat, but it also meant "balance" in an adventure was up to the DM.
> 
> The cheesy A-Team example works here... Hannibal comes up with a plan... Face seduces the receptionist at the front desk of the military base while Murdoch hacks into the computers and finds out where the missiles are kept... B.A. then goes and punches the guy guarding the missiles and steals them so everyone is safe.
> 
> Yay! A story is told... ok not a great story but the A_team never had great writing, it was a weekly TV serial.
> 
> My point is, only B.A. "shines" at combat... but it doesn't matter, because without the team, B.A. would simply fail... so they work together to solve a problem and every wins because they all played a part.
> 
> Also, the summary of an evening of gaming is not just out takes from a fight... the fighter holds off the owl bear, while the mage dispels magic on the locked door so the thief can pick the arcane lock properly and let them escape... this seems like a completely acceptable game to me... and my players.
> 
> In some cases, the folks playing Rogues and Mages don't even want to fight... since they see it as "not their thing"... so I accommodate them.
> 
> So I totally admit, you have me pegged... I do love a good combat yep... but it's not the whole story, there are so many more colors in the palette I just have to use them.




See, the problem with this is that every scenario has to be strongly contrived so that there are things for everyone to do.  IOW, you have to have a very specific scenario with an owl bear, an arcane lock and a locked door.

And you have to do it every single scenario.  

The more scenarios where you don't contrive things for everyone to do, the more classes get sidelined.  In a combat light 3e game, the fighter doesn't get to do a whole lot - he doesn't exactly have a whole lot of skills to fall back on.  In a plains of the dead scenario, the rogue is sitting around twiddling his thumbs because he can't actually hurt anything and there's just no real traps to deal with in the middle of the plains.

So on and so forth.  

If the DM is really on the ball, he can make sure that everyone has something to do.  But, that also places some serious constraints on what scenarios you design.  Every crypt has to have lots of locked doors and traps, regardless of whether or not it really makes sense to do so just so the rogue player isn't bored out of his tree.

In early D&D, this wasn't a problem.  The massive dungeon that was often presumed for play always contained all sorts of stuff for everyone to do.  Great.  But, we're a few years beyond playing a dungeon crawl game and nothing else.

Can a DM whose on the ball make sure that this isn't a problem?  Of course.  Or, you can adjust the classes, and yes, make them a bit more homogeneous possibly, and let the players individualize their characters through play, rather than simply by having unique mechanics that other characters don't have.


----------



## Dunnagin

So... your point is:

Making it all about combat is less contrived?

or 

DM's should not be "on the ball"?

I gave a couple of silly examples I admit... but really it's not that hard to weave a tiny bit of story. All I'm saying is... maybe there's some things character can do that are not combat which can advance the story you and the players make in the game.

If there is combat, most classes are less effective than the fighter... yes... but the players also know they contribute to the solutions, victories, and story in several ways beyond combat.

Honest to gosh... my players enjoy it.
And it requires very few rules... and we have tons of fun.


----------



## Dunnagin

Also, I completely agree with you using the word Contrive:

*con·trive*

  

 /kənˈtraɪv/ 

 Show Spelled [kuh
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





n-trahyv] 

 Show IPA verb, -trived, -triv·ing.  
–verb (used with object) 

1. to plan with ingenuity; devise; invent: The author contrived a clever plot. 

2. to bring about or effect by a plan, scheme, or the like; manage: He contrived to gain their votes. 

3. to plot (evil, treachery, etc.).

Sounds more fun to me than outtakes from a series of fantasy boxing matches


----------



## delericho

For me, too many disassociated mechanics (or disassociated mechanics in the _wrong places_) is absolutely toxic to my enjoyment of the game. I require a certain amount of simulation to be able to effectively play the game.

On the other hand, too much simulation is also a bad thing. It bogs the game down into a lavishly detailed and unplayable mess of numbers... that really isn't ever a very good simulation anyway.

For me, 4e goes too far one way, and 3e too far the other. A middle ground is called for - simple rules that work, without utterly breaking my head in key areas.


----------



## Dunnagin

delericho said:


> For me, too many disassociated mechanics (or disassociated mechanics in the _wrong places_) is absolutely toxic to my enjoyment of the game. I require a certain amount of simulation to be able to effectively play the game.
> 
> On the other hand, too much simulation is also a bad thing. It bogs the game down into a lavishly detailed and unplayable mess of numbers... that really isn't ever a very good simulation anyway.
> 
> For me, 4e goes too far one way, and 3e too far the other. A middle ground is called for - simple rules that work, without utterly breaking my head in key areas.




I'm on board with this as well. Enough off flavor super powers and adjusting my attack based on my prestige class stacked buffed feats referenced to page 36 then sub ruled on page 39.

On with the story


----------



## wrecan

innerdude said:


> Since when did coming up with something "yourself" somehow make the idea  invalid, or the thought less valuable?



As explained, the problem with TheAlexandrian's definition is not that he invented it, but that it's circular.  He personally has no problem explaining why a wizard can cast a fireball once a day, so that mechanic is not disassociated.  He does have a problem with explaining why a first level rogue can shift someone one square once a day, so that is disassociated.

TheAlexandrian's definition of disassociated is entirely based on his own credulity, which makes it an unhelpful definition.  The community has adopted the term and given it a definition that TheAlexandrian hinted at, but never actually adopted.  (If he had, it would have invalidated many of his other points.)  As I see it, "disassociated mechanics" are rules that do not represent the physics of the game world and are simply abstractions used to mimic what happens in the fiction the game emulates.

So, no, the rogue doesn't know why he shifts someone only once a day, because he doesn't think he's limited in that way.  And the rogue is right to believe it, because he has other means of forcing someone to move.  He can bull rush.  He can make an improvised action.  What he can only do once a day is use the Trick Strike exploit.  But he doesn't know from exploits, just as he doesn't know how many hit points or healing surges he has, and just as he doesn't know what his Will Defense is.

Martial daily powers are an example of disassociated mechanics, not just based on the TheAlexandrian's emotional reaction, but on the definition the community has adopted for the term.  But so are hit points, armor class/saving throws/defenses, combat grids, initiative/segments/combat rounds, and a myriad of other mechanics that have existed in D&D since time immemorial (which I believe is 1974).

I, like others, find TheAlexandrian's essay to be a good description of why, emotionally, he and others don't like 4e.  I don't find it to be a good discussion of the pros and cons (or even the definition) of disassociated mechanics.  

I can understand that there is a threshold amount of disassociated mechanics that people can tolerate.  I like 4e.  4e did not exceed my threshold.  I know plenty of people who don't like prior editions of D&D because hit points alone exceeds their tolerance for disassociated mechanics.  



innerdude said:


> The theory could be stated  as, "Dissociative mechanics have an effect on the perceptions and nature  of RPG system resolution."



Which is fine.  Of course disassociated mechanics affect how individuals perceive the game.  All mechanics affect how individuals perceive the game.  And the non-mechanical prose also affects how individuals perceive the game.  

In that sense the "theory" is a slanted tautology.  Everything affects one's perceptions, but because TheAlexandrian perceives the disassociated mechanics to be the part he likes least, he singles it out.  That doesn't sy anything about disassociated mechanics, except that TheAlexandrian doesn't like the ones he identifies.



innerdude said:


> _Airplane! _as a movie is funny precisely because it recognizes this fact--that rationally, no sane person would allow Leslie Nielsen's character anywhere near the cockpit of that plane.... there's no reason at all that Leslie Nielsen can't pilot that plane into harmonious safety



As an aside, Leslie Nielsen's character was the doctor, not the pilot.  You're thinking of Ted Striker, played by Robert Hays.



innerdude said:


> an RPG must necessarily assume that when entities  interact with characters, both the characters and entities have some  basis for rationality. Whatever that basis is, whatever shape it takes,  it imposes a "simulative" aspect on gameplay.
> 
> And ultimately, dissociative  mechanics are a problem because they damage that ability for  character/entity rational response.



I don't think TheAlexandrian proved that.  All he did was point to some things he didn't like and gave them a label and declared them universally bad.

Disassociated mechanics can impinge on the distance between the player and character's perceptions of the game's reality.  But they are also necessary to make the game a workable game.  And, as the canard goes, perceptions become reality.  Nobody blinks at hit points anymore, one of the most disassociated mechanics ever devised.  

The problem is that daily martial powers are new disassociated mechanics.  You've already internalized hit points, defenses, and initiative, but not daily martial powers.  Some people don't want to internalize this new mechanic.  For them, "disassociated mechanics" are the villains, even as they blithely roll initiative, talk about whether their character needs a cure light wounds or a cure critical wounds, and ask NPCs what class they belong to.  And that's fine.  As I said, everyone has a different tolerance for not only disassociated mechanics, but for new mechanics in general.

I used to love the World of Darkness, especially Mage: the Ascension (the king of disassociated mechanics games).  Then Mage: the Awakening came.  I didn't like it.  It's just an emotional reaction.  I like Ascension more, and Awakening simply reminds me that the game I liked got replaced.  Ascension could be a great game.  I hope people enjoy it.  I don't, but I'm not going to pretend it's for any rational reason.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> I AM SAYING that all RPGs are "simulative" in nature. Any time a  player is expected to make a game decision in the context of a _character_,  you are necessarily requiring that character--through the  interpretation of the rules as presented to the player--to have some  real, valid, rational way of making decisions within whatever milieu  they exist.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> BY THEIR VERY NATURE, an RPG must necessarily assume that when entities  interact with characters, both the characters and entities have some  basis for rationality. Whatever that basis is, whatever shape it takes,  it imposes a "simulative" aspect on gameplay.



But the notion of "dissociated mechanics" - which in my view is, as Crazy Jerome said way upthread, a pseud-notion - presupposes something much stronger than this. It presupposes that the "rationality" that governs or underpins decisions made by players about their PCs is (i) yielded primarily by the mechanics, and (ii) models some feature of the ingame reality that the PCs are a part of. This is not true of the turn structure in 3E or 4e. It is not true of martial daily and encounter powers in 4e. It is not true of saving throws in Gygax's AD&D (see the discussion of these in the combat section of the DMG - they are a fortune-in-the-middle mechanic). All these mechanics are about allocating authority _at the game table_ - they don't model anything in the gameworld. But that doesn't mean that they cause any sort of crisis of roleplaying, or inability to engage with or interpret the fiction.

Is there anyone who actually plays and enjoys 4e, _and_ accepts the notion of "dissociated mechanics"? If not, that would be some evidence that the notion is edition-bashing dressed up in pseudo-analysis (as suggested upthread by the comparison to phrenology).

For a much better discussion of various sorts of mechanics, and their relationship to the imaginary causal processes of the fiction, I suggest the essays on simulationisn and narrativism at The Forge, or any discussion on this thread by LostSoul of his "fiction first" approach to houseruling 4e.


----------



## wrecan

pemerton said:


> Is there anyone who actually plays and enjoys 4e, _and_ accepts the notion of "dissociated mechanics"?



I do, but not the circular way TheAlexadnrian defined it.  Defining "disassociated mechanics" as "mechanics that don't replicate the physics of the game world", is a perfectly useful definition.  However, it is a definition that strips the term of most of its negative connotations, and which necessarily includes mechanics like initiative, hit points, and defenses -- mechanics that few D&D players of any edition would claim breaks their immersion.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=64825]wrecan[/MENTION], I agree that it's useful to think about that feature of mechanics (and other features that mechanics can have). I don't find the description "disassociated" very useful - with what _ought_ the mechanics in question to be associated?

Like I said just upthread, I think The Forge does a much better job of discussing these, and related, features of action resolution mechanics. And I liked your post on the WotC forums - as I also said upthread, you pick up on features of 4e that undermine it's non-simulationist features.


----------



## Imaro

wrecan said:


> As explained, the problem with TheAlexandrian's definition is not that he invented it, but that it's circular. He personally has no problem explaining why a wizard can cast a fireball once a day, so that mechanic is not disassociated. He does have a problem with explaining why a first level rogue can shift someone one square once a day, so that is disassociated.




Isn't the fact of the matter that "He forgets it" is a valid connection to the fiction of memorizing and casting spells? I guess I'm not undersatnding what is disassociative about this... there is no corollary to magic in the real world and thus it can't be compared or contrasted to anything in our everyday experiences. The problem he has with the Rogue is that no in-game reason such as "He forgets how to do it" is given. Instead the reason he can do it only once per day is because it is a daily power... thus it is disassociated from the game fiction.



wrecan said:


> TheAlexandrian's definition of disassociated is entirely based on his own credulity, which makes it an unhelpful definition. The community has adopted the term and given it a definition that TheAlexandrian hinted at, but never actually adopted. (If he had, it would have invalidated many of his other points.) As I see it, "disassociated mechanics" are rules that do not represent the physics of the game world and are simply abstractions used to mimic what happens in the fiction the game emulates.




I think you are viewing it wrong. Disassociated mechanics, IMO, seem to be mechanics that aren't justified (even if that justification is "It's magic") in how they behave within the fictional reality of the game world. Instead they are left to be interpreted by those at the table. Thus they are disassociated until one associates them to some causaul relationship in the game. 



wrecan said:


> So, no, the rogue doesn't know why he shifts someone only once a day, because he doesn't think he's limited in that way. And the rogue is right to believe it, because he has other means of forcing someone to move. He can bull rush. He can make an improvised action. What he can only do once a day is use the Trick Strike exploit. But he doesn't know from exploits, just as he doesn't know how many hit points or healing surges he has, and just as he doesn't know what his Will Defense is.




The question not answered is why can't he in game? I mean you've given your interpretation of why he can but in the books this is not stated. The wizard (much as you may or may not like the explanation) knows that magic in and of itself in D&D works a certain way... you memorize specific spells (or prepare if we are talking about Pathfinder) and in completing the partial spell the prepared part of the spell is forgotten. A wizard knows this from the in-game reality of magic. 



wrecan said:


> Martial daily powers are an example of disassociated mechanics, not just based on the TheAlexandrian's emotional reaction, but on the definition the community has adopted for the term. But so are hit points, armor class/saving throws/defenses, combat grids, initiative/segments/combat rounds, and a myriad of other mechanics that have existed in D&D since time immemorial (which I believe is 1974).




Nope I think you have it wrong, you are confusing dissassociated (as in associated with *NOTHING* in the game world) vs. abstract mechanics (as in they abstract things that very much exist in the gameworld so that we can more easily utilize them in a game.). HP's are defined in the gameworld as a combination of things that equate to one's ability to continue to fight, including but not limited to physical endurance, luck, divine favor, morale, etc... These are all in-game connections for the mechanic of hit points... it's abstracted not disassociated. 



wrecan said:


> I, like others, find TheAlexandrian's essay to be a good description of why, emotionally, he and others don't like 4e. I don't find it to be a good discussion of the pros and cons (or even the definition) of disassociated mechanics.




Not going to comment on the quality of the essay since it is the idea of disassociated mechanics we are discussing not the validity of a single writer's essay. I don't think the idea in and of itself is emotionally driven at all... now preference definitely enters the picture and many prefer to have their mechanics in rpg's be tied into the imaginary world in some way as opposed to having to shape their imaginary world around mechanical effects without causality.



wrecan said:


> I can understand that there is a threshold amount of disassociated mechanics that people can tolerate. I like 4e. 4e did not exceed my threshold. I know plenty of people who don't like prior editions of D&D because hit points alone exceeds their tolerance for disassociated mechanics.




Could you please tell me what you believe the difference between a disassociated mechanic is versus an abstracted one... or do you believe they are the same thing? Because I believe someone can have a totally difference tolerance for abstracte mechanics than they do for abstracted ones.




wrecan said:


> Which is fine. Of course disassociated mechanics affect how individuals perceive the game. All mechanics affect how individuals perceive the game. And the non-mechanical prose also affects how individuals perceive the game.




So you believe the disassociated mechanics are in fact a valid reason to dislike 4e?



wrecan said:


> In that sense the "theory" is a slanted tautology. Everything affects one's perceptions, but because TheAlexandrian perceives the disassociated mechanics to be the part he likes least, he singles it out. That doesn't sy anything about disassociated mechanics, except that TheAlexandrian doesn't like the ones he identifies.




Ah, but 4e has way more dissassociated mechanics (just in monster powers alone) than any of the previous editions of D&D and that is definitely a 4e thing.





wrecan said:


> I don't think TheAlexandrian proved that. All he did was point to some things he didn't like and gave them a label and declared them universally bad.






wrecan said:


> Disassociated mechanics can impinge on the distance between the player and character's perceptions of the game's reality. But they are also necessary to make the game a workable game. And, as the canard goes, perceptions become reality. Nobody blinks at hit points anymore, one of the most disassociated mechanics ever devised.




Again I am curious about where you draw the line between disassociation and abstraction. 



wrecan said:


> The problem is that daily martial powers are new disassociated mechanics. You've already internalized hit points, defenses, and initiative, but not daily martial powers. Some people don't want to internalize this new mechanic. For them, "disassociated mechanics" are the villains, even as they blithely roll initiative, talk about whether their character needs a cure light wounds or a cure critical wounds, and ask NPCs what class they belong to. And that's fine. As I said, everyone has a different tolerance for not only disassociated mechanics, but for new mechanics in general.




I think you are again missing the distinction between somehting being an abstract representation of an in-game process to cumbersome or complex to deal with in a relatively fast moving game and a mechanic that doesn't tie into anything whether it is abstracted or not.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> I can understand that there is a threshold amount of disassociated mechanics that people can tolerate. I like 4e. 4e did not exceed my threshold.



That's good terminology. We can't talk about "disassociated mechanics" without also mentioning threshold and tolerance. Then we recognize that we have a moving target and the debate doesn't get distracted by extreme "either-or" wording.


> Nobody blinks at hit points anymore, one of the most disassociated mechanics ever devised.



I was with you, more or less, until here. In short, hit points as a huge abstraction gives me plenty of space to associate the mechanics with the fiction. A more specific mechanic, like slide 2 squares, can often provide less wiggle room to create plausible fluff for that context.

Again, that's all relative. Hit points as an abstraction cannot be entirely free of disassociation, but I think much less so than some other 4E mechanics.


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Dunnagin

Just a quick note... though AC and HP may have been disassociated at one time, they no longer are since they have been in use in RPGs and video games for 40 years (almost) now, so they are now an accepted part of the gaming lexicon.

A designer who puts brand new mechanics into the oldest of RPGs (D&D) does run a high risk of throwing people off. It's a risk they took in 4th, and obviously it does irk some peoples sensibilities.


----------



## Aus_Snow

Dunnagin said:


> A designer who puts brand new mechanics into the oldest of RPGs (D&D) does run a high risk of throwing people off. It's a risk they took in 4th, and obviously it does irk some peoples sensibilities.



I cannot think of any 4e rules that are *new*, off hand. Plenty of "brand" going on though, and flogged _hard_, at that. 

Many of them, for example, come directly from 3e supplements, such as Unearthed Arcana. Others, from other RPGs altogether. And so on.


----------



## wrecan

Imaro said:


> The problem he has with the Rogue is that no in-game reason such as "He forgets how to do it" is given.



yes, there is.  Page 45 pf the PHB gives the in-game reason.  he just doesn't accept it, just as other people don't accept the in-game reason given for hit points.



> they are disassociated until one associates them to some causaul relationship in the game.



Exactly, and if you don't like the explanation for martial dailies, they are disassociated to you.  If someone else thinks Vancian magic is nonsensical, then the daily use of a fireball is disassociated to them.

The problem isn't that the mechanics are abstract, but that any given abstraction is unacceptable to that individual.  That's why TheAlexandrian's argument is ultimately circular.  He can accept some mechanics and rejects others, labeling them "disassociated".



> I don't think the idea in and of itself is emotionally driven at all...



Of course not, because you agree with his conclusion.



> Could you please tell me what you believe the difference between a disassociated mechanic is versus an abstracted one... or do you believe they are the same thing?



I think they are the same thing.  I use the terms interchangeably.  



> Because I believe someone can have a totally difference tolerance for abstracte mechanics than they do for abstracted ones.



Since I think they're the same thing I disagree.  



> So you believe the disassociated mechanics are in fact a valid reason to dislike 4e?



I think the question is meaningless.  "Dislike" is an emotional word.  Aesthetics are neither "valid" not "invalid".  You don't like 4e.  got it.  There's not going to be  a valid or invalid reason for it.  It's just going to be a preference.



> Ah, but 4e has way more dissassociated mechanics (just in monster powers alone) than any of the previous editions of D&D and that is definitely a 4e thing.



That's a circular argument.  Of course 4e's disassociated mechanics are a 4e thing.  And since you've defined "disassociated" as mechanics you think haven't been justified in-game, it's also a circular argument.  i don't think 4e's mechanics are unjustified, so i reject your premise that 4e has more disassociated mechanics (under your definition) than prior games.


----------



## Dunnagin

Aus_Snow said:


> I cannot think of any 4e rules that are *new*, off hand. Plenty of "brand" going on though, and flogged _hard_, at that.
> 
> Many of them, for example, come directly from 3e supplements, such as Unearthed Arcana. Others, from other RPGs altogether. And so on.




Ha ha! Good point 

I actually include both 3e and 4e in the "newer to the lexicon" list.
Things like: Powers, Feats, Prestige Classes, Shift, etc.
A mix there

None of these are as old and entrenched as AC, HP or the six core Stats.
Though some are getting there.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Hit points as an abstraction cannot be entirely free of disassociation, but *I think *much less so than some other 4E mechanics.



I agree, in thiat I agree that you think it's much less so, but that others may think other mechanics are moreso.  As we seem to have agreed, everybody's threshold is going to be personal to them.

I've introduced RPGs to someone with 4e, who had a lot more problems with hp than with daily martial powers.  Sometimes it all depends on where your head is at when you learn the game.


----------



## Elf Witch

Nineball said:


> Really though, like I said, that reminds me more of Shadowrun, specifically SR3.  You have the mage that does The Magic Stuff.  The street sammy and gunbunny do The Combat Stuff.  The decker has his own hour long Matrix minigame he plays.




I play Shadowrun and you are not exactly correct. Mages and deckers also have good combat skills. What usually makes the big difference between mages and deckers and street sams is that the street sams have wired reflexes which means they go more than once in a round.

My hermatic mage has a 4 in pistols the street sam has a 5. 

One of the thing I really like about Shdowrun is that mages don't need magic to survive that if built right they are pretty good with some kind of weapon.

I think Shadowrun has done a great job with balance.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> I agree, in thiat I agree that you think it's much less so, but that others may think other mechanics are moreso. As we seem to have agreed, everybody's threshold is going to be personal to them.



OK, except that you stated that hits points is "one of the most disassociated mechanics ever devised" 



> I've introduced RPGs to someone with 4e, who had a lot more problems with hp than with daily martial powers. Sometimes it all depends on where your head is at when you learn the game.



I once had a huge problem with minions until someone eloquently articulated how it could be translated into cinematic fiction. Now I can tolerate minion rules as plausible enough. So "where your head is at" is not necessarily a chronic condition. One solution is to simply do a better job than the DMG of explaining it; however, this requires "caring" about helping DMs and players to associate the mechanics with the fiction, or at least offer a helping hand (rather than allowing them to figure out for themselves via game table arguments, forums and articles written by 3rd party authors).


----------



## fuzzlewump

Dunnagin said:


> Balanced combat is often touted as the biggest perk of 4th edition D&D. So... are you saying that the various Powers in D&D 4th are so vastly different from one another that they cannot be balanced properly? Or are you stating that the powers are fairly similar so it can be (and is) balanced quite closely?



 Well, some powers are very similar. In more recent supplements, the heterogeneity has increased substantially, especially considering Essentials. I think a more accepted approach is the mechanical homogeneity. While a Brute Strike (3 x Weapon Damage) and a Sleep (At first Slowed, and if fail first saving throw, Unconscious) are completely different, they are both powers that can only be used once per day. Some people care about that, others don't. I'm in the latter.



Dunnagin said:


> 1. Combat is not the primary focus of my game
> 2. I think perhaps Fighters should be the best at fighting (imbalance on purpose)
> 3. If the game showed less focus on Combat Balance then it would have more room for non combat abilities that Rogues, Mages & Clerics may have



Here's where the real problem with 4E/3E should crop up. The thing is, Fighter's aren't really the best at fighting, a polymorphed Wizard is, or a group of summoned monsters. A buffed Cleric, or a Druid's pet is. I want to play a game of (new) D&D as you describe, preferably as a skill-based system where 'Fighting' exists as just another skill you can get or not get, but I don't think 3E+ really models it well. Everything still attempts to be good at combat in 3E, but some classes aren't that good at it, i.e. lack of balance. I guess you can pick spells that are useless in combat as a Wizard/Cleric/Druid, but it's hard, you have to kind of gimp yourself on purpose, since a lot of the best spells are really awesome both in and out of combat. As I was saying, I would like to play the D&D with the Wizard as the wise sage, rather than the wise sage that is also Batman from around level 3 and on.


----------



## Dunnagin

fuzzlewump said:


> Here's where the real problem with 4E/3E should crop up. The thing is, Fighter's aren't really the best at fighting, a polymorphed Wizard is, or a group of summoned monsters. A buffed Cleric, or a Druid's pet is. I want to play a game of (new) D&D as you describe, preferably as a skill-based system where 'Fighting' exists as just another skill you can get or not get, but I don't think 3E+ really models it well. Everything still attempts to be good at combat in 3E, but some classes aren't that good at it, i.e. lack of balance. I guess you can pick spells that are useless in combat as a Wizard/Cleric/Druid, but it's hard, you have to kind of gimp yourself on purpose, since a lot of the best spells are really awesome both in and out of combat. As I was saying, I would like to play the D&D with the Wizard as the wise sage, rather than the wise sage that is also Batman from around level 3 and on.




Yeah, I agree with you here for sure.
I think there are various ways you could make this work, because I'm sure every player and dm's worst fear is having a player feel left out... which is fair.

It'd still be cool to see a game address this.
Maybe more diverse non combat rules?
Maybe some more direct "mage duel" mechanics?
Maybe some more ingrained "arcane check" rules?

There must be some way to balance it out huh?


----------



## Imaro

wrecan said:


> yes, there is. Page 45 pf the PHB gives the in-game reason. he just doesn't accept it, just as other people don't accept the in-game reason given for hit points.




Uhm, I'm looking at page 45 in the 4e PHB... and it's the section on halflings, am I missing something?

EDIT: I'm going to assume you mean page 54.  But there is no real explanation here for why encounter powers are only once every encounter...  In fact they are maneuvers you have extensively trained to pull off... but you can only pull them off once in awhile...  That's not an in-game reason it's just stating you can only pull them off once in awhile, because you can only pull them off once in awhile.


----------



## Imaro

wrecan said:


> Exactly, and if you don't like the explanation for martial dailies, they are disassociated to you. If someone else thinks Vancian magic is nonsensical, then the daily use of a fireball is disassociated to them.




Wrong, given the explanation on page 54 I would say MD's aren't a disassociative mechanic, regardless of whether I like or don't like the justification, they are justified in-game... however encounter powers, monsters with recharges, many monster powers in general, and so on have no in-game explanation for why they work the way they do. What exactly is happening when a monster rolls to recharge a power... I don't know because it's never stated in the power itself.

See it's not about whether I think a mechcanic is nonsensical or not it's about whether this mechanic has an in-game explanation or not... or whether I have to pull that out of the ether after I use it.



wrecan said:


> The problem isn't that the mechanics are abstract, but that any given abstraction is unacceptable to that individual. That's why TheAlexandrian's argument is ultimately circular. He can accept some mechanics and rejects others, labeling them "disassociated".




Nope there are mechchanics in 4e that have no in-game ties whatsoever, even abstract ones. They are left as pure mechcnics and the association of them to anything in the world is left up in the air.




wrecan said:


> Of course not, because you agree with his conclusion.




No, because there are examples in 4e of mechanics that have no in-game/fictional/fluff representation. They are pure mechanics. Check out this thread for a pretty good example from a 4e fan of what I mean...

[4E] Monster Stat Blocks: filling in the fluff plus what is a Grazroblain



wrecan said:


> I think they are the same thing. I use the terms interchangeably.




Of course you do... because you want them to be.




wrecan said:


> Since I think they're the same thing I disagree.




That's a pretty circular argument there.



wrecan said:


> I think the question is meaningless. "Dislike" is an emotional word. Aesthetics are neither "valid" not "invalid". You don't like 4e. got it. There's not going to be a valid or invalid reason for it. It's just going to be a preference.




Really because there are plenty of 4e fans who will divide up reasons for liking and disliking 4e into valid and non-valid categories.




wrecan said:


> That's a circular argument. Of course 4e's disassociated mechanics are a 4e thing. And since you've defined "disassociated" as mechanics you think haven't been justified in-game, it's also a circular argument. i don't think 4e's mechanics are unjustified, so i reject your premise that 4e has more disassociated mechanics (under your definition) than prior games.




It's not circular and I can list mechanics that have no justification in-game (no explanation, no fluff, nothing to infer from). Again monster powers are great for this, encounter powers per the PHB explanation again have no in-game reason for why you can only use them once in an encounter (you just can't). You seem to be willfully ignoring any facts presented. Now to me that seems emotionally driven as opposed to objective examination.


----------



## Bluenose

delericho said:


> On the other hand, too much simulation is also a bad thing. It bogs the game down into a lavishly detailed and unplayable mess of numbers... that really isn't ever a very good simulation anyway.




Why? Simulation can be done without making rules into "a lavishly detailed and unplayable mess of numbers". Any process that gives appropriate results based on the source material is a good simulation. It doesn't matter how complex or simple the rules are as long as that is remembered.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Imaro said:


> Uhm, I'm looking at page 45 in the 4e PHB... and it's the section on halflings, am I missing something?
> 
> EDIT: I'm going to assume you mean page 54.  But there is no real explanation here for why encounter powers are only once every encounter...  In fact they are maneuvers you have extensively trained to pull off... but you can only pull them off once in awhile...  That's not an in-game reason it's just stating you can only pull them off once in awhile, because you can only pull them off once in awhile.



Page 54 has an explanation for daily powers -
using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you're a martial character, you're reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​The power that TA critiques for having no ingame explanation for its limited number of uses is a daily, the rogue exploit, Trick Strike. It doesn't take a great stretch to apply the same rationale to encounter powers, save that they require fewer physical and mental resources, though admittedly there isn't such a justification in the encounter powers section.


----------



## Imaro

Doug McCrae said:


> Page 54 has an explanation for daily powers -
> using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you're a martial character, you're reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​The power that TA critiques for having no ingame explanation for its limited number of uses is a daily, the rogue exploit, Trick Strike. It doesn't take a great stretch to apply the same rationale to encounter powers, save that they require fewer physical and mental resources, though admittedly there isn't such a justification in the encounter powers section.




This is why in an earlier post I said I wanted to focus on the idea being presented not the essay itself. I conceded in my above post that Martial Daily powers have an in-game reason but I do not believe his choosing of a bad example invalidates the idea. In the post above I also noted the nunerous other places in 4e where there is no in-game reason given for the mechanics such as many monster powers, how or why recharges occur, encounter powers, etc.


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> Page 54 has an explanation for daily powers -
> using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you're a martial character, you're reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​The power that TA critiques for having no ingame explanation for its limited number of uses is a daily, the rogue exploit, Trick Strike. It doesn't take a great stretch to apply the same rationale to encounter powers, save that they require fewer physical and mental resources, though admittedly there isn't such a justification in the encounter powers section.




That's not really a satisfying explanation from an in-game perspective.

Joe the Hero: Wow, Ziggy, that was amazing! Can you do it again?
Ziggy the Rogue: Uh, no.
Joe the Hero: Why not?
Ziggy the Rogue: I've, uh... exhausted my physical and mental resources.
Joe the Hero: You mean you're tired?
Ziggy the Rogue: Not, uh, not exactly. I'm just too... exhausted... to do THAT. 
Joe the Hero: You mean you've exhausted your ki?
Ziggy the Rogue: Can we change the subject?
Joe the Hero: You got it. Okay, get ready. I'm about to set up an awesome move. Get ready! We're only going to get one shot at this.
Ziggy the Rogue: Got it.
Joe the Hero: I mean that literally. If we don't pull this off, we cannot try again until tomorrow.


----------



## Imaro

pawsplay said:


> That's not really a satisfying explanation from an in-game perspective.
> 
> Joe the Hero: Wow, Ziggy, that was amazing! Can you do it again?
> Ziggy the Rogue: Uh, no.
> Joe the Hero: Why not?
> Ziggy the Rogue: I've, uh... exhausted my physical and mental resources.
> Joe the Hero: You mean you're tired?
> Ziggy the Rogue: Not, uh, not exactly. I'm just too... exhausted... to do THAT.
> Joe the Hero: You mean you've exhausted your ki?
> Ziggy the Rogue: Can we change the subject?
> Joe the Hero: You got it. Okay, get ready. I'm about to set up an awesome move. Get ready! We're only going to get one shot at this.
> Ziggy the Rogue: Got it.
> Joe the Hero: I mean that literally. If we don't pull this off, we cannot try again until tomorrow.




Good point... not to mention that at certain levels you can be too exhausted to use one particular daily... but have no problem doing a different (but arguably just as strenuous) daily power.


----------



## delericho

Bluenose said:


> Why? Simulation can be done without making rules into "a lavishly detailed and unplayable mess of numbers".




I'm not sure how far you can take simulation before it becomes unwieldy. How accurately should you calculate bow ranges indoors, for example? How exacting should the grapple rules be?

I think simulation is a fine thing... to a point. But I think also that it probably reaches a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Gantros said:


> The rest are examples of _abstracted_ mechanics, in which a range of various factors and circumstances are rolled up into a simplified numerical value for the sake of convenience.  HP and Saving Throws each represent a character's ability to avoid serious harm or death through a combination of skill, experience, natural ability, luck, fate, divine favor, magical assistance, etc.  XP for gold made the assumption that adventurers who amassed large amount of wealth had faced and overcome many difficult challenges to do so.  Armor and weapon restrictions assumed some combination of cultural and practical factors.
> 
> All of the above mechanics still have a direct association with specific behaviors and outcomes in the game world.  Take HP for example.  It is directly affected by a character's experience level, class, and ability scores, all of which are things an avatar would have some awareness of.  It also degrades as a character absorbs blows, gets tired, or presses their luck repeatedly - again all things the character could feel and understand.  So when a player uses HP to make informed decisions about when to flee or continue fighting, or whether or not to jump off a 20' cliff, we can easily envision the character making the same decision based on the same set of information.



You're quite right that saving throws and hit points are abstracted. The same mechanic can refer to a number of quite different properties of the game world. But isn't this very rules feature what TA is complaining about when he talks about the war devil's _besieged foe_ ability? He bemoans the multiple possible explanations, saying that to provide a specific explanation is to make a house rule. Isn't there the exact same need, if there is such a need, to 'pin down' the abstract mechanics of saving throws and hit points as there is to explain _besieged foe_? I don't agree with what TA says here, but it applies equally, imo, to saves and hit points -

So now we've established that any attempt to provide an explanation for this mechanic constitutes a house rule: Whatever explanation you come up with will have a meaningful impact on how the ability is used in the game. Why is this a problem?

First, there's a matter of principle. Once we've accepted that you need to immediately house rule the war devil in order to use the war devil, we've accepted that the game designers gave us busted rules that need to be fixed before they can be used. The Rule 0 Fallacy ("this rule isn't broken because I can fix it") is a poor defense for any game.

...

These massive house rules also create a disjunction in the game. One of the things that was identified as problematic in the waning days of AD&D was that the vast majority of people playing the game had heavily house ruled the game in various ways. That meant that when you switched from one AD&D group to a different AD&D group, you could often end up playing what was essentially a completely different game.

In the case of AD&D, this widespread house ruling was the result of disaffection with a fundamentally weak and inconsistent game system. House ruling, of course, didn't disappear with the release of 3rd Edition -- but the amount of house ruling, in general, was significantly decreased and the consistency of experience from one game table to the next was improved.​

Ofc, TA is wrong about _besieged foe_, the rules do in fact provide a game world explanation. I would assume that when he wrote the article, the author only had access to the power description and not the accompanying text on pg 67 of the MM -

They use besieged foe... to direct their subordinates against dangerous foes​
TA imagines conducting an interrogation of a character, asking him to explain why he can only use Trick Strike once a day. Surely a similar interrogation could be conducted regarding hit points. We could ask how a character on one hit point who fled, or sought rest or healing, knew he was badly wounded or severely fatigued, given that none of his capabilities were impaired in any way. His movement, his skill use, his ability to strike, to deal damage, to avoid blows, all of these were functioning at full capacity. And yet such a technique of interrogation, uncovering inconsistencies, insufficient explanations, is deemed capable of uncovering dissociated mechanics.

We might equally ask why a character jumped off a great height with such abandon. He seemed certain he could survive. How so?

Regarding xp for gold, Gary Gygax is perfectly honest about it having no game world justification, ie being a dissociated mechanic - 

Players who balk at equating gold pieces to experience points should be gently but firmly reminded that in a game certain compromises must be made. While it is more "realistic" for clerics to study holy writings, pray, chant, practice self-discipline, etc. to gain experience, it would not make a playable game roll along. Similarly, fighters should be exercising, riding, smiting pelts, tilting at the lists, and engaging in weapons practice of various sorts to gain real expertise (experience); magic-users should be deciphering old scrolls, searching ancient tomes, experimenting alchemically, and so forth; while thieves should spend their off-hours honing their skills, "casing" various buildings, watching potential victims, and carefully planning their next "iob". All very realistic but conducive to non-game boredom!​ - DMG pg 85

Your explanation, that in gaining gold, PCs will be very likely to use all their character abilities, is a perfectly good one. It's just that it's not the justification given in the text. So we have a situation where the users of the game text are having to create their own explanations, which is precisely what TA dislikes about _besieged foe_.

Pre-3e editions of D&D are, imo, full of what TA would call dissociated mechanics. OD&D, as far as I'm aware, doesn't provide many justifications for its rules. 1e does provide some, even then they are often honest about the real reason being gamism or playability, for example the explanation for the lack of a critical hit system on page 61 of the DMG. Vancian magic itself was chosen with game balance in mind, as described in the article 'The D&D Magic System' in the Strategic Review #7. Likewise the use of weapons and armour -

Why can’t magic-users employ swords? And for that matter, why not allow fighters to use wands and similar magical devices? On the surface this seems a small concession, but in actuality it would spoil the game! Each character role has been designed with care in order to provide varied and unique approaches to solving the problems which confront the players. If characters are not kept distinct, they will soon merge into one super-character. Not only would this destroy the variety of the game, but it would also kill the game, for the super-character would soon have nothing left to challenge him or her, and the players would grow bored and move on to something which was fun.​ - Gary Gygax, “Role-Playing: Realism vs. Game Logic”, Dragon #16

Even Gary's simulationist justifications in 1e were added after the fact. It was mechanic first, explanation second -

When questioned about the whys and wherefores of D&D I sometimes rationalize the matter and give “realistic” and “logical” reasons. The truth of the matter is that D&D was written principally as a game — perhaps I used game realism and game logic consciously or unconsciously when I did so, but that is begging the question. Enjoyment is the real reason for D&D being created, written, and published.​ - Gary Gygax, “Role-Playing: Realism vs. Game Logic”, Dragon #16



Gantros said:


> Contrast this with 4e daily powers, which dissociate the mechanic (i.e. how often you can use the power) from any meaningful factors or circumstances a character would conceivably be aware of or able to influence in the game world (such as skill level, experience, fatigue, luck, or prior preparation).  The mechanic allows the player to make informed decisions about when to use it, but provides no explanation of how the character would arrive at the same conclusion.



As has been said upthread, there is a game world explanation for martial daily powers on page 54 of the PHB, which talks about using up “physical and mental resources”. The character could certainly be aware of such.


----------



## LostSoul

Raven Crowking said:


> If the avatar doesn't "know", then why doesn't the avatar attempt things that would be extremely effective, if successful, and which the avatar has no reason to believe will not be successful?
> 
> This is, AFAICT, the root of what is being called "disassociative mechanics" -- the player must disassociate from the avatar's POV in order to make effective choices in the game milieu.  From the avatar's POV, tactic X makes sense, but from the player's POV, tactic X can no longer be used.




Ah, that makes sense!  I was having trouble understanding The Alexandrian's essay as I was looking at it through my own biases.  This clears it up for me.  Thanks, RC.

In my own words: Dissociated mechanics aren't about the fact that what's happening in the game world doesn't _necessarily_ have an influence over resolution; they are about associating player choice with character choice.  

The idea I had in my head was that Power Attack was "dissociated" - what your character is actually doing in the game world doesn't matter, as long as you meet the rules requirements listed in the Feat.  This is similar to the Slide Effect of Trick Strike; what your character is doing to move his foe isn't important.

The difference between Power Attack and Trick Strike is that Power Attack is a choice that you, as a player, can make, as well as a choice that your character can make in the game world.  You want to trade BAB for Damage, while your character wants to trade precision for power.  The player's decision and the character's decision are related - or associated.  Trick Strike, being a Daily power, is a choice a player can make but the character cannot.  The character will want to use Trick Strike as often as possible but is prohibited from doing so more than once per Extended Rest.

(I've been playing 3.5 lately, using Power Attack a lot, so it's on my mind.  Wraithstrike is a powerful spell.  )

Hmm... I'm not sure I understand it yet.  Let me keep on rambling.

From the PC's point of view, he's trying to feint and get in a really good hit each time he attacks.  From the player's point of view, he's trying to knock the NPC's hit points to 0 and manipulate the NPC's position on the field of battle.  The dissociation comes from the fact that the player can activate a Daily power to achieve this goal while the character, from his point of view, cannot.

With Power Attack, the player can decide to trade BAB for Damage, while the PC can decide to trade precision for power.  But what happens when a character without the Power Attack Feat attempts the same action?  He cannot trade precision for power - it's not just that he's less effective at it, it's impossible for him.  The player knows this - but why should the character?  Trading precision for power seems like a plausible action for a character to take.

Is it then the case that Power Attack is a dissociated mechanic?  Contrast it to Combat Expertise - you don't need the Feat to be able to fight defensively, it's just better if you have it.  A character and a player can make the same choice - "I want to fight defensively" - it's just that Combat Expertise makes that choice a better one.  A character without Power Attack cannot take the completely plausible and sensible action of trading precision for power.  Nor can a character without Spring Attack even attempt to strike at a hydra before it can respond with a bite from all of its heads, though to me that seems like a plausible action by a D&D character, even if you have to suffer a quick strike because you haven't learned to properly protect yourself yet.

What have I misunderstood here?  



Raven Crowking said:


> I am not at all certain that this disassociation was necessary in order to meet 4e's design goals.  It is my understanding that Essentials takes steps to remove a level of disassociation, as does LostSoul's hack, and The Jester's (AFAICT).




I think it's pretty clear that I don't understand what is meant by dissociated mechanics!    That's why I'm not sure that I removed any dissociation from my hack.  I left Martial Daily Exploits in, for example; I just tied them more closely to Quests (and renamed them "Determined Exploits").  I also have a section in the player's guide that tells players to draw on their player knowledge, not just character knowledge, when making decisions!

What I was trying to do was manipulate the player's decision-making process in a way that makes success more likely if the player pays attention to the game world.  I attempted to do this by including details of the game world as a relevant factor in action resolution - which is a long-winded way of saying _how_ your character makes his "to-hit roll" is important to the "game" part of the RPG.


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> You're quite right that saving throws and hit points are abstracted. The same mechanic can refer to a number of quite different properties of the game world. But isn't this very rules feature what TA is complaining about when he talks about the war devil's _besieged foe_ ability?




Well, since you asked, no. Not in the slightest. 

Hit points can represent a lot of things, but in all cases, "I am low on hit points," is equivalent to, "I can't take much more of being attacked or I will die." In all cases, having lost hit points is equivalent to having been somewhat injured, even if superficially. Whether or not your hit points, in this particular instance, reflect more in the way of luck, divine favor, toughness, or artful dodging, if you've been hit, you want _cure light wounds_.

Hit points are abstract and yet completely associated to the game world. Big, more dangerous weapons do more damage. Injured characters are more hurt. Wounded characters should think about fleeing. Etc. They are basically the antithesis of a dissociated mechanic. 

Tell me if I've made sense to you. I'm really having a hard time understanding how you came up with the statement I quoted.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Imaro said:


> Good point... not to mention that at certain levels you can be too exhausted to use one particular daily... but have no problem doing a different (but arguably just as strenuous) daily power.



Yeah, that is a problem. A better, or supplementary, justification is that opponents only position themselves in such a way that the power can be used every so often. There is only the occasional opening for the rogue to exploit. Such openings could be a result of a series of feints on the rogue's part.

This makes the mechanic abstract certainly, and one could raise the issue that it's become more a player power than a character power - by using the power, the player is actually dictating the actions of NPCs.

However I think that player and character experience and control of the game have always been quite distinct, for example the ability of the player to choose a PC's race while the character, ofc, cannot.


----------



## Bluenose

delericho said:


> I'm not sure how far you can take simulation before it becomes unwieldy. How accurately should you calculate bow ranges indoors, for example? How exacting should the grapple rules be?
> 
> I think simulation is a fine thing... to a point. But I think also that it probably reaches a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly.




If you build up rules detail by detail and then fit them together, then you'll certainly get a very complex set of rules, and you'll certainly get a set of rules that can't take into account every possible factor. So the answer isn't to say that simulation is hard, it's to take a different approach to resolving situations. You can tyake the focus outwards. Your goal when you shoot the bow is to have an effect on the fight. The range and the height of the ceiling complicate your ability to have an effect, so you have to overcome that difficulty before you can get involved. Discard your 'out of melee range' advantage, and you can claim that you've moved closer and can fire effectively, but you're now not immune to melee attacks. Make a successful tactics check to find an 'advantageous position' and you cna ignore the complication without making yourself vulnerable. Or fire into the melee, accepting a different complication like 'friendly fire'. Disregard the idea of resolving your actions in isolation and treat them as part of the fight as a whole, and let your actions affect the overall result of this rounds action or even the whole fight.

I repeat, as far as I'm concerned it's getting 'accurate' results from the situation that marks out a simulation, not how those results are arrived at. Building things up from the details is not the only way to do it.

Note, I may be explaining this badly. Some of the concepts come from Heroquest 2, various Fate based games, and even tabletop wargames (which have been through exactly this evolution). I'm not even sure I can explain it, though I know what I am trying to explain.


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## Imaro

Doug McCrae said:


> However I think that player and character experience and control of the game have always been quite distinct, for example the ability of the player to choose a PC's race while the character, ofc, cannot.




Eh, I don't see these as the same... in one you are making decisions before play begins, thus there is no character and no in-game world and thus you can't interact with the world through your character... however the minute play begins you now have those things and interaction with the game world through one's character begins.  I guess I considered pre-game prep and in-game play within D&D two very different phases of play.  Though other rpg's definitely blur the line, D&D by RAW really doesn't.


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## Doug McCrae

pawsplay said:


> Hit points can represent a lot of things, but in all cases, "I am low on hit points," is equivalent to, "I can't take much more of being attacked or I will die." In all cases, having lost hit points is equivalent to having been somewhat injured, even if superficially. Whether or not your hit points, in this particular instance, reflect more in the way of luck, divine favor, toughness, or artful dodging, if you've been hit, you want _cure light wounds_.
> 
> Hit points are abstract and yet completely associated to the game world. Big, more dangerous weapons do more damage. Injured characters are more hurt. Wounded characters should think about fleeing. Etc. They are basically the antithesis of a dissociated mechanic.
> 
> Tell me if I've made sense to you. I'm really having a hard time understanding how you came up with the statement I quoted.



The issue is that The Alexandrian uses multiple definitions of dissociated mechanic. There's the one he uses at the top of the article - "These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations" - for which he has Trick Strike as an example. But then he talks about the _besieged foe_ ability being dissociated even though he himself provides several game world explanations. Here his definition seems to be a mechanic for which the rules don't provide a gameworld justification, hence leaving such a justification up to the participants. He then talks at length about the problems he believes are caused by such multiple interpretations in the passage I quoted above. Hit points, saving throws and xp for gold are all like _besieged foe_ in this respect. 

I believe I detected a third definition later in the article - non-simulationist mechanic.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Bluenose said:


> I repeat, as far as I'm concerned it's getting 'accurate' results from the situation that marks out a simulation, not how those results are arrived at. Building things up from the details is not the only way to do it.



You're saying it's quite possible to have an abstract simulation? That's an interesting idea, as most, if not all, rpgs generally regarded as simulationist are very detailed.


----------



## Bluenose

Doug McCrae said:


> You're saying it's quite possible to have an abstract simulation? That's an interesting idea, as most, if not all, rpgs generally regarded as simulationist are very detailed.




Then I think it's about time someone tried to get the simulationist results without the obsession with details. It's been done outside RPGs for a couple of decades. I've got tabletop wargames rules from the 70s and 80s where there are several pages listing and explaining the modifiers that affect a combat resolution, and similar for various other parts of the game like morale checks and movement modifiers. And I've got more recent ones where the whole section on combat resolution is two or three pages, which might have been enough to list and explain the modifiers in some of the older sets. And if there's a difference in how accurately they simulate the history, there's no trend for the complex sets being better than the simple ones.


----------



## Dunnagin

It seems that "The Alexendrian's" terminology and method are in question here, so I will describe my personal experience in my own words, perhaps clarifying the position of several other as well.

If my primary language is Greek... then Japanese is completely "disassociated" to me. The characters and pronunciations are totally foreign to me, and I have a hard time communicating (if at all) in that language.

4e was not a completely foreign language to me, but it was a language that contained a lot of slang and concepts I did not identify with (if that states it clearly enough)... therefore it was not an ideal system for myself, or my players.

This does not make the system bad... but it does make it "bad for me".
I could learn this new language eventually perhaps... but my players and I are fluent in our native tongue... so why would we do this?

Does that make sense?


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> The issue is that The Alexandrian uses multiple definitions of dissociated mechanic. There's the one he uses at the top of the article - "These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations" - for which he has Trick Strike as an example. But then he talks about the _besieged foe_ ability being dissociated even though he himself provides several game world explanations. Here his definition seems to be a mechanic for which the rules don't provide a gameworld justification, hence leaving such a justification up to the participants. He then talks at length about the problems he believes are caused by such multiple interpretations in the passage I quoted above. Hit points, saving throws and xp for gold are all like _besieged foe_ in this respect.




Those aren't different definitions. As he clearly spells out in the article, he considers Trick Strike to be dissociated, and re-associating it means house-ruling the ability every time it is used. He does not claim it is now and forever dissociated.



> I believe I detected a third definition later in the article - non-simulationist mechanic.




Not by my reading of the article, or even the most broadest definitions of simulationist I can think of. It simply means non-immersive. In Forge Terms, the whole question is creative-agendra neutral. Certainly, a dissociated mechanic is anti-Simulationist, in that it makes simulation harder, but it also impedes any form of play in which you are working from Actor Stance.


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> You're saying it's quite possible to have an abstract simulation? That's an interesting idea, as most, if not all, rpgs generally regarded as simulationist are very detailed.




Not only is it possible... but a simulation is by definition abtract! Otherwise it would be reality.


----------



## Dunnagin

simulation, narration & game play remind me of the three terms often used in business:
quality, time & cost

Clients always want things to be top of quality, delivered on time or early and done on or under budget.

We are all "clients" of the RPG's which we purchase... so it is no surprise to me that we want a good level of simulation that encourages great narratives and that is the most fun to play.

When I think of it in those terms... I feel bad for game designers.
When running a project I often asked a client which TWO options were most imperative.

The poor game designers cannot ask us that, since we are a huge group that cannot agree on this ourselves.

sigh

We are not easy clients, as a whole... perhaps


----------



## Yesway Jose

Scenario A: A Knight and a Barbarian are playing a game of rock-paper-scissors. Who wins?

Mechanic 1: Players play a match of rock-paper-scissors. Maximum association of mechanics to fiction.
Mechanic 2: Players roll a die, higher die roll wins. As good as an association of mechanics to fiction as you're likely to get; an opposed die roll perfectly simulates a 50% chance of winning at rock-paper-scissors.


Scenario B: A Knight and a Barbarian fight a duel. Fictionally, they are equal oppponents. Who wins?

Mechanic 1: Players fight a duel ala LARPing. Disassociated from fiction unless the players are also equal opponents.
Mechanic 2: Opposed die roll or a match of rock-paper-scissors. Good association to the end result of the duel, although zero association with the minutiae of the battle.


Scenario B: A Knight and a Barbarian fight a duel. Fictionally, the Knight is the stronger opponent. Who wins?

Mechanic 1: Opposed die roll. Poor association to the end result of the duel, because there isn't a 50:50 probability of a win.
Mechanic 2: Opposed die roll with an extra bonus for the Knight. Better association to the end result of the duel.

* * *

Reviewing that, I'm wondering if "disassociated mechanics" can be defined as:

(1) IF you use a mechanic to pre-determine the outcome of a fictional event
AND (2) IF the fictional construct was imagined to play out by some number of roleplayers/screenwriters/authors (to average out for individual variation)
THEN (3) CAN/DOES #1 and #2 independently yield the same or similar probability curve of possible outcomes?


Disclaimer: Fictional expectations in point #2 will strongly influence if #3 is true or not.

-An ordinary man is shot at with multiple submachine guns. The mechanics say he's at -10 hit points. The fictional consensus is that he's dead. No disassociation.

-An action hero in a Hollywood movie is shot at with multiple submachine guns. The mechanics says he lost 20 hit points but still has 40 more hit points. Screenwriters concede that he dodges past the bullet fire. No disassociation (because losing 20 hit points can be abstracted to mean that he used up some luck "points" and maybe a bullet graze).

-A superhero is paralyzed by a freeze ray. The mechanics say he's paralyzed for a short while and then snaps back into action. One scientifically-minded writer decides that the superhero's lung muscles stop working and asphyxiates, but the rest of the comic book writers form the consensus that he's OK. So no (significant) disassociation.

-A villian is holding a world-shattering artifact, so a wizard casts Hypnotism on him. The spell mechanics state the wizard can slide the target or force him to make a basic melee attack against a creature. The fictional writers imagine that the wizard could feasibly mind-control the villian to drop (or throw) the artifact and withdraw. The mechanics don't allow the spell to work that way. That would be disassociation of mechanics.

It is my personal opinion that many 4E mechanics do not permit or encourage the same probability curve of possible outcomes in a fantasy narrative that would/could be imagined by a significantly large enough percentage of the roleplaying community, thus a strong impression of disassociated mechanics for a significant number of people.

Is 3E disassociation-free? Of course not, but it's all relative, and anyway, one doesn't negate the other.


----------



## Elf Witch

Nineball said:


> This is what really hits it on the nail for me.  I am continuously boggled by people who say "I can't play 4e, it's too gamist, the daily powers pull me out of the character" followed by "Oh, hit me with cure lesser, not cure moderate, I only lost 5 HP."
> 
> You make player-based choices all the time.  If 4e is the step too far, then ok, I can get that.  But there's a difference between "4e is a step too far" and "my editions _never did that at all!_"
> 
> 
> 
> If there is anything you should learn from The Alexandrian, it is that  everything is defined to mean "4e is bad."  The actual used definitions  will change on the drop of a pin, but at the end of the day, the result  he truly wants is "This is why 4e is bad."




I have not read anyone here saying that my edition never did that. What I have read is 4E has taken it to far for me to to be able to enjoy it.

If there is anything we should learn from your posts is that any criticism of 4E is not justified and  our only purpose is to say 4E is bad. Of course you are allowed to criticize 3E because for some reason that is different. Oh yeah 3E is a crappy system and we just can't admit it. 

I seen several 3E fans here admit that Alexander had an axe to grind but we thought there was some points he brought up that we found interesting and worthy of discussion.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Quick note, for late reply. The first "this" is referring to a quote of my assertion that the problem was not disassociated mechanics, but what the person brought to the table.



Raven Crowking said:


> I am not at all certain that this is true. AFAICT, what one brings to the table is either an awareness of the disassociation, or being bothered by it, which is a problem that not all will have. But, because not everyone will be aware of/bothered by the disassociation of avatar and player does not mean that said disassociation doesn't exist.
> 
> If, ultimately, "role-playing" means "associating the player's POV with the POV of a fictional avatar" then disassociation of those POVs affects role-playing, to the degree that it occurs. Obviously, if you define "role-playing" differently, you will draw a different conclusion.....but that doesn't make the original conclusion wrong.
> 
> IMHO, it depends upon how you see "role-playing", whether or not you are aware of the disassociation, and the degree to which any disassociation interferes with your goals in playing the game.
> 
> Note also that this is true for any game element, and is not limited to 4e. To the degree to which anything interferes with your goals in playing the game, that thing is going to be a problem. It is the interaction between your goals and the ruleset that creates the problem -- it is not true (IMHO) to say that it is solely what you bring to the table, or solely what occurs in the ruleset.




Starting at the end, of course any such problem (or things that work with no problem, for that matter), are an interaction between what you bring and the rules (and what everyone else brings, too). 

But note that the inherent claim of the theory is that a line is crossed with 4E in this interaction that makes a difference in kind, not simply degree. As I've mentioned elsewhere, claiming degree is not a problem at all. It is the claim of difference in kind that is all the problem. Because once you claim that, then you've either got to find evidence to support it, or, if you want to work the other way around, you start seeing evidence to support it. 

You can't find that evidence in people who are bothered by the difference in degree. If the rogue only getting Trick Strike 1/day bothers you enough that it changes your play experience, then any difference in kind that may or may not be present (according to a theory) will be masked, or at least contaminated, by this experience. For there to be a difference in kind, it would have to *also* be affecting the people who are not bothered by the difference in degree, and if present, this will be the easier place to show it. That is, the guy playing the rogue who is fine with Trick Strike being 1/day is being affected in some negative way by the disassociation itself.

The *claims* that are made is that said guy "isn't roleplaying" very much, if at all. Or any number of similar things. The guy actually playing 4E is frequently saying some version of what permeton keeps saying: He is consciously acting as a player to use a metagaming narrative/gamist resource to make fight happen in ways that are exciting, while simutaneously imagining his rogue pull off some variation of a move that doesn't happen all that often. But the person looking for evidence of disassociation (at the theory level) *must* reject that testimony, because the theory has put "metagaming" into another bucket.

There are many variations on this argument--but they all come back to, if not backed away from, some version of, "the thing you say you do you didn't actually do." This is the offensive part. My report of what someone did at my table *cannot* have happened because then the theory is disproved.

There have been several examples put forth in this thread of niche things that have supposedly illustrated a disassociated mechanic. I'll pick one that is particular easy to rebut, the d4 dagger versus the d8 longsword. This exactly an example of what the player (or the group) brings to the table, and is based not, as was first claimed, on "logic", but on feeling and limited evidence.

Note, I'm not saying that people don't have a reaction to those weapon sizes that adversely affects their enjoyment of the game. They said they did. And even if I didn't give them that courtesy, I once felt the same way! The very thought of going back to the OD&D d6 for all weapons was something that I simply could not do. 

OTOH, it has long been a complaint in some circles that one of the big problems with D&D combat was the pretense that there was all that great a difference in how long it took to kill someone with a dagger versus a longsword. The very idea was ludicrous, as the thinking goes, because the skill of the hands that wield it, and the circumstances under which it is willed, are so much more vital. And 3E even addresses this concern! Very rapidly, compared to previous version, level, attributes, magic, etc. matter a whole lot more than the die size. Are we then saying that low level D&D is not disassociated, but it gets gradually more so as we go? I can hear the answer already. "Well, this guy gets a bunch of levels and power, and these dwarf the base weapon, and that makes perfect sense." OK. So at some point in training/abilities/magic, it is fine, right? Now that we've established that it is degree, we are just talking about price. 

Now, you don't have to buy one version of fantasy reality or another for your arguments, let alone your game. Mix in all the different literary traditions we are trying to emulate, and the target is not only moving, but erratic. But the argument that the longsword must do more damage than the dagger, because it is bigger, lest you therefore have a mechanic that inherently disassociates the mind from what "dagger" and "longsword" mean in the imagined reality is, well, a really narrow view of the possibilities of imagined realities or really dismissive of them. That is for "inherent". If all you need to show is that it bother you in your imagined reality, then you can use whatever you want. But now we are back to what the players bring to the table.

BTW, a niche thing, critical to understanding how people like me have no problem with things like Trick Strike, is the realization that 1/day is not actually "exactly 1/day". Rather, it is "zero to once per day", which over time, played in a game where a story is taking place, come out to considerably less than 1/day. It becomes much easier to visualize such a move rarely coming up, once this is noted. You can't do that if you assume, however, that someone is playing the game as a boardgame, and exactly milking every resource for maximum effect, all the time.


----------



## FireLance

Yesway Jose said:


> -A villian is holding a world-shattering artifact, so a wizard casts Hypnotism on him. The spell mechanics state the wizard can slide the target or force him to make a basic melee attack against a creature. The fictional writers imagine that the wizard could feasibly mind-control the villian to drop (or throw) the artifact and withdraw. The mechanics don't allow the spell to work that way. That would be disassociation of mechanics.



Frankly, this to me is more a case of the effect of a spell not fully living up to its name (or its default flavor). If the spell was explicitly described as being able to trigger only one of two very basic reactions in the target (effectively, fight OR flight, and nothing else) then there would be a much lower level of disassociation.

The way I see it, it is essentially up to the players and the DM to prevent disassociation by not using mechanics that create disassociation for them. I suspect that most of the mechanics with a high potential for disassociation are the martial abilities. Magical abilities have the convenient "it's magic!" handwave, but for martial abilities, the players (and the DM) need to work harder to ensure that the narrative remains at a level of plausibility that they are comfortable with. That is the price that you have to pay if you want to stretch the limits of what can be accomplished by martial characters. If you are not willing to pay this price and are willing to accept that martial characters will be more limited than the others, you can simply restrict yourself to using the more straightforward options for martial characters (for example, the Essentials fighters and rogue). 

To a certain extent, I think that the "cure" for disassociation is simply internalizing the way things work in the game. When I first started playing D&D, the biggest source of disassociation for me was the way that spellcasters worked. Magic-users and clerics simply didn't work the way I expected them to. What was this "memorization" nonsense? Wizards don't run out of spells (at least, they never did in the fiction that I was familiar with - mostly because spellcasters were usually anagonists or plot devices, but this didn't even feature in novels like A Wizard of Earthsea where the protagonist was one). A cleric should simply pray and his deity (in his or her infinite wisdom) would provide whatever miracles are most appropriate to the situation. 

Naturally, since I'm still playing the game, I got used to it in time (there is a significant amount of self-selection on this forum - if I hadn't managed to get over my disassociation, I wouldn't be posting here, now, in the first place), and it's now almost second nature for me to talk about "preparing" daily spells (or prayers, or invocations, or whatever). And I've been getting over disassociation in every new edition since.


----------



## pawsplay

Crazy Jerome said:


> But note that the inherent claim of the theory is that a line is crossed with 4E in this interaction that makes a difference in kind, not simply degree. As I've mentioned elsewhere, claiming degree is not a problem at all. It is the claim of difference in kind that is all the problem. Because once you claim that, then you've either got to find evidence to support it, or, if you want to work the other way around, you start seeing evidence to support it.




I agree that the evidence has not been furnished that this is a different of kind, rather than degree. I agree that the evidence has not been furnished that 4e as a whole is a different game of a kind, rather than to a degree. I do think that the identification of the problem some people have with certain mechanics is accurate as to what is bothering them.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

pawsplay said:


> I agree that the evidence has not been furnished that this is a different of kind, rather than degree. I agree that the evidence has not been furnished that 4e as a whole is a different game of a kind, rather than to a degree. I do think that the identification of the problem some people have with certain mechanics is accurate as to what is bothering them.




I agree.  

I think it then follows that the "way out" is by understanding how people who aren't bothered are playing differently, such that they aren't bothered.  And then either adopting their methods and/or houseruling around the issues to avoid the need of their methods.  Or, since this is a game after all, if one doesn't want to bother, play a different game that better fits the preferences in question.

That is what individual players and tables can do.  On the larger question of what can be changed to accommodate more people, in a single version of D&D, it is easier to find the limits on how far "degree" can be pushed if people really understand why the line gets crossed.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

As a related aside, the huge irony for me in this particular discussion is that on one level I completely sympathize with those so bothered by the 4E choices.  While I don't have any issue with most of the 4E elements discussed, pro or con, thus far, I have a similar "bother" against coarse granularity in skills.  

I recognize that, from a playability standpoint, why it has to be that way, but I think you can see the severity of the problem for me when I say that I find even games like Hero and GURPS insufficiently fine.  4E bothers me, 3E bothers me, Non-weapon proficiency rules bothered me.  I can control it and enjoy the game, but it lurks there all the time.  And frankly, even though 3E skills were finer grained, I found that overall, 4E bothers me less in this respect, because it did cross a line.  3E kept teasing me that if I only tweaked this or that skill, I'd quit being bothered.  3.5 both teased me, but also told me to lower expectations.  4E just stopped teasing me altogether and told me I would have to deal with it.   Which, oddly, was more functional for me in actual play at the table.

So it might be useful to note that even though we are talking about lines being crossed, solutions aren't always as easy as staying sufficient distance back from the edge.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> The problem he has with the Rogue is that no in-game reason such as "He forgets how to do it" is given. Instead the reason he can do it only once per day is because it is a daily power... thus it is disassociated from the game fiction.



If a participant in an RPG is unable to draw a distinction between the reason for XYZ from the point of view of the players of the game, and the reason for XYZ from the (imaginary) point of view of the fictional inhabitants of the gameworld, then that person will probably not enjoy 4e.

This is true. I don't think we need the label "dissociated mechanics" to describe it, though. It's no more or less an interesting fact than that a person who hates iron-spike-and-10'-pole-play (like me) probably won't enjoy the Tomb of Horrors.

Anyway, returning to the rogue. The rogue hasn't forgotten how to do it. Or been rendered unable to do it. It's just that s/he _doesn't do it_. Why not (from her perspective)? Any number of reasons is possible - s/he gets unlucky, s/he doesn't bother because not enough is at stake, s/he has something else she'd rather be doing, etc, etc.

A comparable degree of "dissociation" in (typical) classic D&D play - why do the wandering monsters never catch a PC pants down relieving him- or herself in a corner of the dungeon? Among the players at the table, we know the reason - because no one wants to explore that particular human activity in the context of the game. In the fiction, who knows? The PCs get lucky, I guess. Does anyone infer, though, that because it never comes up, PCs don't go the toilet?



Imaro said:


> Disassociated mechanics, IMO, seem to be mechanics that aren't justified (even if that justification is "It's magic") in how they behave within the fictional reality of the game world. Instead they are left to be interpreted by those at the table. Thus they are disassociated until one associates them to some causaul relationship in the game.



So they're not justified, except that they are justified by those at the table - so where's the problem?



Imaro said:


> I mean you've given your interpretation of why he can but in the books this is not stated.



Correct. As you've already indicated, it's left as an exercise for the participants in the game.

Some people call this process, of the participants at the table working out among themselves what is happening in the fiction, _roleplaying_.



pawsplay said:


> That's not really a satisfying explanation from an in-game perspective.
> 
> Joe the Hero: Wow, Ziggy, that was amazing! Can you do it again?
> Ziggy the Rogue: Uh, no.
> Joe the Hero: Why not?
> Ziggy the Rogue: I've, uh... exhausted my physical and mental resources.
> Joe the Hero: You mean you're tired?
> Ziggy the Rogue: Not, uh, not exactly. I'm just too... exhausted... to do THAT.



Relating this to the hit point example:

Ziggy the Rogue: Wow, Joe, that was amazing! You took them all down and you haven't even broken a sweat!

Joe the Hero: Uh, I'm practically dying here - one more hit, even a scrape from a rock or a knife, and I'll drop.

Ziggy the Rogue: Gosh, I didn't notice. Do we need to call an ambulance? Get a stretcher?

Joe the Hero: Not at all, I'm as spry as when I woke up this morning. It's just that . . . .

(Complete dialogue to taste.)​
In other words, what Doug said:



Doug McCrae said:


> TA imagines conducting an interrogation of a character, asking him to explain why he can only use Trick Strike once a day. Surely a similar interrogation could be conducted regarding hit points. We could ask how a character on one hit point who fled, or sought rest or healing, knew he was badly wounded or severely fatigued, given that none of his capabilities were impaired in any way. His movement, his skill use, his ability to strike, to deal damage, to avoid blows, all of these were functioning at full capacity. And yet such a technique of interrogation, uncovering inconsistencies, insufficient explanations, is deemed capable of uncovering dissociated mechanics.




As it happens, [MENTION=18280]Raven Crowking[/MENTION] has a serious explanation for how we should make sense of this hit points thing - namely, that a player whose PC has 1 hp left will play his/her PC more cautiously, and _this_ is how the exhaustion/depletion of divine favour shows itself. And the same thing will happen with the player of a martial 4e PC who has no dailies left - s/he will play the PC more cautiously, because having fewer good powers to deploy. _That_ is how the depletion of reserves, or failure of luck, or whatever we want to think of it as, will manifest itself.



Imaro said:


> HP's are defined in the gameworld as a combination of things that equate to one's ability to continue to fight, including but not limited to physical endurance, luck, divine favor, morale, etc... These are all in-game connections for the mechanic of hit points... it's abstracted not disassociated.



What does it mean to say "I took 4 hp damage" or "I delivered 4 hp damage"? Or to say "I have 1 hp remaining"? We can't know in the abstract. It can only be resolved by the participants in the game in a given context. For example, 4 hp taken by a high level fighter with 80 hp is different from 4 hp taken by a giant slug with 80 hp (the slug's hp, unlike the fighter's, are mostly meat) is different from 4 hp taken by a 1st level MU. And 1 hp remaining for that MU or rogue who rolled a one on the die is obviusly very different from 1 hp remaining for that high level fighter, or the giant slug.



Yesway Jose said:


> hit points as a huge abstraction gives me plenty of space to associate the mechanics with the fiction. A more specific mechanic, like slide 2 squares, can often provide less wiggle room to create plausible fluff for that context.
> 
> Again, that's all relative. Hit points as an abstraction cannot be entirely free of disassociation, but I think much less so than some other 4E mechanics.



Each to his or her own. Until 4e, I could never handle hit points (and so I played Rolemaster, in which hit points - earned by ranks in Body Development - are all meat). But slides have never caused me or my group any trouble.

The Alexandrian essay records a potentially interseting biographical fact about Justin Alexander, but not much more than that as far as I can tell.



Raven Crowking said:


> If the avatar doesn't "know", then why doesn't the avatar attempt things that would be extremely effective, if successful, and which the avatar has no reason to believe will not be successful?
> 
> This is, AFAICT, the root of what is being called "disassociative mechanics" -- the player must disassociate from the avatar's POV in order to make effective choices in the game milieu.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If, ultimately, "role-playing" means "associating the player's POV with the POV of a fictional avatar" then disassociation of those POVs affects role-playing, to the degree that it occurs.  Obviously, if you define "role-playing" differently, you will draw a different conclusion.....but that doesn't make the original conclusion wrong.



LostSoul already replied to this in some detail. But to add some examples to his discussion of Power Attack - why does the avatar, in 3E play, not wait until the goblin leaves cover before running out and shooting an arrow? The mechanical explanation, from the player's point of view, is that (i) the rules don't permit readying both a move and a standard action, and (ii) there is no analogue to the charge for ranged attacks. In game which use simultaneous resolution - like some versions of Rolemaster, and some versions of classic D&D - the issue doesn't arise in the same way.

But I've _never_ seen or heard it suggested that the presence of turn-by-turn initiative rules in 3E makes it not a roleplaying game.

In any event, the notion that "roleplaying" _means_ assimilation of the player to the PC, not just as advocate and controller, but in terms of point-of-view, strikes me as too narrow to capture more than a small handful of paradigmatic roleplaying experiences. (For example, it would put such a strong constraint on metagaming that huge chunks of classic D&D play -which depend on the player having a sense, independent of his/her PC, of the conventions of the game, like pit traps and 10' poles and the like - would be excluded from the ambit of roleplaying.)



Doug McCrae said:


> Ofc, TA is wrong about _besieged foe_, the rules do in fact provide a game world explanation. I would assume that when he wrote the article, the author only had access to the power description and not the accompanying text on pg 67 of the MM -
> 
> They use besieged foe... to direct their subordinates against dangerous foes​



In a recent thread, I and other posters pointed to the flavour text for kobolds - which talks about them being skulking ambushers, preferring to swarm foes and then run away if threatened, etc - as helpful for understanding what the Shifty power is about. We got the reply that because that text appears a few centimetres up the page, rather than in the very stat block next to Shifty, it is irrelevant to interpreting and GMing the Shifty power. Presumably, the same can be said in response to your reading of Besieged Foe.

Personally, the way I read Besieged Foe is as primarily a metagame thing. It's as if the GM played an "Unluck" or "Anti-Fate" token on the player, saying "This war devil and it's allies are going to take you down!" The effect of the power is to _produce_ the result that the foe is besieged, because it creates a mechanical incentive for the war devil's allies to attack the targeted PC.

Those who don't like pure metagame abilities could intepret it as a curse instead: "You shall know the wrath of my legions!"



Dunnagin said:


> If a mechanic says that a thief or a fighter can perform some action which doesn't align to thieving or fighting at all... something similar to teleportation (you just appear somewhere else), then you begin to lose me.



How many rogue powers in PHB, MP and MP2 grant teleportation? One: a level 22 utility power called "Mountebank’s Flight" with the flavour text "You steal a bit of magic to stow away on another creature’s teleportation." (There is also a 20th level teleportation power for the paragon path Arcane Trickster.)

Across those same three books, how many fighter powers grant telepotation? None. (Again, a fighter paragon path which requires warlock multi-classing grants a teleportation utility power at level 12.)

So how exactly does this comment shed light on 4e's mechanics?


----------



## Hussar

Dunnagin said:


> Also, I completely agree with you using the word Contrive:
> 
> *con·trive*
> 
> 
> 
> /kənˈtraɪv/
> 
> Show Spelled [kuh
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> n-trahyv]
> 
> Show IPA verb, -trived, -triv·ing.
> –verb (used with object)
> 
> 1. to plan with ingenuity; devise; invent: The author contrived a clever plot.
> 
> 2. to bring about or effect by a plan, scheme, or the like; manage: He contrived to gain their votes.
> 
> 3. to plot (evil, treachery, etc.).
> 
> Sounds more fun to me than outtakes from a series of fantasy boxing matches




Oh, please.

If you're going to play dueling dictionaries, at least use the right word:

con·trived

adjective /kənˈtrīvd/ 

    Deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously
        - the carefully contrived image of party unity

    Giving a sense of artificiality
        - the ending of the novel is too pat and contrived


----------



## pemerton

Raven Crowking said:


> Sorry, but that doesn't logically follow.



I didn't assert that it did follow as a matter of logic. I obviously suppressed some premises, and I'm not even sure I can express my reasoning in syllogistic form.

That doesn't render the inference unsound. Not all inferences are logical ones. Arguably, some of the most interesting and important inferences human beings make are not logical ones.



Raven Crowking said:


> not finding someone who is aware of property Y in object X, who also likes object X, in no way indicates that property Y is non-existent.  Nor does it in any way speak to the motives of those who are aware of property Y.



Well, "awareness" presupposes existence - in that one can't be aware of what doesn't exist.

My contention is that person A, by _positing_ the existence of property Y in object X, which object person A does not like, may speak to the motives of person A. For example, the positing by me of the existence, in politicians whom I don't like, of the property of beig a liar, may speak to my motives. Frequently, in fact, it does. Sometimes it may not.



Raven Crowking said:


> In either event, were your premise accurate, then the existence of LostSoul's hack would seem to indicate the opposite conclusion.  To wit, there is a clear example of someone who actually plays and enjoys 4e, _and_ has taken specific action to limit or remove exactly what is being termed "dissociated mechanics".



Well, LostSoul can speak for himself, and indeed has done so. 



Raven Crowking said:


> If the opposite would "would be some evidence that the notion is edition-bashing dressed up in pseudo-analysis", it would therefore follow that the denial of the notion, in light of the evidence, is comparable to phrenology.  Right?



I can't parse this sentence. If you're asking whether it would follow, from the existence of 4e enjoyers who also deploy the notion of "dissociated mechanics", that the notion _does_ have some utility and is not mere pseudo-analysis, the answer is "yes". It is good evidence for the utility of a technique for analysing aesthetic phenomena that those who appreciate the phenomena in question use the technique. Not perfect evidence - perhaps the enthusiasts are all deluded - but good evidence nevertheless.

In the case of dissociated mechanics (or "disassociated" - different posters in this thread seem to use different terms, but I assume nothing is at stake here), though, I see no evidence of this sort (given that LostSoul says he doesn't understand the notion, and Wrecan redefines the term before deploying it),.

My claim, which I'm sticking to, is that the notion as presented in Justin Alexander's essay is a pseudo-notion.



Raven Crowking said:


> IF one accepts the premise of disassociated mechanics, THEN one would also posit that a person who enjoys a game is either unaware of, or not bothered by, said mechanics.



How does this rebut my claim, that the notion is thinly-disguised edition-baiting?



Raven Crowking said:


> May I suggest instead that this is a feature of a game that some will enjoy, some will not, and is worth looking at for its own merits?



There is no doubt that 4e has features that are interesting, and in respect of which it more closely resembles (let's say) Burning Wheel or Maelstrom Storytelling than (let's say) Runequest or Classic Traveller.

There is a perfectly good language for talking about these features: metagame mechanics, fortune-in-the-middle action resolution, scene-framing guidelines, scene-resolution mechanics, etc etc.

Introducing a term the principal purpose of which is to signal by way of implicit presupposition that these features of 4e are an impediment to the game being an RPG is not adding to the useful vocabulary. It is edition-warring thinly veiled as analysis.



Imaro said:


> I don't see these as the same... in one you are making decisions before play begins, thus there is no character and no in-game world and thus you can't interact with the world through your character... however the minute play begins you now have those things and interaction with the game world through one's character begins.  I guess I considered pre-game prep and in-game play within D&D two very different phases of play.  Though other rpg's definitely blur the line, D&D by RAW really doesn't.



Those other RPGs would include Runequest and Classic Traveller, I guess.

And guess what - D&D 4e is also a different RPG from (eg) Basic D&D. It takes a different approach to "interacting with the world through your character" that is not limited to "doing things to the world that (i) can only be explained as having been done by your PC and (ii) are resovled via a mechanic that models the very ingame causal process that your PC uses".

Breaking the first of these limitations permits eg Come and Get It before it was errata-ed (ie sometimes I can also dicate the actions of some NPCs). Breaking the second of these limitations permits eg Come and Get It both pre-and post-errata versions (ie the causal process in the gameworld that explain why this happens only occasionally aren't modelled by the 1x/enc mechanic).



pawsplay said:


> Not by my reading of the article, or even the most broadest definitions of simulationist I can think of. It simply means non-immersive. In Forge Terms, the whole question is creative-agendra neutral. Certainly, a dissociated mechanic is anti-Simulationist, in that it makes simulation harder, but it also impedes any form of play in which you are working from Actor Stance.



Here're some definitions of stances:

In *Actor stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. 

In *Author stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.) 

In *Director stance*, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​Come and Get It, pre-errata, presupposed adopting Director stance.

Does post-errata Come and Get It presuppose also presuppose Director Stance? Or can it be done in Actor stance? Well, the decision to _try_ and lure all your foes within swinging reach can be made purely using the character's knowledge. What about the decision _not_ to attempt it in a subsequent round in the same encounter? If we see this as the character knowing (via "gut feel", let's say) that his or her luck won't stretch any further, and it's time to try something else, than Actor stance is possible. If we see this, rather, as no subsequent opportunity to do so arising, and hence the attempt not being rational for the PC, then we have Director stance.

I think the distinction between these two approaches to an encounter power, while perhaps theoretically interesting, is a pretty fine one relative to the way most tables resolve most combats.

So whatever the Alexandrian's objection to martial encounter and daily powers, I don't think the need to depart from Actor stance can be it.

I think that RC is probably closer to it, when he sees the issue as one going to immersion, understood as some sort of _fusion_ of the decision-making activities of the player and the PC.


----------



## pawsplay

pemerton said:


> Relating this to the hit point example:
> 
> Ziggy the Rogue: Wow, Joe, that was amazing! You took them all down and you haven't even broken a sweat!
> 
> Joe the Hero: Uh, I'm practically dying here - one more hit, even a scrape from a rock or a knife, and I'll drop.
> 
> Ziggy the Rogue: Gosh, I didn't notice. Do we need to call an ambulance? Get a stretcher?
> 
> Joe the Hero: Not at all, I'm as spry as when I woke up this morning. It's just that . . . .
> 
> (Complete dialogue to taste.)​




Your example is made of straw. Someone down to their last point is not as spry as when they woke up this morning. Ziggy would easily discern Joe was in bad shape, most of the time. It's true, D&D doesn't have rules for crippled limbs, specifically. However, Joe would not be impaired until 0 hit points or below. I.e. Joe does not need an ambulance. He needs rest. If he goes to 0 hit points or below, yes, he'll need an ambulance. 

Joe is, in fact, lying in this example about his health status. Ziggy is being strange about offering him an ambulance, immediately after failing to notice Joe was in bad shape at all.


----------



## pawsplay

pemerton said:


> Here're some definitions of stances:
> 
> In *Actor stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.
> 
> In *Author stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)
> 
> In *Director stance*, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​Come and Get It, pre-errata, presupposed adopting Director stance.
> 
> Does post-errata Come and Get It presuppose also presuppose Director Stance? Or can it be done in Actor stance? Well, the decision to _try_ and lure all your foes within swinging reach can be made purely using the character's knowledge. What about the decision _not_ to attempt it in a subsequent round in the same encounter? If we see this as the character knowing (via "gut feel", let's say) that his or her luck won't stretch any further, and it's time to try something else, than Actor stance is possible. If we see this, rather, as know subsequent opportunity to do so arising, and hence the attempt not being rational, then we have Director stance.
> 
> I think the distinction between these two approaches to an encounter power, while perhaps theoretically interesting, is a pretty fine one relative to the way most tables resolve most combats.
> 
> So whatever the Alexandrian's objection to martial encounter and daily powers, I don't think the need to depart from Actor stance can be it.




Who said anyone needed to depart from Actor stance? WhatI said was that Actor stance was negatively impacted by the ability. You can, of course, continue to soldier on, making whatever rationalizations you need, but you are doing extra work. You are, of course, houseuling again, which was the Alexandrian's point.


----------



## Hussar

pawsplay said:


> Your example is made of straw. Someone down to their last point is not as spry as when they woke up this morning. Ziggy would easily discern Joe was in bad shape, most of the time. It's true, D&D doesn't have rules for crippled limbs, specifically. However, Joe would not be impaired until 0 hit points or below. I.e. Joe does not need an ambulance. He needs rest. If he goes to 0 hit points or below, yes, he'll need an ambulance.
> 
> Joe is, in fact, lying in this example about his health status. Ziggy is being strange about offering him an ambulance, immediately after failing to notice Joe was in bad shape at all.




How?

How does being at 1 hp manifest itself in game?  In what way are they different from being at full hit points?  What *associated *mechanic (ie.  A mechanic that has an in game parallel) in any version of D&D allows the PC or anyone else for that matter, to know that he has 1 hit point left?


----------



## Beginning of the End

FireLance said:


> The way I see it, it is essentially up to the players and the DM to prevent disassociation by not using mechanics that create disassociation for them.




The fact that a Knight can only move in an L-shape in _Chess_ is a dissociated mechanic. The fact that you collect $200 when you pass "Go" in _Monopoly_ is a dissociated mechanic.

The idea that you have some sort of "responsibility" to avoid using those mechanics is... bizarre. Those mechanics are part of the game. If the existence of those mechanics is not serving the purpose of the game; then they shouldn't be part of the game.



LostSoul said:


> Ah, that makes sense!  I was having trouble  understanding The Alexandrian's essay as I was looking at it through my  own biases.  This clears it up for me.  Thanks, RC.
> 
> In my own words: Dissociated mechanics aren't about the fact that what's happening in the game world doesn't _necessarily_ have an influence over resolution; they are about associating player choice with character choice.
> 
> The idea I had in my head was that Power Attack was "dissociated" - what  your character is actually doing in the game world doesn't matter, as  long as you meet the rules requirements listed in the Feat.  This is  similar to the Slide Effect of Trick Strike; what your character is  doing to move his foe isn't important.
> 
> The difference between Power Attack and Trick Strike is that Power  Attack is a choice that you, as a player, can make, as well as a choice  that your character can make in the game world.  You want to trade BAB  for Damage, while your character wants to trade precision for power.   The player's decision and the character's decision are related - or  associated.  Trick Strike, being a Daily power, is a choice a player can  make but the character cannot.  The character will want to use Trick  Strike as often as possible but is prohibited from doing so more than  once per Extended Rest.




You've pretty much nailed it here.



Doug McCrae said:


> The issue is that The Alexandrian uses  multiple definitions of dissociated mechanic. There's the one he uses at  the top of the article - "These are mechanics for which the characters  have no functional explanations" - for which he has Trick Strike as an  example. But then he talks about the _besieged foe_ ability being dissociated even though he himself provides several game world explanations.




The _besieged foe_ ability -- as it was available at the time the essay was written -- was a complete _tabula rasa_: The characters have no functional explanation for it because there's no explanation given at all. This is somewhat distinct from Trick Strike (for which an explanation is given which is not consistent with the mechanic), but not so distinct as to represent a radically different concept.

And, yes, house rules can be applied to the _besieged foe_ ability in order to associate it with the game world (the "several game world explanations" you talk about). But this is also true of Trick Strike. You can house rule Trick Strike to model a magical tattoo that you can activate once per day to place magical shackles on a chosen target which you can activate by hitting key pressure points on the shackles in order to exert a limited control over the target's movement. The result would give you something much more closely associated to the game world than the existing mechanic.



Elf Witch said:


> I seen several 3E fans here admit that  Alexander had an axe to grind but we thought there was some points he  brought up that we found interesting and worthy of discussion.




Speaking as someone who's played at hist able: Justin was excited about 4th Edition. When it came out, he played it and he DMed it several times. He simply didn't enjoy it. And in trying to explain _why_ he didn't enjoy it, he articulated the concept of dissociated mechanics as a major reason why. If that constitutes an "axe to grind", then I guess it's an axe that had to be ground.



Imaro said:


> Good point... not to mention that at certain levels  you can be too exhausted to use one particular daily... but have no  problem doing a different (but arguably just as strenuous) daily  power.




You can also be too exhausted to do an encounter power right now... but a couple or three dailies? Sure. No problem.



wrecan said:


> TheAlexandrian's definition of disassociated is  entirely based on his own credulity, which makes it an unhelpful  definition.  The community has adopted the term and given it a  definition that TheAlexandrian hinted at, but never actually adopted.   (If he had, it would have invalidated many of his other points.)  As I  see it, "disassociated mechanics" are rules that do not represent the  physics of the game world and are simply abstractions used to mimic what  happens in the fiction the game emulates.
> 
> (...)
> 
> I don't think TheAlexandrian proved that.  All he did was point to some  things he didn't like and gave them a label and declared them  universally bad.




(1) That definition is, in fact, the one proffered in the original essay. (Except he doesn't include the extraneous "abstractions", because all mechanics are abstractions.)

(2) The original essay not only says that dissociated mechanics work within the design ethos of 4th edition, but actually includes a lengthy section talking about how dissociated mechanics can be used. It even includes a section explicitly labeled "Benefits of Dissociation".

How you can go from that to concluding that the essay "declares them universally bad" is beyond me. In fact, one would suspect that you have not actually read the essay.


----------



## pemerton

pawsplay said:


> Someone down to their last point is not as spry as when they woke up this morning. Ziggy would easily discern Joe was in bad shape, most of the time. It's true, D&D doesn't have rules for crippled limbs, specifically. However, Joe would not be impaired until 0 hit points or below. I.e. Joe does not need an ambulance. He needs rest. If he goes to 0 hit points or below, yes, he'll need an ambulance.
> 
> Joe is, in fact, lying in this example about his health status. Ziggy is being strange about offering him an ambulance, immediately after failing to notice Joe was in bad shape at all.



I want to reiterate Hussar's question.

How does Joe know that he needs to rest, given that he is not impaired? How does Ziggy discern this? The _players_ can tell, by looking at the hit point totals. But how do the characters know?


----------



## pemerton

pawsplay said:


> What I said was that Actor stance was negatively impacted by the ability. You can, of course, continue to soldier on, making whatever rationalizations you need, but you are doing extra work. You are, of course, houseuling again, which was the Alexandrian's point.



How is Actor stance adversely impacted by me playing my PC's gut feel that my luck has been stretched as far as it can go?

And why is this houseruling? (Especially given that page 54 of the PHB talks about depleted reserves.)

Is there some new definition of houseruling that I missed, where all fortune-in-the-middle and metagame mechanics are actually houserule in disguise?


----------



## Beginning of the End

chaochou said:


> I'm talking about this definition of dissociated mechanics:
> 
> _When       I talk about "dissociated mechanics", I'm talking about       mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are       mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations._
> 
> I don't see how it's missing something to point out that characters are not capable of giving functional explanations of anything. It's a nonsense definition, followed by nonsense examples.




I think your failure to comprehend meaningful context and your resulting conclusion that Justin must be suggesting that one can pick up a telephone and ring up their character speaks volumes about you and very little about anything else.


----------



## Gantros

Doug McCrae said:


> You're quite right that saving throws and hit points are abstracted. The same mechanic can refer to a number of quite different properties of the game world. But isn't this very rules feature what TA is complaining about when he talks about the war devil's _besieged foe_ ability? He bemoans the multiple possible explanations, saying that to provide a specific explanation is to make a house rule. Isn't there the exact same need, if there is such a need, to 'pin down' the abstract mechanics of saving throws and hit points as there is to explain _besieged foe_?






> Ofc, TA is wrong about _besieged foe_, the rules do in fact provide a game world explanation. I would assume that when he wrote the article, the author only had access to the power description and not the accompanying text on pg 67 of the MM -
> 
> They use besieged foe... to direct their subordinates against dangerous foes​




I think you're still missing the distinction between abstraction and association.  Certainly HP, saves, and _besieged foe_ all involve a fair amount of abstraction.  The difference is that the mechanics for the latter are not associated with a description of the in-game actions they are supposed to be modeling.

Consider this - if _besieged foe_ is meant to work by directing subordinates against dangerous foes, as the description states, then why is the actual effect that allies get a bonus to hit the target?  Why does it still grant a bonus to an ally that was already engaging the target before any direction was given to do so?  The mechanic could be adjusted to have a direct association with the description (e.g. the war devil forces its allies to stop whatever else they were doing and attack the target), or a description could be provided that better associates with the mechanic (e.g. the war devil sends telepathic guidance to allies on how to exploit the target's weaknesses).  But as the essay points out, these would have to be house rules with their own new implications, and _besieged foe_ is far from being an isolated example.



> TA imagines conducting an interrogation of a character, asking him to explain why he can only use Trick Strike once a day. Surely a similar interrogation could be conducted regarding hit points. We could ask how a character on one hit point who fled, or sought rest or healing, knew he was badly wounded or severely fatigued, given that none of his capabilities were impaired in any way. His movement, his skill use, his ability to strike, to deal damage, to avoid blows, all of these were functioning at full capacity. And yet such a technique of interrogation, uncovering inconsistencies, insufficient explanations, is deemed capable of uncovering dissociated mechanics.
> 
> We might equally ask why a character jumped off a great height with such abandon. He seemed certain he could survive. How so?




In 3.5e, the description of hit points is clear - they represent both the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.  It's easy to see how a character would at any given time be aware of how much physical punishment they had taken, and also how much longer they think they can avoid taking a serious blow.  The description is also well supported by other rules that modify max HP according to character class, level, and Constitution scores.

Now try to do the same thing with 4e daily martial powers.  They are described only as, "reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit."  Except no matter how powerful a character gets, they will never be able to use one more than once per day.  It doesn't matter if it's a Level 1 power and they've got a bunch of other higher level daily powers remaining.  It doesn't matter if they just woke up from a good night's sleep, or they're exhausted after a long day of brutal combat.  It doesn't matter what any of their ability scores are.  So while the description does point to something the character would be aware of in-game, there's really almost nothing associating the mechanics with that description.



> Regarding xp for gold, Gary Gygax is perfectly honest about it having no game world justification, ie being a dissociated mechanic -
> 
> Players who balk at equating gold pieces to experience points should be gently but firmly reminded that in a game certain compromises must be made. While it is more "realistic" for clerics to study holy writings, pray, chant, practice self-discipline, etc. to gain experience, it would not make a playable game roll along. Similarly, fighters should be exercising, riding, smiting pelts, tilting at the lists, and engaging in weapons practice of various sorts to gain real expertise (experience); magic-users should be deciphering old scrolls, searching ancient tomes, experimenting alchemically, and so forth; while thieves should spend their off-hours honing their skills, "casing" various buildings, watching potential victims, and carefully planning their next "iob". All very realistic but conducive to non-game boredom!​ - DMG pg 85
> 
> Your explanation, that in gaining gold, PCs will be very likely to use all their character abilities, is a perfectly good one. It's just that it's not the justification given in the text. So we have a situation where the users of the game text are having to create their own explanations, which is precisely what TA dislikes about _besieged foe_.




This is once again confusing abstraction with association.  The justification you quoted explains why it's okay to assume that both gold and XP come from adventuring and therefore gold = XP, which could be considered an excessive level of abstraction (I always felt it was and therefore never liked the rule myself).  But the association between the mechanic and the behavior is still clear, unlike with _besieged foe_.



> Even Gary's simulationist justifications in 1e were added after the fact.




The design process used to create a game's mechanics and descriptions aren't as important as the final product.


----------



## Beginning of the End

pemerton said:


> How does Joe know that he needs to rest, given that he is not impaired? How does Ziggy discern this? The _players_ can tell, by looking at the hit point totals. But how do the characters know?




Mechanics are always abstracted. Because of this, there will always be information about the game world which is not included in the mechanics. That's the nature of abstraction. (In this case, the specific information which is not being included in the mechanics is the degree to which a character's injuries are impairing them.)

The lossy quality of mechanical abstraction means that sometimes there's information available in the game world which is not available in the mechanics. For some people, the information being lost may be a deal-breaker. (For example, few if any RPGs mechanically answer the question, "Did I slash with my sword or stab with it?" And basically no one cares about the loss of that information. The loss of impairment from wounds, OTOH, is a common concern for many people... which is why lots of games have included mechanics for that.)

Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.

I can see why, at first glance, it can be tempting to simply equate the two types of information loss. But I think there's an important qualitative distinction. This may be relevant reading.

* Of course, dissociated mechanics are still mechanics and, therefore, they're still abstracted. Which means they can also suffer from the same problems as all other mechanics.


----------



## pawsplay

Hussar said:


> How?
> 
> How does being at 1 hp manifest itself in game?  In what way are they different from being at full hit points?  What *associated *mechanic (ie.  A mechanic that has an in game parallel) in any version of D&D allows the PC or anyone else for that matter, to know that he has 1 hit point left?




Why do we need a mechanic that says would someone looks like at 1 hp? It says 1 hp on the character sheet. If a player asks, "How badly hurt does Pogo the Clown look?" that's a valid question. 1 hp is pretty badly hurt. "It looks like a bad scrape or a thrown rock would finish him off," would be the answer if the PCs were judged to be a good position to assess their opponent's health.

Just because a "traveler's outfit" in 3e has no stated color, that doesn't mean that there's no way to discern what color it is. How do you know slashing weapons have edges? How do you know trolls have long arms? How do you know what kind of weapons the orcs are wielding? How do you know otyughs smell bad?

I'll turn the question around. Given that hit points represent combat attrition, why WOULDN'T someone be able to make a ballpark guess?


----------



## FireLance

Beginning of the End said:


> The fact that a Knight can only move in an L-shape in _Chess_ is a dissociated mechanic. The fact that you collect $200 when you pass "Go" in _Monopoly_ is a dissociated mechanic.



I'll give you the former, but I believe the income from Monopoly is supposed to represent a salary or allowance of some kind. Perhaps changing the name of the square from "Go" to "Bank" or "ATM" might help remove the disassociation.



> The idea that you have some sort of "responsibility" to avoid using those mechanics is... bizarre. Those mechanics are part of the game. If the existence of those mechanics is not serving the purpose of the game; then they shouldn't be part of the game.



No more "bizarre" than the idea that you should not use classes, spells or monsters if they do not fit in with your concept of your fantasy world. 

Some people don't like monks in a western medieval fantasy setting, so they don't use them. Some people don't like psionics, so they don't use them, either. I personally have encountered some spells that I consider to be nothing more than combo platters of disassociated effects, so I don't use those. I find some classic D&D monsters like the beholder to be rather silly, so I don't use them, either. But so what? Even if some people don't use these classes, spells and monsters, others do.

The same goes for disassociated mechanics. I don't think disassociation is something that can be objectively proven. Some abilities might seem disassociated to one person, and not to another. As for "serving the purpose of the game" ... Frankly, for a game of fantasy and imagination like D&D, I'd say the purpose of the game is better served by pushing the boundaries of the possible (admittedly, to subjective degrees of success and acceptance) than by staying firmly within the boundaries of what we have always known.


----------



## LostSoul

First of all, thanks for replying!



Beginning of the End said:


> Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.




My big question is: how does this work with _negative_ mechanics?  The fact that one cannot trade precision for power in a melee attack without the proper Feat - Power Attack - in 3E is the example I'm thinking about.  It seems to me that, in that case, there are meaningful mechanical decisions that have no association with the decisions made by the character - assuming the character wants to trade precision for power yet does not possess the Power Attack Feat.

[sblock=Aside]As an aside, I think the idea of dissociated mechanics is sound, even if I'm not sure that I understand it.  (RPG mechanics are very complicated things.)  I think that 4E would have been a more successful game - that is, it would have achieved its design goals more ably - if it had adopted dissociated mechanics _throughout_ its design.  I think that an "Encounter" should have been more dissociated, linking up to elements set by the narrative; "Extended Rests" should have been tied to something in the narrative, not a daily event.[/sblock]


----------



## pemerton

Beginning of the End said:


> The lossy quality of mechanical abstraction means that sometimes there's information available in the game world which is not available in the mechanics.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.



With hit points, it seems to me that there is information available to the player - eg I will die if I take one more hit, or I can jump over that 200' cliff and survive, or There's no way a single blow of that sword can kill me - that is manifestly not available to the PC.

As to decisions which have no association with decisions being made by the PC - deciding to use a daily power has an associate with all sorts of decision made by the PC, like where to move to, what to do beforehand, what to do afterwards, etc. If by "association" you mean something like "the player's dedision-making process, in deciding to use the martial daily, does not correspond to any particular decision made by the PC", that may or may not be true. If a particular table, following page 54 of the PHB, takes the view that martial dailies represent deep reserves, then there _is_ this sort of correspondence - namely, the player decides to use a daily and the the PC decides to draw upon every last ounce of his or her being. But obviously some other tables will run (at least some) martial dailies in a purely metagame fashion - doing a 3W daily rather than a 1W at-will becomes equivalent to spending a Fate Point for bonus damage. I believe some versions of 3E (eg Eberron) use such a mechanic. So does Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. The presence of this sort of mechanic in 4e is not all that revolutionary, although it's packaging of it (as a mechanism to balance martial PCs against spell users) might be new to some.



Gantros said:


> In 3.5e, the description of hit points is clear - they represent both the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.  It's easy to see how a character would at any given time be aware of how much physical punishment they had taken, and also how much longer they think they can avoid taking a serious blow.  The description is also well supported by other rules that modify max HP according to character class, level, and Constitution scores.



If it's physical punishment, why does it not wear the character out?

Do you do some _houseruling_, like positing an adreline rush during combat? That keeps going even hours or days after the combat ended?



pawsplay said:


> Why do we need a mechanic that says would someone looks like at 1 hp? It says 1 hp on the character sheet. If a player asks, "How badly hurt does Pogo the Clown look?" that's a valid question. 1 hp is pretty badly hurt. "It looks like a bad scrape or a thrown rock would finish him off," would be the answer if the PCs were judged to be a good position to assess their opponent's health.



Yet Pogo the clown has no impairment to any limbs or organs. _What sort of biological condition is a creature in_ such that both (i) a bad scrape would knock it out, yet (ii) it has no functional impairments?

Perhaps some _houserules_ would settle this question!



pawsplay said:


> Just because a "traveler's outfit" in 3e has no stated color, that doesn't mean that there's no way to discern what color it is.



Assuming that you _houserule_ that it's not colourless, as the actual rulebook appears to suggest!



Gantros said:


> Consider this - if _besieged foe_ is meant to work by directing subordinates against dangerous foes, as the description states, then why is the actual effect that allies get a bonus to hit the target?  Why does it still grant a bonus to an ally that was already engaging the target before any direction was given to do so?  The mechanic could be adjusted to have a direct association with the description (e.g. the war devil forces its allies to stop whatever else they were doing and attack the target), or a description could be provided that better associates with the mechanic (e.g. the war devil sends telepathic guidance to allies on how to exploit the target's weaknesses).  But as the essay points out, these would have to be house rules with their own new implications, and _besieged foe_ is far from being an isolated example.



So now a GM who decides to run _beseiged foe_ as a curse is houseruling! A GM who decides that, instead, it represents telepathic guidance is houseruling!

In Gygax's DMG, the combat section has a discussion of saving throws. He explains how a saving throw is always permitted - that it represents a last-ditch chance at ingenuity and luck. Even a fighter chained to a rock gets a save against dragon breath - perhaps at the last minute the fighter finds cover behind the barest ridge, or perhaps the chains break! Not until this thread had it ever occurred to me that a GM who runs saving throws as per Gygax's instructions in the DMG - which is to say, extrapolating some saving situation out of the context of the game that is ready-to-hand for the participants, although variable from occasion to occasion, _houseruling_! I'd always assumed that this was called running the game.


----------



## pemerton

Here are some extracts from the Alexandrian's essay:

Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. 

<snip> 

In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that's entirely accidental.

<snip>

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a _different_ way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).

<snip>

There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project.

<snip>

In the case of _Wushu_, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.

So why can I see the benefit of the _Wushu_-style trade-off, but am deeply dissatisfied by the trade-offs 4th Edition is making?

Well, the easiest comeback would be to say that it's all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don't like the tactical wargaming.

That's an easy comeback, but it doesn't quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games.

My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the roleplaying of _roleplaying_ games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story.

<snip>

There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn't actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you're playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.​
It's got it all: 4e is primarily/overwhelmingly a tactical wargame/skirmish game. It's mechanics impede roleplaying. Unlike other (not merely so-called) RPGs, 4e does not produce stories, or permit the player to engage with the PC through story.

Is anyone really telling me that this isn't edition-bashing!?

What is the actual purpose, in RPGing, of encounter and daily powers? To produce combats which have dramatic pacing. Does the 4e implementation of these class features succeed at that? In my experience, yes. In the experience of some others, apparently not. A serious discussion of 4e's power design, from the point of view of the relationship between player, character and narrative, would ask why it is that some but not others get this experience from the mechanics. (You might talk about encounter design; or party composiition; or tolerance for fiddly mechanics; or the approach that the GM takes to page 42; or any other of the myriad factors that can effect how the game plays at one table or another.)

It may be, of course, that some - perhaps many - RPGers don't particularly care for a game in which combat is a, if not the, principal mode in which the expression and resolution of conflict takes place. (Presumably these people don't care for superhero comics either, or Arthurian legends - or maybe they bring different aesthetic preferences to RPGs from those other forms of storytelling.) A moment's glance at the 4e rules will reveal that 4e is not the game for them - the rules make it obvious that combat will be a principal - perhaps the principal - mode of expressing and resolving conflict.

But this has nothing to do with whether or not 4e is a tactical skirmish game, to which the accretion of any roleplaying is a mere accident.


----------



## pemerton

LostSoul said:


> I think that 4E would have been a more successful game - that is, it would have achieved its design goals more ably - if it had adopted dissociated mechanics _throughout_ its design.  I think that an "Encounter" should have been more dissociated, linking up to elements set by the narrative; "Extended Rests" should have been tied to something in the narrative, not a daily event.



I think there is quite a bit of truth to this.

As it stands, the notion of "encounter" in the game rules is ambiguous. For example, supppose that during the course of an extended skill challenge my Warlock PC use Beguilng Tongue (an encounter utility power) to get +5 to a social skill check. If I take a short rest during the course of the skill challenge, do I get to use Beguiling Tongue again in that challenge? My personal ruling is No, but (unlike deciding what exactly Beguiling Tongue represents in game - is it a boost to facility with choosing words, or a boost to tone and delivery, or a change in appearance, or something else?) this actually _is_ a houserule.

With extended rests, my "solution" to the issue is to link rests during overland travel to success or failure in skill challenges. (Although there is an argument that this is bad rather than good for pacing, as it makes success breed easier rather than harder challenges.)

I assume that the reason they went for "daily" powers (and surges etc) is because the day as a means of parcelling out these sorts of PC resources was already familiar to D&D players (through spell memorisation, magic items, healing rates, etc).


----------



## Yesway Jose

FireLance said:


> -A villian is holding a world-shattering artifact, so a wizard casts Hypnotism on him. The spell mechanics state the wizard can slide the target or force him to make a basic melee attack against a creature. The fictional writers imagine that the wizard could feasibly mind-control the villian to drop (or throw) the artifact and withdraw. The mechanics don't allow the spell to work that way. That would be disassociation of mechanics.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Frankly, this to me is more a case of the effect of a spell not fully living up to its name (or its default flavor). If the spell was explicitly described as being able to trigger only one of two very basic reactions in the target (effectively, fight OR flight, and nothing else) then there would be a much lower level of disassociation.
Click to expand...


Even if any or every 4E spell or power was renamed and/or refluffed to be reconciled with its name or default flavor, then that wouldn't lower enough the level of disassociation for those that care about it. The mechanic in question would still be dis(ass)ociated as long as enough people want or expect mind control magic to be more flexible than a binary 'fight or flight'-or-nothing option.



> To a certain extent, I think that the "cure" for disassociation is simply internalizing the way things work in the game. When I first started playing D&D, the biggest source of disassociation for me was the way that spellcasters worked. Magic-users and clerics simply didn't work the way I expected them to. What was this "memorization" nonsense? Wizards don't run out of spells (at least, they never did in the fiction that I was familiar with - mostly because spellcasters were usually anagonists or plot devices, but this didn't even feature in novels like A Wizard of Earthsea where the protagonist was one).



There are many different magic systems between so many fantasy novels and films. I think most people recognize that. Nobody (I hope) freaks out that Harry Potter magic is different than Earthsea magic.

The Vancian system was simply an attempt to reconcile or associate the mechanics with the fiction.

For those 2 reasons, I think that's why people have been able to internalize (or at least tolerate) the way magic worked in the game for so many years.

Not that it was perfect by any means. For one thing, 3E sorcerers were created to appease a surge in expectations that not all magic-users should constantly forget their spells once cast.


pemerton said:


> Anyway, returning to the rogue. The rogue hasn't forgotten how to do it. Or been rendered unable to do it. It's just that s/he doesn't do it. Why not (from her perspective)? Any number of reasons is possible - s/he gets unlucky, s/he doesn't bother because not enough is at stake, s/he has something else she'd rather be doing, etc, etc.



Expanding on that premise, if you take a thousand PC Rogues over a thousand days of adventuring, then that's a million instances of a rogue never using that power more than once a day.

I think it's improbable that in all those million instances, not one single rogue ever had the luck or opportunity or interest to use it more than once.

You may say that 4E is not modelling 1 million fictional instances in any one gaming group's subjective fictional world, which is true, but it's only a thought experiment illustrating the disassociation of my expectations from what the rules technically would allow me to experience. Even if there are just a couple dozen instances of a Rogue not using the power more than 1/day, the probability curve outcome is already failing to associate for me.

As usual, it's all relative and a question of degree and tolerance.


----------



## Mallus

So if I'm understanding this (clarified) explanation of dissociated powers...

... feinting in melee combat in AD&D is dissociated because it isn't something the _player_ can choose to do. It's _assumed_ their character is doing it --all the time, when they're in the mood, if they got bit by a feinting bug that morning-- but declaring a feint has no effect. 

... critical hits in D&D 3e are dissociated, because they're a product of mere probability, modified by weapon type and possibly feat choice and class ability. But not by player choice during live play. A player can declare "I'm shooting for the eyes --or any other vital spot-- but this, again has no effect.

... saving throws are  dissociated powers aren't necessarily tied to specific character actions, and the representation of a saving throw in the game fiction is described _after the fact_. The order of operation is: _player_ makes a saving throw --> die roll is evaluated --> _character's_ action in the fiction is described. 

So dissociated mechanics have always been around, right? So can we talk about in a more nuanced way, perhaps discussing why some are good, or at least tolerable, while others get people's dander up?


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Bagpuss

innerdude said:


> He gives several examples in the essay, so I don't want to repeat them here, but his presentation of the premise is fairly ironclad--if you create a rule and the characters have no reasonable explanation for how and why it "works" inside the game world, the mechanic is dissociated.




Problem is his examples aren't ironclad.

His first example is... Trick Strike (Rogue Attack 1) which he has a problem with just because it is a daily.



> The problem  is that this is a Daily power -- which means it can only be used once per day by the rogue.
> 
> Huh? Why is Robin Hood losing his skill with the bow after using his skill with the bow? Since when did a swashbuckler have a limited number of feints that they can perform in a day?
> 
> There's a fundamental disconnect between what the mechanics are supposed to be modeling (the rogue's skill with a blade or a bow) and what the mechanics are actually doing.
> 
> If you're watching a football game, for example, and a player makes an amazing one-handed catch, you don't think to yourself: "Wow, they won't be able to do that again until tomorrow!"




Thing is when you see something like this...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhN0OZA3aIs]YouTube - ‪Best Catch Ever?! - Morgan State Player Makes Unreal Catch!‬‏[/ame]

You think exactly that. First because the set up situation isn't likely to occur exactly the same, in that game or even next weeks game, or even in practice. Second, because the wind conditions could easily blow the ball to the left or right, or the defense could have caught him or any number of situations. There are loads of receivers that drop the ball, in similar situations or aren't even there to try to catch it. The power represents the occasions when everything goes just right and they have the skill, hence it is a daily and not an at will.

Same with Trick Strike, it's not a loss of still from the rogue it's the fact the other variables aren't right. The opponent sees through the feint, or some other event.

The definition of disassociated mechanics is fine, just the application is prejudice by his own dislike of 4E. 

You want to talk disassociated mechanics in D&D start by looking at hit points they stand out far worse than any of the powers in 4E and we've had hit points since the beginning and no one seems to mind.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

Mallus said:


> So if I'm understanding this (clarified) explanation of dissociated powers...
> 
> ... feinting in melee combat in AD&D is dissociated because it isn't something the _player_ can choose to do. It's _assumed_ their character is doing it --all the time, when they're in the mood, if they got bit by a feinting bug that morning-- but declaring a feint has no effect.
> 
> ... critical hits in D&D 3e are dissociated, because they're a product of mere probability, modified by weapon type and possibly feat choice and class ability. But not by player choice during live play. A player can declare "I'm shooting for the eyes --or any other vital spot-- but this, again has no effect.
> 
> ... saving throws are dissociated powers aren't necessarily tied to specific character actions, and the representation of a saving throw in the game fiction is described _after the fact_. The order of operation is: _player_ makes a saving throw --> die roll is evaluated --> _character's_ action in the fiction is described.
> 
> So dissociated mechanics have always been around, right? So can we talk about in a more nuanced way, perhaps discussing why some are good, or at least tolerable, while others get people's dander up?




I don't remember AD&D very well, but at least the other two are not dissociated.


Just because an action is not initiated by a character or player doesn't have any relation to dissociated mechanics.

A critical hit represents the character landing a lucky blow. Just as in the real world, luck can play a part in the pretend world.

A saving throw is a measure of the combination of luck and skill/protections (the d20 roll and the character's save modifier). This is not dissociated because, as in the real world, a faster person might be able to escape a burning building but also might be unlucky enough to be hit by falling firey boards.


In both of these two instances, what is happening in the mechanics is pretty obvious and clear, and is easily described. It doesn't have to be "real world", but it's easiest to show with real world examples.


EDIT: But yes, dissociated mechanics HAVE always been around, these particular examples are not them.


----------



## Yesway Jose

> So dissociated mechanics have always been around, right? So can we talk about in a more nuanced way, perhaps discussing why some are good, or at least tolerable, while others get people's dander up?



I thought a good number of posts were kinda doing that.


----------



## chaochou

pemerton said:


> Here're some definitions of stances:In *Actor stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.
> 
> In *Author stance*, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)
> 
> In *Director stance*, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.
> ​



Sorry, can't XP you at the moment, but I think looking at stances would be helpful.

The most workable definition of 'dissociated mechanic' I can see is:
'A mechanic a given player can not pre-rationalise while in Actor Stance'.

So there are two reasons why a given player might object to a disocciated mechanic:
* because it intrudes on their ability to remain in actor stance
* because they can-not pre-rationalise - meaning the causes are not determined prior to the effect

The TA essay goes on to give examples. TA does not object to dissociated mechanics in Wushu. The reason is because he is playing in director stance and is happy to post-rationalise because it's a workable way to produce cool narrative.

The need to pre-rationalise is a defining factor of a simulationist agenda. The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream



> Resolution mechanics, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of _what_... Two games may be  equally Simulationist even if one concerns coping with childhood trauma  and the other concerns blasting villains with lightning bolts. *What  makes them Simulationist is the strict adherence to in-game, pre-established, cause for the outcomes that occur during play.*



The TAs constrast between the positive effects of dissociated mechanics (using my definition) in Wushu and negative effects in 4e are a result of approaching Wushu and 4e with different agendas. He abandoned the need for pre-established cause, or for actor stance, in Wushu but imposed them on 4e.

Similarly The argument in TA that post-rationalising events produces 'house rules' - which over time become burdensome - assumes that once I explain a cause after an effect that specific explanation *becomes binding as a pre-establised cause of future effects*. That argument takes a non-simulationist technique and applies simulationist priorities to it. Wushu fares no better if you do that.

I have no problem with TA wanting to play D&D with a sim agenda, from actor stance. It's his right. But yet again - as I and many others have argued - the problem is not 'the game'. It's the mismatch between the game and the agenda a player brings, as  @CrazyJerome brilliantly intuited way back on about page 2 of this thread.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

I think the video catch from Bagpuss as compared to a critical hit points to an important difference as to why invoking a daily might be dissociated while rolling well for a crit is not.

That was an incredibly lucky catch, but one that required a ton of skill (no way I would have been able to make it). I'd liken it more to rolling really high combined with a great attack bonus or athletics/acrobatics roll. In 4e, that catch is like a super high dc along with having maxed out skill and high ability modifier.

Here's the dissociation with calling that a daily. Could he potentially make that same catch later in the same game? Yes. Would he have the same chance to do so? Probably (it is a slim chance, and he'd likely miss....you don't roll a 20 every time). Would it be impossible for him to make that catch again? No. (But if it were a daily representing it, then he, as a character WOULD find it impossible to make that catch again.)

Also, it's not as though he decided "I'm really going to use up some personal resource to make this catch...I'm going to put something on the line, give it my all, and end up worse for wear until I rest up." Perhaps a better representation of a daily would be a football player taking a horrific tackle, getting injured, but because of the risk making a touchdown. Or perhaps we could represent a daily as a baseball player sliding into home on his face. Even these, though, would be better represented in 4e by other things (hp attrition, loss of healing surges, etc), but at least it shows how they couldn't do that all day...even so, unless the injury were debilitating in some way, they'd still be able to do it again, even in the very next play.

That is why Dailies are seen by some to be dissociated. I honestly cannot come up with an example of what they're modelling in the game world that can't be better explained by other rules in that same game world. To be more clear, every explanation of what dailies represent in 4e seems to actually be represented by other things in 4e, at least the way I see them.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Bagpuss

Aberzanzorax said:


> I honestly cannot come up with an example of what they're modelling in the game world that can't be better explained by other rules in that same game world.




Okay, I can see where you are coming from calling that a critical, but at least you can see how they might be modeled a different way, even if you feel it requiring a critical is a better way to model it.

Personally I prefer a daily mechanic than a "critical" mechanic to model those events.

Taking the stances mentioned earlier.

A critical mechanic to model rare circumstances, would be in the actor stance.

Where as a daily mechanic would be in the author stance I think.

We know the event is likely to only happen once every four fights or so. A one in 20 chance. The actor stance makes that event random, where as the daily mechanic gives the player control over when that event happens.

In the critical model, while the athlete might be able to make that same catch five minutes later, he might never make it in an entire game or even in a season, because it is completely random.

In the daily model at least I as the player get to pick when the event is important enough to ensure the game winning catch.

The other problem was in 3rd ED it never really was a critical model (1 in 20 chance), it was just a case of rolling against a fixed number.

So if we take the popular example of tripping, there tended to be two options.

1) Don't build a character that focuses on tripping, and if you attempt to trip you will most likely fail, because it is a rare chance of happening. So you never used the trip action, because there was nearly always something better you could do than waste an action failing to trip.

or

2) Build a character based on tripping and exploiting that roll with additional modifiers until in the end completely almost removing the random element. Something that should have been a special occasional event became and every round event.

What I like about 4th Ed is now, I don't have to build a character around tripping to be able to do it when it is dramatically appropriate. And I don't have to put up with characters tripping every single round of combat until it becomes boring.

But yes there is a difference in stance there I suppose.


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## Aberzanzorax

I think I agree with everything you said there Bagpuss.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Aberzanzorax said:


> That is why Dailies are seen by some to be dissociated. I honestly cannot come up with an example of what they're modelling in the game world that can't be better explained by other rules in that same game world. To be more clear, every explanation of what dailies represent in 4e seems to actually be represented by other things in 4e, at least the way I see them.




This is where you hit up against the multiple reasons why Dailies are in the game, and thus to answer that, you have to consider all of those reasons. (I might miss some.)

Pemerton already aluded several times to narrative pacing.  Flatly, the whole question of people being comfortable with the relation between the mechanic and the in-game reality is ignored here, with the goal of giving the player a way to impose drama at times of his or her choosing.  So there is a sense in which--even if you can stay in actor stance and rationalize a given power--you aren't using them to their full potential unless you deliberately go into author or director stance.  

But it doesn't stop there.  From a simple handling time perspective, Dailies also serve the purpose of very clearly and sharply handing out this narrative (and gamist) power, in a simple package.  This is, in fact, exactly a big reason that Vancian magic was adopted in the first place, per earlier quote by Gygax.  

Then there is the balance and aesthetic issue (it is both) of giving martial characters something impressive to do at high levels.  Dailies are a way that this can be done.

It it true that from any single perspective, a game could produce simulate the things done by fighter dailies using some other mechanics.  Many games have.  But when you look at it from a wider perspective, not so much.  Name me the options for so simulating, while allowing or even pushing the fighter's player to take temporarily control of the narrative and exert resources to win an encounter, with simple handling time for the player, and giving the fighter the opportunity to exert some of the aesthetic choices from famous fighter characters in fantasy, while neither subordinating the fighter to other characters or overwhelming them either.  And feel free to include other parts of "Dailies" that I have probably overlooked.  Oh, and whatever you list, it has to work for a version of D&D.

That's a tall order.  It is such a tall order, that some people might feel that 4E was an ambitious failure, in that it got a little too far from "a version of D&D," and there wasn't a way to meet all that.  However, that is a separate criticism, and really ought to be made upfront, if that is the tack someone wants to take.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bagpuss said:


> We know the event is likely to only happen once every four fights or so. A one in 20 chance. The actor stance makes that event random, where as the daily mechanic gives the player control over when that event happens.
> 
> In the critical model, while the athlete might be able to make that same catch five minutes later, he might never make it in an entire game or even in a season, because it is completely random.
> 
> In the daily model at least I as the player get to pick when the event is important enough to ensure the game winning catch.



Technically, IF a daily is a random event requiring a number of external unpredictable variables to be true, then choosing when that improbable event occurs AND in fact knowing that it's going to happen 1/day is "disassociated".

It's as improbable as a) knowing that lightning will strike every day and b) knowing exactly when to raise your sword so that you can use "Harvest the Lightning Blade".

Furthermore, due to a conflict of interest, it's "disassociated" when the player chooses the improbable event to occur when it is optimal for him/her and not when it is optimally plausible for the fiction.

Continuing my (absurdly exaggerated) example, the player could choose "Harvest the Lightning Blade" to occur during a climactic battle on a clear sunny day, rather than a minor skirmish during a thunderstorm.

I cannot fairly extrapolate much more from this absurd example, other than to theoretically claim that some mechanics can empower player action to be just as "dissassociated" as the way the mechanic reads on paper. Not a criticism per se, just an observation.


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## ThirdWizard

I find this thread interesting, in that I really love these "disassociated mechanics!" That's probably partially what drew me to 4e (although the dissociative properties are minuscule at best). It's definitely what drew me to FATE. I love it when a player can step in and say "This happens" or "This is how the game world works" for just a moment. I think it gives an extra thrill to the game and can keep the GM engaged in a different way than I'm used to: no longer the sole architect of the world and now a participant in a way. It's great. It's really really great!



Yesway Jose said:


> Technically, IF a daily is a random event requiring a number of external unpredictable variables to be true, then choosing when that improbable event occurs AND in fact knowing that it's going to happen 1/day is "disassociated".




Nobody is arguing the definition of a word created by someone to define that exact thing!


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Nobody is arguing the definition of a word created by someone to define that exact thing!



I did define it, at least for myself 

1) if the mechanic allows 0-1/day
2) and if there exists fictional expectations that it could probably occur more or less than 0-1/day
3) then you have dissassociation

More on page 9...

Again, "disassociation" in itself is neither good nor bad, it's all relative, a question of degree and subjective tolerances, etc. etc.


----------



## wrecan

Imaro said:


> encounter powers, monsters with recharges, many monster powers in general, and so on have no in-game explanation for why they work the way they do.



I don't think the game needs to repeat the same explanation in multiple places, particularly if the explanation works equally well for all of them, which it does.

At any rate, now you're simply quibbling with the editing because, clearly, if the same sentence about martial dailies on PHB 54 were also placed into the section on martial encounters and monstrous powers, you'd deem those mechanics no longer disassociated.



pawsplay said:


> That's not really a satisfying explanation



"Satisfaction" is a matter of opinion.  I found it perfectly satisfying.  Others don't.  Some people find the explanation for why a hero can fall 40 feet with complete confidence that he will survive (because he has more hp than can be caused by an 40-foot fall) dissatisfying.  Others don't have a problem with it.

Which brings us back to the issue being, not that 4e's mechanics are disassociated or abstracted, or what have-you, but that individual people don't like 4e because it exceeds their threshold for abstraction/disassociation in specific cases, just as other people have been turned off to prior editions of D&D due to the abstractions and/or disassociation related to hit points, levels, and other abstract mechanics.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> I did define it, at least for myself
> 
> 1) if the mechanic allows 0-1/day
> 2) and if there exists fictional expectations that it could probably occur more or less than 0-1/day
> 3) then you have dissassociation
> 
> More on page 9...
> 
> Again, "disassociation" in itself is neither good nor bad, it's all relative, a question of degree and subjective tolerances, etc. etc.




Okay, but Bagpuss never said it _wasn't_ "disassociative."


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Okay, but Bagpuss never said it _wasn't_ "disassociative."



I know, and I respect that. I was just make a mere puny observation.


----------



## Yesway Jose

> Some people find the explanation for why a hero can fall 40 feet with complete confidence that he will survive (because he has more hp than can be caused by an 40-foot fall) dissatisfying. Others don't have a problem with it.



You wrote that article about minions' hit points being relative to the PCs, so maybe the same is true for PCs.

I might be tempted to say that hit points are situational, and if you had your character confidentally jump off a cliff with that kind of metagame thinking, then you're tempting Lady Fate and who knows if she might wave those hit points goodbye.


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## pawsplay

pemerton said:


> Yet Pogo the clown has no impairment to any limbs or organs. _What sort of biological condition is a creature in_ such that both (i) a bad scrape would knock it out, yet (ii) it has no functional impairments?




Ask a boxer. Eventually, too much is just too much. Another example would be someone who manages to knock themselves out in the shower in one go; obviously, they didn't have many hit points to begin with. Another example would be Boromir, or apparently, Blackbeard the Pirate. 

The issue is not abstraction. The issue is that abstraction gives game mechanics room to move. If they are moved in such a way that they cease to have a meaningful relationship to what they were originally supposed to be abstracting, that's what is being called dissociated.


----------



## pawsplay

Mallus said:


> So if I'm understanding this (clarified) explanation of dissociated powers...
> 
> ... feinting in melee combat in AD&D is dissociated because it isn't something the _player_ can choose to do. It's _assumed_ their character is doing it --all the time, when they're in the mood, if they got bit by a feinting bug that morning-- but declaring a feint has no effect.




No, that is not a dissociated mechanic. There is no feinting mechanic, for one thing. Feinting is simply generalized into to-hit rolls.



> ... critical hits in D&D 3e are dissociated, because they're a product of mere probability, modified by weapon type and possibly feat choice and class ability. But not by player choice during live play. A player can declare "I'm shooting for the eyes --or any other vital spot-- but this, again has no effect.




That is not dissociated, either, since people who shoot for the eyes do not always hit them. In fact, it's safe to assume people are always shooting for the eyes, if the opportunity presents itself. Actually being able to make called shots to the eyes is more likely to be dissociated, since it's rare that a game would closely model whether or not the eyes were a reasonably available target.



> ... saving throws are  dissociated powers aren't necessarily tied to specific character actions, and the representation of a saving throw in the game fiction is described _after the fact_. The order of operation is: _player_ makes a saving throw --> die roll is evaluated --> _character's_ action in the fiction is described.




Not dissociated. In fact, saving throws are a flat-out simulation.



> So dissociated mechanics have always been around, right? So can we talk about in a more nuanced way, perhaps discussing why some are good, or at least tolerable, while others get people's dander up?




Do you understand that glossing over the very subject of discussion and considering it solved is frustrating? None of those are dissociated mechanics. It has been claimed a couple of times that dissociation is just a level of abstraction, but I do not accept that position. Something can be highly abstracted but still completely immersive.

Player: We go back to the inn.
GM: Twenty minutes later, you arrive at the inn. 

Another example:

GM: There are still two guards by the door.
Player: Are they the same guards from before?
GM: Yes.

Traveling a couple of miles, or recognizing another person on sight, are both considerable and complex tasks. But they aren't exactly really challenging, most of the time, so it's worthwhile to simply abstract the tasks. There is no really justifiable reason to make the players play out a twenty minute walk in real time, or to make the players roll a series of Spot/Perception checks in order to determine something that is easily determined.


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## ThirdWizard

pawsplay said:


> The issue is not abstraction. The issue is that abstraction gives game mechanics room to move. If they are moved in such a way that they cease to have a meaningful relationship to what they were originally supposed to be abstracting, that's what is being called dissociated.




I agree that abstraction has nothing to do with a dissociated mechanic. but the "originally supposed to be abstracting" line there confuses me. What exactly do you mean by that?

EDIT: I also find it interesting that people want to somehow legitimize dissociated mechanics (which I used to just call Narrative and Gamist rules) by saying these things have been in D&D already, as if something has to be in D&D for it to be a legitimate roleplaying thing. It's like people who point out that Defenders, Strikers, etc have been in D&D as fighters and rogues. While there is some truth to it, it seems to me that there should be intrinsic qualities in these things that give them value beyond whether or not they have been in Dungeons and Dragons. But, then, this being a D&D board, I suppose it is natural to debate in that direction.

Me, I don't care if its been in D&D. The mechanics stand on their own, and if you don't agree, well, it isn't that big a deal. Even the most hardcore simulationist could probably sit down and enjoy a game of Dread or FATE, at least as a one shot. But, maybe that's just me.


----------



## pawsplay

ThirdWizard said:


> I agree that abstraction has nothing to do with a dissociated mechanic. but the "originally supposed to be abstracting" line there confuses me. What exactly do you mean by that?




Like, when someone says, "I attack the orc," what follows is an abstraction of combat. Everything in an RPG is an abstraction of some kind. For instance, when you roll a Sense Motive check, there aren't separate tables for reading facial wrinkles, or comparing their hesitation in speaking with previous interactions.


----------



## ThirdWizard

pawsplay said:


> Like, when someone says, "I attack the orc," what follows is an abstraction of combat. Everything in an RPG is an abstraction of some kind. For instance, when you roll a Sense Motive check, there aren't separate tables for reading facial wrinkles, or comparing their hesitation in speaking with previous interactions.




But in that example, it is abstracting a specific mechanic. What do you mean by "originally supposed to be abstracting." It implies some kind of progression from one kind of thing to another kind of thing. But, I can't think of any examples of that.

EDIT: I'm probably making no sense, and I have to go home from work now, so... >_<


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## Imaro

wrecan said:


> I don't think the game needs to repeat the same explanation in multiple places, particularly if the explanation works equally well for all of them, which it does.
> 
> At any rate, now you're simply quibbling with the editing because, clearly, if the same sentence about martial dailies on PHB 54 were also placed into the section on martial encounters and monstrous powers, you'd deem those mechanics no longer disassociated.




No it's not quibbling, these are different mechanics.  How does the same explanation work for a totally random recharge power?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

As long as we are talking about not being convinced, I'm not convinced that there is anything more to "disassociated" as defined in the essay than "abstraction that I don't like/understand/get" whatever word you want to use there at the end.  It's been asserted several times, but every counter example is just another way of looking at abstractions.

Now, I'll grant that there are different kinds of abstractions, and that some of them might make model/imagined reality associations more or less difficult, cumbersome, or what have you.  That is why when you play the "word association" game with people, you get such interesting and surprising results.  Anyone old enough to remember watching a session of "Password" (either the game show, or the imitation parlor game) go completely bad, because two peoples' assocations get out of sync, can appreciate how this might become frustratingly comical in an RPG. 

"If they are moved in such a way that they cease to have a meaningful relationship to what they were originally supposed to be abstracting, that's what is being called dissociated. "

What other meaningful relationship can there be but the associations people have made in their minds?  Using that definition, the whole theory becomes nothing but a tautology:  Thing are disassociated when I don't associate them.  Well, yeah!


----------



## Doug McCrae

Imaro said:


> No it's not quibbling, these are different mechanics.  How does the same explanation work for a totally random recharge power?



Aren't recharge powers just a restatement of 3e's dragon breath once every 1d4 rounds?


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## Imaro

Doug McCrae said:


> Aren't recharge powers just a restatement of 3e's dragon breath once every 1d4 rounds?




Are they? I know for a fact there are powers like hitting someone really hard with a mace that have a recharge number.

EDIT: The other thing I'm curious about with the recharge = 1d4 rnds of Dragon Breath is why do different things recharge on different numbers in 4e if this is true?   And with the 1d4 there was never the possibility of something not recharging in 4 rnds now there is a possibility of it not recharging in 4, 5, 6, etc. rounds.


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## pawsplay

Crazy Jerome said:


> What other meaningful relationship can there be but the associations people have made in their minds?  Using that definition, the whole theory becomes nothing but a tautology:  Thing are disassociated when I don't associate them.  Well, yeah!




A tautology is likely to occur when you try to treat a definition as an argument. That has already been discussed upthread. The definition is, abstractions that become dissociated from the imaginary world of play. The argument is, "This is something that has been observed to occur, and specifically, this seems to occur in some central 4e game mechanics." Setting aside the partisanship of the original article, I think some mechanics are notably disassociated, and this is particularly true of many 4e mechanics. I don't think the explanation for that solely resides in the people feeling disassociation. I think the mechanics themselves can be classified by how much the make you work to remain immersed while employing them.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Gantros said:


> In 3.5e, the description of hit points is clear - they represent both the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.  It's easy to see how a character would at any given time be aware of how much physical punishment they had taken, and also how much longer they think they can avoid taking a serious blow.  The description is also well supported by other rules that modify max HP according to character class, level, and Constitution scores.
> 
> Now try to do the same thing with 4e daily martial powers.  They are described only as, "reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit."  Except no matter how powerful a character gets, they will never be able to use one more than once per day.  It doesn't matter if it's a Level 1 power and they've got a bunch of other higher level daily powers remaining.  It doesn't matter if they just woke up from a good night's sleep, or they're exhausted after a long day of brutal combat.  It doesn't matter what any of their ability scores are.  So while the description does point to something the character would be aware of in-game, there's really almost nothing associating the mechanics with that description.



Yes, there are problems with this explanation of daily powers. There are problems with the explanation of hit points given in the rules, which have been documented many times. There are, if you scratch at them a bit, problems with every rule in the book because D&D is a very imperfect simulation, which has always emphasised playability and gamism in its mechanics.



Gantros said:


> The design process used to create a game's mechanics and descriptions aren't as important as the final product.



The point is that D&D has always created its mechanics first, to be playable and support gamism, and then looked for simulationist justification afterwards. We know this because Gary told us so. Exactly the same thing is happening with the 4e mechanics. They aren't primarily simulationist. Just like the mechanics of classic D&D, they support gamist play with simple, playable rules. I believe that one can find semi-reasonable game world explanations for all the mechanics The Alexandrian mentions – dailies, marking and skill challenges. Just as Gary found semi-reasonable game world explanations for hit points, saving throws, and, in the case of xp for gold, didn't provide one at all.

Nothing has changed here, D&D is the same as it ever was. Gamist play, mechanics that do the job and aren't too complex, after the fact simulationist justifications for some of it.


----------



## Mallus

pawsplay said:


> No, that is not a dissociated mechanic. There is no feinting mechanic, for one thing. Feinting is simply generalized into to-hit rolls.



Let me see if I can clarify my position a bit...

Imagine a 4e rogue's Power called Tricky Dick's Feint. The user feints to left, speaks the words "I am not a crook", then stabs the beegeesus out of the target from the right. It's a Martial Daily. 

According to TheAlexandrian, this would be an example of a dissociated mechanic because it can only used once per Extended Rest. Why can't the rogue do it more often? There's apparently disagreement between what can be easily imagined in the game fiction and the game mechanics.

Now imagine an AD&D player declaring their PC is feinting to the left and attacking from the right. We both agree this action is generalized into the to-hit roll. But a feint to the left is the same as a feint to the right, a wild overhand swing, or cautiously waiting for an opening. To my mind, this abstraction is another example of dissociation. It's another disagreement between what a player might intend their character to do (feint), what's easily imagined and described in fictional terms ("Hadric feints right") and what the mechanics describe (shut up and roll a d20 already!) 

So while the 4e PC can only feint _once_, the AD&D character can't really feint _at all_, since the feint indistinct from other melee combat actions (a PC might be feinting, or not, or they're doing the opposite, like swinging for the fences). The player could describe their minute-long attack sequence as an extremely aggressive Busby Berkeley dance routine for all that it would matter under the AD&D combat rules. 



> That is not dissociated, either, since people who shoot for the eyes do not always hit them. In fact, it's safe to assume people are always shooting for the eyes, if the opportunity presents itself.



A player _might_ be shooting for the slit in an opponent's helm, or going for an easier shot at the opponents body. The difference between them is easy to imagine, easy to describe, and irrelevant to every iteration of the D&D combat system (barring whatever optional called shot rules I'm forgetting at the moment). 

A PC can get lucky, but never actively try for the more difficult shot. Why isn't this an example of dissociation?

This is partly the reason why some people define a dissociated mechanic as: an abstraction I don't personally approve of. 



> Not dissociated. In fact, saving throws are a flat-out simulation.



A fireball is thrown into an open area. A PC is in the center of the blast radius. The PC makes their save. What, exactly, is this a simulation _of_? The luck of the Irish? (or elvish?). 

Saving throws are an early example a D&D meta-mechanic: if they simulate anything, it's the resilience of a typical adventure story protagonist. They simulate _genre conventions_.



> Do you understand that glossing over the very subject of discussion and considering it solved is frustrating? None of those are dissociated mechanics. It has been claimed a couple of times that dissociation is just a level of abstraction, but I do not accept that position.



I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I admit to getting a little frustrated, or at least amused, by what I see as the construction of an unnecessary critical framework which attempts to treat as a special case what is better seen in more general terms as a subset of abstraction.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Doug McCrae said:


> Nothing has changed here, D&D is the same as it ever was. Gamist play, mechanics that do the job and aren't too complex, after the fact simulationist justifications for some of it.



Folks, you heard it here first! D&D is the same as it ever was. Thanks for sorting that out. Now we can go back to hundreds and thousands of pages in which many individuals articulately debate simulationism vs gamism over various mechanics over various editions and we can wave all those annoying assertions away just like magic. Because it's not like there's any dissociation between your blanket statement and the people who clearly have begged, do beg and will beg to differ.

In return, I would also like to share a word of wisdom: contrary to popular belief, there is NO such thing as shades of grey.


----------



## Doug McCrae

pawsplay said:


> Something can be highly abstracted but still completely immersive.
> 
> Player: We go back to the inn.
> GM: Twenty minutes later, you arrive at the inn.



I'm not sure that that is as immersive as playing the journey out in more detail. Some LARPers consider LARP to be more immersive than tabletop by far because the player is experiencing a great deal of what his character is experiencing. He travels on the same journeys in real time, sees and hears and feels and smells the world around him, wears the same clothes, even feels a modicum of the pain when struck by a weapon.

I played in a SLA game in which we played out, over the course of the first session, the significant moments of our PCs' childhoods and adolescence. The goal, I believe, was for the players to get more of a sense of where the character comes from as an aid to roleplaying as an adult. In other words, to experience more immersion.

In a 2e AD&D game, we played out journeys in much detail, in a somewhat Tolkienesque style. I personally found it too boring for my taste. But there's no question that it was more immersive. We really got to experience the boredom that constitutes much of real life!

Playing the crpg Morrowind, I remember experiencing strong feelings of immersion - tension, excitement, fear - when my character descended into an unknown cave system, stronger, I think, than anything I've experienced playing tabletop. The fact that this computer game operates in real time, and, as with most crpgs, hides the mechanics, made it more immersive than a tabletop rpg.

Imho a major source of non-immersion in a tabletop rpg is rules talk of any kind. I think my mind is in a different mode talking about modifiers, rolls to hit, and such, than it is when I use plain English descriptions of what is happening. Though, for me, it's quite easy to switch back and forth. Combat, being the most rules heavy part of the game, has always been highly non-immersive for me, except when playing games such as Amber, which have almost no rules at all, and feature descriptions that are almost exclusively in plain English, no hit points or armour classes or anything of that nature.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Imaro said:


> Are they? I know for a fact there are powers like hitting someone really hard with a mace that have a recharge number.
> 
> EDIT: The other thing I'm curious about with the recharge = 1d4 rnds of Dragon Breath is why do different things recharge on different numbers in 4e if this is true?   And with the 1d4 there was never the possibility of something not recharging in 4 rnds now there is a possibility of it not recharging in 4, 5, 6, etc. rounds.



I believe the reason they used a different mechanic for 4e - roll target number to recharge - was to make it more playable, avoiding the problem of having to remember or note down the value of the d4 roll which might have occurred several minutes ago.


----------



## Imaro

Doug McCrae said:


> I believe the reason they used a different mechanic for 4e - roll target number to recharge - was to make it more playable, avoiding the problem of having to remember or note down the value of the d4 roll which might have occurred several minutes ago.




Yeah, but I don't think the probabilities are the same... are they?


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## pawsplay

Mallus said:


> Let me see if I can clarify my position a bit...
> 
> Imagine a 4e rogue's Power called Tricky Dick's Feint. The user feints to left, speaks the words "I am not a crook", then stabs the beegeesus out of the target from the right. It's a Martial Daily.
> 
> According to TheAlexandrian, this would be an example of a dissociated mechanic because it can only used once per Extended Rest. Why can't the rogue do it more often? There's apparently disagreement between what can be easily imagined in the game fiction and the game mechanics.
> 
> Now imagine an AD&D player declaring their PC is feinting to the left and attacking from the right. We both agree this action is generalized into the to-hit roll. But a feint to the left is the same as a feint to the right, a wild overhand swing, or cautiously waiting for an opening. To my mind, this abstraction is another example of dissociation. It's another disagreement between what a player might intend their character to do (feint), what's easily imagined and described in fictional terms ("Hadric feints right") and what the mechanics describe (shut up and roll a d20 already!)




Thank you for clarifying your position. I definitely disagree with you. You are using dissociated in two entirely different senses.

Alexandrian: Decisions are dissociated from the characters and events in the game.
You: A specific choice of how a combat mechanic should be implemented has little or no "association" with how I would like it to be. The outcome of my action is not resolved according to how I would like it to be. 

In the "shut up and roll a d20 already" version, you can still feint. It is just not mechanically distinct from not feinting. Even though you can have a Strength of 10 or 11 in D&D but not something in between, does not mean there are no people with Strength scores between 10 and 11; they just all receive a 10, or an 11. 

Allowing someone to "shoot for the eyes" in D&D isn't less dissociative, it's opening up a whole can of worms that could easily break the system if you don't come up with really good checks and balances. It is likely more dissociative. Dozens of orcs and elves would line up, and all shoot at each other, either striking the eyes or throat, or missing altogether. 

I think your argument is based on what is known in formal logic as equivocation. Simply because the word "dissociative" can be inserted into each context does not mean the same thing is being discussed.


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> I believe the reason they used a different mechanic for 4e - roll target number to recharge - was to make it more playable, avoiding the problem of having to remember or note down the value of the d4 roll which might have occurred several minutes ago.




In any case, the original rule (d4 rounds) was not dissociative; dragons apparently needed to rest between breaths. Whether or not a specific monster in 4e's ability were dissociative would depend on the ability and the monster. Obviously, it would apply just fine to a dragon's breath, and probably OK for something that builds up momentum for a big charge, but would probably be fairly dissociative for, say, a shield bash, by a creature that primarily attacks with a sword.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Yesway Jose said:


> Folks, you heard it here first! D&D is the same as it ever was. Thanks for sorting that out. Now we can go back to hundreds and thousands of pages in which many individuals articulately debate simulationism vs gamism over various mechanics over various editions and we can wave all those annoying assertions away just like magic. Because it's not like there's any dissociation between your blanket statement and the people who clearly have begged, do beg and will beg to differ.



There may well be a significant difference between the rules of 4e D&D and those of earlier editions. But if there is, The Alexandrian has not imo located it with his concept of dissociated mechanics. We have always had rules that had no accompanying flavor text, indeed there are many in 3e. We have always had rules that are hard to justify from a game world perspective, such as hit points. We have always had abstract rules, such as saving throws. We have always had non-simulationist mechanics. We have always had dissociation, in the sense of a disjoint between what the player experiences and what the character experiences. We have always had non-magic guys performing supernatural feats - a great many PC powers in 3e are extraordinary abilities, which means they are impossible by the physics of our world, but not technically magical in the D&D world.


----------



## wrecan

Imaro said:


> How does the same explanation work for a totally random recharge power?



The explanation on page 54 is that the warrior digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until after he has a chance to sleep.

That explanation works just as well for martial encounter powers: the warrior digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until after he has a chance to catch his breath.

And it works just as well for a monster's rechargeable power: the monster digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until he catches his breath in a few seconds.

The only difference is how long it takes before the actor can attempt the action again.  You accepted it for martial dailies -- there's no reason not to accept it for martial encounters, or for monstrous rechargeable powers.

What you're now complaining about it they didn't bother to put it into the description of encounter powers or rechargeable powers.  That's an editing issue, not an issue with disassociation (as you define it).


----------



## wrecan

Imaro said:


> Yeah, but I don't think the probabilities are the same... are they?



Pretty close.  

A recharge 6 is likely to recharge in an average of 4 rounds (essentially a d8)
A recharge 5,6 is likely to recharge in an average of 2 rounds (essentially a d4)
A recharge 4,5,6 is likely to recharge in an average of 1 round (essentially a d2).

Most recharge powers use recharge 5,6, which is probabilistically similar to rolling a d4 to see when you can use your power again.


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## Yesway Jose

Doug McCrae said:


> There may well be a significant difference between the rules of 4e D&D and those of earlier editions. But if there is, The Alexandrian has not imo located it with his concept of dissociated mechanics. We have always had rules that had no accompanying flavor text, indeed there are many in 3e. We have always had rules that are hard to justify from a game world perspective, such as hit points. We have always had abstract rules, such as saving throws. We have always had non-simulationist mechanics. We have always had dissociation, in the sense of a disjoint between what the player experiences and what the character experiences. We have always had non-magic guys performing supernatural feats - a great many PC powers in 3e are extraordinary abilities, which means they are impossible by the physics of our world, but not technically magical in the D&D world.



True, but there still shades of grey.

X-Men: First Class, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings are fantasy/sci-fi.

The Dungeons and Dragons movie, Transformers, and 2012 are fantasy/sci-fi.

None of the above is realistic. Isn't it fair to perceive, however, that one set of movies is more satisfyingly or tolerably plausible than the other set of movies?

Yes, all D&D editions have gamist elements. Isn't it fair, however, to perceive that some mechanics may come across as relatively more simulationist than another? If so, absolute statements that "nothing has changed" is simplistically black and white.


----------



## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> There may well be a significant difference between the rules of 4e D&D and those of earlier editions. But if there is, The Alexandrian has not imo located it with his concept of dissociated mechanics.




Ok, you have stated your premise. Let's look at your arguments.



> We have always had rules that had no accompanying flavor text, indeed there are many in 3e.




Could you reference which ones you mean? I actually cannot think of any significant rules that have no flavor text. 



> We have always had rules that are hard to justify from a game world perspective, such as hit points.




I agree there are rules that are hard to justfy. I think hit points, however, work pretty well. With the exception of some versions of Fate, and a few other corner cases, every RPG I can think of uses some form of hit points, whether it's D&D's hit dice, M&M&'s conditions, or GURPS's hit point system.



> We have always had abstract rules, such as saving throws.




I agree. What relevance does that have to the Alexandrian's argument? Can you think of any example of any rule in any RPG ever written, or that could be written, that is not abstract?



> We have always had non-simulationist mechanics.




True. Since I don't equate simulation with immersion, however, I don't see that as an obstacle to the Alexandrian's theory.



> We have always had dissociation, in the sense of a disjoint between what the player experiences and what the character experiences.




Yes. The Alexandrian does downplay the concept of scale rather than quality.



> We have always had non-magic guys performing supernatural feats - a great many PC powers in 3e are extraordinary abilities, which means they are impossible by the physics of our world, but not technically magical in the D&D world.




That has nothing to do with dissociative mechanics. As long as the characters can actually do those things in the D&D world, you're golden.


----------



## tomBitonti

*A concrete example*

Concrete examples, I think, can serve this discussion.

Working from the recent Thor movie, the Frost Giants had a kind of chilling touch, where they grabbed their opponent to cause cold damage that could be seen as an frozen patch that extended out from the point of contact.

That seems to be close to abilities that I've seen in 3.5, say, Chill Touch (Chill Touch :: d20srd.org), or say, Chill (EX), from
(D&D[MENTION=3300]d20[/MENTION]FORGE - Contributions - Creatures - Ice Golem).

In either case, an effect is generated by physical contact (a touch attack, or a slam attack).  Because the attack is imbued with a damaging aura (channeled negative energy, from chill touch, or intense code, from Chill).

One has an immediate description of what happens when one of these attacks is made: A weapon (hand or fist) is imbued with damaging energy, an attack is made to make contact with the target, and on a hit, the imbued energy is transferred to the target.

Looking at a 4E example.  (Not exact: Ranged vs. touch, but close enough): Ray of Frost, for a Wizard (see merricb: Meet the 4e Human Wizard):

Ray of Frost   Wizard Attack 1
A blisteringly cold ray of white frost streaks to your target.
Encounter * Arcane, Cold, Implement
Standard Action   Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: +4 vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d6 + 4 cold damage, and the target is slowed until the end of your next turn.

No dissociation here!  Ray of frost can be visualized as a ray of intense cold.  An attack shoots the ray at a target, with a hit transferring intense cold to the target, causing damage.

But let's look at:

Brute Strike   Fighter Attack 1
You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.
Daily ✦ Martial, Reliable, Weapon
Standard Action   Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: +6 vs. AC
Hit: 6d6 + 3 damage.
Miss: You don't expend the use of this power.

(From: Merric's Musings - Meet the 4e Dwarf Fighter).

Here, I see a disassociation.  Ignoring the power title and description (which is allowed, since these are reskinnable!) how is one to imagine the power works?

It's easy enough to imagine that the power derives from a (literal) feat of strength: The fighter puts all of his strength into the blow, and pushes his muscles beyond their normal limit, to deliver the strongest, most powerful blow that he can.  (Although, that does run into a problem: That doesn't sound like a power that should be reliable!)

The problem is that, unlike Ray of Frost, this is all imagined.  The power has no concrete, in-game, detail that explains where the extra damage came from.

That right there seems to be a typical example of what is considered dissassociative.

I would say, though, that the problem is not inherent in the use of powers, or their application to fighters.  I'd say instead that there wasn't enough effort put into creating a grammar for explaining fighter powers.  Why does the wizard power have arcane and cold keywords, while the fighter power has none?  Let's modify the fighter power slightly:

Brute Strike   Fighter Attack 1
You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.
Daily ✦ Martial, Reliable, Weapon, *Strength*

To my eye, that seems to make a huge difference!

Thx!

Tom Bitonti


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## Imaro

wrecan said:


> The explanation on page 54 is that the warrior digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until after he has a chance to sleep.
> 
> That explanation works just as well for martial encounter powers: the warrior digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until after he has a chance to catch his breath.
> 
> And it works just as well for a monster's rechargeable power: the monster digs deep into his reserves to pull off a trick he couldn't hope to repeat until he catches his breath in a few seconds.
> 
> The only difference is how long it takes before the actor can attempt the action again. You accepted it for martial dailies -- there's no reason not to accept it for martial encounters, or for monstrous rechargeable powers.
> 
> What you're now complaining about it they didn't bother to put it into the description of encounter powers or rechargeable powers. That's an editing issue, not an issue with disassociation (as you define it).




First, I don't necessarily accept it for dailies... as was commented earlier in this thread, the very setup of the mechanics make this explanation unsatisfactory (though I do give the designer/developers props for at least making a half-hearted attempt to provide something in the way of association to the game world for them.). But the reason given doesn't line up logically with the in-game world and thus doesn't really associate with anything. It's the same disassociation that arises if one tries to claim hit points are all physical damage.  You can do it but the logic breaks down and the fictional association rings false if you try to only define them in a physical sense.

Second, without there being something to actually associate these mechanics with in the game world... they are still disassociated. Now the fact that they are disassociated mechanics doesn't mean I can't willy nilly associate them with something which is what you are doing here (and what many 4e fans claim is one of the reasons that they enjoy 4e)... but that doesn't make the mechanics as presented in the book any more or less dissassociative without having some kind of association to the in-game fiction. All you've done is decided on an association you are happy with, but it is not one stated in the books.


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## Doug McCrae

Here's a puzzler -

The most simulationist mechanic in Mutants & Masterminds, hero points, is dissociative.

It's highly abstract, a hero point can be spent to achieve a wide variety of effects. Some of those effects, such as the example in the text of just the right chemicals to create a defoliant happening to be found in a lab, are dissociative in the sense of the player controlling aspects of the world that the character cannot. And yet hero points simulate one aspect of the fiction very well - a superhero gaining a new superpower for one scene, to get the character out of a jam, then forgetting he has that power for the rest of his career.

However innerdude, the OP, has it that dissociated mechanics are not simulationist. I think the issue here is that there is a big difference between fiction sim and real world sim. In fiction the characters must be 'genre blind'. The protagonists in horror must not know that going down to the cellar alone, or having sex, is a terrible idea (unless it's Scream). Superheroes can't know that soliloquoy takes no time, or that their universe is full of continuity errors (unless it's Ambush Bug). And yet the audience know all these things. Mechanics that support such aspects of the fiction must be dissociated, the characters can't know about them.

Real world sim is different, the rules of the universe are not hidden from discovery. Well, they are, unless we are in Order of the Stick territory. But I'm talking about the rules of the universe in the sense of the physics of the game world.

With fiction sim it gets very complex because there are three layers of rules:
1) The rules of the universe.
2) The rules of genre.
3) The game rules used to simulate both of the above rules.

Characters in a fiction sim game can't know about 2 or 3.


----------



## Imaro

wrecan said:


> Pretty close.
> 
> A recharge 6 is likely to recharge in an average of 4 rounds (essentially a d8)
> A recharge 5,6 is likely to recharge in an average of 2 rounds (essentially a d4)
> A recharge 4,5,6 is likely to recharge in an average of 1 round (essentially a d2).
> 
> Most recharge powers use recharge 5,6, which is probabilistically similar to rolling a d4 to see when you can use your power again.




But doesn't rolling a d4 have an upper limit of 4 rnds (as in you will never take longer than 4 rounds to recharge)... while none of these mechanics have the same uppper limit?


----------



## Greg K

tomBitonti said:


> I would say, though, that the problem is not inherent in the use of powers, or their application to fighters.  I'd say instead that there wasn't enough effort put into creating a grammar for explaining fighter powers.  Why does the wizard power have arcane and cold keywords, while the fighter power has none?  Let's modify the fighter power slightly:
> i



I still want to know where is the shattering of bone and armor mentioned in the description


----------



## LostSoul

Mallus said:


> Imagine a 4e rogue's Power called Tricky Dick's Feint. The user feints to left, speaks the words "I am not a crook", then stabs the beegeesus out of the target from the right. It's a Martial Daily.
> 
> According to TheAlexandrian, this would be an example of a dissociated mechanic because it can only used once per Extended Rest. Why can't the rogue do it more often? There's apparently disagreement between what can be easily imagined in the game fiction and the game mechanics.




I think this is what I originally thought dissociated mechanics were, but now I don't think has anything to do with what can be easily imagined or not.  What follows should not be taken as anything more than my attempt to work this out. 

Does the player make the same choice as the PC?  The PC makes the choice to feint to the left and speak the words "I am not a crook", stabbing the beegeesus out of the target from the right.  (I assume the feint has something to do with making the peace sign.)  The player chooses the Daily Power Tricky Dick's Feint.

The player is operating at a different level than the PC.  The PC might feint to the left and speak the words "I am not a crook", stabbing the beegeesus out of the target from the right many times during a day or over the course of a single encounter, but the PC cannot choose when that's Tricky Dick's Feint and when it's not.  Only the player can make that choice.

(If Tricky Dick's Feint relied on a trigger in the game world - "When your foe is a dirty hippie" - then I assume it would be associated.  If that was the case then both the player and the PC would be making the same choice.)

Now with Power Attack, the player makes the choice to trade precision for power, and the PC makes the choice to trade precision for power.  Or Tide of Iron - the player makes the choice to push his foe with his shield and move into the vacated space while getting a quick blow in, and the PC makes exactly the same decision.  (I don't think that the fact that a level 1 halfling fighter can do this to the Tarrasque on a crit has any bearing on whether or not Tide of Iron is dissociated.)



Mallus said:


> A player _might_ be shooting for the slit in an opponent's helm, or going for an easier shot at the opponents body. The difference between them is easy to imagine, easy to describe, and irrelevant to every iteration of the D&D combat system (barring whatever optional called shot rules I'm forgetting at the moment).
> 
> A PC can get lucky, but never actively try for the more difficult shot. Why isn't this an example of dissociation?




This is what I'm not sure of.  If the mechanics create the situation where a plausible in-game action is impossible - that is, the PC should be able to make a specific choice, but the player cannot - are the mechanics are dissociated?  My gut says yes.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> I would say, though, that the problem is not inherent in the use of powers, or their application to fighters. I'd say instead that there wasn't enough effort put into creating a grammar for explaining fighter powers...




I think the problem is that other abstractions, already common and accepted, get in the way here. For example, D&D has never much modeled "fatigue" from your positive actions. Sure, some of it is rolled up into hit points, and several versions have had various conditions or modifiers the DM can impose when they seem appropriate, but there traditionally hasn't been much emphasis on individual actions.

So consider the modern sports fencer. They routinely lunge 75% to 80% of their maximum lunge, in practice and bouts. Why don't they do more? Because the energy expenditure, recovery time, and other risks are incredible for that last little bit. Even Olympic caliber epee fencers can't routinely lunge 90% to 100%, and those folks are in unbelievable shape and very efficient in their movements. But very rarely, they risk it, because they make a split second determination that *right now* it will make the difference between success and failure. Note that a huge part of this determination is what they opponent happens to be doing.

So this makes me wonder exactly what kind of handling issues people would be willing to accept in order for "dailies" to be more flexible? Is it worth it, from the handling perspective, to perhaps say that a martial character gets each "daily" 5 or 7 or whatever times per week, and after that, they need time for muscle fatigue to recoup?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

LostSoul said:


> This is what I'm not sure of. If the mechanics create the situation where a plausible in-game action is impossible - that is, the PC should be able to make a specific choice, but the player cannot - are the mechanics are dissociated? My gut says yes.




Depends entirely on how large you are willing to make the problem space.  This is why those who mainly or entirely favor simulation by process are more likely to be bothered by this issue, than those who lean mainly or entirely towards favor of simulation of results.  The latter is almost always predisposed to favor larger problem spaces.  

"Plausible in-game action" is not some isolated thing.  It has context.  Views of the same context can easily differ.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Yesway Jose said:


> Isn't it fair, however, to perceive that some mechanics may come across as relatively more simulationist than another?



Yes, I have no problem with that. Everyone's disbelief suspenders are of a different elasticity, as they say.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Imaro said:


> It's the same disassociation that arises if one tries to claim hit points are all physical damage.  You can do it but the logic breaks down and the fictional association rings false if you try to only define them in a physical sense.



I think that's my preferred explanation of hit points. It's the way most players think of them anyway, imo. We just accept that a high level fighter is a supernaturally tough son of a bitch. Gary couldn't accept that a high level fighter was literally as tough as four horses but by 3e you've got a lot of character classes with extraordinary abilities, such as the barbarian's damage reduction. If the barbarian can have skin as tough as a wooden door, then let the fighter's hit points be an extraordinary ability also.


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## Raven Crowking

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## Raven Crowking

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## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> Here's a puzzler -
> 
> The most simulationist mechanic in Mutants & Masterminds, hero points, is dissociative.




Is it? I was going to say, "That's true," but I'm not sure any more. If the character thinks, "Is there anything around here I can use?" and finds some acid, there's not much of a dissociation. Also, the primary use of HPs is for extra effort, which is not dissociative. I'm going to say HPs are only moderately dissociative. Further, dissociation is only likely to occur when the player deliberately chooses a metagame solution to a problem, and only briefly enough to "edit" the scene. Whatever the HP is used for is end-to-end consistent within the world.

I'd say HPs are a good example of how to include metagame elements that have only mild dissociative effects. I don't think most players stop feeling like Batman because they just happen to have something lucky happen of their own choosing.


----------



## Imaro

Raven Crowking said:


> I think that they are.  I am perfectly okay with something like a recharge representing an opportunity.
> 
> I would have no trouble with some of 4e's powers if they recharged in the same way, so that you had limited uses, and where the recharge represented opportunity.
> 
> Even "hitting someone really hard with a mace" can be measured by opportunity.  After all, that is what critical hits do.  Heck, that's what successful attack rolls do.
> 
> I don't think that this is an example of a dissociated mechanic.
> 
> 
> RC




You see this is exactly why I find it disassociated as a mechanic... You and Wrecan just gave totally different explanations for this mechanic. He claimed it was resting tired energy reserves, you claim it represents opportunities for usage, and the book is silent on what a recharge actually is in-game.  So what exactly is happening via the fictional game when a creatur recharges?


----------



## pawsplay

Imaro said:


> You see this is exactly why I find it disassociated as a mechanic... You and Wrecan just gave totally different explanations for this mechanic. He claimed it was resting tired energy reserves, you claim it represents opportunities for usage, and the book is silent on what a recharge actually is in-game.  So what exactly is happening via the fictional game when a creatur recharges?




No one knows. It's completely up to the GM to fill in that information. That's one of the Alexandrians criticisms, one of the things that leans a mechanic toward dissociation.

EDIT: Someone give Imaro some XP for me.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> I would have no trouble with some of 4e's powers if they recharged in the same way, so that you had limited uses, and where the recharge represented opportunity.
> 
> Even "hitting someone really hard with a mace" can be measured by opportunity. After all, that is what critical hits do. Heck, that's what successful attack rolls do.




What if the powers only had an opportunity to fire on a crit? What if, that opportunity let you pick one from a list? Could the list be more or less like 4E powers now (i.e. use a daily up in this circumstance, and it is gone) or would it need to be more a list of explicitly "critical" powers that let you pick a certain one each time. (Mongoose RQ II uses something analogous to this, BTW, though the "powers" aren't varied by character types.)

Just curious where the boundaries are, and if they are the same for you as other people. Were I to change it, I'd lean heavily towards something like encounter becoming 1/scene and daily becoming 1/adventure, myself.


----------



## pawsplay

Crazy Jerome said:


> What is the powers only had an opportunity to fire on a crit?  What if, that opportunity let you pick one from a list?  Could the list be more or less like 4E powers now (i.e. use a daily up in this circumstance, and it is gone) or would it need to be more a list of explicitly "critical" powers that let you pick a certain one each time.  (Mongoose RQ II uses something analogous to this, BTW, though the "powers" aren't varied by character types.)
> 
> Just curious where the boundaries are, and if they are the same for you as other people. Were I to change it, I'd lean heavily towards something like encounter becoming 1/scene and daily becoming 1/adventure, myself.




In general, I would want the things that represent extra effort to be player choice (1/scene, for instance) and things that represented opportunity to be represented by opportunities (crits and other die rolls are good for that). Of course, there are crossover cases, but I think that preserves the congruence of player choice and PC motivation.


----------



## Yesway Jose

LostSoul said:


> I think this is what I originally thought dissociated mechanics were, but now I don't think has anything to do with what can be easily imagined or not. What follows should not be taken as anything more than my attempt to work this out.
> 
> Does the player make the same choice as the PC?



Except that in many cases, we don't know exactly what the PC is doing. 

Even since 3E, I believe it was stated that 1 turn of combat is some undeclared mix of different feints, blocks and swings, and that PCs are acting the entire turn and that initiative is an abstraction of your most consequential action in that turn. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Even if we do think we know what the PC is doing, he/she doesn't actually exist, so it's technically our perception of how the PC is interacting with the fiction.

That's why I think it's OK to use the definition of disassociation from what we can easily imagine the PC is/would do?


----------



## Raven Crowking

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## Raven Crowking

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## ThirdWizard

Okay what is going on here? _I thought we had a working definition!_

Disassociated: A mechanic that isn't a choice of the PC but a choice of the player.

I thought that was the working definition. If I'm wrong, I'm looking at this whole thread in a different light, and it is not as interesting. 

And, you can talk all day about how 4e is full of disassociated rules, but if my definition is right, its just kinda sorta non-simulationist in reality, teetering on the edge of disassociation.

If 4e was really gung ho about disassociated mechanics you would do things like roll your Religion skill to determine if you know the high priest the first time you meet him in game, or roll Stealth to determine if the hallway is dark enough to let you hide in it, or your Perception roll is high enough then _treasure is there because of your high roll_. 

Those are _moderate_ dissociation mechanics as far as I'm concerned. But, they'd probably give simulationists a heart attack.


----------



## pawsplay

ThirdWizard said:


> Okay what is going on here? _I thought we had a working definition!_
> 
> Disassociated: A mechanic that isn't a choice of the PC but a choice of the player.
> 
> I thought that was the working definition. If I'm wrong, I'm looking at this whole thread in a different light, and it is not as interesting.
> 
> And, you can talk all day about how 4e is full of disassociated rules, but if my definition is right, its just kinda sorta non-simulationist in reality, teetering on the edge of disassociation.




It's a matter of degree, I suppose. It does jar me, though, if you have a create with, say, claws and a barbed tail, that has claws as an at-will and the barbed tail as a recharging power. From my experience, 4e has enough rules that are dissociative enough and come into play with enough frequency that it's a definitely negative factor. I wouldn't reject 4e on that basis alone, but in combination with other things I don't like about 4e, it clinches the deal pretty well.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> X-Men: First Class, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings are fantasy/sci-fi.
> 
> The Dungeons and Dragons movie, Transformers, and 2012 are fantasy/sci-fi.
> 
> None of the above is realistic. Isn't it fair to perceive, however, that one set of movies is more satisfyingly or tolerably plausible than the other set of movies?



I have a view on this. I also have a view on which system - AD&D, 3E or 4e - is more likely to produce an experience at my table that resembles the movies I prefer.



Yesway Jose said:


> Expanding on that premise, if you take a thousand PC Rogues over a thousand days of adventuring, then that's a million instances of a rogue never using that power more than once a day.
> 
> I think it's improbable that in all those million instances, not one single rogue ever had the luck or opportunity or interest to use it more than once.



Part of the idea is that most tables won't play through those million instances. It's a narrative conceit - like Boromir having only the odd occasion to sound his horn (making it dramatic rather than mundane).



Yesway Jose said:


> Technically, IF a daily is a random event requiring a number of external unpredictable variables to be true, then choosing when that improbable event occurs AND in fact knowing that it's going to happen 1/day is "disassociated".
> 
> It's as improbable as a) knowing that lightning will strike every day and b) knowing exactly when to raise your sword so that you can use "Harvest the Lightning Blade".



FIrst, "Harvest the Lightning Blade" is a great power - it would suit a certain sort of barbarian, or even a Stormwarden-style ranger!

Second, the PC doesn't know in advance that lightning will strike. The PC looks up, and - lo! - storm clouds are gathering overhead! It is _the player_ who uses the 1x/day mechanic, not the PC.

And even the player doesn't know it will happen 1x/day. The player knows it won't happen _more_ than 1x/day. But it may not happen at all.



ThirdWizard said:


> I  also find it interesting that people want to somehow legitimize dissociated mechanics (which I used to just call Narrative and Gamist rules) by saying these things have been in D&D already, as if something has to be in D&D for it to be a legitimate roleplaying thing.



I don't think it has to have been in D&D to be a legitimate roleplaying thing. But D&D has always had _some_ fortune-in-the-middle mechanics (eg saving throws in the 1st ed DMG), which makes it odd when D&D players decry those mechanics.



Imaro said:


> You see this is exactly why I find it disassociated as a mechanic... You and Wrecan just gave totally different explanations for this mechanic. He claimed it was resting tired energy reserves, you claim it represents opportunities for usage, and the book is silent on what a recharge actually is in-game.  So what exactly is happening via the fictional game when a creatur recharges?



Like I said upthread - this is to be worked out in play.

You play HeroQuest, right? What happens when I use my "love for Esmerelda" attribute to augment an attack against Esmerelda's kidnapper? What happens when I use the same attribute to augment my song sung at Esmerelda's window under the moonlight? *It's up to the player and the other participants at the table to work this out on each occasion!* That's part of what it is to play a game of HeroQuest.



pawsplay said:


> saving throws are a flat-out simulation.





Aberzanzorax said:


> A saving throw is a measure of the combination of luck and skill/protections (the d20 roll and the character's save modifier). This is not dissociated because, as in the real world, a faster person might be able to escape a burning building but also might be unlucky enough to be hit by falling firey boards.



Gygax, in his DMG, states that a successful save vs dragon breath, by a fighter chained to a rock, can mean that the chain breaks (this is luck - I'll take others' words for it that it's also simulation - I would have thought a STR check is what would simulate this, but anyway) _or_ that the fighter discovers a small cleft in the rock and shrinks back into it at just the right moment. So now the saving throw die roll simulates what? Past geological processes? This is an explicitly fortune-in-the-middle mechanic that is not radically different in character from the unerrata-ed Come and Get It.



Aberzanzorax said:


> That was an incredibly lucky catch, but one that required a ton of skill (no way I would have been able to make it). I'd liken it more to rolling really high combined with a great attack bonus or athletics/acrobatics roll. In 4e, that catch is like a super high dc along with having maxed out skill and high ability modifier.
> 
> Here's the dissociation with calling that a daily. Could he potentially make that same catch later in the same game? Yes. Would he have the same chance to do so? Probably (it is a slim chance, and he'd likely miss....you don't roll a 20 every time). Would it be impossible for him to make that catch again? No. (But if it were a daily representing it, then he, as a character WOULD find it impossible to make that catch again.)
> 
> Also, it's not as though he decided "I'm really going to use up some personal resource to make this catch...I'm going to put something on the line, give it my all, and end up worse for wear until I rest up." Perhaps a better representation of a daily would be a football player taking a horrific tackle, getting injured, but because of the risk making a touchdown. Or perhaps we could represent a daily as a baseball player sliding into home on his face. Even these, though, would be better represented in 4e by other things (hp attrition, loss of healing surges, etc), but at least it shows how they couldn't do that all day...even so, unless the injury were debilitating in some way, they'd still be able to do it again, even in the very next play.
> 
> That is why Dailies are seen by some to be dissociated. I honestly cannot come up with an example of what they're modelling in the game world that can't be better explained by other rules in that same game world. To be more clear, every explanation of what dailies represent in 4e seems to actually be represented by other things in 4e, at least the way I see them.



Just to add to Crazy Jerome's response, here is my take: if 4e had given all PCs Hero Points, which could be spent 1x/day to either (i) make an attack roll into an automatic critical, or (ii) make a damage roll deliver maximum damage, then almost no one would have complained (because plenty of d20 games already had these mechanics).

If one of these Hero Points could also be spent to make an opponent automatically fail a saving throw, maybe it would be a bit more controversial, but probably not all that much.

If only fighters and rouges got Hero Points, _that_ would be more controversial, but because of the metagaming aspect of the mechanic? I'm not sure. But this is, in effect, what martial daily powers are - daily Hero Points that only martial PCs get. They're just formatted and described slightly differently.



tomBitonti said:


> Brute Strike   Fighter Attack 1
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Here, I see a disassociation.  Ignoring the power title and description (which is allowed, since these are reskinnable!) how is one to imagine the power works?
> 
> It's easy enough to imagine that the power derives from a (literal) feat of strength: The fighter puts all of his strength into the blow, and pushes his muscles beyond their normal limit, to deliver the strongest, most powerful blow that he can.  (Although, that does run into a problem: That doesn't sound like a power that should be reliable!)
> 
> The problem is that, unlike Ray of Frost, this is all imagined.  The power has no concrete, in-game, detail that explains where the extra damage came from.
> 
> That right there seems to be a typical example of what is considered dissassociative.
> 
> I would say, though, that the problem is not inherent in the use of powers, or their application to fighters.  I'd say instead that there wasn't enough effort put into creating a grammar for explaining fighter powers.  Why does the wizard power have arcane and cold keywords, while the fighter power has none?  Let's modify the fighter power slightly:
> 
> Brute Strike   Fighter Attack 1
> You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.
> Daily ✦ Martial, Reliable, Weapon, *Strength*
> 
> To my eye, that seems to make a huge difference!



Tha would be one way of going, definitely. My preferred approach, though, is to see using Brute Strike as analogous to spending a Hero Point, in the way I've described above.



pawsplay said:


> I don't think most players stop feeling like Batman because they just happen to have something lucky happen of their own choosing.



But they do stop feeling like Conan or the Grey Mouser because they just happen to get a lucky opening of their own choosing?



pawsplay said:


> With the exception of some versions of Fate, and a few other corner cases, every RPG I can think of uses some form of hit points, whether it's D&D's hit dice, M&M&'s conditions, or GURPS's hit point system.



Rolemaster doesn't use hit points that resemble D&D's. It uses a system of penalties (some cumulative, some overlapping) accrued via crit rolls and concussion hit attrition.



pawsplay said:


> Ask a boxer. Eventually, too much is just too much.



But boxers get fatigued. Their performances suffer. That is one way in which boxing matches are won.


----------



## FireLance

pawsplay said:


> No one knows. It's completely up to the GM to fill in that information. That's one of the Alexandrians criticisms, one of the things that leans a mechanic toward dissociation.



From another perspective, though, it is about as disassociative as hit points. For a hill giant, hit points may actually represent pure physical toughness. However, for an 8th-level fighter, it may represent skill at dodging, or luck, or divine favor, or magical protection. As long as there is a consistent explanation for the recharge mechanic for the same creature (or type of creature), I would not find it disassociative.


----------



## pawsplay

pemerton said:


> Gygax, in his DMG, states that a successful save vs dragon breath, by a fighter chained to a rock, can mean that the chain breaks (this is luck - I'll take others' words for it that it's also simulation - I would have thought a STR check is what would simulate this, but anyway) _or_ that the fighter discovers a small cleft in the rock and shrinks back into it at just the right moment. So now the saving throw die roll simulates what? Past geological processes? This is an explicitly fortune-in-the-middle mechanic that is not radically different in character from the unerrata-ed Come and Get It.




Saving throws are meant to resolve whether you were able evade or withstand the attack. They were never intended as a device for, as example, mapping out crevices in a room. As for the chain breaking, that is fully within the purview of the GM to rule. Simulation does not mean the rules are considered to be exhaustive.  Saving throws are, of course, somewhat abstract. But in general, they have a pretty obvious relationship to the imaginary world. You duck under the fireball, shake off the charm spell, and so forth. Gygax's comment was not meant to undermine the saving throw mechanic as something that happens in the imaginary world, but to bolster it by making suggestions how to deal with unforseen and unforseeable contexts. It is the last ditch, so to speak, to rationalize saving throws in this way, but the first hurdle for many 4e powers.



> Just to add to Crazy Jerome's response, here is my take: if 4e had given all PCs Hero Points, which could be spent 1x/day to either (i) make an attack roll into an automatic critical, or (ii) make a damage roll deliver maximum damage, then almost no one would have complained (because plenty of d20 games already had these mechanics).




Because hero points generally have a rationalized way of recharging. Admittedly, True20's Conviction points are more arbitrary and dissociative. It also depends on the power. Many 4e powers are not so simple as doing lots of damage or hitting or whatever. 



> If only fighters and rouges got Hero Points, _that_ would be more controversial, but because of the metagaming aspect of the mechanic? I'm not sure. But this is, in effect, what martial daily powers are - daily Hero Points that only martial PCs get. They're just formatted and described slightly differently.






> Tha would be one way of going, definitely. My preferred approach, though, is to see using Brute Strike as analogous to spending a Hero Point, in the way I've described above.




That's probably the best way to do it, yes.



> But they do stop feeling like Conan or the Grey Mouser because they just happen to get a lucky opening of their own choosing?




I doubt it. Those characters are known for being lucky. Not all games would make that a player choice, but some do. For the record, I tend to prefer games that only allow hero points for PC actions or second chances, but I've played many sorts of game.



> Rolemaster doesn't use hit points that resemble D&D's. It uses a system of penalties (some cumulative, some overlapping) accrued via crit rolls and concussion hit attrition.




Concussion hits are, indeed, a form of hit points. Very much so. And death by critical is not at all different than death by "massive damage" or vorpal sword.



> But boxers get fatigued. Their performances suffer. That is one way in which boxing matches are won.




Abstraction. It doesn't alter the outcome if both fighters receive the same allowances. In reality, meaningful fatigue is likely to occur rapidly, toward the end of a match. In D&D terms, it could be only a round or two. Also, D&d is not a boxing game. Real life battles are very rarely won by extreme attrition, although battles between armored opponents could swing that way. D&D probably has some rules for sailboat somewhere that don't quite model all the nuances, either. 

It would not be more immersive, or better, if D&D focused on spiraling fatigue as the determination of a fight. The most important determination is who lands a disabling blow first. In D&D, hit points reflect a measure of fighting measure that must be overcome before you land that strike.

There are some areas where hit points are dissociative. For instance, it's very hard to ambush and kill a high level character in D&D. Since nobles in older editions were often level 2 to 4 fighters, assassination was a tricky business. If that's an important consideration in my game, I'll have to outlay some effort to patch the hit point rules for this situation.


----------



## MrGrenadine

Njall said:


> That's something that AD&D or 3e can't simulate at all, for example: most combat oriented characters have a few select tricks that they're good at, and that they use over and over because not doing so would be suboptimal when not outright suicidal.
> In such a system, combat is fairly repetitive ( I won't say that it's boring, because that's another matter entirely ), unless you're just using suboptimal options for the sake of it.
> That's why "I'll use an encounter power that blinds my opponent now" ( or, if you prefer it, "I'll throw some dirt in his eyes and try to stab him while he's recovering, and next turn I'll try to trip him") feels closer to actual fighting than "I guess I'll just disarm him again, this round" for some of us.
> It's just a matter of perspective, I suppose.




I've been out of the loop on this thread, so apologies if I've been ninja'd on this point, however:

In AD&D/2/3/3.5, combat is only repetitive if players make it so.  In previous editions, my fighters used terrain and furniture to gain strategic advantage, moved around the battlefield to assist or defend allies, focused fire on dangerous or wounded enemies, etc., and while doing so, I never said "I move here and hit it with my sword", "I move here and hit it with my sword", etc.  

Rather, I would RP my choices, and describe my actions and intentions--"I dump a brazier down the stairs to slow the enemy reinforcements coming up, and then and turn and strike at the orc trying to flank me!", or "I bend low and sweep my flail along the ground, trying to knock the largest bugbear prone, and force the others to step back."  

In my experience, with the good DMs I played with, this creates a rich story, and a hell of a fun game.

And although in previous editions a player could just say "I throw sand in his eyes" over and over again, a good DM can manage that with a simple "He's seen you do that trick once already, and easily dodges the sand", which is a limit, but its a limit placed by character and story, not by mechanics (using up your one power that can blind).  Limits are terrific things for the creative process, and that simple explanation by the DM should make a player think outside the box.


Anyway, 4e's AEDU structure is interesting, but it didn't give me much of anything in terms of feel that I didn't have already.  It DID put some pretty severe limits on my choices, but as I said, limits can be a good thing for a creative environment.  I just prefer character and story-based limits.


----------



## MrGrenadine

Raven Crowking said:


> If I was to re-write 4e, I would have a recharge for all dailies and all encounter powers, and the character could attempt to recharge one (once used in its allotted span) as an Action, gaining that usage if successful and losing the Action if not.  Obviously, an encounter power would be easier to recharge than a daily.




Interesting idea.  Me?  I'd just say that Encounter and Daily powers are strenuous, tiring and/or easy to recognize once you've been hit with them, so characters can use them whenever they wish, but take a cumulative -2 penalty to hit with each successive use of an encounter power, and a cumulative -4 penalty with each successive use of a daily.

This, to me, replaces the artificial rules-based limit (losing/forgetting a maneuver after its attempted), with a character/story driven limit.  The player is thinking, "I'd love to try to hit with that encounter one more time, but at -4?  Better to go with a different power".  Meanwhile, the character is thinking "The damned beast is getting wise to my shield slam!  Best to switch it up with a leg sweep!"

It also allows for desperate and heroic actions that could turn the tide of a battle--a little swinginess, if you will, which is something I think 4e combat lacks, and that I miss.


----------



## BryonD

MrGrenadine said:


> In AD&D/2/3/3.5, combat is only repetitive if players make it so.



Very true.

But also another point is that having characters take action they are not optimized for is very far from "suicidal".  Clearly a "disarm" optimized character is going to use that option much more often.  But I've had plenty of characters use disarm options without being optimized for it.  (I actually can't recall a disarm optimized character in my games, but I could just be forgetting one). 

When someone starts putting things in the black and white of either being optimized or else any attempt is "suicidal", then they are completely out of touch with how the game has consistently played for me.

Sometimes the disarms fail.  And sometimes the power attack misses.  That is part of the game.  But they also often work as well.



> which is a limit, but its a limit placed by character and story, not on mechanics



Amen on that.


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> tomBitonti said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Brute Strike Fighter Attack 1
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Here, I see a disassociation. Ignoring the power title and description (which is allowed, since these are reskinnable!) how is one to imagine the power works?
> 
> It's easy enough to imagine that the power derives from a (literal) feat of strength: The fighter puts all of his strength into the blow, and pushes his muscles beyond their normal limit, to deliver the strongest, most powerful blow that he can. (Although, that does run into a problem: That doesn't sound like a power that should be reliable!)
> 
> The problem is that, unlike Ray of Frost, this is all imagined. The power has no concrete, in-game, detail that explains where the extra damage came from.
> 
> That right there seems to be a typical example of what is considered dissassociative.
> 
> I would say, though, that the problem is not inherent in the use of powers, or their application to fighters. I'd say instead that there wasn't enough effort put into creating a grammar for explaining fighter powers. Why does the wizard power have arcane and cold keywords, while the fighter power has none? Let's modify the fighter power slightly:
> 
> Brute Strike Fighter Attack 1
> You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.
> Daily ✦ Martial, Reliable, Weapon, Strength
> 
> To my eye, that seems to make a huge difference!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tha would be one way of going, definitely. My preferred approach, though, is to see using Brute Strike as analogous to spending a Hero Point, in the way I've described above.
Click to expand...



That seems to move along a different dimension: How frequently can the power be used?

My issue is with the basic description of the power.  In this example, without the flavor text, the "content" of the power is that it does extra damage, and that it is based on a melee attack with a weapon.  There is no "you strike with greater force" or "greater precision" or "you cause the opponent to strain themself" or whatever.  The attack simply does more damage, with not much hint of an explanation.

I'd myself base the frequency on the basic description.  My sense of why a dragon's breath has a recharge time is that it takes that long for the dragon to "catch it's breath".  I view that as if the dragon had just run up several flights of stairs and was winded.  Or perhaps the dragons flame gland needed that much time to generate additional flame enzyme.

(A curious point: I find the flame breath recharge only slightly disassociative, while I find the fighter daily to be very disassociative.  I'm not sure exactly why: Maybe the explanation is "closer at hand".  Or maybe I'm more used to thinking about a dragon's breath as being recharge limited.  Or maybe I imagine that there must be _some_ limitation, as otherwise, the dragon would be emitting a stream a fire, like a fire nozzle on continuous discharge!)

Thinking about that a bit more, the key is an in game meaningful hint as to how the ability works.  Without at least a hint (and one that could impact the use of the ability, depending on circumstance!) that makes for a disassociation.

Something that I have been struggling with is the removal of GM (and player, to a degree) interpretation of what is happening.  To me, a part of the fun was deciding actually how a rule worked.  That means that 4E has a very sour taste for me.  But, I am finding, as I get more perspective, that I have a lot of the same criticisms towards 3.5E: Too much of the fun has disappeared in limiting rule sets!

Sorry for the ramble,

TomBitonti


----------



## Hussar

pawsplay said:


> In any case, the original rule (d4 rounds) was not dissociative; dragons apparently needed to rest between breaths. Whether or not a specific monster in 4e's ability were dissociative would depend on the ability and the monster. Obviously, it would apply just fine to a dragon's breath, and probably OK for something that builds up momentum for a big charge, but would probably be fairly dissociative for, say, a shield bash, by a creature that primarily attacks with a sword.




Umm, I would point out that the 1d4 rounds is edition specific.  2e dragons could breathe every round IIRC.  Or was it every 3 rounds?  Anyway, the "rest between breaths" doesn't even work in your definition since I could roll a 1 and breathe the very next round.


----------



## pemerton

pawsplay said:


> Gygax's comment was not meant to undermine the saving throw mechanic as something that happens in the imaginary world, but to bolster it by making suggestions how to deal with unforseen and unforseeable contexts. It is the last ditch, so to speak, to rationalize saving throws in this way, but the first hurdle for many 4e powers.



I'm not the biggest fan of "last ditch" and "first hurdle" as terminology - they carry evaluations that I don't really share - but putting the evaluation to one side, I agree. 4e's difference from AD&D is not in _having _metagaming-type mechanics, but _embracing_ them.



pawsplay said:


> Because hero points generally have a rationalized way of recharging.



In HeroQuest they recharge by turning up for sessions and doing stuff - a bit like 4e's XPs. I'm not sure where you see this as falling on your spectrum.

If you already responded to LostSoul's post upthread - about 4e benefitting from having extended rests be triggered narratively rather than per day - I missed it, sorry. Do you have a view on that suggestion?



pawsplay said:


> Many 4e powers are not so simple as doing lots of damage or hitting or whatever.



This is true, but fo martial powers often the "extra" is bonus wounding (slowed, weakened etc) or forced movement - both of which are equally amenable to a Hero Point interpretation, in my view.



pawsplay said:


> Concussion hits are, indeed, a form of hit points. Very much so. And death by critical is not at all different than death by "massive damage" or vorpal sword.



Now this I strongly disagree with, based on extensive play experience: Rolemaster damage plays nothing like D&D hit point loss, even with death from massive damage rules included. (The exception to this is creatures that take Large or especially SuperLarge criticals - in these cases, hit point attrition - hacking away the meat! - is more significant.)



pawsplay said:


> It would not be more immersive, or better, if D&D focused on spiraling fatigue as the determination of a fight. The most important determination is who lands a disabling blow first. In D&D, hit points reflect a measure of fighting measure that must be overcome before you land that strike.
> 
> There are some areas where hit points are dissociative. For instance, it's very hard to ambush and kill a high level character in D&D. Since nobles in older editions were often level 2 to 4 fighters, assassination was a tricky business. If that's an important consideration in my game, I'll have to outlay some effort to patch the hit point rules for this situation.



OK, nearly all my D&D play has been above 1st level. So this aspect of hit points looms pretty large for me. The "jumping over the cliff" scenario is a variant of it. For me, the most natural interpretation of the high-level-character-survives-ambush scenario is that, at the last minute (like Conan!), s/he ducks or rolls via "sixth sense". Always.

Is this contrived? Dissociative? I see it as a narrative conceit. As you say, it may well wear thin in an assassination-focused game. If I wanted to play such a game, I wouldn't use D&D. 4e takes various steps to reduce ambushes and assassination as a focus of play (eg no scry-buff-teleport, and a strong emphasis on GM rather than player control over scene framing). When it's come up, I've used various techniques to handle it - minionisation, skill challenge rather than combat mechanics, etc.


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> My issue is with the basic description of the power.  In this example, without the flavor text, the "content" of the power is that it does extra damage, and that it is based on a melee attack with a weapon.  There is no "you strike with greater force" or "greater precision" or "you cause the opponent to strain themself" or whatever.  The attack simply does more damage, with not much hint of an explanation.



Fair enough. At my table, the fact that it's called "Brute Strike", and a daily, has been suggestive enough - it's the fighter giving it his/her all to try and finish off a foe. And that's how it tends to play, which reinforces the flavour.


----------



## Hussar

Imaro said:


> But doesn't rolling a d4 have an upper limit of 4 rnds (as in you will never take longer than 4 rounds to recharge)... while none of these mechanics have the same uppper limit?




Exploding dice are a fantastically fun mechanic.  You should try it sometime.

But, be that as it may, what does having an upper limit have to do with anything?


----------



## pemerton

A power no one has mentioned yet: the paladin at-will Valiant Strike, which is a standard melee attack but with a +1 bonus to hit per adjacent enemy.

Presumably this is also "dissociated" - there is no ingame explanation for the bonus - it is a metagame mechanic which produces results that live up to the name "valiant strike" ie a paladin who has this power will end up _being valiant_, because rising to the challenge when surrounded by many foes.

A feat with a similar characteristic is Against All Odds, which grants a bonus to hit and damage when adjacent to three or more enemies.

(And these both resemble Beseiged Foe - again, the use of the power will produce the result that the foe is beseiged by the War Devil's allies.)

Did 3E have any feats like this? Does making them at-will rather than daily make them more tolerablem to those who dislike metagame mechanics?


----------



## Beginning of the End

LostSoul said:


> My big question is: how does this work with _negative_ mechanics?  The fact that one cannot trade precision for power in a melee attack without the proper Feat - Power Attack - in 3E is the example I'm thinking about.  It seems to me that, in that case, there are meaningful mechanical decisions that have no association with the decisions made by the character - assuming the character wants to trade precision for power yet does not possess the Power Attack Feat.




I would argue what you have there is an arguably odd abstraction. 

Let's momentarily simplify the situation by removing Power Attack for the equation. Imagine the feat doesn't exist. What you're left is a game system that doesn't include a mechanical model for trading precision for power. That doesn't mean that your character can't choose to do that; it just means that the choice isn't mechanically relevant (it's been lost in the abstraction of the system).

If we add Power Attack back into this hypothetical system, does anything change? Nope. The system is basically saying, "The decision to trade precision for power is only mechanically relevant if you've had special training for it."

I can see why that particular abstraction would potentially feel strange to some people. (And Justin would probably agree with them. We play with house rules which unify the mechanics for Power Attack and Combat Expertise by giving Combat Expertise the same BAB cap as Power Attack. They also offer a non-trained option of both abilities which basically builds on the rules for fighting defensively.)

I'm not ruling out the possibility of a system being dissociated by the absence of some mechanic. But I wouldn't characterize this particular oddity as a dissociation. It's still a matter of game world information not being available in the mechanics; not mechanical information being unavailable to the game world.



pemerton said:


> With hit points, it seems to me that there is  information available to the player - eg I will die if I take one more  hit, or I can jump over that 200' cliff and survive, or There's no way a  single blow of that sword can kill me - that is manifestly not  available to the PC.




Quite possibly. As the original essay stated, all mechanics both abstracted _and metagamed_ (emphasis added). The example given in the essay are players knowing that fireballs do (d6 x level) damage whereas characters have no idea what d6s are. The exact numerical representation of hit points or Strength or the DC of an Open Lock check would all be similar examples.



pemerton said:


> I believe some versions of 3E (eg Eberron) use such a mechanic.




I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that dissociated mechanics were wholly absent from pre-4E versions of D&D. But differences in degree are not irrelevant. If someone says, "I don't really like eating salt-licks." Replying with, "Ah-ha! I saw you put salt on your mashed potatoes last night!" doesn't really have any relevance.



Mallus said:


> So if I'm understanding this (clarified) explanation of dissociated powers...




Nope. Pretty much every single thing you wrote there was incorrect. You're still confusing abstraction and dissociation.



Bagpuss said:


> You think exactly that. First because the set up  situation isn't likely to occur exactly the same, in that game or even  next weeks game, or even in practice. Second, because the wind  conditions could easily blow the ball to the left or right, or the  defense could have caught him or any number of situations. There are  loads of receivers that drop the ball, in similar situations or aren't  even there to try to catch it. The power represents the occasions when  everything goes just right and they have the skill, hence it is a daily  and not an at will.
> 
> Same with Trick Strike, it's not a loss of still from the rogue it's the  fact the other variables aren't right. The opponent sees through the  feint, or some other event.




Everything you say there is true.

But the reason the mechanic is dissociated is because the player making the decision that "this is the moment where everything has lined up to make this happen" is the equivalent of Baptiste saying _in the huddle_, "Okay, on this play I'm going to leap backwards, catch the ball one-handed, and then do a reverse somersault." And begin right every single time he chooses to say that (but he can only say it once per day).


----------



## Hussar

On a side note, I find it interesting that 4e is basically screwed either way it goes.

One of the big criticisms of 4e was spamming attacks.  Players doing the same thing over and over and over again, combat after combat.

But now, the criticism is that 4e doesn't let you spam attacks over and over again and it should.

Which is it?  Is it better to allow characters to pick one or two tactics (core tripper for example) and do the same thing over and over and over again, or is it better to have mechanics in place that will let you trip something, but, not all the time, thus forcing characters to choose other tactics as the combat unfolds?

Me?  I much prefer 4e's very mobile combat.  Every combat unfolds differently since every character interacts with every other character's abilities differently every time.  Even at very low levels, each character has about six or so different options in any given round.  And those options generally synergise with other character's options.  

-----

But, on to the whole "dissacciated mechanics" thing.  For what it's worth, I think the basic mistake being made here is the assumption that there must be one and only one explanation for every single effect and that explanation must be pre-set.  This is mostly how 3e worked.  If you wanted to do something, you had to choose from effects that were pre-defined.

Now, you can certainly change those definitions.  But, now you're into disassociated mechanics territory.  If the in-game justification for X can be modified to fit whatever situation, then that mechanic is now associated with every situation into which it can be fit.

I had a discussion a while ago on these boards about my 4e rogue/cleric tapping a lock with his holy symbol and making the lock spring open.  I have no problems doing that with 4e mechanics because there are no associated in game explanations for how the Open Lock skill works.  Open Lock, in the PHB simply says, "Make a thievery check to pick a lock".  That's it.  I don't need tools, I don't have any other in game justifications.

Now, some people strongly dislike this.  They want Open Lock to work one way and one way only - you need Thieves Tools (3e and earlier) to open a lock.  No Thieves Tools (whether regular or crafted on the spot) and you can't open the lock.  Now, if I CAN open the lock in 3e by tapping it with my holy symbol, then you have to ignore the text of the 3e Open Lock skill.  Which means that you have gone into disassociated mechanics territory since there is no real in-game justification for how I can open the lock by tapping it with my holy symbol and rolling an Open Locks check.

The thing is, DM's do this all the time.  Situations come up all the time and we modify existing rules to fit.  But, if that's what you're doing, then the mechanics are no longer simply associated with whatever the original association was.  Save Vs Petrification is used to jump a pit.  Why?  Because the number is just about right for a DC.  It has no association in the game whatsoever.

But, we do it all the time.

Pemerton is spot on when he says that the primary difference between 4e and earlier editions isn't the existence of disassociated mechanics, it's that 4e *embraces* their use.


----------



## Greg K

Doug McCrae said:


> Here's a puzzler -
> 
> The most simulationist mechanic in Mutants & Masterminds, hero points, is dissociative.
> 
> It's highly abstract, a hero point can be spent to achieve a wide variety of effects. Some of those effects, such as the example in the text of just the right chemicals to create a defoliant happening to be found in a lab, are dissociative in the sense of the player controlling aspects of the world that the character cannot..




Has this changed between 2e and 3e? In 2e, altering the enviornment is not a default use for hero points. It is an option given to GMs for  expanding inspiration. By default, inspiration allows the player to spend a hero point 1/session to gain a clue or insight.  In 2e, the quote about altering the environment as follows:

"Gamemasters may even wish to expand the 'inspiration' facet of hero points to allow the players greater control over the environment of the game, effectively allowing them to edit a scene to grant their heroes an advantage."


----------



## FireLance

Hussar said:


> Umm, I would point out that the 1d4 rounds is edition specific.  2e dragons could breathe every round IIRC.  Or was it every 3 rounds?  Anyway, the "rest between breaths" doesn't even work in your definition since I could roll a 1 and breathe the very next round.



I do recall that dragons used to be able to breathe three times per day, but that could have been Basic or 1E. And dragon breath also dealt damage equal to the dragon's current hit points, which kindasorta made sense, although it was one of the few types of attacks which varied in effectiveness in this manner. (One other, interestingly enough, was the damage dealt by dragonlances in the eponymous setting. A footman's lance dealt damage equal to the current hit points of the wielder, while a mounted lance dealt damage equal to the combined current hit points of the wielder AND the dragon that he was riding.)


----------



## LostSoul

Beginning of the End said:


> I would argue what you have there is an arguably odd abstraction.
> 
> Let's momentarily simplify the situation by removing Power Attack for the equation. Imagine the feat doesn't exist. What you're left is a game system that doesn't include a mechanical model for trading precision for power. That doesn't mean that your character can't choose to do that; it just means that the choice isn't mechanically relevant (it's been lost in the abstraction of the system).
> 
> If we add Power Attack back into this hypothetical system, does anything change? Nope. The system is basically saying, "The decision to trade precision for power is only mechanically relevant if you've had special training for it."




Ah, okay, that makes sense.  Thanks!  This has been an interesting discussion.  I have to admit, the idea of dissociation never really occurred to me before.


----------



## billd91

Doug McCrae said:


> Here's a puzzler -
> 
> The most simulationist mechanic in Mutants & Masterminds, hero points, is dissociative.
> 
> It's highly abstract, a hero point can be spent to achieve a wide variety of effects. Some of those effects, such as the example in the text of just the right chemicals to create a defoliant happening to be found in a lab, are dissociative in the sense of the player controlling aspects of the world that the character cannot. And yet hero points simulate one aspect of the fiction very well - a superhero gaining a new superpower for one scene, to get the character out of a jam, then forgetting he has that power for the rest of his career.
> 
> However innerdude, the OP, has it that dissociated mechanics are not simulationist. I think the issue here is that there is a big difference between fiction sim and real world sim. In fiction the characters must be 'genre blind'. The protagonists in horror must not know that going down to the cellar alone, or having sex, is a terrible idea (unless it's Scream). Superheroes can't know that soliloquoy takes no time, or that their universe is full of continuity errors (unless it's Ambush Bug). And yet the audience know all these things. Mechanics that support such aspects of the fiction must be dissociated, the characters can't know about them.




I guess my rejoinder to this is... so what? And I think that would be the general response of someone who has read and agrees with the Alexandrian article as well. Hero points in M&M are an application of a dissociative mechanic that fits the bill for an acceptable trade-off between pulling the player out of the PC's perspective in order to achieve a desired narrative result (like the improbable sorts of coincidences and outcomes that litter the superhero genre). 

The blog post isn't opposed to dissociative mechanics in general - rather ones that aren't worth the trade-off. Is the trade-off of bringing the player out of the PC perspective every time you use a dissociative mechanic worth the results? What result is the dissociative mechanic in question attempting to achieve?


----------



## JamesonCourage

I don't think the "dragon's breath in 1d4 rounds" is necessarily dissociative. If there is a reason, in-game, then it's not. Is it supernatural? In 3.X, dragon's breath is. Is it because their glands need time to build up that much material? The dragonomicon goes into this, I believe.

An ankheg can only spit acid once every 6 hours. Why? "30-ft. line, once every 6 hours; damage 4d4 acid, Reflex DC 14 half. One such attack depletes the ankheg’s acid supply for 6 hours. It cannot spit acid or deal acid damage during this time. The save DC is Constitution-based." The ankheg has an in-game reason that people can learn, explore, observe.

Why does the rogue only get to use his ability 1/day? If it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learnt, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.

As far as I can tell, anyways. As always, play what you like


----------



## pawsplay

pemerton said:


> I'm not the biggest fan of "last ditch" and "first hurdle" as terminology - they carry evaluations that I don't really share - but putting the evaluation to one side, I agree. 4e's difference from AD&D is not in _having _metagaming-type mechanics, but _embracing_ them.




Sorry, I wasn't trying to be prejudicial. I guess that is simply my preferences showing.



> In HeroQuest they recharge by turning up for sessions and doing stuff - a bit like 4e's XPs. I'm not sure where you see this as falling on your spectrum.




It's functional, but, uh, I don't want to throw out a fancy term here, but structuralist. You do the things you are rewarded for doing so you can continue to be rewarded for them and doing them... HeroQuest is laudable for giving the players many opportunities to craft the narrative, but I see that as the back wall, against which you may well bump. One of the things I like about mechanical aspects of games is that the dice (cards, whatever) can surprise you. In HQ, it's really only the other players that can truly surprise you.

I don't think HQ is particularly more dissociative than 4e, and may even be less so in the typical game, but there is definitely a ceiling to how player-PC congruent you can get in that game. It tends to work out best when the player wants to explore their character thematically... congruence is pretty high then. As a tactical game, so-so. As a long-term resource game, I don't think HQ hits the right cylinders to be a a very congruent PC saga.



> If you already responded to LostSoul's post upthread - about 4e benefitting from having extended rests be triggered narratively rather than per day - I missed it, sorry. Do you have a view on that suggestion?




I could see something like that working, but honestly, my main view is that it's a mistake to take D&D in that direction. Why do poorly what other games do well? Why abandon what D&D already does well? ... I know the 4e designers had the same thought and things still (IMO) went awry, but I think the idea is sound. My view is that D&D works best when narrative tropes are built into the game probabilistically, rather than tied to a narrative, thematic approach. RPGs are a post-modern form of storytelling, and D&D barreled onto the scene with a very post-modern approach. I think uniting the unpredictability of the RPG concept to the unpredictabilities of the D&D milieu is a winning combination.

In much the way trying to clamp down RPGs to do four-color Silver Age supers really has its issues. Comics are tidy things.



> Now this I strongly disagree with, based on extensive play experience: Rolemaster damage plays nothing like D&D hit point loss, even with death from massive damage rules included. (The exception to this is creatures that take Large or especially SuperLarge criticals - in these cases, hit point attrition - hacking away the meat! - is more significant.)




I don't consider differences in specifics to be relevant. Rolemaster has hit points, and a variety of condition and sudden death mechanics. D&D is the same. Rolemaster has more conditions and sudden death mechanics tied to standard attacks, but that is only a specific difference in their design, not a difference in character.



> OK, nearly all my D&D play has been above 1st level. So this aspect of hit points looms pretty large for me. The "jumping over the cliff" scenario is a variant of it. For me, the most natural interpretation of the high-level-character-survives-ambush scenario is that, at the last minute (like Conan!), s/he ducks or rolls via "sixth sense". Always.




Sure. And the corollary is that all successful assassins must have a sneak attack or assassinate ability. All of them. And for the standard D&D milieu that works well enough.


----------



## pawsplay

By the way, despite the rumblings here and there about edition warring, I just want to say this has been a surprisingly useful thread for identifying when and how dissociation occurs, and the considerations that raises for game design and play. It's certainly given me food for thought as to how I might "improve" a version of D&D.


----------



## Doug McCrae

pawsplay said:


> Could you reference which ones you mean? I actually cannot think of any significant rules that have no flavor text.



Quite a  few of the class powers in 3e simply state what the power does without giving an explanation of what is going on in the game world, of how the power is accomplished. It's particularly noticeable with the extraordinary abilities, which, being supernatural* but not magical would seem to require more explanation. Examples include: the barbarian's fast movement; the druid's animal companion, woodland stride, trackless step, venom immunity and timeless body; the monk's timeless body and tongue of the sun and moon; the ranger's woodland stride and hide in plain sight; the paladin's divine health; the rogue's special ability opportunist. This would seem to lay them open to the same objections The Alexandrian levels at the _besieged foe_ power, of being open to multiple interpretations.

I must admit though that most of the class powers do have accompanying flavor text. An example is the druid's wild empathy - "a druid can use body language, vocalizations, and demeanor to improve the attitude of the animal." I was surprised to discover that there is flavor text for a barbarian's damage reduction, a particularly supernatural power – he "gains the ability to shrug off some amount of injury from each blow or attack." Though whether that's sufficient to justify DR5/-, the same resistance to damage as a wooden door, is more open to question.



			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> I agree. What relevance does that have to the Alexandrian's argument? Can you think of any example of any rule in any RPG ever written, or that could be written, that is not abstract?



In this case I was using abstract to mean a single rule which can stand for a wide variety of quite different game world properties. As pemerton described upthread, this is Gary's account of saving throws in the 1e DMG pg 80 -

This protection takes a slightly different form for each class of character. Magic-users understand spells, even on an unconscious level, and are able to slightly tamper with one so as to render it ineffective. Fighters withstand them through sheer defiance, while clerics create a small island of faith. Thieves find they are able to avoid a spell's full effects by quickness . . .​

Hit points are similarly abstract, by the 1e DMG, in that one hit point can mean a unit of physical injury, or skill, or luck, or fatigue, or divine protection.

You are quite right to say that all rules are abstract. It's a good point and something I'd not considered. As mentioned upthread, a roll to hit could reference a stab or a slash. But I think the level of abstraction involved in saving throws and hit points is far greater than this.

It's relevant to The Alexandrian's argument because his difficulty with the _besieged foe_ power appears to be the variety of possible game world interpretations it allows. This is where we get into difficulty in distinguishing between a dissociated mechanic and a highly abstract rule. I think they are the same thing, at least for this definition of dissociated mechanic.



			
				pawsplay said:
			
		

> That has nothing to do with dissociative mechanics. As long as the characters can actually do those things in the D&D world, you're golden.



I think that 3e's extraordinary abilities have a lot to do with it. The Alexandrian's difficulty is not with magical powers, which as always get a free pass, but with non-magical martial powers such as Trick Strike, his first example of a dissociated mechanic. TA's problem with Trick Strike is that he cannot explain it in terms of the game world. But 3e is already full of non-magical martial powers. An extraordinary ability is a power that cannot work in our world. It is a power that *should* break our suspension of disbelief. Why then can Trick Strike not be an extraordinary ability? If we accept barbarians with skin as tough as wood and druids with immunity to poison and monks speaking with any living creature and rangers hiding in plain sight and a character with evasion avoiding all damage from a fireball. While he's asleep. And that all of these are non-magical, then why can we not accept Trick Strike?

*EDIT: I should add that when I use the word supernatural I'm using it in its common English sense, and not as a D&D rule term. In 3e, supernatural abilities are always magical.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Doug McCrae said:


> I think that 3e's extraordinary abilities have a lot to do with it. The Alexandrian's difficulty is not with magical powers, which as always get a free pass, but with non-magical martial powers such as Trick Strike, his first example of a dissociated mechanic. TA's problem with Trick Strike is that he cannot explain it in terms of the game world. But 3e is already full of non-magical martial powers. An extraordinary ability is a power that cannot work in our world. It is a power that *should* break our suspension of disbelief. Why then can Trick Strike not be an extraordinary ability? If we accept barbarians with skin as tough as wood and druids with immunity to poison and monks speaking with any living creature and rangers hiding in plain sight and a character with evasion avoiding all damage from a fireball. While he's asleep. And that all of these are non-magical, then why can we not accept Trick Strike?




Like I mentioned, I think it's important to note whether or not characters can investigate the reasoning in-game. If the reasoning for the ranger "Hide in Plain Sight" can be taught (or otherwise learned), explored, or observed, it's not dissociative. If the use of Evasion while sleeping saves a rogue cannot be taught (or otherwise learned), explored, or observed, than it is dissociative.

Again, why does the rogue only get to use his ability 1/day? If it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learnt, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.

I think that's the issue, as I understand it. And, again, it's not that D&D hasn't had dissociative mechanics in the past. It's that 4e embraced them, and that they seem so omni-present to so many people (whether or not you agree) that it became a problem for those people (and thus the post that sparked this thread).

I don't know if some abilities have flavor text or not, but if they could theoretically be explored in-game by characters, I think they aren't dissociative. If they cannot be explored, however, my understanding is that they are dissociative, whether or not they're possible in the real world notwithstanding.

Again, this is all as far as I can tell. As always, play what you like


----------



## Mallus

LostSoul said:


> This has been an interesting discussion.  I have to admit, the idea of dissociation never really occurred to me before.



Hey Lost... could you explain the idea of dissociation to _me_? Your writing is clear and insightful (and partisanship-free!).

I've read the original blog post, and this thread, and I just don't get the meaningful difference between "dissociation" and what I'd label "a species of abstraction". Can you lend a hand? 

Thanx!


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Part of the idea is that most tables won't play through those million instances. It's a narrative conceit - like Boromir having only the odd occasion to sound his horn (making it dramatic rather than mundane).



That was directly addressed by the very next paragraph which you may have glossed over:


> You may say that 4E is not modelling 1 million fictional instances in any one gaming group's subjective fictional world, which is true, but it's only a thought experiment illustrating the disassociation of my expectations from what the rules technically would allow me to experience. Even if there are just a couple dozen instances of a Rogue not using the power more than 1/day, the probability curve outcome is already failing to associate for me.



We'll not experiencing one single permanent instance of Lord of the Rings. We're experiencing many different iterations of many different stories, after which the limitation on the probability curve of possible outcomes starts to become more apparent.

I looked up the Horn of Gondor. Boromir uses once as a sort of warcry and once to call for help. It's not clear if it has any actual enchantment, or just a subtle one. Anyway, Boromir could use it anytime it makes fictional sense, and he could theoretically do that when he wants and how often he wants. 4E wouldn't prevent Boromir from using the horn whenever he wants, but it may limit the number of times it has a consequential effect. Pre-4e, it may have an effect based on fictional prerequisites (ie., whenever someone is in hearing range).

So perhaps here's an illustration of disassociation. Player: "I can use the Horn of Gondor 1 x day. Our party is in trouble, we're just at the edge of Gondor's border, so I could blow the horn now and try to summon aid. However, I'll use up the daily. I won't be able to use it later today." Fictionally, however, a character in danger would very rarely hold back from using the horn and almost certaintly never for fear of 'wasting' a once per day opportunity.

The only way around this is to force the story to conform to the 1x day mechanic, such that the player never has a fictional incentive to use the horn more 1 x day, but unlike Tolkein writing Lord of the Rings, there's no guarantee of that because the story is an interactive and unpredictable one.

Another quibble is that what if the horn is sounded deep inside a cave in the wilderness vs within arrow range of a Gondor castle. There is NOT an equal probability of help arriving any time soon or at all. A "disassociated" mechanic is a Rule that puts its fingers in its ears and shouts "La, la, la!" loudly while you're trying to explain that to the Rule.

Due to the above, I think that a game like 4E (sorry to be partisan about it) would entirely remove anything like a Horn of Gondor from the game, because it can't be fairly modelled with 4E design intent. So what actually happens there is that you've realized a potentially interesting fictional construct but then barricaded it from the game, not because it's not a good idea, but because the system won't handle it as such.

As usual, it's all relative. All RPGs are disassociated by nature. However, if a game system *embraces* mechanics-first philosophy to a certain extent....


----------



## Doug McCrae

Further to the notion of the difficulty in providing a game world explanation of multiple dailies - if a character is tired why can he use one daily but not another? - it's worth noting that in 3e a barbarian could take the stunning fist feat and he would also have multiple dailies. Admittedly this is far more of a corner case than it is in 4e, where all martial characters of level 5 and up have multiple dailies.

It may be possible to provide further justification for multiple dailies with the concept of different forms of tiredness. After hours spent walking I can find it a lot harder to walk further, but not so difficult to perform mental tasks. Likewise any form of repetitive task can produce tiredness and strain which can be alleviated as soon as one changes to a different task. A change is as good as a rest as they say. So in the same way, exhaustion may be specific to a particular daily.

I concede that it's a fairly feeble justification, but it feels kind of Gygaxian to me.


----------



## tomBitonti

tomBitonti said:
			
		

> My issue is with the basic description of the power. In this example, without the flavor text, the "content" of the power is that it does extra damage, and that it is based on a melee attack with a weapon. There is no "you strike with greater force" or "greater precision" or "you cause the opponent to strain themself" or whatever. The attack simply does more damage, with not much hint of an explanation.






pemerton said:


> Fair enough. At my table, the fact that it's called "Brute Strike", and a daily, has been suggestive enough - it's the fighter giving it his/her all to try and finish off a foe. And that's how it tends to play, which reinforces the flavour.




That works for me.  But, I thought the flavor text for a power was to be taken, at best, as suggestive, but that it had no relevance to applying the power.  And, could be changed to fit ones taste.

That seems one of the big differences between 4E and prior editions: Before, say, for a spell description, the spell description was meaningful in terms of understanding the in-game effect of the spell.  In 4E, all that matters are the keywords and effects block.  At least, that is my understanding.

That means I can reflavor brutal strike to mean, "a deep penetrating lunge", say, if I wield a rapier.  The "bone-crushing" description isn't a necessary part of the power.

(Note: 3.5E had already started down this path.  Codification of spells, and placing more of a focus on combat effects, had already started.  As well, a number of 3.5E classes and feats, typically in expansion books, have unexplained abilities.  There seems to be a tendency, once an abstraction is made, to build new powers and abilities that are defined in terms of the abstraction, without looking to an underlying justification.)

Thx!

TomBitonti


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## Doug McCrae

JamesonCourage said:


> I don't know if some abilities have flavor text or not, but if they could theoretically be explored in-game by characters, I think they aren't dissociative. If they cannot be explored, however, my understanding is that they are dissociative, whether or not they're possible in the real world notwithstanding.



But can't we always come up with some sort of game world justification, however wonky and, at best, semi-plausible, in the good old D&D tradition. This would mean that no game mechanics are dissociative.

I think the term marking might be the most egregious because it's just a rules term, it doesn't reference anything in the game world. Combat challenge and divine challenge, the terms for the fighter and paladin's marking abilities are a lot more acceptable as they suggest, and the text below seems to support this, the character shouting a challenge to single combat.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pawsplay said:


> There are some areas where hit points are dissociative. For instance, it's very hard to ambush and kill a high level character in D&D. Since nobles in older editions were often level 2 to 4 fighters, assassination was a tricky business. If that's an important consideration in my game, I'll have to outlay some effort to patch the hit point rules for this situation.



Situational HP, perhaps?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/308612-how-about-situational-hit-points.html


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## pemerton

Hussar said:


> On a side note, I find it interesting that 4e is basically screwed either way it goes.



An acute observation.



Hussar said:


> I think the basic mistake being made here is the assumption that there must be one and only one explanation for every single effect and that explanation must be pre-set.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The thing is, DM's do this all the time.  Situations come up all the time and we modify existing rules to fit.  But, if that's what you're doing, then the mechanics are no longer simply associated with whatever the original association was.  Save Vs Petrification is used to jump a pit.  Why?  Because the number is just about right for a DC.  It has no association in the game whatsoever.
> 
> But, we do it all the time.



Didn't you know that, every time you thought you were playing or GMing a game, and doing that funky old school thing called "rulings not rules", you were in fact the victim of outrageously bad game design that made you _houserule everything_!

Why, just the other day I was posting in a thread about 4e kobolds' Shifty power, and I discovered that when I read the flavour text at the top of the kobold entry, and used that to interpret what a use of Shifty typically means in the gameworld, that I was HOUSERULING! - because that flavour text isn't actually formatted as part of the entry for Shifty!

I thought that 4e was worth the money I spent on it because playing it has given me some great roleplaying experiences. But now I've discovered I've actually been ripped off, because all it is is a whole lot of mechanical structure that I have to _houserule_ every time I play it. Next time, I'll just stick to my board games and CCGs, or maybe learn to play video games, because I never have to houserule them!


----------



## pemerton

Beginning of the End said:


> As the original essay stated, all mechanics both abstracted _and metagamed_ (emphasis added). The example given in the essay are players knowing that fireballs do (d6 x level) damage whereas characters have no idea what d6s are. The exact numerical representation of hit points or Strength or the DC of an Open Lock check would all be similar examples.



The examples that I gave weren't analaogous to knowing the DC of an open lock check, or d6 damage from fireballs.

To repeat them, they were: knowing that a 200' fall won't be fatal; knowing that a sword blow won't be fatal; knowing that one more blow _will_ be fatal. These are things that a player can know, that his/her PC _cannot_ know (assuming that the fantasy world resembles our real world in all the ways that the fiction presents it as doing so). This is not just about units of measurement, like DCs and d6s of damage.



JamesonCourage said:


> Like I mentioned, I think it's important to note whether or not characters can investigate the reasoning in-game. If the reasoning for the ranger "Hide in Plain Sight" can be taught (or otherwise learned), explored, or observed, it's not dissociative. If the use of Evasion while sleeping saves a rogue cannot be taught (or otherwise learned), explored, or observed, than it is dissociative.



What does it mean to "learn" or "explore" how one hides, non-magically, in plain sight? Or how one "evades" an explostion, non-magically, while asleep? I'm not persuaded that we even have a coherent notion of what that would mean.

Yes, the game rules _assert_ that these are non-magical talents that can be learned. It could also assert that heirophant druids have non-magical techniques for squaring the circle. But mere assertion doesn't create the actuality of coherence.



Yesway Jose said:


> Boromir could use it anytime it makes fictional sense, and he could theoretically do that when he wants and how often he wants. 4E wouldn't prevent Boromir from using the horn whenever he wants, but it may limit the number of times it has a consequential effect.



In the gameworld of 4e the rogue could, theoretically, do it whenever s/he wanted to also. It's just that s/he _doesn't_.

You, the player, know this won't happen. Just as you, the author/reader of LotR, know that Boromir's horn usage will be reserved for dramatic situations.

Yes, it's metagaming. That's the _point_ of the mechanic. It doesn't follow from that that it undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, which is what Justin Alexander's essay claims.



billd91 said:


> The blog post isn't opposed to dissociative mechanics in general - rather ones that aren't worth the trade-off. Is the trade-off of bringing the player out of the PC perspective every time you use a dissociative mechanic worth the results? What result is the dissociative mechanic in question attempting to achieve?



In the case of 4e combat powers, the answer to this question is pretty obvious - it's to produce combats with dramatic pacing, and as an element of that pacing dramatic participation by all the protagonists, not just the Vancian casters.

Whether or not it succeeds at that is one interesting question - experiences appear to vary wildly. Whether or not using metagame mechanics to _achieve_ this result is desirable for everyone is another interesting question - apparently some RPGers really don't like leaving a very tightly circumscribed actor stance.

These are all interesting things that the original essay could discuss, but doesn't.


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## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> I thought the flavor text for a power was to be taken, at best, as suggestive, but that it had no relevance to applying the power.  And, could be changed to fit ones taste.



This is true, but when the suggestion makes sense, at my table we tend to run with it. For Brute Strike, it nearly always makes sense.

On the other hand, for Come and Get It (which we play un-errata-ed), because the fighter in question is a polearm-using melee controller with the Deadly Draw and Polearm Momentum feats, we tend to assume that he's doing tricky things with his polearm to land his foes prone in front of him.

The bit in my rant above agreeing with Hussar, about discussing the kobold's Shifty power, really is true. That is, some poster were saying that _because the flavour text and power name are merely suggestive_, they therefore leave it mysterious what is going on in the gameworld. I find that opinion mysterious. If a GM or player is wondering what is going on in the gameworld, it seems to me natural to begin with the description and flavour that the rulebooks offer. But if they don't work, or something better is obviously available (like the polearm fighter using Come and Get It) than run with that instead.

Whereas the Alexandrian's essay calls this houseruling, I regard it as playing the game. For those who don't like metagaming, I can see why they wouldn't like it. But it has nothing to do with whether 4e is just a tactical skirmish game (which is what the Alexandrian's essay asserts).


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Yes, it's metagaming. That's the _point_ of the mechanic. It doesn't follow from that that it undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, which is what Justin Alexander's essay claims.



I think that roleplaying can be undermined by this premise:
1) the mechanic allow for a [insert mechanical limitation here]
2) if you abide by the Rule, you will not have any contrary fictional expectations or you will self-regulate your expectations to conform them to the Rule
3) therefore, there is no disassociation

Which I guess is fine, until someone somewhere expects otherwise from the narrative.

For example:
1) in the interest of public safety, the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alchohol is now prohibited
2) due to Prohibition, people will not want to drink alchohol
3) therefore, there is no disassociation

Anyone sympathetic to the temperance movement would have agreed, but we all know how that turned out for everyone else.

Substitute 'public safety' with 'game balance' (or other metagame design intent) and 'alchohol' with messy non-binary fiction-first choices, and that's how I think that "disassociated" mechanics can begin to undermine a person's expectations what roleplaying can be.

As usual, it's all relative, subject to personal subjective opinion and tolerances levels...


----------



## BryonD

Hussar said:


> On a side note, I find it interesting that 4e is basically screwed either way it goes.
> 
> One of the big criticisms of 4e was spamming attacks.  Players doing the same thing over and over and over again, combat after combat.
> 
> But now, the criticism is that 4e doesn't let you spam attacks over and over again and it should.



I don't see that as a good assessment of the complaint.

4E is criticised when the mechanics guide the action toward spamming.
4E is criticised when the mechanics guide the action against having the option to repeat an action.  ("Spamming" doesn't really fit the idea being complained about here.)

Yes, 4E gets nailed either way.  But that is a direct result of the "...when the mechanics guide the action..." part.  

It is possible to take a wrong first step and then be screwed no matter what you do from there.


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## ThirdWizard

pawsplay said:


> There are some areas where hit points are dissociative. For instance, it's very hard to ambush and kill a high level character in D&D. Since nobles in older editions were often level 2 to 4 fighters, assassination was a tricky business. If that's an important consideration in my game, I'll have to outlay some effort to patch the hit point rules for this situation.




I don't think hit points are dissociated because of this. That some people are harder to kill, no matter the circumstances, is something that can be interacted with in game. It isn't something that the PCs have no control over, and in fact it is something that the PCs will have to take into consideration. A PC knows that a _fireball_ spell can never kill them, for example, or that they can jump off that proverbial 200' cliff without dying. These are in game circumstances that can be measured, examined, and known.

For a more dissociated "hit point" mechanic, take FATE. In FATE, you have stress boxes that fill up individually and you have consequences you take to lower damage. These consequences last for varying amount of time based on the severity. A player can, at any point, choose not to take the damage that was inflicted and be "taken out." At that point, the attacker gets to choose the character's fate. In a low stakes combat, the player can say his PC was taken out before taking any consequences. In a high stakes combat, the player can choose to take full consequences before being taken out.

The reason it is dissociated is because the character isn't exercising control over his own fate. The character isn't letting himself be knocked unconscious or thrown off a bridge or whatever fate the attacker chooses. It's the player stepping forward and saying that that's enough, and the character now loses.



Mallus said:


> Hey Lost... could you explain the idea of dissociation to _me_? Your writing is clear and insightful (and partisanship-free!).
> 
> I've read the original blog post, and this thread, and I just don't get the meaningful difference between "dissociation" and what I'd label "a species of abstraction". Can you lend a hand?
> 
> Thanx!




I'm not  him, but I'll give an example and see if it makes any sense.

The reason that encounter powers and daily powers are seen as dissociated, IMHO, is that the explanation of why they work involves some kind of setup that only happens every once in a while in combat. This series of events that leaves the enemy open to the attack or however you describe it, isn't something that can be explained in full as PC action. He or she is taking advantage of an opportunity. How did the opportunity arise? The player used the power, which _made_ the opportunity arise! That's where we get the disconnect for some people. The player is stepping beyond the bounds of the PC and taking narrative control of the other combatants, the flow of battle, maybe the terrain around them, and so forth, and saying "Now I can do this" because of that narrative control.


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> A PC knows that a _fireball_ spell can never kill them, for example, or that they can jump off that proverbial 200' cliff without dying. These are in game circumstances that can be measured, examined, and known.



Personally, I think the character is very afraid of jumping off the cliff and does worry about dying and only would do it in a moment of desperation while being chased by monsters. I think only the player knows he won't die, and directing to jump off the cliff with assurances that everything will be OK.



> For a more dissociated "hit point" mechanic, take FATE. In FATE, you have stress boxes that fill up individually and you have consequences you take to lower damage. These consequences last for varying amount of time based on the severity. A player can, at any point, choose not to take the damage that was inflicted and be "taken out." At that point, the attacker gets to choose the character's fate. In a low stakes combat, the player can say his PC was taken out before taking any consequences. In a high stakes combat, the player can choose to take full consequences before being taken out.



Very interesting, I didn't know that, thanks!



> The reason it is dissociated is because the character isn't exercising control over his own fate. The character isn't letting himself be knocked unconscious or thrown off a bridge or whatever fate the attacker chooses. It's the player stepping forward and saying that that's enough, and the character now loses.



A quibble: The mechanics are disassociated from the Actor stance, but not from the Author/Director stance, and so the mechanic can still be "true" to the narrative, but the narrative is not necessarily limited by the mechanics, if that makes any sense.

I highly recommend watching a movie called Mr Nobody, which I think is a fantastic movie, as well as a fantastic illustration of how that FATE mechanism might work.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## Hussar

BryonD said:


> I don't see that as a good assessment of the complaint.
> 
> 4E is criticised when the mechanics guide the action toward spamming.
> 4E is criticised when the mechanics guide the action against having the option to repeat an action.  ("Spamming" doesn't really fit the idea being complained about here.)
> 
> Yes, 4E gets nailed either way.  But that is a direct result of the "...when the mechanics guide the action..." part.
> 
> It is possible to take a wrong first step and then be screwed no matter what you do from there.




How is, "The mechanics won't let me repeatedly try the same thing over and over and over again" not spamming an attack?  

Because, if the complaint is that you can't do something more than once, that's simply not true.  There are any number of abilities with similar effects.  Heck, my fighter pushes every time he hits a challenged opponent with a opportunity attack.  And, he pushes with other attacks as well.  In fact, he's a pushing machine.

Granted, I can't push exactly the same way every single round.  But, that's a good thing isn't it?


----------



## Hussar

All three options IMO have strengths and weaknesses.  Take our Football example from way back.  In every football game, there are bad calls.  I think we can all agree on that.  So, how do we add bad calls into our Football The Gridiron game?

Well, there's three options:

1.  The DM does it.  The DM decides when there is a bad call.
2.  The dice do it.  Random tables or mechanics goverened by some sort of random number generator decide when a bad call occurs.
3.  The Players do it.  The Players decide when there is a bad call.

Now, all three options have strengths and weaknesses.

1.  The DM does it.  Well, the strength here lies in the strength of the DM.  A good DM will be able to have bad calls when it best enhances game play.  The downside here is that it places a LOT of responsibility in the hands of the DM and if he screws up, it's really going to hurt the game.

2.  The Dice do it.  Now we have a truly objective mechanic.  There is no "right" time for the bad call, it just happens when it happens.  Sometimes that's going to lead to great results, sometimes it's going to be meaningless and sometimes it's going to be outright wonky, depending on how the dice gods are feeling today.

3.  The Players do it.  This would be the 4e approach generally.  The players have a limited resource (X number of bad calls per period of time - could be quarter, could be game, whatever) and they have to manage that resource.  On the plus side, it puts the players in the drivers seat.  Instead of simply reacting to things beyond their control, they have direct input to how the game plays out.  On the downside, not everyone WANTS this level of player control.

Now, how does this relate to disassociated mechanics?  Well, take the Great Catch daily power.  The player can choose to make his Great Catch now or later.  He's only got one.  It might win the game or it might be meaningless as the quarterback coughs up the ball on the next play.  Is there an in game justification for why they only get one Great Catch per game?  Well, sorta.  How many Great Catches do you really get in a single game? 

Typically, you can usually point to one great catch in a game, something that makes the replays on Sports Center that night.  You generally don't get more than one.  Is it really that unrealistic to allow the players to dictate one Great Catch per game?  For some people it is.  It totally breaks suspension of disbelief since the player is deciding when that Great Catch happens.  

I can get that.  I understand.  It's certainly a pretty big change from earlier editions where everything was either a Type 1 or Type 2 determined event (either DM dictated or Randomly determined).  I'm not sure, though, that adding Type 3 (Player Dictated) is such a bad thing.  After all, there are still loads and loads of Type 1 and Type 2 events going on in 4e.  

This is just adding stuff, not necessarily taking away.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> ...It totally breaks suspension of disbelief since the player is deciding when that Great Catch happens.
> 
> I can get that. I understand. It's certainly a pretty big change from earlier editions where everything was either a Type 1 or Type 2 determined event (either DM dictated or Randomly determined). I'm not sure, though, that adding Type 3 (Player Dictated) is such a bad thing. After all, there are still loads and loads of Type 1 and Type 2 events going on in 4e.
> 
> This is just adding stuff, not necessarily taking away.



If the ultimate goal is fun and suspension of disbelief, I suppose I don't care which Type is used, as long as the goal is achieved. I think everything in moderation.

Too much of Type 2 and it's not fun, just lots of die rolling.

Too much of Type 1 and you're entirely dependant on the DM ("the Ewoks kill you with a slingshot, sorry, you're all dead!")

Too much of Type 3 and you're dependant on any one player affecting the game for everyone else ("I don't care if you guys are trying to be realistic about it, I'm going to have my PC jump off the cliff just for fun because I know he has enough hp") and/or the players have too much power relative to the narrative ("so my halfling knocks the Titan prone") because you can have "bad" players just as much as "bad" DMs.

I'm not sure if Type is the core question, if the goal is fun and suspension of disbelief. I think it's about the system that DMs and players are using, and not the amount of power sharing between them, but I'm really not sure.


----------



## billd91

Hussar said:


> On a side note, I find it interesting that 4e is basically screwed either way it goes.
> 
> One of the big criticisms of 4e was spamming attacks.  Players doing the same thing over and over and over again, combat after combat.
> 
> But now, the criticism is that 4e doesn't let you spam attacks over and over again and it should.
> 
> Which is it?  Is it better to allow characters to pick one or two tactics (core tripper for example) and do the same thing over and over and over again, or is it better to have mechanics in place that will let you trip something, but, not all the time, thus forcing characters to choose other tactics as the combat unfolds?




I think you have to examine why you see those criticisms and then ask why 4e receives them, and compare to previous editions.

Previous editions got criticized about spamming attacks because critics thought there wasn't much variety other than standing toe to toe and slugging it out, spamming the best single attack (or attack as modified by a feat or maneuver like trip). 4e is on the receiving end of spamming, as I've seen the critique, because combat grinds longer and once you've burned through your encounter powers and dailies you want to fire off, you're back to spamming your best at-will through a buttload of monster hit points. And I think that criticism takes on a particular tone because the claim during design was that they didn't *want* there to be spamming and the initial buzz was that it was 'fixed'. Since then, solo hit points have been reduced somewhat, but they're still high and some players probably still feel the grind.

The criticism about not being able to spam in 4e is more directed at artificial-looking restrictions on the number of times a particular power can be used and how that really fits in with the PC perspective. In the case of encounter martial powers, I can totally see why they have a once/encounter use. They're akin to a surprise move that, once used, opponents can be wary of. I can accept that, though I don't really think they were sold that way, or at least I never felt they communicated it that way. And that may be a limit with some of the way the rules have been presented. It's the dailies that this criticism, I think, is mainly directed at. And I generally agree with it. I'd prefer a bit more choice about how dailies are designed and triggered to offer up more narrative choices to the player... including using one of the dailies more than once, even if at the expense of not using a different daily at all.

With these in mind, I really don't see it as 4e being screwed coming or going. The roots of the criticisms are, I think, sufficiently different. Nuance is important.


----------



## Hussar

Yesway Jose said:


> If the ultimate goal is fun and suspension of disbelief, I suppose I don't care which Type is used, as long as the goal is achieved. I think everything in moderation.
> 
> Too much of Type 2 and it's not fun, just lots of die rolling.
> 
> Too much of Type 1 and you're entirely dependant on the DM ("the Ewoks kill you with a slingshot, sorry, you're all dead!")
> 
> Too much of Type 3 and you're dependant on any one player affecting the game for everyone else ("I don't care if you guys are trying to be realistic about it, I'm going to have my PC jump off the cliff just for fun because I know he has enough hp") and/or the players have too much power relative to the narrative ("so my halfling knocks the Titan prone") because you can have "bad" players just as much as "bad" DMs.
> 
> I'm not sure if Type is the core question, if the goal is fun and suspension of disbelief. I think it's about the system that DMs and players are using, and not the amount of power sharing between them, but I'm really not sure.




Yeah, I can pretty much agree with all of that.  

Thing is, people are trying to say that adding Type 3 mechanics suddenly makes the game less of a role playing game and more of a simple board game.  As if having the DM in the privileged position is necessary for a game to be a "true" RPG.

There's all sorts of games out there that use Type 3 mechanics that are all perfectly well suited to being called RPG's.  And it's not like these are earth shatteringly new to begin with.  The old 007 game from way back when had hero points (can't remember what they were called) where you could add or subtract things from a scene to make it more "Bondesque".  Need trash cans to pull over to slow down the pursuing thugs?  Spend a hero point and poof, there are now trash cans in the alleyway.

To me, there is no difference between that and saying that the rogue can only do something once per day.  It's a resource.  It's not MEANT to define the world.  Not every mechanic in the game is required to define the game world.  It's perfectly fine to have mechanics that have no game world explanation.

It's only when people try to force mechanics that obviously are not meant to have game world explanations into being world defining that problems occur.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> IOW, there is nothing wrong, or illogical, about saying "X exists, but I don't find it impedes my enjoyment of Y". OTOH, there is something irrational about saying "Because it doesn't impede my enjoyment of Y, X does not exist."




Agreed. There is also, however, something illogical about saying, "X exists and impedes my enjoyment of the game, therefore, when I characterize X, I have it exactly right." 

There is also nothing illogical about the reply being "Because it doesn't impede my enjoyment of Y, I have reason to suspect you are a bit off on X, because X the way you describe it would impede my enjoyment." And then it is highly illogical for the original guy to start claiming that "X does not exist" is said, when the reply was actually "X is not exactly of the nature you have claimed."

From my perspective, the essay is of this nature. It is as if the author was at a party and admitted he wasn't wild about your dip recipe, and then theorized it was how you mixed things, or some secret ingredient, or maybe what you served with it. And in the course of the conversation, it game out that he liked neither celery nor dill. So you think to yourself, "Ah ha, that's it. It's got celery and dill. Of course he doesn't like it." But he isn't buying that reason at all, and wants to insist that your celery and dill are part of some kind of special combination that mucks it all up for him. 

And then he goes and writes blog entries saying why your dip is a Sign of the Beast, and has moved beyond _what dip is allowed to do, _less the elder gods be upon us. And then you get evangelist that go out and spread this message to the benighted peasants, every time they dare contemplate said dip.

I remember a guy on another board who came around every few months or so, for many years running, and would froth at the mouth at the very existence of hit points--usually right in the middle of some otherwise innocuous D&D conversation. But even he was a one-man shop, and infrequent. 

I mean, people have been *heavily* bashing D&D (any version) for years because they don't like abstractions, or certain abstractions, or abstractions used in certain parts of the ruleset, or because the abstraction covered enough ground that they got confused about what it was trying to do. And then I doubt it has quite the same pedigree, but some people get fairly exercised about metagaming, at different places and different times.  And certainly some people have strong simulation preferences.  and some people don't like players exercising narrative control.

So if a ruleset mixes these heavily, I can see why it could easily move off the old enjoyment scale for more than a few people. It's the scale and scope of the reaction that leaves me nonplussed. Well, that and the (I think) deliberate choice of "disassociation" as the term, so as to invoke Dissociative disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. That said, I really appreciate the thoughtful conversation in this topic, for which I'm sure no such "brain damage" slur is even considered, much less intended. But if you want to know why people feel like their replies have been reasonably measured from the first spread of the idea, consider how we were provoked.


----------



## MrGrenadine

Hussar said:


> How is, "The mechanics won't let me repeatedly try the same thing over and over and over again" not spamming an attack?
> 
> Because, if the complaint is that you can't do something more than once, that's simply not true.  There are any number of abilities with similar effects.  Heck, my fighter pushes every time he hits a challenged opponent with a opportunity attack.  And, he pushes with other attacks as well.  In fact, he's a pushing machine.
> 
> Granted, I can't push exactly the same way every single round.  But, that's a good thing isn't it?




Let's examine a less extreme example.  Surely you don't think a character using the same maneuver on the first and last rounds of a 15 round combat is spamming an attack, right?  So, let's assume we're talking about using an option somewhere between "once a day" and "spamming it every round"--somewhere in the realm of "a couple times a combat, as I see fit".  

Thats where the crux of the disagreement lies, I think.

And regarding your fighter's push abilities--that limit imposed on your in-game choices is only a good thing (to me) if _you_ choose that limit because of story and character reasons--for example, if in-game your character sees the reduced benefit of continuing the same line of attack, and chooses a different tactic in an intelligent, organic way.

To me, its not such a good thing when the limit is imposed because of a rule that has no relationship to the in-game world, (because you had one use of that power on your character sheet, for instance).  

I'll take story/character limits over artificial limits imposed on the narrative every time.  I much prefer games of "yes, and..." that dissuade repetition and attempts at ridiculously difficult moves with penalties.  Up thread, I described how I would allow repeated uses of E and D powers, but with successive penalties to each use, but this philosophy can be applied to anything the characters think up.  "Can I try to leap that chasm, roll into that archer, and throw my sword at the wizard all in one movement?"  "Yes, but thats going to be almost impossible--take -2 to the roll for the leap, -5 to the attack on the archer, and -10 to the sword attack on the wizard."

Now, thats not the game everyone wants to play, and I get that.  And--full disclosure--I'm having a great time playing in a 4e campaign right now, so I'm not anti a pure gamist system, I think 4e rules be given story and character-based constructs to "make sense" in what is an admittedly made-up world, and I also have to live with artificial limits of some kind in every edition of D&D--rage powers in Pathfinder that can only be used 1/rage, as an example.

But, if I could have my druthers, (are there any druthers available today?), I prefer limitless options over a list of things I can do, and story and character based limitations on those options over "no, you can only do that thing once a day".


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## Yesway Jose

billd91 said:


> I'd prefer a bit more choice about how dailies are designed and triggered to offer up more narrative choices to the player... including using one of the dailies more than once, even if at the expense of not using a different daily at all.



I was wondering how it would play out if each player receives a hand of cards (doesn't have to actual playing cards, but could be) representing all the things the PC can do at full energy. Some cards have prerequisites (ie use only on the 1st round) which are explicitly based on fiction (ie surprise attack). Some cards have synergies with others, some can be reused and/or recharged for fictional reasons, others are discarded until the end of the encounter or when you get all your hit points back. Some cards can be chained and the chains are also based on fiction -- so you could use your a fist power (at-will) or a kick power (at will) or you can combine a jump + fist or jump + kick (encounter-like power) or you can combine a jump + fist + kick (daily-like power).

Everytime you play one of these abilities/powers/card, you understand what your PC is doing. And the frequency that you use up the cards tends to work about the same as 1/encounter or 1/day, but it doesn't have to be, so it doesn't feel artificial or arbitrary.

I'm sure there are games like that already out there. I think D&D might do well to at least *try* the concept of power frequencies that aren't hardcoded with a number, but usually work out to that number in actual gameplay due to player choice and fiction-informed probabilities that are associated to the mechanic.


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## TwoSix

ThirdWizard said:


> The reason that encounter powers and daily powers are seen as dissociated, IMHO, is that the explanation of why they work involves some kind of setup that only happens every once in a while in combat. This series of events that leaves the enemy open to the attack or however you describe it, isn't something that can be explained in full as PC action. He or she is taking advantage of an opportunity. How did the opportunity arise? The player used the power, which _made_ the opportunity arise! That's where we get the disconnect for some people. The player is stepping beyond the bounds of the PC and taking narrative control of the other combatants, the flow of battle, maybe the terrain around them, and so forth, and saying "Now I can do this" because of that narrative control.




Exactly.  Dissociation occurs whenever any game decision has to be made where the decision couldn't reasonably be made by the knowledge that would logically be available to the character.

A guy with a sword and shield is facing three orcs.  He can make the decision to attack cautiously. He could decide to throw caution to the wind and take a wild swing at the lead orc.  He could notice a weakness in the orc's armor when the orc raises his axe to swing and strike home.  He might adopt the stance of the rapid mongoose, taught by his old sergeant, to keep them away with quick slashes.  He might get lucky and catch the orc across the carotid, and the orc collapses.  He might run if they appear too dangerous.  

I think 4e, with its stances and triggers and auras, best models the complexity of action within combat.  But any power that narrates probability within the game world, or that causes an effect that doesn't originate from the character, isn't a power that makes sense as a choice within the character's frame of reference, and is therefore dissociative.

I'm not arguing that dissociative is _bad_.  Everyone has a different priority as to what game layer is most important to them (character level, game world(plot) level, and mechanical level).  You can't use game mechanics to model genre conventions, for example, without a level of dissociation.  As soon as your intent becomes the deriving of an outcome, as opposed to modeling a process from which the outcome is probabilistically determined, you've moved into dissociation. 

For a lot of players, decision making at the character level is the heart of role-playing.  Choosing to cast "Evard's Black Tentacles" because your character is a necromancer is roleplaying.  Choosing the same spell because it's one of the strongest 4th level spells, or because it's my job to lock down enemies, is a decision made on a different game layer, and therefore "not-roleplaying"  (i.e. "roll-playing").  The fact that is can be justified in-character is irrelevant.  Intent matters.  

I would argue that D&D roleplaying (as opposed to roleplaying in general), at its heart, is about the tension between fidelity to the character layer while maintaining an understanding and appreciation of the mechanical layer.  It's why skill points matter to a lot of players.  You can't demonstrate faithfulness to the character layer without making concessions to the mechanics layer.  If you don't make a sacrifice of character effectiveness (by assigning skill points to a background skill), you haven't shown that your decision-making is driven by the primacy of the character.

(Note:  I'm not arguing this is the right way to play, or the one true way to play, or even that this is my way of playing.  But I believe, from discussions with other players, that many players feel this way.)


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## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> That works for me. But, I thought the flavor text for a power was to be taken, at best, as suggestive, but that it had no relevance to applying the power. And, could be changed to fit ones taste.
> 
> That seems one of the big differences between 4E and prior editions: Before, say, for a spell description, the spell description was meaningful in terms of understanding the in-game effect of the spell. In 4E, all that matters are the keywords and effects block. At least, that is my understanding.
> 
> That means I can reflavor brutal strike to mean, "a deep penetrating lunge", say, if I wield a rapier. The "bone-crushing" description isn't a necessary part of the power.




Does it help, for anyone bothered by this, if the associations are made earlier and/or are locked in once made?  

That is, if your rapier-wielding fighter flavors the brutal strike that way, then that is the way it stays.  Perhaps you even flavored it that way before it first came up.  Another fighter, might flavor it a different way, but whatever he picks, stays the same for him.  Presumably, if this matters to you on this level, then your guy can't just pick up, say, a great axe, and use the power.  You can probably still use it for a spear or other thrusting polearm, or any thrusting sword or dagger.  

So, given the plethora of houserules objection ... (I'm not sure flavoring effects should count as "houserules," but whatever it is, it is something to keep track of) ... assume the written rules include a variant of this flavor as the default.  You can then reskin this with different flavor if you want (and this is made explicit).  

How is that different than, say, reskinning 3E magic missile as purple darts that you unerringly throw, but keeping the mechanics?


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## Crazy Jerome

TwoSix said:


> ...But any power that narrates probability within the game world, or that causes an effect that doesn't originate from the character, isn't a power that makes sense as a choice within the character's frame of reference, and is therefore dissociative.
> 
> ...As soon as your intent becomes the deriving of an outcome, as opposed to modeling a process from which the outcome is probabilistically determined, you've moved into dissociation.




Those are really strong claims!  Especially the latter.  I'd rather see some justification for them, before considering a reply.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> How is that different than, say, reskinning 3E magic missile as purple darts that you unerringly throw, but keeping the mechanics?



I don't see any mechanical difference between force magic missiles and purple darts magic missiles, if the fictional difference is superficial in consequence. If magic missiles was refluffed as fire bolts or flying toads or purple darts, then I'd start questioning if the original mechanics still apply or if new mechanics would apply. "Can the fire bolts go through a waterfall? Don't flying toads suck? Can I add a purple mark to the target hit by purple darts?" All I can say is, some fiction should matter. Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.


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## Crazy Jerome

MrGrenadine said:


> But, if I could have my druthers, (are there any druthers available today?), I prefer limitless options over a list of things I can do, and story and character based limitations on those options over "no, you can only do that thing once a day".




As far as I'm concerned, the only really good reason for daily powers of any kind is ease of understanding and handling time--i.e. ease of play.  That is not a small reason, but I think it is ultimately the only good one.  (As in, the things you do for balance/flavor/archetypes/etc. that might cause you to use daily powers could be done "better" some other way on those grounds, but this might compromise your ease of play in ways you weren't willing to cede.)


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.




OK, but the thrust of my question was, *when* must the fiction have consequences?  And if you change it, when is the last moment that you are allowed to do so?


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> OK, but the thrust of my question was, *when* must the fiction have consequences? And if you change it, when is the last moment that you are allowed to do so?



It's difficult to answer in a generic sense. I'm not sure why you're asking "when" instead of "why" or "what"? I guess I just don't understand the question, sorry!


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## Raven Crowking

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## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> If a mechanic is dissociative when it dissociates the choices of the player from those of the avatar, then choices that arise from the player that have no relationship to the knowledge or possible choices of the avatar are, by definition, dissociative.




But he didn't stop there, by my reading.  I guess one can quibble on the first claim.  But the second one is saying that *all* outcome-based results, even *simulations,* are "disassociative", merely by virtue of being outcome-based instead of process-based.  Full stop.  

According to that definition, I'm fairly certain the siege rules in Rules Cyclopedia would be "disassociative".  Thus my puzzlement.


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## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> I am also not at all certain that the "Rule 0 Fallacy" is really a fallacy. It seems to me that the ability to make judgements without having to look up specific rules is what allows, literally, anything the participants imagine to occur in a role-playing game. This is a core strength of games, and the "Rule 0 Fallacy" would tend to claim otherwise.
> 
> But I do think that there is a fundamental difference in play between having to "Rule 0" corner cases and specific exceptions, and having to "Rule 0" regular occurances.




Also agree.  I think the "Rule 0" thing is a sometimes useful rule of thumb, but is not rigorous enough to qualify as a "fallacy".  So there is definitely as scope and frequency aspect to it before it kicks in.

That said, I disagree with your presumed intent that flavoring effect via narrative control is automatically exercising Rule 0.  That is, I think there is some wiggle room between, "We make things up as we go along, which we consider central to roleplaying," and "Rule 0".

And I say this as a person that often values consistency quite a lot. Emerson's version of the famous quote was a deliberate inversion of Pope's earlier version:  "Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  Given his targets, Pope had good reason for saying it that way.


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## ThirdWizard

Crazy Jerome said:


> But he didn't stop there, by my reading.  I guess one can quibble on the first claim.  But the second one is saying that *all* outcome-based results, even *simulations,* are "disassociative", merely by virtue of being outcome-based instead of process-based.  Full stop.
> 
> According to that definition, I'm fairly certain the siege rules in Rules Cyclopedia would be "disassociative".  Thus my puzzlement.




I'm not TwoSix either, but I think we have the same idea going about dissociated mechanics.

I think the second statement is just a clarification on the first statement. 

The two, taken together, is stating that that the Action doesn't bring about the Result through cause and effect as seen in the game world. The Action directly and mechanically brings out the Effect, with no character-initiated apparent cause necessarily occurring in the game world. That, I believe, and correct me if I am wrong, is what he means by using the word "deriving."


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> It's difficult to answer in a generic sense. I'm not sure why you're asking "when" instead of "why" or "what"? I guess I just don't understand the question, sorry!




As I understand it, at least part of the objection to "lack of association," is that it is jarring for the player to make the association at the moment.  Well, there are two parts to that--who/how it is made, and when it gets made.  Presumably, it is acceptable, then, for the game author to make the association when he writes the game, and thus by the time the player gets ahold of the "thing", it is easily associated from whatever text the author provides to explain it.

So I want to know the limits, especially of the "when" part, for something to qualify.  If a game has fill in the blank spots for the associations, for example, and gives you guildelines on how to fill them in, which you do as a group before play starts, is that acceptable strictly from a "disassociated" perspective?  (There is work to do of course, and many would not find that part acceptable.)  

Some people, notably RC and Pawsplay, are being careful and rigorous in their claims.  Others, not quite so much.  If you take the sum of all the claims made thus far, by everyone saying what is "disassociated", then a lot of time-honored techniques (well before 4E was even a gleam in someone's eye) are lumped in that bucked.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## pawsplay

Doug McCrae said:


> Quite a  few of the class powers in 3e simply state what the power does without giving an explanation of what is going on in the game world, of how the power is accomplished. It's particularly noticeable with the extraordinary abilities, which, being supernatural* but not magical would seem to require more explanation. Examples include: the barbarian's fast movement; the druid's animal companion, woodland stride, trackless step, venom immunity and timeless body; the monk's timeless body and tongue of the sun and moon; the ranger's woodland stride and hide in plain sight; the paladin's divine health; the rogue's special ability opportunist. This would seem to lay them open to the same objections The Alexandrian levels at the _besieged foe_ power, of being open to multiple interpretations.




I don't really follow. Barbarians are non-magically fast. Druids have an animal compaion that loyally follows them around. "Woodland strike" is... striding in woodlands. Trackless steps means you don't leave tracks. Rogues make attacks ... opportunistically. The rogue one is a little less clear, but they attack when someone else distracts their opponent. In every case, it is pretty clear what the character is doing.


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## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> When a GM determines what happens behind the scenes, this would, in fact, be disassociative, even if the GM'd goal was to simulate the course of events s/he feels most likely to happen. The GM steps "out of" the NPC avatars and determines likely events from a remove.




Thank you. That whole reply was very helpful.  Here is where my disagreement lies, as an empirical matter, and has nothing whatsoever to do with disassociation being good or bad.

My experience, and I have discussed this with people at our current table, and observed it from many others, is that outcome-based methods are not disassociated in practice for us, but in fact *highly associated* with the fiction.  Often, they are even more so than competing process-based methods.  

For example, one of the ladies in our group who isn't much up on mechanics, and whose main focus is nearly always characterization.  She wants to take the flavor of what her character is, act on that according to the scene, and let someone else help her with the mechanics. She barely considers the mechanics at all.  It wouldn't bother her is someone else rolled her dice for her.  

She seldom played warrior types in 3E (or Fantasy Hero).  Too many mechanical decisions to be made to make the process come out with a result she can predict, and too annoying and fiddly for other people to help her with it (for her and them).  She was particularly annoyed by not being able to keep foes off her friends.  Give her the 4E fighter, and she is all over that.  She plays the fiction as she and we imagine the scene, and there is usually an option somewhere on the sheet that someone can tell her to use to get that likely outcome mechanically.

I don't think the Alexandrian understands that some people are not process driven.


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## tomBitonti

Crazy Jerome said:


> Does it help, for anyone bothered by this, if the associations are made earlier and/or are locked in once made?
> 
> That is, if your rapier-wielding fighter flavors the brutal strike that way, then that is the way it stays.  Perhaps you even flavored it that way before it first came up.  Another fighter, might flavor it a different way, but whatever he picks, stays the same for him.  Presumably, if this matters to you on this level, then your guy can't just pick up, say, a great axe, and use the power.  You can probably still use it for a spear or other thrusting polearm, or any thrusting sword or dagger.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> How is that different than, say, reskinning 3E magic missile as purple darts that you unerringly throw, but keeping the mechanics?




I'm finding that I'm most accepting of the "brutal" part of the strike.  I can apply "brutal" to many weapons, and it applies differently in each case, although, the end result, expressed as hit point loss, turns out to be the same.

A part of the difficulty is in the result: How is the result different than an improved critical (to use 3E vernacular)?  As an example, in the local game which I regularly attend, we use exploding criticals: On a critical confirmation, if you roll a 20, you keep rolling, as long as you keep getting a 20.  Each additional 20 increases the multiplier by one.

That gives a result which is similar to Brutal Surge, with a difference that the player does not control when the result happens.  (This result tends to happen less often than Brutal Surge, but I take that as a small difference.)

That distills the difference to one of player control: Does the player control when an exceptional result occurs, or does chance?  And, that difference is what matters to many: The difference grates at some folks, and is fine to others.

That is, even if one provides an explanation (e.g., an extra large and powerful attack, or, a blow on a vital point), the issue of control remains.  I think those two issues (whether the power is explained vs. whether the option to apply the power is at the players direction) should be separated, as they contribute independently.

I'd like to add, while the focus has been on 4E, that detracts from the question of whether disassociation is a useful concept.  There are certainly many abilities in 3E which are disassociative.  I find that Chill Touch is explained "well enough" to meet my satisfaction.  On the other hand, Arrow Mind (from Spell Compendium, which means that attacks with a bow do not provoke attacks-of-opportunity, and, allows a bow to threaten adjacent squares), is to me very terribly disassociative.  I see that as the result of Arrow Mind being defined, foremost, in terms of game abstractions, and not as the result of an intermediate effect which is then interpreted using the standard game rules.  Circular initiative and attacks-of-opportunity also have problems, mostly which we "get over" and accept as necessary for playability.

As far as reskinning magic missile, there are feats (or perhaps simply class options) for creating "signature" spells: Providing a spell with a unique appearance.  That is important for one who is trying to determine what spell is being cast, and may affect the spellcraft DC to identify the spell, but the underlying effect is unchanged: Magic missile remains a missile of force, which must target a creature, which cannot miss, and which interacts in particular ways with incorporeal or ethereal creatures.

For other spells, I don't know.  Reskinning lightning bolt as a stream of purple wasps, without using Energy Substitution, doesn't work for me.  But if a player wanted to have their lightning bolt look more like a fast stream of small balls of electricity (say, like a very fast roman candle), say with lots of sparklies along the way, I'd allow it.  A problem is that the effect is a bolt, which limits the details of the description.

I'm having to think now about where I stand on the player control question.  In a game like the (new edition) Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, the idea of fate points works for me.  But, the system as a whole has features which resonate with the idea of fate points.  (I don't remember the details, but players have pools which are used for various purposes, which seem like fate points on a smaller scale.)  Also, the idea of rolling initiative in a common pool, with the individual players choosing which player uses each particular initiative seems to fit pretty well along these lines.

On the other hand, daily and encounter powers, as introduced by 4E, I find rather jarring.  I'm feeling a dissonance between critical hits (which occur at random) and some power effects.

Thx!

TomBitonti


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Some people, notably RC and Pawsplay, are being careful and rigorous in their claims. Others, not quite so much. If you take the sum of all the claims made thus far, by everyone saying what is "disassociated", then a lot of time-honored techniques (well before 4E was even a gleam in someone's eye) are lumped in that bucked.



Yes, I think that, yes, technically, a lot of time-honored techniques are lumped in that bucket. I think it's been acknowledged repeatedly that every game has some level of dissassocation. On page 9, I hypothesized that an example of maximum association is playing a match of rock-paper-scissors to adjucate which character wins at a fictional/in-game match of rock-paper-scissors. I think that it's been acknowledged that disassocation is not a judgement value per se, and some amount is inherent to any RPG and every mechanic. I think that a rigorous definition is, well, mental masturbation at this point, but it's fun, I guess.


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## Crazy Jerome

[MENTION=13107]tomBitonti[/MENTION], thanks, very well said.  I guess I can't XP you twice in the same topic.


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## tomBitonti

*The Dip of the Elder Gods*

Before I forget ...



Crazy Jerome said:


> And then he goes and writes blog entries saying why your dip is a Sign of the Beast, and has moved beyond _what dip is allowed to do, _less the elder gods be upon us. And then you get evangelist that go out and spread this message to the benighted peasants, every time they dare contemplate said dip.




Had me laughing out loud.

Coolest quote that I've seen in a while.

Tom Bitonti


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## TwoSix

Crazy Jerome said:


> Those are really strong claims!  Especially the latter.  I'd rather see some justification for them, before considering a reply.




I worded that a little strongly.  Not every result-driven method is dissociative.  Only those which are inherent to a single character.  Controlling an army or a siege engine division is more difficult to be dissociative, since there was never any association of that entity with the character layer.     

Also, I would argue that any simulation that is outcome-based isn't really a simulation at all, but rather a method of world creation and modeling.  

Take an orc lair.  There might be rules that every orc lair has 2d4 males, 1d4 females, and 1d4+1 orc children.  (After all, how can we simulate alignment without orc babies?  )   Is that a simulation?  No.  All it does is present a plot point in a manner that appears more organic than it would if every orc lair has 5 men, 3 women, and 4 babies.   The input parameters are immaterial, and thus no process is being simulated.  If the output doesn't change based on the input, you're not simulating anything, because everything that happens in the real world is part of a process.   Without rules of process, there is no simulation.

It's also why I think simulation is a terrible word for whatever it is the traditionalists are trying to get out of D&D.


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## Raven Crowking

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## Patryn of Elvenshae

pawsplay said:


> Your example is made of straw. Someone down to their last point is not as spry as when they woke up this morning.




As evidenced by the penalties they take to attack and damage rolls, movement speed, Jump / Acrobatics checks, and AC.

Right?


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## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> I am begining to suspect that you didn't actually *read* the essay




It had been awhile, though I went over it very carefully several times when it was first written. So just for you, I went back an reread it. Actually, I concentrated on the nuts and bolts, and the specific parts that you are calling out.

After as much of this reread as I could stand, my conclusion is that my memory has been more generous to the author's case and his manner than were warranted by an objective reading.



> Obviously, in the essay, "dissociated mechanics" mean "mechanics that are dissociate *one particular thing* from _*another particular thing*_". That they may be associated with _*something else*_ should be obvious. In this case, the particular things being dissociated are the player decision from the avatar's POV.




No. That is the point. It is not "something else". It is the particular thing. This is why there is "roleplaying" and "interaction with the fiction" in a way that is not getting through. People do not associate in the same ways--not even for player decisions to avatar's POV. 

I think you are edging into one objection to my last post, though, that has some real merit. It is not the problem that the author doesn't understand that not all people are process driven and that I do (though I think that happen to also be true). Rather, it is neither he, nor I, nor apparently a whole bunch of other people fully understand the range of how association works. I'm simply more aware of my limits in this matter than he is.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## Crazy Jerome

Well, it isn't the first time we had to agree to disagree, and probably won't be the last, either. Usually, we can get to understanding but disagreeing, but no one promised that would always be the case.


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## Yesway Jose

Time for a thought experiment?

At your next game session, a mind-reading neutral observer sits quietly in a very tall chair at the very corner of the room with a pen and pad of paper. (You may politely offer a drink, but otherwise are not permitted to interact with him/her, as to not introduce any bias into the experiment).

The observer assigns 1 point any time one of the following occurs:

- a player invokes a game mechanic as a direct result of a perceived fiction (ie., enemy is standing on a rug, so I'd like to use a Str check to pull the rug out from under him)

- a player refrains from using a game mechanic, despite the mechanic being legitimate or even optimal, because the imagined effect is perceived as lacking plausibility (ie., a zombie knocking a hydra prone)


In order to average out all the variances (such as subjective perceptions and tolerances for associating mechanics to fiction, _per_ individual *and* _per_ game mechanic), this experiment would theoretically be repeated across thousands of gaming groups and sessions.

The goal of this thought experiment will be to strip away all the rationalizations and observe how games are actually being played out in practice.

Would anyone hazard an hypothesis: if games like checkers and Monopoly will score zero points, and pure story-telling games will score maximum points, then a RPG system or edition that scores higher than another would mean....?


----------



## billd91

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> As evidenced by the penalties they take to attack and damage rolls, movement speed, Jump / Acrobatics checks, and AC.
> 
> Right?




As evidenced by their lack of ability to avoid that death blow as well as they could when they were fresher. And that works well enough for me. There's all sorts of conflicting evidence about whether a person really enters a death spiral due to injury, particularly in a single fight where adrenaline may hide all ills. Implementing one in the rules may actually be anti-simulative.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Would anyone hazard an hypothesis: if games like checkers and Monopoly will score zero points, and pure story-telling games will score maximum points, then a RPG system or edition that scores higher than another would mean....?




I'll hazard a different one.  There will be shown a high causality between a given person and points.  People that score high will tend to always score high, and vice versa.  There will also be a weaker but noticable correlation with systems.  Some of this will be shown to be preferences at work--people gravitating to something that suits their methods.

Further testing, where the same individuals are retested with many different systems, will show that the correlation is definitely there (across the study), but subject to odd spikes in subsets of people.  That is, there is no smooth system continuum, but a wave function.


----------



## Patryn of Elvenshae

JamesonCourage said:


> An ankheg can only spit acid once every 6 hours. Why? "30-ft. line, once every 6 hours; damage 4d4 acid, Reflex DC 14 half. One such attack depletes the ankheg’s acid supply for 6 hours. It cannot spit acid or deal acid damage during this time. The save DC is Constitution-based." The ankheg has an in-game reason that people can learn, explore, observe.




But if this is case, why can't the ankheg breathe a 15' foot line after 3 hours?


----------



## tomBitonti

*An (unfair) example?*

I thought I'd spend a moment reviewing the foremost example from The Alexandrian:



			
				TheAlexandrian said:
			
		

> Trick Strike (Rogue Attack 1)
> Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.
> Daily - Martial, Weapon
> Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
> Target: One creature
> Attack: +8 vs. AC
> Hit: 3d4 + 4 damage, and you can slide the target 1 square
> Effect: Until the end of the encounter, each time you hit the target you can slide it 1 square




I'm thinking that the analysis slides off the mark: The elephant in the room here is the actual effect, not that it is a daily power.

You can make a separate analysis of whether you can accept daily or encounter powers, and make a decision about what powers "work" as either a daily or as an encounter.

I find that the power is defined too strongly in terms of abstracted game mechanics.  That is, the trigger (an attack) and the result (a slide) are too game centric.  To emphasize the point:



			
				Me said:
			
		

> Knight's Coup (Chess Master/Rogue Attack 1)
> 
> Through a series of feints and lures, you maneuver your foe right where you want him.*With your chess master verve, you make him tumble and stagger across the battlefield in unpredictable ways.*
> 
> Daily - Martial, Weapon
> Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
> Target: One creature
> Attack: +8 vs. AC
> Hit: 3d4 + 4 damage, and you can slide the target *3 squares*
> 
> Effect: Until the end of the encounter, each time you hit the target *you can slide it two squares in a direct line, then one square in a perpendicular direction.*




While you may find the initial effect acceptable, what do you think about this updated effect?  There is a matter of degree here, with some folks finding the core example (Trick Strike) as funny as (Knight's Coup), while others are fine with both.

Note the difference between the similar but limited bull rush from 3E: Bull rush can be used "at will" but has a lesser effect, and has a more finely tuned effect chance (opposed strength, instead of an attack roll).  I'm not aware of a use of feint that allows you to cause an opponent to move.

I think the problem here is really that one can reject the idea that a rogue's attack could produce this effect.  That's what happens for me.  I grok bull rush (a person pushing another back), but not this effect.

Tom Bitonti


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway, your tack reminded me of a similarly off-beat slant I had on the "hit point versus assassination attempt" issue that was raised much earlier in the topic:

To preserve the main value of hit points (i.e. pacing and plot protection due to various elements presumed of the character such as toughness, luck, etc.), while allowing for the single "knife to the throat" kind of resolution, would it make sense to have hit point depleting abilities that involve stalking or otherwise setting up the target?  And if so, can you provide these abilities in ways that are going to satisfy various peoples' requirements for relation to the fiction?

In 4E terms, I suppose this would be a rogue power (or similar) that produces hit point "damage" on a target, but is:

1. Dependent on sneaking, trickery, or the like, and
2. Negated if the final attack misses.

For a 3E version, I suppose this would be something like sneak dice that are accumulated over time with skill checks, and apply to the first attack delivered against the target, with surprise.

Those implementations are fairly rough, but I needed some kind of example.  Anyway, if we take hit points as envisioned above, it would seem to make sense that something other than physical attacks can pull them down.  Presumably, also, the target gets to act in his round to somehow "fight back" without the character actually knowing he is a target at that moment.  This seems a rather trickier issue to satisfy for the "disassociated" crowd than the rogue itself.

OTOH, if RC is right and I'm wrong about the possiblities of embracing the theory, then this would seem to be an area where 4E is failing to pursue an avenue of its design that is unique to it.


----------



## ThirdWizard

tomBitonti said:


> I think the problem here is really that one can reject the idea that a rogue's attack could produce this effect.  That's what happens for me.  I grok bull rush (a person pushing another back), but not this effect.




I think one of the ideas behind 4e was a perception (I'm not going to say its true, but you must admit that there was at least the _perception_) that in 3e combatants had a tendency of standing in one place duking it out. The designers wanted to see more movement this time around, and so it was expected that 4e combat would be a constantly moving affair. So you see a lot of movement based powers, both allowing you to move without opportunity attacks and to move others.

Part of the idea of all the forced movement is that this movement is already going on. You're just guiding their movement with your abilities, using their own momentum to get them where you want them to go instead. It's an idea based on a constantly shifting battlefield.

Nowhere is this stated in the rules. Nowhere in the PHB would you get this idea. It relies on several design intents that may or may not be true in actual play from group to group. Yay! But, that is, I believe, what the designers intended based on the comments I've pieced together from when 4e was released.

That's not me trying to get you to accept it or find it more realistic or whatever. I just thought its an interesting bit of trivia into why 4e has all these movement inducing effects. It's just the designers wanting a particularly movement-friendly battlefield. Whether they succeeded or not is up for debate (thought hopefully not in this thread) .


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I'll hazard a different one. There will be shown a high causality between a given person and points. People that score high will tend to always score high, and vice versa. There will also be a weaker but noticable correlation with systems. Some of this will be shown to be preferences at work--people gravitating to something that suits their methods.
> 
> Further testing, where the same individuals are retested with many different systems, will show that the correlation is definitely there (across the study), but subject to odd spikes in subsets of people. That is, there is no smooth system continuum, but a wave function.



Right, so there's no single bell curve, and that there's no "average" person? OK, so let's say there are 3 subsets: Group A scores highest, Group B is average, and Group C scores the lowest.

Game A scores the highest and Game B scores the lowest.

Game A probably has a disproportionate number of Group A. Game B probably has a disproportionate number of Group C. So then isolate Group B and see if they score higher with Game A or Game B.

So then, in this highly theoretical thought experiment, if there's a significant difference, than one game encourages the "average" person to score higher than in the other game.

Did I get that right? I only took statistics in one university course a long time ago.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> While you may find the initial effect acceptable, what do you think about this updated effect? There is a matter of degree here, with some folks finding the core example (Trick Strike) as funny as (Knight's Coup), while others are fine with both.
> 
> Note the difference between the similar but limited bull rush from 3E: Bull rush can be used "at will" but has a lesser effect, and has a more finely tuned effect chance (opposed strength, instead of an attack roll). I'm not aware of a use of feint that allows you to cause an opponent to move.
> 
> I think the problem here is really that one can reject the idea that a rogue's attack could produce this effect. That's what happens for me. I grok bull rush (a person pushing another back), but not this effect.




It's a fair line of argument. I think where one might draw the line will depend in part on how expansive one views the concept of "feints". But did you mean mechanically supported in the rules, or the fiction surrounding "feints"?

In the fiction, it's easy for me. I attend a fencing school taught by an older man who was taught by the Italians in New Jersey. One of his maxims is that, "a feint is anything that causes your opponent to react in a predictable manner." Now it is true that your feint doesn't *force* them to do that. They can not block your line of attack (in which case, you simply hit them) or do any number of crazy things. However the idea is, if they don't do one of two or three limited options, you've got them cold. (And if they've got any sense, they know you were leading them into an option, and they'll pick one of those, knowing you are expecting it, and then react to what you had planned. But that is getting afield.) 

Despite all this, I have seen over and over fencers win touches by pushing their opponent to the back of the strip, suddenly feinting, and having the opponent retreat off the strip, and thus give up a touch. I even won a tied preliminary bout 5-4 once, doing that, against a guy that was better than me. And who cleaned my clock later that day. He felt pretty sheepish letting me get away with it once, and wasn't going to let up after that. 

Combat is moving, and off a strip, fighting for your life instead of touches, all the experienced writers I have seen have agreed that this is magnified, not diminished compared to what is essentially highly-regulated sparring.

So for me, the only potential sticking point is the timing of the force. In a simulation with any fidelity, feints *resulting* in opponents moving--even when this was not necessarily their best course, will happen on an infrequent but recurring basis.


----------



## Patryn of Elvenshae

billd91 said:


> As evidenced by their lack of ability to avoid that death blow as well as they could when they were fresher.




So he's "not as spry as he was," but only in a very limited, specific sense of "avoiding attacks" (and even then, only specific kinds of attacks).  In all other ways he's _exactly_ as spry as he was.

So, there's no particular difference here between "too winded to avoid certain attacks but otherwise perfectly fine" (1 hit point left out of 100 total, but no penalties to AC, attacks, Jump, etc.) and "too tired to perform certain attacks but otherwise perfectly fine" (1 particular daily used, but can use other dailies and encounters and at-wills).

The only difference is the relative newness of the phenomena.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> - a player invokes a game mechanic as a direct result of a perceived fiction (ie., enemy is standing on a rug, so I'd like to use a Str check to pull the rug out from under him)




Lets say a player, as part of a description for a daily martial power in 4e that trips, declares that the enemy is standing on a rug in order to give flavor to his ability? Would that count for a point?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> So then, in this highly theoretical thought experiment, if there's a significant difference, than one game encourages the "average" person to score higher than in the other game.
> 
> Did I get that right? I only took statistics in one university course a long time ago.




Per your stated effects, I think there is a strong chance of you being correct. You still haven't shown causation versus correlation, though. I've got a bit more statistic than one long ago course, and have used it a bit since, but I don't claim any great shakes at it. So I could be wrong.

But mainly I think your stated effects are a bit off, though.  I think what you will fine is that in all groups, there will be "switch flipping" moments in games, or "tipping points" as we talked in another topic. I *know* for me there are switch flipping moments, and I'm fairly certain that I've observed them and heard them reported from others. In fact, to the extent that a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind from "disassociation," that would seem to be what people are claiming happens?

For example, I have an aesthetic preference against big eyes, spikey armor, ridiculously huge weapons, mechanical player character, and steam-powered dwarven railroads. (I know I'm mixing up all kinds of stuff there.) It isn't that I *can't* roleplay if any of that is present, or that each one is going to lower my ability to do so some set amount. But throw enough of that stuff at me at once, and my roleplaying ability will simply shut down, same as if I had a carnival barker shouting in my ear at the table.

I don't recall if it was RC or Pawsplay, but the earlier statement about a boxer having fatigue set in and be determinant in a relatively short period at the end of the fight, matches my experience, and applies to a lot more than fatigue. This is what I meant when I said that people would spike all over the place in wave function. When you combine an "ok" system with an "average" person, you'll get something you can measure. But when the peaks or valleys align just right, you'll shoot off the top of the scale, or disappear off the bottom of it entirely.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> But if this is case, why can't the ankheg breathe a 15' foot line after 3 hours?




It's gluptorid (an internal organ which collects, but does not excrete the acid, similar to the human gall bladder) must be completely full to have any substantial range. Imagine a water gun that's nearly empty; how it sort of dribbles until it has a minimum amount of fluid.

In addition the causatis, the liver-like organ which produces the acid in the first place, suffers from a sort of "reflux" and shuts down massively using a sphincter that will not relax for a substantial amount of time, as a means both of preventing an internal acid spray and to conserve and concentrate digestive acid for future use.


(Those were my own inventions, however. They likely bear no resemblance with Ecology of the Ankheg in Dragon 117).


What I'm saying here, is that it can be believable because this is a fantastic creature, and we don't know its biology. Even daily recharge could be reasonable. 

Less reasonable would be if it was daily recharge that occurred when it slept (though perhaps the acid is tied to some brain organ that, when at rest allows the production of the acid).


----------



## Imaro

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> But if this is case, why can't the ankheg breathe a 15' foot line after 3 hours?




Because the description says it is depleted for 6 hours... not depleted for 3 and then partially depleted for another 3.  Not really sure what your point is?


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Lets say a player, as part of a description for a daily martial power in 4e that trips, declares that the enemy is standing on a rug in order to give flavor to his ability? Would that count for a point?



Good question!!!

On one hand, I think it would score a point, because the player made an effort to incorporate fiction into the ability when he isn't actually required to do so which would imply an interest in the fiction.

On the other hand, what if the battle is taking place in a jungle (to be extreme) and the player declares there's a rug on the ground? Does that mean he genuinely believes that there are rugs in the jungle, or is he just throwing out an excuse so to speak to use the mechanic? And if he did make up a limp excuse, does that make it any less legitimate?

With the other scoring, I think it's clear the player is insisting that the fiction take precedence over mechanical options. In your example, I don't know.

I think you halted my experiment :O)


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Per your stated effects, I think there is a strong chance of you being correct. You still haven't shown causation versus correlation, though.



I agree, I believe these statistics can never prove causation.

You started to lose me after that (sorry!) so I will re-read it later again, but I just wanted to say that: In one sense, maybe who cares about rigorously defining whether a mechanic is disassociated or not, an abstraction, an issue process vs outcome, etc.?

The ultimate complaint is that certain amounts and kinds of disassociations are making it difficult to immerse or simulate or narrate the fiction. (Sorry, I don't have time to be rigorous in my definitions here).

I think the question, if you look at thousands of people in actual gameplay over thousands of game sessions, are they paying attention to the fiction, and is that due to or despite of the mechanics? I think that's what ultimately matters if the goal is suspension of disbelief and roleplaying and all that?


----------



## Bluenose

Imaro said:


> Because the description says it is depleted for 6 hours... not depleted for 3 and then partially depleted for another 3.  Not really sure what your point is?




Presumably the idea is that it's refilling the organ that lets it discharge acid gradually over the six hour period, and it will therefore at some point be partly full. That might not be enough to discharge at full effect, but there could be a smaller one.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> The ultimate complaint is that certain amounts and kinds of disassociations are making it difficult to immerse or simulate or narrate the fiction. (Sorry, I don't have time to be rigorous in my definitions here).
> 
> I think the question, if you look at thousands of people in actual gameplay over thousands of game sessions, are they paying attention to the fiction, and is that due to or despite of the mechanics? I think that's what ultimately matters if the goal is suspension of disbelief and roleplaying and all that?




Sure. But what I've been driving at is that the conversation is typically starting in a place that has already closed some legitmate avenues of exploration. Rigor is not required to investigate. It isn't even required to get something useful out of the investigation (though it certainly might help in some cases). But rigor is definitely required *somewhere*, by the time you start drawing conclusions. And certainly, you have to be clear on what the limits of that investigation are.

So for your thought experiment, you could go different ways for that rigor. Here a couple of extremes:

1. You define exactly what you mean by "paying attention to the ficton" and how you are measuring it, what the boundaries are, etc. 

2. You go for something more like a reasonably decent reporter observing and interviewing people.

Where's the rigor in the second one? It's in what you draw from it. "Hey, we went out and observed a bunch of groups, and here is what we saw. Yep, we saw X happen in 76% of the groups. What does that mean? Well, it might mean that if we looked closer, that A was involved. However, some of the participants suggested B was closer to the truth. Who knows for sure?"

And likewise, the conclusons in the first one, even with the rigor, are only as good as your ability to define "paying attention to the fiction" in a way that maps back to that label. Otherwise, it comes out that your study was really about "paying attention to the fiction in way X". So you betcha, X sure showed up a lot.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> And likewise, the conclusons in the first one, even with the rigor, are only as good as your ability to define "paying attention to the fiction" in a way that maps back to that label. Otherwise, it comes out that your study was really about "paying attention to the fiction in way X". So you betcha, X sure showed up a lot.



"Paying attention" is an informal extrapolation. The rigorous thing being measured was the 2 part scoring, although ThirdWizard put a crimp in the 2nd one.


----------



## Patryn of Elvenshae

Aberzanzorax said:


> It's gluptorid (an internal organ which collects, but does not excrete the acid, similar to the human gall bladder) must be completely full to have any substantial range. Imagine a water gun that's nearly empty; how it sort of dribbles until it has a minimum amount of fluid.




So, given that there's an effective minimum and a maximum, how long does it take to reach the minimum point?

How long before the ankheg has enough acid stored make a 5' line?  To deliver a bit of acid along with its attacks (maybe, like, 1 point of acid damage on an attack instead of 1d4 points)?

Assuming it doesn't use its acid spit attack, how many successful melee attacks can the ankheg make (each doing 1d4 points of acid damage) before it runs out of acid?



Imaro said:


> Because the description says it is depleted for 6 hours... not depleted for 3 and then partially depleted for another 3.  Not really sure what your point is?






Bluenose said:


> Presumably the idea is that it's refilling the organ that lets it discharge acid gradually over the six hour period, and it will therefore at some point be partly full. That might not be enough to discharge at full effect, but there could be a smaller one.




Exactly.

And what if the ankheg tries to spit again in 5 hours, 58 minutes?  At this point it's certainly almost completely full, hmm?  Why is there no individual variation in "recharge times"?

My point is that this is something in the rules which, when viewed through the "lens of reality," lacks a good, consistent fictional explanation.  We have to "house rule it" to make it make sense.  It is different in degree, but not in kind, from many other such things we cheerfully accept in our D&D game.

And yet this is supposed to be an "associated" mechanic.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

In 5 hours and 58 minutes, the sphinter on the causatis has not yet released, so the source of the acid is still holding it while the propellor of acid remains completely empty.

In two more minutes, the sphincter opens and the gluptorid is flooded with acid, ready for action.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> But if this is case, why can't the ankheg breathe a 15' foot line after 3 hours?




Here's the thing: if there's an in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or observed for why this is, than it's not dissociated. If there isn't, than it is dissociated.

So, if a GM lets you explore the ankheg by dissecting it and figuring out how quickly it can produce acid, than it's associated. If, however, there's no reason in-game that can be learned, explored, or observed, than it is dissociated.

I think you may have been trying to "get me" but my point was simple (and twisting it won't work in a reasonable conversation): the ankheg has a reason why it cannot use that ability more than once. If there is no such reason for an ability, in-game, than it's dissociative. I'll admit that an ankheg can have its acid spit as a dissociative mechanic if you agree that it fits the bill of dissociative. If you don't agree with that, I'm not sure the point of you trying to "get me".

Again, as far as I can tell, dissociative mechanics are mechanics that must be able to be learned, explored, or otherwise observed from an in-game perspective. So, again if the rogue only get to use his ability 1/day, and if it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.



Doug McCrae said:


> But can't we always come up with some sort of game world justification, however wonky and, at best, semi-plausible, in the good old D&D tradition. This would mean that no game mechanics are dissociative.
> 
> I think the term marking might be the most egregious because it's just a rules term, it doesn't reference anything in the game world. Combat challenge and divine challenge, the terms for the fighter and paladin's marking abilities are a lot more acceptable as they suggest, and the text below seems to support this, the character shouting a challenge to single combat.




If there is an in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or observed, than I don't think it's dissociative. If the rogue can only get to use his ability 1/day, and if it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.



pemerton said:


> What does it mean to "learn" or "explore" how one hides, non-magically, in plain sight? Or how one "evades" an explostion, non-magically, while asleep? I'm not persuaded that we even have a coherent notion of what that would mean.
> 
> Yes, the game rules _assert_ that these are non-magical talents that can be learned. It could also assert that heirophant druids have non-magical techniques for squaring the circle. But mere assertion doesn't create the actuality of coherence.




I don't understand your question at all (that is, "What does it mean to "learn" or "explore" how one hides, non-magically, in plain sight?"). This seems so basic to me that I don't know where to start. What does it mean to explore how to apply an arm lock? That's literally the same thing, in my mind. The disconnect you seem to be having there is something I can't explain.

If there is some non-magical technique in-game that allows you to hide while being observed, than it can be taught (and thus learned by others). It can be explored. It can be observed. The same goes for evasion, though I'd probably see it as dissociative most of the time. If, however, it allowed you to phase your body reactively, without thought, when certain conditions were met, I could see it. I'd be hard pressed to accept it (my 3.5-based game doesn't allow Reflex saves while incapacitated), but at least it's associative.

This is such a simple thing to look at. Whether or not _anything_ can be explored in-game. How one would go about doing that is a little more tricky, depending on what it is, but it's still a very straightforward concept.

Again, as far as I can tell, If there is an in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or observed, than I don't think it's dissociative. If the rogue can only get to use his ability 1/day, and if it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.

As always, play what you like


----------



## BryonD

Hussar said:


> How is, "The mechanics won't let me repeatedly try the same thing over and over and over again" not spamming an attack?
> 
> Because, if the complaint is that you can't do something more than once, that's simply not true.  There are any number of abilities with similar effects.  Heck, my fighter pushes every time he hits a challenged opponent with a opportunity attack.  And, he pushes with other attacks as well.  In fact, he's a pushing machine.
> 
> Granted, I can't push exactly the same way every single round.  But, that's a good thing isn't it?



I don't even know where to begin answering you.

The complaint is not that you can't do something more than once.  The complaint is not that you can do something more than once.

You are, yet again, misrepresenting the issue (this time on both the 3E and 4E side at once) by blowing it so far out of proportion that it is not recognizable.

As I said, it isn't a question of must spam or may not spam, but rather that the mechanics drive that choice create your damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.  And if you are in that scenario do to you own mistakes then you don't get any sympathy for being there.

The entire of question of "is this spamming" misses the point.


----------



## Patryn of Elvenshae

JamesonCourage said:


> Here's the thing: if there's an in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or observed for why this is, than it's not dissociated. If there isn't, than it is dissociated.
> 
> So, if a GM lets you explore the ankheg by dissecting it and figuring out how quickly it can produce acid, than it's associated. If, however, there's no reason in-game that can be learned, explored, or observed, than it is dissociated.




And, per the rules of the game, there is no in-game reason for the ankheg's limitation.

You have to add it.  And, as demonstrated, the rationales given are pretty thin, and raise at least as many questions as they answer.

Why is this okay for ankhegs, but not other things?


----------



## MrGrenadine

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> My point is that this is something in the rules which, when viewed through the "lens of reality," lacks a good, consistent fictional explanation.  We have to "house rule it" to make it make sense.  It is different in degree, but not in kind, from many other such things we cheerfully accept in our D&D game.
> 
> And yet this is supposed to be an "associated" mechanic.




Actually, yes, it is associated.  And it actually IS consistent.

All that your examples are showing are variations on the RAW, which are interesting, but not better or worse--just different.  And houseruleable, if you prefer them.  The point is that whether the ankheg acid power can be used again in 6 hours or 5:58 is irrelevant to the fact that in the game world, its a living creature with a consistent ecology that can be discovered, studied, and adapted to.  This is as it should be, regardless of what details you alter.

But I fail to see how the ecology of fantastic creatures relates to a humanoid fighter only being able to use a particular sword attack once every 24 hours.  The two examples are very different.


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## JamesonCourage

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> And, per the rules of the game, there is no in-game reason for the ankheg's limitation.
> 
> You have to add it.  And, as demonstrated, the rationales given are pretty thin, and raise at least as many questions as they answer.
> 
> Why is this okay for ankhegs, but not other things?




I'll let MrGrenadine take this one 



MrGrenadine said:


> Actually, yes, it is associated.  And it actually IS consistent.
> 
> All that your examples are showing are variations on the RAW, which are interesting, but not better or worse--just different.  And houseruleable, if you prefer them.  The point is that whether the ankheg acid power can be used again in 6 hours or 5:58 is irrelevant to the fact that in the game world, its a living creature with a consistent ecology that can be discovered, studied, and adapted to.  This is as it should be, regardless of what details you alter.
> 
> But I fail to see how the ecology of fantastic creatures relates to a humanoid fighter only being able to use a particular sword attack once every 24 hours.  The two examples are very different.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

MrGrenadine said:


> But I fail to see how the ecology of fantastic creatures relates to a humanoid fighter only being able to use a particular sword attack once every 24 hours. The two examples are very different.




Maybe human fighters also posess a gluptorid?


----------



## BryonD

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> Why is this okay for ankhegs, but not other things?



IMO, it is NOT ok for the ankheg.  This is a problem.

Now, it is a trivial problem.  I can't think of one time ever that the issue of a ankheg spewing acid again in 2.37, or 5.98, or even 0.45 hours has even come up.

But, if it did, I would change it.  I can completely throw that out.  Depending on how I did it I *might* tweak the CR.  But probably not.  But I can change it without touching anything else.

In the one case we are talking about a (highly marginal) design flaw in a specific creature.  In the other we are talking about the fundamental action economy underpinning of an entire system.

I agree with you that both the 3E Ankheg and the 4E core system need repairs.


----------



## Hussar

BryonD said:


> I don't even know where to begin answering you.
> 
> The complaint is not that you can't do something more than once.  The complaint is not that you can do something more than once.
> 
> You are, yet again, misrepresenting the issue (this time on both the 3E and 4E side at once) by blowing it so far out of proportion that it is not recognizable.
> 
> As I said, it isn't a question of must spam or may not spam, but rather that the mechanics drive that choice create your damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.  And if you are in that scenario do to you own mistakes then you don't get any sympathy for being there.
> 
> The entire of question of "is this spamming" misses the point.




Yet, funnily enough, everyone else in the thread was capable of seeing the point I was making and discuss it.  Someone is missing the point, but, for once, I don't think it's me.

I just thought it was funny that on one hand the mechanics are criticised because it's too "gamist" or "disassociated" because they only allow you to do something once per day while on the other hand, the very same mechanics were criticised because they force players to spam the same action over and over again and don't allow flexibility.

Meh, it wasn't a big deal.


----------



## tomBitonti

tomBitonti said:
			
		

> While you may find the initial effect acceptable, what do you think about this updated effect? There is a matter of degree here, with some folks finding the core example (Trick Strike) as funny as (Knight's Coup), while others are fine with both.
> 
> Note the difference between the similar but limited bull rush from 3E: Bull rush can be used "at will" but has a lesser effect, and has a more finely tuned effect chance (opposed strength, instead of an attack roll). I'm not aware of a use of feint that allows you to cause an opponent to move.
> 
> I think the problem here is really that one can reject the idea that a rogue's attack could produce this effect. That's what happens for me. I grok bull rush (a person pushing another back), but not this effect.






Crazy Jerome said:


> It's a fair line of argument. I think where one might draw the line will depend in part on how expansive one views the concept of "feints". But did you mean mechanically supported in the rules, or the fiction surrounding "feints"?
> 
> In the fiction, it's easy for me. I attend a fencing school taught by an older man who was taught by the Italians in New Jersey. One of his maxims is that, "a feint is anything that causes your opponent to react in a predictable manner." Now it is true that your feint doesn't *force* them to do that. They can not block your line of attack (in which case, you simply hit them) or do any number of crazy things. However the idea is, if they don't do one of two or three limited options, you've got them cold. (And if they've got any sense, they know you were leading them into an option, and they'll pick one of those, knowing you are expecting it, and then react to what you had planned. But that is getting afield.)
> 
> Despite all this, I have seen over and over fencers win touches by pushing their opponent to the back of the strip, suddenly feinting, and having the opponent retreat off the strip, and thus give up a touch. I even won a tied preliminary bout 5-4 once, doing that, against a guy that was better than me. And who cleaned my clock later that day. He felt pretty sheepish letting me get away with it once, and wasn't going to let up after that.
> 
> Combat is moving, and off a strip, fighting for your life instead of touches, all the experienced writers I have seen have agreed that this is magnified, not diminished compared to what is essentially highly-regulated sparring.
> 
> So for me, the only potential sticking point is the timing of the force. In a simulation with any fidelity, feints *resulting* in opponents moving--even when this was not necessarily their best course, will happen on an infrequent but recurring basis.




I'm OK with _some_ of that, but not in the unrestricted sense allowed by the power.  When fighting a mobile (and maybe twitchy) opponent using several independent feint checks.  I don't like that with one hit the effect is automatic on every remaining attack during the fight.  I have a problem too with the power being used against a slow, massive opponent, say, a large and ponderous stone golem adjusted to have massive attacks but a 10' movement.

Thx!

Tom Bitonti


----------



## Hussar

tomBitonti said:


> I'm OK with _some_ of that, but not in the unrestricted sense allowed by the power.  When fighting a mobile (and maybe twitchy) opponent using several independent feint checks.  I don't like that with one hit the effect is automatic on every remaining attack during the fight.  I have a problem too with the power being used against a slow, massive opponent, say, a large and ponderous stone golem adjusted to have massive attacks but a 10' movement.
> 
> Thx!
> 
> Tom Bitonti




Probably fair enough.  But, then again, it would be easier to make the exception for the big, ponderous stone golem than to worry about adjusting the base effect.  If you don't want the stone golem to be pushed around, give it the steadfast (I think that's the right name - the thing dwarves have) ability and now push effects are reduced by one (or whatever amount you wish) square.

From a purely personal perspective, I'd rather have a broad, general mechanic with exceptions than a narrow specific mechanic that tries to cover every eventuality.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> I'm OK with _some_ of that, but not in the unrestricted sense allowed by the power. When fighting a mobile (and maybe twitchy) opponent using several independent feint checks. I don't like that with one hit the effect is automatic on every remaining attack during the fight. I have a problem too with the power being used against a slow, massive opponent, say, a large and ponderous stone golem adjusted to have massive attacks but a 10' movement.




You don't even have to go that far.  Against a vastly inferior opponent, the more likely outcome is that they fail to move at all, and thus suffer consequences.  I think it is the "thus suffer consequences" part that gets right into handling time, though.

I suppose if they designers wanted to start with fencing, SCA, manuals for defense from the middle ages, expert testimony, etc. --and then get a crack team of fantasy authors to extrapolate from this to allow for magic and monsters -- for every power, you could come up with 2-4 things that the opponent could do in this situation, or suffer the consequences.

 I do X, the monster can even get out of the way where I herd him (force move) or move unpredictably, but with a risk of falling or stumbing (fall prone, tied to a check) or do some kind of risky counter attack (opposed roll, monster fails it, I get to nail him).  And if he won't do any of that, then I get a bonus to hit and damage with my next attack, because he is definitely out of position.

Sounds way too complicated for RuneQuest or Rolemaster to me (not that experienced with the latter, though), let alone a version of D&D.

I suppose a more 4E-centric way of addressing this kind of objection is "take the power as written, or give the opponent a free shot at something appropriate on page 42, low damage option."  That ponderous stone golem simply will not be force moved, but every time someone lands something like that, they've got him at a disadvantage.


----------



## Bagpuss

Beginning of the End said:


> Everything you say there is true.
> 
> But the reason the mechanic is dissociated is because the player making the decision that "this is the moment where everything has lined up to make this happen" is the equivalent of Baptiste saying _in the huddle_, "Okay, on this play I'm going to leap backwards, catch the ball one-handed, and then do a reverse somersault." And begin right every single time he chooses to say that (but he can only say it once per day).




I not sure it that alone is enough to be dissociated in the original theory though.



> I talk about "dissociated mechanics", I'm talking about *mechanics which have no association with the game world*. These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations.
> Now, of course, all game mechanics are -- to varying degrees -- *abstracted *and *metagamed*. For example, the destructive power of a fireball spell is defined by the number of d6's you roll for damage; and the number of d6's you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell.




The action has a clear association although admittedly only through stepping out of the actor stance, and using more metagame thinking. Being abstracted and/or metagame isn't enough to be dissociated in the original theory.

I think perhaps stances is a better way of looking at the issues than the term dissociated.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Perhaps part of this debate can be articulated like so...

"Dissociated mechanics" either has been or can be rigorously defined, and any one mechanic can be rationalized towards that definition.

However, that is simply not enough, not for contradictory illogical human beings.

I believe the more relevant issue is whether a mechanic *feels* dissociated? Furthermore, does it feel dissociated enough that we care? Does it feel too dissociated but we can tolerate its existence? Or does it feel too dissociated that we refuse to play the game as is?

The essay is only rationalizing why he intuitively feels about a kind of relationship of mechanics to narrative. (that probably describes most or not all of fantasy arguments, no?)

Having a fun debate about why any one mechanic is too dissociated or not is not only about rigorous logic (why does the ankheg spit 1/day but not...) but to discuss the reason behind that feeling. That reason can be a superseding metagame priority (having fun, keeping it simple, game balance, etc.) or a superseding force of fiction (the surmisal of a gluptorid gland).


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Neonchameleon

Raven Crowking said:


> In an article about winds of 5-6 mph, where the term "wind" is defined in the article to refer only to winds of that speed, what happens with hurricane-force winds is irrelevant when determining whether or not the article's conclusions make sense.




Indeed.  But winds between 5 and 6 mph are such a corner case scenario that they really aren't that relevant.  And if the article can't be extrapolated beyond that then even if it's correct its conclusions may be worse than useless.  (If for instance it claimed that Toppers are faster than Lasers because Toppers start planing at 4.9mph and lasers at 6.1mph it would be entirely correct - but given that the laser is faster at all other wind speeds the article would be so misleading as to be worse than useless).



Yesway Jose said:


> That was directly addressed by the very next paragraph which you may have glossed over:
> 
> We'll not experiencing one single permanent instance of Lord of the Rings. We're experiencing many different iterations of many different stories, after which the limitation on the probability curve of possible outcomes starts to become more apparent.
> 
> I looked up the Horn of Gondor. Boromir uses once as a sort of warcry and once to call for help. It's not clear if it has any actual enchantment, or just a subtle one. Anyway, Boromir could use it anytime it makes fictional sense, and he could theoretically do that when he wants and how often he wants. 4E wouldn't prevent Boromir from using the horn whenever he wants, but it may limit the number of times it has a consequential effect. Pre-4e, it may have an effect based on fictional prerequisites (ie., whenever someone is in hearing range).
> 
> So perhaps here's an illustration of disassociation. Player: "I can use the Horn of Gondor 1 x day. Our party is in trouble, we're just at the edge of Gondor's border, so I could blow the horn now and try to summon aid. However, I'll use up the daily. I won't be able to use it later today." Fictionally, however, a character in danger would very rarely hold back from using the horn and almost certaintly never for fear of 'wasting' a once per day opportunity.




And to me this underlines beautifully the brilliance of 4e's design structure that they drew back on at the last minute to give more to the traditionalists.  From my reading of Lord of the Rings, everything fits beautifully if you assume that an extended rest was taken only at a very few points in the story.  There was, for example, no extended rest between Rivendell and Lorien.  Which is why you don't have Aragorn continually feeding people Athelas although in a "trad simulationist"* game he should be using it at every possible opportunity.

As for a condition such as "Only if anyone is around to hear it", that's an epic fail.  What it means is that the smart thing is _always_ to blow the Horn of Gondor when facing something big (like the Balrog).  Because it can't do any harm - it just won't do any good.  But mysteriously Boromir didn't do this.  Instead he waited until his back was completely against the wall, hoarding the daily to use against completely impossible odds because he didn't know when the next extended rest was coming and would prefer to have something in reserve in case the next obstacle was even worse than the current one.  This is the emergent play you get in 4e when rests are uncertain.  It is also what happens in most stories (hell, even Power Rangers where the smart thing would be to break out the super-mega-giga-zord's Ultimate! Attack! the second you see the monster) - the biggest abilities only come out against the biggest enemies.

But getting it right involves tossing one more sacred cow onto the barbeque and either renaming At Will/Encounter/Daily powers to At Will/Scene/Episode or moving Extended Rests to long lazy weekends somewhere safe and slotting in a third type of rest that just gives back a surge or two  for an 8 hour sleep.

* Trad simulationist games try to simulate the real world - and it's the sort of simulationist that GURPS is and is normally claimed for AD&D.  4e on the other hand tries to simulate the genre.  It makes no claims to be real-world realistic, instead running under Holywood Physics and therefore does a much better job of simulating mythological or pulp stories including The Illiad, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or (once the extended rests are fixed) Lord of the Rings.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## ExploderWizard

My take on the whole disassociated mechanic issue is that a game is much better if it doesn't have to use them. 

Eliminate the problem that causes the need for them and then they can go away. The first part is identifying the real underlying issue. On the surface the issue might seem to be how can martial characters use abilities of widely varying power without spamming the high power moves?

The real question should be, do martial characters really need the same varying power scale as casters? 

Why does every character class have to have: basic attack/ medium attack/ strong attack/ finishing move? 

Is there a good reason that fighters couldn't learn from a pool of moves as they level as a way to add interesting bits to combat that didn't _have_ to be specific limited use hotbar moves? 

What about this as a rough concept: 

The fighter does X range of damage on a hit. As levels increase, this basic damage does too. In effect, the basic attack scales with level. This gives the fighter a basic consistent resource (damage output) as currency that can be used to power specific maneuvers instead of dealing  regular damage. 

The real grunt work would be determining the damage "cost" of various effects. Some of the more powerful ones wouldn't be "affordable" until higher levels are reached when base damage permits the options. 

Don't make any effect too good for the damage cost. Here is an important bit- _the effects generated are not and should not be equal to those produced by magic or other limited use effects. _


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## chaochou

Raven Crowking said:


> In the original article, "A disocciated mechanic is one that causes the player to step out of the actor stance" would be a good summary of how the term is used.




Being in actor stance is a matter of preference or choice made by a given player at a given point in time.

The result (positive or negative) of a disocciated mechanic is a consequence of player preference or choice.

So it is impossible to use the term 'disocciated' as the basis for objective analysis of a given mechanic or system. It describes only how you related to a mechanic given your own choice or preference at the time it was used.

So the term under your definition (which I posted about 10 pages ago) has no utility except to describe your own preferences, as I and others pointed out about 20 pages ago.


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## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> As for a condition such as "Only if anyone is around to hear it", that's an epic fail. What it means is that the smart thing is _always_ to blow the Horn of Gondor when facing something big (like the Balrog).



From what I understand, the Horn had no magic effect on the Balrog. It was a mundane but sudden warhorn sounding in the dark depths that surprised the opponents for a second. I understand that the subtle enchantment of the Horn was that if you sounded it within Gondor's borders, then it would always summon aid. It's not clear if that was an actual enchantment or just a silly legend. I think it was a silly legend, because Boromir died at the end (Oh, SPOILER! My bad) without getting aid, IIRC.



> Because it can't do any harm - it just won't do any good. But mysteriously Boromir didn't do this. Instead he waited until his back was completely against the wall, hoarding the daily to use against completely impossible odds because he didn't know when the next extended rest was coming and would prefer to have something in reserve in case the next obstacle was even worse than the current one.



As per above, I don't think this was the case at all. Perhaps Boromir knew that if he did sound the Horn again, the Balor would be like "OK, you surprised me the first time, but, like seriously, again...?" The decision how often to sound the horn was based on the character thinking logically about cause-and-effect, and taking an extended rest has absolutely nothing to do with that.

In fact, that may be a key part of too much dissociation for people, when there's no cause-and-effect between extraneous elements like Extended Rest and how often the character could fictionally do something like blowing a magic horn that doesn't need to rest, unless...



> ...But getting it right involves tossing one more sacred cow onto the barbeque and either renaming At Will/Encounter/Daily powers to At Will/Scene/Episode



..if the Horn's legend was "You may use this once in a time of great need", then suddenly you have a fictional construct to tie the "At Episode" mechanic to the fiction.

You can't use this too much though, because then the character has to keep a timesheet of what powers were used when. "Um, guys, the Harvest the Lightning Blade was destined to be used once until the next full moon. The full moon is coming up on Tuesday, right? Does anyone remember if I harvested lightning since before the last full moon, I don't remember -- what? Ya, I know... I just... I forgot to write it down on my timesheet -- what? Well, excuse me! I was getting fried by that fireball. I was too busy, and then after the fight, then we were healing, and you mentioned that funny episode about the Muppets, ha ha, that was funny, and sorry, what was I talking about?"


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## Raven Crowking

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## Bedrockgames

Interesting discussion all around. I think something about the essay rings true for me, in terms of what may be one of the root reasons i cant seem to get into 4e. However i really believe this stuff is a matter of taste and preference and that our reactions to games begin with a feeling ( i.e. I am not having a good time playing this or this really bores me) and then we try to figure out the reasons why. This is why i dont think it is fruitful to prove to someone their reasons for disliking a game are wrong. Because at the end of the day it isn't a matter of providing a logical proof that johnny really likes 3e though he says he doesn't. You can prove his assumptions about why he doesn't like it are questionable, but he is still going to have that same reaction to the game itself.,


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> In fact, that may be a key part of too much dissociation for people, when there's no cause-and-effect between extraneous elements ...




There are two answers to this, each slanted to the pro or con on the "disassociated" concept:

1. If you are thinking about the modeled world in a consistent, logical, rational, rigorous way, and then acting as the character, then you don't want all these extraneous elements with no cause and effect between them, where you would expect it.

2. If you are thinking about the modeled world in a rigid, hyper-logical, non-poetic, very narrow way, and then acting as the character, then you will often fail to see existing cause and effect beween extraneous elements, simply because of your expectations.

Those can even be descriptions of the same actions.  It depends on where you want to draw the line.  If you draw the line in a different place than I do, then chances are good that a *mechanic* which for you can produce this feeling related to the "disassociated" concept*, equally won't produce it for me.

* Even saying it that way makes my skin crawl.  People aren't even threating to enter a "disassociated state"--which is what the language leads you to say.  Next thing you know, RPGs will be getting banned because playing a character will be cited as prone to invoking multiple personalities.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Bedrockgames said:


> This is why i dont think it is fruitful to prove to someone their reasons for disliking a game are wrong.




No one is trying to do so. What several of us are saying, is that if you find you don't like something, and then you investigate why you think you don't like it, that's all great. You may even have some insights for other people that will be useful to them. That's also great. 

If from this, you start making claims about things that fall somewhat outside this sphere (e.g. someone that doesn't experience the same feeling using the same game therefore isn't really "roleplaying"), then the parts of your theory that pertain to this wider scope are subject to debate, and you don't get to hide behind, "I'm just saying why I don't like it," anymore.

Keep behind wall of it only being about preferences, or submit to the slings and arrows of those who don't agree. But be consistent in this, or expect to get called on it.


----------



## BryonD

Hussar said:


> Yet, funnily enough, everyone else in the thread was capable of seeing the point I was making and discuss it.  Someone is missing the point, but, for once, I don't think it's me.
> 
> I just thought it was funny that on one hand the mechanics are criticised because it's too "gamist" or "disassociated" because they only allow you to do something once per day while on the other hand, the very same mechanics were criticised because they force players to spam the same action over and over again and don't allow flexibility.
> 
> Meh, it wasn't a big deal.



I haven't missed you point.  I'm pointing out that what you are describing as a double standard is not because both sides come from the same source, which is still caused by the mechanics which are being blamed.

I follow the conversation that is taking your point at face value.  But, imo, the conversation can be better understood if instead of just staying at face value you look a bit deeper.  

It isn't "funny" that the system is being criticized from both hands, it is reasonable and even predictable.  That's my point.  What appears to you to be a double standard is not.


----------



## BryonD

Bedrockgames said:


> Interesting discussion all around. I think something about the essay rings true for me, in terms of what may be one of the root reasons i cant seem to get into 4e. However i really believe this stuff is a matter of taste and preference and that our reactions to games begin with a feeling ( i.e. I am not having a good time playing this or this really bores me) and then we try to figure out the reasons why. This is why i dont think it is fruitful to prove to someone their reasons for disliking a game are wrong. Because at the end of the day it isn't a matter of providing a logical proof that johnny really likes 3e though he says he doesn't. You can prove his assumptions about why he doesn't like it are questionable, but he is still going to have that same reaction to the game itself.,



Yep.  Exactly.

It is like arguing over whether baseball or football is a better sport.

But the one difference that makes this debate more complex is the unwillingness to agree that we are even talking about two different sports.


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## Raven Crowking

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## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> On one hand, I think it would score a point, because the player made an effort to incorporate fiction into the ability when he isn't actually required to do so which would imply an interest in the fiction.
> 
> On the other hand, what if the battle is taking place in a jungle (to be extreme) and the player declares there's a rug on the ground? Does that mean he genuinely believes that there are rugs in the jungle, or is he just throwing out an excuse so to speak to use the mechanic? And if he did make up a limp excuse, does that make it any less legitimate?




I think another mechanic of FATE might be interesting to you. Players have the ability to make Declarations that define aspects of the scene. I'll paraphrase an example out of the Dresden Files RPG book, which uses the FATE rules (they're OGL). In the example, a character is being chased by vampires and makes the Declaration that there are pipes full of running water in the area. The GM sets what amounts to a DC for his skill roll (in this case Alertness) and if he succeeds, they are there. If he doesn't make the roll they aren't there. In the setting vampires don't like running water.

So this is a rule in the system that allows players to mechanically define a scene with a set difficulty to beat. In D&D, scene definition is something completely under the purview of the DM. But, in other games, it can be a shared role between players and game masters. As traditional roles blur, so can the feel and mood of the game shift. When you play the Dresden Files RPG, it isn't like playing in D&D, but you feel like you're a living in the world of the Dresden Files novels. It's trying to evoke a different experience, and the conceits of the game reflect that.



ExploderWizard said:


> My take on the whole disassociated mechanic issue is that a game is much better if it doesn't have to use them.
> 
> Eliminate the problem that causes the need for them and then they can go away.




That's like saying "I don't like chocolate, so we need to _kill all the cocoa trees_!

Maybe Dungeons and Dragons 4e is _better_ for its dissociated mechanics for some.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> There are two answers to this, each slanted to the pro or con on the "disassociated" concept:
> 
> 1. If you are thinking about the modeled world in a consistent, logical, rational, rigorous way, and then acting as the character, then you don't want all these extraneous elements with no cause and effect between them, where you would expect it.
> 
> 2. If you are thinking about the modeled world in a rigid, hyper-logical, non-poetic, very narrow way, and then acting as the character, then you will often fail to see existing cause and effect beween extraneous elements, simply because of your expectations.



- a submachine gun with no visible ammo
- a submachine gun with a full pack ammo
- a submachine gun with 1 bullet

- a rune-inscribed dried octopus
- a rune-inscribed dried octopus with a see-through ink sac and 3 little tick marks
- a rune-inscribed dried octopus (that doesn't do anything) that you found in a necromantic library on a table next to a book opened to a page with a drawing of man kneeling at the sea shore immersing a dark writhing shape into the water

- a sword inscribed in Latin with the words "Only for use during Armageddon"
- a sword given to you by a man in a suit and a hat who says "You will use this once per day, because that's the Plan."

These are some of many possible fictional reasons to supply cause-and-effect for a character, even if it doesn't seem "hyper-logical" to the character.

However, in case of the submachine gun with no ammo, how does the character have any information to know when and how often he can do something? You may know, as the player, that the item can only be used 1xday, but how does the character know that it cannot be used repeatedly? How long is the character going to lug around this mysterious submachine gun without trying it to use it until you, the player, say so? What happens if the character would want to use the gun before you know as a player that it's optimal?

I don't have a problem with characters not always understanding the cause-and-effect and that the universe works in mysterious ways.

I suppose I would have a problem with characters not acting in a believable way depending on whether they do or do not understand the cause-and-effect.

Although this is only a small part of the bigger issue...


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## chaochou

Raven Crowking said:


> This doesn't follow.
> 
> The choice to use X is a choice of preference, but the results of choosing X can be objectively analyzed.




No, the result (the effect of disocciation) is - by the definition you gave - a function of the choice made (stance). You can assert the above all you like, but it's simply not true of 'disocciated'.

Your car analogy is an attempt at a different type of obfuscation, which is not easily explained, but easily exposed: Put simply, imagine a car in your next rpg session (your choice of car) and then get an objective measure of it's milage and environmental impact (the result of that choice).


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## Raven Crowking

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## ExploderWizard

ThirdWizard said:


> That's like saying "I don't like chocolate, so we need to _kill all the cocoa trees_!
> 
> Maybe Dungeons and Dragons 4e is _better_ for its dissociated mechanics for some.




There are obviously issues with them or this thread wouldn't be over 20 pages.


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## Raven Crowking

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## Nagol

chaochou said:


> No, the result (the effect of disocciation) is - by the definition you gave - a function of the choice made (stance). You can assert the above all you like, but it's simply not true.
> 
> Your car analogy is an attempt at a different type of obfuscation, which is not easily explained, but easily exposed: Put simply, imagine a car in your next rpg session (your choice of car) and then get an objective measure of it's milage and environmental impact (the result of that choice).




Actually, the result is the interaction between two independent and objectively measurable choices: the stance assumed and the game engine engaged.

If the result is unsatisfactory then the player can review if the result is preferable to altering one or both of those choices.  He can choose to exit actor stance and/or choose to use a game system that better supports its use.


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## pemerton

Raven Crowking said:


> I note that the essay is also explicit that dissociation is not necessarily a bad thing, depending upon what gains from the trade-off.
> 
> What one gains from the trade-off would, IMHO, be interesting to hear from the persepective of those who (1) understand the general gist of the essay, and its use of the term _*dissociation*_, and who (2) believe that the trade-off is generally positive.



Well, ThirdWizard is posting to that effect in this thread. And I've been posting for several years about the role played by metagame mechanics in my 4e game. Some of those posts are in this thread.

The TL;DR version is: (i) from the GM's point of view, more robust scene framing; (ii) from the players' point of view, more narrative control over scene resolution; (iii) from the whole table's point of view, and supervening on (i) and (ii), more dramatically satisfying pacing and conflict resolution.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## ThirdWizard

Raven Crowking said:


> That would work very well for a Supers game, or for a game based off Doctor Who.  I assume that there is a FATE Supers game?




It would make an amazing Doctor Who game. I hadn't even thought of that.

I haven't found any supers FATE based game. 



Raven Crowking said:


> I think that this is self-evident.




You would _think_ that, but I believe certain parties would actually say that 4e is objectively worse for its dissociated mechanics. I'm pretty sure it still has to be pointed out, lest people forget that some people like this kind of thing in our RPGs.



ExploderWizard said:


> There are obviously issues with them or this thread wouldn't be over 20 pages.




This thread has stayed away from decrying these mechanics for the most part. While individuals have been stating their preference, there has been a fairly good back and forth between people of differing opinions. 

Also, keep in mind that the majority of posters on this board have a fairly strong simulationist bent to their opinions, coloring the discussion based on board preferences far more than overall gamer preferences. ENWorld has its own tenor, which has to be taken into account.

I think this has been a fascinating discussion, and I think it can live on its own merits, edition of D&D aside.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## Crazy Jerome

Raven Crowking said:


> My interest lies in what is worth considering in terms of my own design.




Ditto.  That is probably why we keep butting heads. 

For what is worth, had the whole discussion started with this topic or something very much like it, instead of how it did start, I'd have a whole lot more favorable "feel" about the whole thing--both as a way of looking at D&D and for my own design.


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## Raven Crowking

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## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> I don't understand your question at all (that is, "What does it mean to "learn" or "explore" how one hides, non-magically, in plain sight?"). This seems so basic to me that I don't know where to start. What does it mean to explore how to apply an arm lock? That's literally the same thing, in my mind. The disconnect you seem to be having there is something I can't explain.
> 
> If there is some non-magical technique in-game that allows you to hide while being observed, than it can be taught (and thus learned by others). It can be explored. It can be observed. The same goes for evasion, though I'd probably see it as dissociative most of the time. If, however, it allowed you to phase your body reactively, without thought, when certain conditions were met, I could see it. I'd be hard pressed to accept it (my 3.5-based game doesn't allow Reflex saves while incapacitated), but at least it's associative.



My point is that it's not enough for the game rules to stipulate that there is a method that can be learned, if the notion of such a method is contradictory or incoherent.

I would suggest that the notion, in D&D, of phasing my body as an EX rather than a SU ability, is an example of that sort of incoherence.

Hiding in plain sight perhaps not - but does it have clothing/camouflage requirements?



ExploderWizard said:


> My take on the whole disassociated mechanic issue is that a game is much better if it doesn't have to use them.
> 
> Eliminate the problem that causes the need for them and then they can go away.



This is already assuming that metagame mechanics are a response to a problem that ignores cure in favour of treating symptoms.

The "problem" is that purely exploratory play is not guaranteed to produce dramatically satisfying play. Metagame mechanics are one well-known way of helping to produce dramatically satisfying play. 4e is not the first, nor the only, RPG to use them. For some reason, though, it's the only one that gets pilloried for doing so.


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## Yesway Jose

Did anybody see my glasses? I think I left them here, somewhere...


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## chaochou

Raven Crowking said:


> It would be far more accurate to say
> 
> *"The effects of disocciation is the result of the interplay of the choice made and the context within which the choice is made."*




I was under the impression you were disagreeing with me.



chaochou said:


> It ('disocciated') describes only how you  related to a mechanic given your own choice or preference at the time it  was used.




What argument do you have to support the claim that the outcomes can be analysed independly of the preferences / choice?

A player chooses a stance while playing 4e and then says he had experience x as a "result of the choice made and the context within which the choice was made".

What is the objective analysis you are claiming is possible? What data are you claiming this is this producing?


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## pemerton

Raven Crowking said:


> What do you think about the idea expressed in the essay that 4e should have gone farther in terms of DisMech, specifically to increase (ii)?



Well, as you know, I find less of worth in the essay than you do.

For example, the essay appears to presuppose that a combat resolution mechanics that are complex and have a signficant metagame component are at odds with, or at best orthogonal, to player control over the narrative. Whereas in my experience with 4e, they are one principal source of player control over the narrative.

If you didn't want to play a game in which combat is one of the principal focuses of conflict, and hence the combat mechanics one of the principal methods of resolving conflict, I don't think you'd choose 4e. (Not that it's non-combat resolution is shoddy - but if your focus was primarily on political or mercantile conflict, you'd have all this other combat-related stuff accreting to your character and your monsters that would not be relevant to your play.) The powers that the essay criticises are, in my experience, precisely the powers that facilitate the use of combat as a vehicle for expressing theme and resolving conflict.

So the player of a paladin, by choosing valiant strike (a "dissociated" power, as I noted upthread, though at-will rather than daily), gets to ensure that his/her PC will be valiant.

The GM, by placing a war devil, gets to ensure that at least one PC will be a foe of that devil who is besieged by devils.

The resolution of the combat will reflect these choices made by player and GM.

If I was a 4e designer wanting to emphasise this aspect of the game, I wouldn't be looking at mechanical changes (what's obviously missing are mechanically-expressed relationships - though some paragon paths approximate these - but introducing them would be a big deal, I think). I'd be looking at taking the discussion from Worlds and Monsters of the thematic significance of various sorts of monsters and planes, amping that up, and putting it into the core GMing guidelines. I really don't think that the game needs more mechanics at this point - it needs to do a better job of explaining, especially to GMs, how they can put what is there to work.

Robin Laws' contribution to DMG2 attempted this to an extent, but in my view suffered from being cribbed almost entirely from the HeroQuest rules, without being adapted to the different mechanical context of 4e - and especially 4e combat, which (unlike skill challenges) has very little in common with HeroQuest action resolution.


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.



This strikes me as obviously false. For example, as far as I know, _no_ version of D&D has rules governing love, or the consequences of love (this is a difference from HeroQuest, for example, or The Riddle of Steel). Nevertheless I have played D&D games (and Rolemaster games, which in this respect resembles D&D) where romantic love has been a prominent part of the fiction, and manifestly has mattered.

Generalising: not all significant consequences in an RPG result from direct application of the action resolution mechanics.



Yesway Jose said:


> what if the battle is taking place in a jungle (to be extreme) and the player declares there's a rug on the ground? Does that mean he genuinely believes that there are rugs in the jungle, or is he just throwing out an excuse so to speak to use the mechanic? And if he did make up a limp excuse, does that make it any less legitimate?



In HeroQuest, this issue is framed as a Credibility Test - with genre conventions as the starting point for adjudication, and with adjudication ultimately in the hands of the GM.

Introducing a similar sort of credibility test into the 4e action resolution mechanics for combat would be a houserule, but a fairly minor one in terms of complexity (obviously not necessarily minor in terms of implications for play!). The idea of a credibility test is already part of the skill challenge mechanics, although it's not framed in quite those terms (it's somewhere around p 75 of the DMG, I think).



Yesway Jose said:


> The observer assigns 1 point any time one of the following occurs:
> 
> - a player invokes a game mechanic as a direct result of a perceived fiction (ie., enemy is standing on a rug, so I'd like to use a Str check to pull the rug out from under him)
> 
> - a player refrains from using a game mechanic, despite the mechanic being legitimate or even optimal, because the imagined effect is perceived as lacking plausibility (ie., a zombie knocking a hydra prone)



Does this tick your first box: the GM describes to a player how the player's PC notices his mortal enemy across the street, and the player responds by saying "Cool, I run across the street while drawing my sword to cut her down!"?

Does this tick your second box: a player expresses a desire to use a mechanical ability, someone at the table expresses some curiosity as to what in the fiction the ability represents, a brief discussion ensues, and the ability is then used?



billd91 said:


> As evidenced by their lack of ability to avoid that death blow as well as they could when they were fresher. And that works well enough for me.



Except that it's _only a death blow because the character is low on hit points_. Mechanically, it's just another roll of the old d8 damage die. What _in the fiction_ does this damage roll correspond to. And what in the ficiton does this low hit point status correspond to? A liability to being killed by some indeterminate set of weapon strikes?

I'm not feeling the association.

Which is not to say that hit points are a metagame mechanic. But they're not a causal-process-simulationist one either.



Crazy Jerome said:


> In 4E terms, I suppose this would be a rogue power (or similar) that produces hit point "damage" on a target, but is:
> 
> 1. Dependent on sneaking, trickery, or the like, and
> 2. Negated if the final attack misses.
> 
> this would seem to be an area where 4E is failing to pursue an avenue of its design that is unique to it.



It's getting there. The module in the Monster Vault outlines a social skill challenge to deal hit point damage to the solo at the end of the module.


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## pemerton

Double post.


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This strikes me as obviously false. For example, as far as I know, no version of D&D has rules governing love, or the consequences of love
Click to expand...


I think you extropolated the statement a bit out of context. Make love (not war) as much as you want.



> In HeroQuest, this issue is framed as a Credibility Test - with genre conventions as the starting point for adjudication, and with adjudication ultimately in the hands of the GM.



I think I like the idea, as well as ThirdWizard's description of FATE Declarations, but if DMs can raise the DC as high as they want to effectively negate a fiction they don't want to exist (for "good" or "bad"), I don't see how it's any different than "old school" DM adjucation that some people enjoy being removed from.


> Does this tick your first box: the GM describes to a player how the player's PC notices his mortal enemy across the street, and the player responds by saying "Cool, I run across the street while drawing my sword to cut her down!"?



No, I've decided I would cancel that scoring altogether, for the sake of a more rigorous methodology. If you move away into subjective assessments, then the thought experiment is swayed too much by the interpretation of the observer and the statistical noise of a multitude of scenarios.



> Does this tick your second box: a player expresses a desire to use a mechanical ability, someone at the table expresses some curiosity as to what in the fiction the ability represents, a brief discussion ensues, and the ability is then used?



No, because the player didn't ultimately refrain from using the ability. The thought experiment would measure the tolerance limit for what is "too much disassociation" as perceived in actual gameplay by thousands of gaming groups over many gaming sessions, and the only way to rigorously measure is that is when you force a binary measurement of "did they do it, or did they not do it?".



Did anybody see my pen? It's a blue pen.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> <snip>
> 
> The "problem" is that purely exploratory play is not guaranteed to produce dramatically satisfying play. Metagame mechanics are one well-known way of helping to produce dramatically satisfying play. 4e is not the first, nor the only, RPG to use them. For some reason, though, it's the only one that gets pilloried for doing so.




My guess as to why it gets flak for using them is the audience is used to the D&D game running without them.  I already have other systems of choice I turn to for narrative/dramatically satisfying play.  4e targeted such play space <edit>more</edit> than its predecessors and _seemed_ to move away from the sort of play (heavy exploration, rewards coming directly from context and overcoming a hostile environment) I wanted when I turned to using the D&D rules.

In other words, it _seemed_ that 4e was not true to the roots of its style of game.

Add to that a marked change in presentation and apparent design philosophy and you gete passionate alienated fans.  And passion leads to action. 

*Seemed of course takes into account IME, IMO, YMMV, etc.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## tomBitonti

Anyone noticing the tension between having a detailed, tactical game and having narrative resolution?

I'm used to detailed, tactical fights.  But when I run such fights, I want more detailed resolution mechanisms.

On the other hand, for more free-form, narrative style encounters, narrative resolution fits better (for me).

I guess I get a bit of whiplash ... "ok, lets focus on detailed resolution (by having a grid, and a precise resolution system)" but "lets use more narrative mechanics (per encounter, per day, with less description of how the powers work)".

Tom Bitonti


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## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> Anyone noticing the tension between having a detailed, tactical game and having narrative resolution?




That doesn't bother me. They are separate enough in concept, that I can put them into two separate compartments. What does cause a similar whiplash for me is having the narrative element expressed in operational gaming terms, when most of the rest of the game doesn't seem to share those operational concerns.

For 1/encounter verus 1/scene, it's just a term, and I can easily mentally substitute. It has no appreciable effect on the mechanics, if you are already thinking of "encounter" as "scene" anyway. But the difference between 1/day and 1/adventure is not merely a switch in term and thinking.


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## chaochou

Raven Crowking said:


> Tell you what:  Let me know what position you are actually advocating, and we can go from there.






chaochou said:


> A player chooses a stance while playing 4e and then says he had experience x as a "result of the choice made and the context within which the choice was made".
> 
> What is the objective analysis you are claiming is possible? What data are you claiming this is this producing?




Tell you what: Answer the questions and we can go from there.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## ThirdWizard

tomBitonti said:


> Anyone noticing the tension between having a detailed, tactical game and having narrative resolution?
> 
> I'm used to detailed, tactical fights.  But when I run such fights, I want more detailed resolution mechanisms.
> 
> On the other hand, for more free-form, narrative style encounters, narrative resolution fits better (for me).
> 
> I guess I get a bit of whiplash ... "ok, lets focus on detailed resolution (by having a grid, and a precise resolution system)" but "lets use more narrative mechanics (per encounter, per day, with less description of how the powers work)".




Let me preface this by saying this is how I feel. Anyone and everyone is free, and often times, encouraged to feel differently. 

One of the things I like about narrative mechanics is that they encourage players to emotionally invest in the resolution itself beyond success or failure, in the actual narrative of how the events play out. Going back to the example of the character running from the vampires I brought up earlier in the thread who "creates" the pipes of running water, the player is being engaged with the world by adding to said world in a narrative fasion. Now that he's doing that, he has more of a connection with it than if everything is detailed to him by the DM.

This is in addition to his character's interactions with the world, which are also going to do the same thing. When a character saves an NPC, then that NPC shows up later in the game, there's a sense of the character belonging to a living breathing world. When the player takes over an aspect of a scene and helps define its aspects, then there's a sense of the campaign belonging to the player. These are slightly different feelings, but ones that I think anyone who has DMed would appreciate on at least some level.

These are very concrete things. There are specific mechanics, resolutions, and ways in which these resolutions come about. I wouldn't really call it free-form at all. You roll a skill, check a DC, and you either succeed or fail. The resolution mechanic is narrative, but that doesn't mean the resolution isn't a rules construct.

Going back to 4e, the narrative aspects of the game are really just the descriptions of very well defined mechanics. So, to take the example of a 1/encounter trip power, it might play out something like this:

"I rush over to the man with the tatoo, shoulder low and sword held back behind me as I move to intercept him." _Rolls attack, hit resolved with DM._ "As I feint, I notice that he's overcompensated for a moment and press my advantage, hitting him with the pommel of my sword. Wide eyed, he goes over completely, hitting the ground with a crack and a thud."

So, _description-wise_, it was a bit of luck that caused the opponent to be knocked to the ground. But, the _mechanical resolution_ doesn't care about this. Mechanically speaking it's just as crunchy and detailed as if there was no room for description beyond a well defined explanation for all circumstances.

So, I see no tension between the two.


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> One of the things I like about narrative mechanics is that they encourage players to emotionally invest in the resolution itself beyond success or failure, in the actual narrative of how the events play out
> <snip>
> Going back to 4e, the narrative aspects of the game are really just the descriptions of very well defined mechanics. So, to take the example of a 1/encounter trip power, it might play out something like this:
> 
> "I rush over to the man with the tatoo, shoulder low and sword held back behind me as I move to intercept him." _Rolls attack, hit resolved with DM._ "As I feint, I notice that he's overcompensated for a moment and press my advantage, hitting him with the pommel of my sword. Wide eyed, he goes over completely, hitting the ground with a crack and a thud."



What is your and/or Average Joe's motivation to describe the action in fluff terms? Why not just announce "I trip the opponent"?

The mechanical result is fixed. No DM or player is asking Average Joe to justify the power, so how does the mechanic encourage Joe to have an emotional investment in defining the narrative?

When I played 2E and 3E, it was very rare for anyone to say anything other than "I attack with ___" and roll the die. The odd storyteller player would describe fluff for standard actions but they were rare in my sphere. For everyone else, there was simply no motivation.

However, when the mechanical process is uncertain and the outcome unknown, that was a whole different ballgame...

EDIT: I ask this with all due respect. I acknowledge that narration for its own sake can be a reward in itself (and for some people more than others) but I don't understand why a 1/encounter power encourages that more, either for you or for Average Joe, when the outcome (target is prone) would seem to be the same regardless.


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## chaochou

Raven Crowking said:


> Frankly, clear responses to your questions would require an expenditure of time and effort.




Awww. How hurtful!


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> What is your and/or Average Joe's motivation to describe the action in fluff terms? Why not just announce "I trip the opponent"?




That is the problem with only going part way. Above, somewhere in this thread, I said that 4e was only kinda-sorta dissociated, not really dissociated in any meaningful way. What you just pointed out, that would be the "meaningful way" that I was referring to. Because there is no mechanical benefit to the narrative aspect.

In other systems, there _is_ the mechanical benefit of adding to the narrative. There's a direct correlation. The more into the narrative aspects of the game the players are, the more the benefit from the system, the more they get out of using those narrative mechanics, the more they use the narrative mechanics. And, with use, you get into a groove with the other players and the GM over time. There's a push in the system to do it.

4e is lacking that. It tries to do it, sort of, and with a group that embraces it, you can really have fun with the system. However, you are exactly right. There is nothing that starts that push in the rules.

For a group that accepts the narrative conceits, for these people none of the negative aspects that people have been talking about come up. There's no issue with suspension of disbelief. It's just what it is, another narrative mechanic. You don't have to narrate the power every time, because it is just implied. Everybody, in my experience, narrates occasionally, whether you're playing 3e, 4e, or whatever floats your boat.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't note that from a gameplay perspective Encounter powers are something I like. I would rather have a per session or per adventure resource instead of per day, but I can only ask so much of D&D. But, that is a whole other topic!

The question, I suppose, becomes was it worth it? For me, I like it. For others they don't like it. Is my pleasure in the system worth their displeasure? I won't answer that, but I will say this: Thank goodness for the existence of the OGL.


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> My guess as to why it gets flak for using them is the audience is used to the D&D game running without them.  I already have other systems of choice I turn to for narrative/dramatically satisfying play.  4e targeted such play space <edit>more</edit> than its predecessors and _seemed_ to move away from the sort of play (heavy exploration, rewards coming directly from context and overcoming a hostile environment) I wanted when I turned to using the D&D rules.



I agree with this, excpet with a substituion of "expected" for "wanted" in the last clause. It is precisely because 4e _differed_ from what I had traditionally expected from D&D that I now _want_ to play D&D.



Nagol said:


> In other words, it _seemed_ that 4e was not true to the roots of its style of game.
> 
> Add to that a marked change in presentation and apparent design philosophy and you gete passionate alienated fans.



The last sentence here seems pretty plausible, if a lot of people agree with, or (in terms of their own perceptions and feelings) exemplify the first sentence here.

I personally have a fairly uncertain handle on the roots of D&D's style of game - there is classic Gygaxian D&D, there is the much more character-focused way that I played Basic/Expert and then D&D (which enjoyed some support in Dragon magazine in the mid-80s), there is heavy sim-style world-building exploration (which enjoyed a _lot_ of support in Dragon around that time), there is 2nd-ed era GM-driven storytelling (which irritated me at the time and which I'm even more averse to these days), there is 3E which I don't really get at all (I don't see what 3E offers that Rolemaster - perhaps with a Fate point system to allow players to mitigate criticals vs their PCs (heck, let's publish it and call it HARP!) - doesn't do better - but that's probably just me). And the 3E of Pathfinder adventure paths looks different to me from the 3E of many ENworld posters' sandboxes.

But the fact that I like 4e _because_ of its mechanical departures from earlier editions probably makes me an outlier in the way I engage with (or fail to engage with) D&D's roots.


----------



## Beginning of the End

ExploderWizard said:


> The real grunt work would be determining the damage "cost" of various effects. Some of the more powerful ones wouldn't be "affordable" until higher levels are reached when base damage permits the options.
> 
> Don't make any effect too good for the damage cost. Here is an important bit- _the effects generated are not and should not be equal to those produced by magic or other limited use effects. _




Unfortunately, this is very difficult to balance without being able to tightly control the exact number of encounters a group will experience between extended rests (or whatever other mechanic you use for allowing limited use effects to recharge).

You can already see this in pre-4E D&D: Here most fighters basically have "do damage as often as you want" as the only ability you need to balance, but whether or not this is balanced varies widely depending on how many encounters you experience per day. One? The fighter might as well stay home. Twenty? Now the fighter is essential.

Add special, at-will abilities to the fighter and now you're balancing from two directions.



Bedrockgames said:


> Interesting discussion all around. I think  something about the essay rings true for me, in terms of what may be one  of the root reasons i cant seem to get into 4e. However i really  believe this stuff is a matter of taste and preference and that our  reactions to games begin with a feeling ( i.e. I am not having a good  time playing this or this really bores me) and then we try to figure out  the reasons why. This is why i dont think it is fruitful to prove to  someone their reasons for disliking a game are wrong. Because at the end  of the day it isn't a matter of providing a logical proof that johnny  really likes 3e though he says he doesn't. You can prove his assumptions  about why he doesn't like it are questionable, but he is still going to  have that same reaction to the game itself.,




I don't find this to be universally true. We certainly haven't found any value in 4E's dissociated mechanics, but there are plenty of other games where understanding how they're supposed to be played has allowed out group to enjoy them. (Whereas if we had approached them as traditional RPGs we wouldn't have.)



Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> And what if the ankheg tries to spit again in 5 hours, 58 minutes?  At  this point it's certainly almost completely full, hmm?  Why is there no  individual variation in "recharge times"?
> 
> My point is that this is something in the rules which, when viewed  through the "lens of reality," lacks a good, consistent fictional  explanation.  We have to "house rule it" to make it make sense.  It is  different in degree, but not in kind, from many other such things we  cheerfully accept in our D&D game.
> 
> And yet this is supposed to be an "associated" mechanic.




Actually, what you're clearly demonstrating is that -- contrary to Imaro's claim -- there's nothing inherently dissociated about recharge mechanics. But you're muddying that issue by insisting on some sort of partisanship in your antics.



Neonchameleon said:


> As for a condition such as "Only if anyone  is around to hear it", that's an epic fail.  What it means is that the  smart thing is _always_ to blow the Horn of Gondor when facing  something big (like the Balrog).  Because it can't do any harm - it just  won't do any good.  But mysteriously Boromir didn't do this.  Instead  he waited until his back was completely against the wall, hoarding the  daily to use against completely impossible odds because he didn't know  when the next extended rest was coming and would prefer to have  something in reserve in case the next obstacle was even worse than the  current one.




Alternatively: He used the horn in Gondor because there was help to be summoned. He didn't use it in Moria because there was no help to be summoned.

Ultimately, this kind of "let's pretend this narrative is literally a game session" is of virtually no use whatsoever.



> 4e on the other hand tries to simulate the genre.




There's really no evidence of that to be found in the rulebooks or the design diaries. 4E's goal appears to have been to create a balanced system for handling predictable strings of encounters.

More generally, you've got two very confused Venn diagrams going on here.

First, narrative control mechanics are almost always dissociated mechanics. But not all dissociated mechanics are narrative control mechanics.

Second, some genre-emulation mechanics may be dissociated mechanics. But the relationship is tangential at best.

4E has a lot of dissociated mechanics. But it doesn't have much in the way of genre-emulation mechanics or narrative control mechanics.


----------



## innerdude

Having  read through most of the thread, and the Alexandrian's essay again, I'm  just as firmly convinced as to the general premise and conclusion  posited--that dissociated mechanics are bad, if they're used in the  place of non-dissociated mechanics without any benefit in utility or  substance (i.e., transfer of narrative control). 

But  the importance of that concept continues to grow in my mind, and it's  based on something that struck me as I was writing my 2nd post on page 6  of the thread--namely that in order for roleplaying games to work at  all, they have to represent a form of human rationality as it comes to dealing with other sentient, rational entities.

In  other words, beyond any mechanical representations or resolutions, a  player has to assume that their actions inside the game world will at  some point receive a response. That other rational entities (read:  people) are evaluating the character's actions, and formulating  appropriate responses, based on the game world's structure, cultural and  racial norms, the individual entities' circumstances, etc. as defined  by the GM.

This,  in my mind, is the heart of roleplaying. Whatever class and skills a  character possesses, whatever race, whatever "level" or proficiency a  character has, all of that is merely a vehicle for the player to present  themselves as a particular rational entity, and that the game world is  expected to respond, act, and react to what is presented. Character  backbround matters because of this reality. I've seen a lot of people  say in essence that no character needs a background any more specific  than "I grew up with an adventuring spirit."

But  if you're approaching roleplaying as a form of experiencing vicarious  human interaction, that's insufficient, because the character's  background naturally forms the character's own internal sense of  rationality. A character with no background is literally its own  dissociation--it's a mechanical construct of numbers with no basis for  the point of reality it inhabits within the game world.

Now  some might say that no outside observer can know personal intention  anyway. That if a player wants to act randomly, it's their prerogative,  and the GM, or "game world," or "mileu" be damned. "It's my character, I  choose to act the way I want. It's the GM's job to figure out how it  'fits' their vision."

That's  fine and good, to a point; clearly no one plays RPGs to be told how to  play their character. But more often than not, it leads to natural  breaks within the rationality of the character--i.e., the substance of  the character within the game world. The player rarely or never  associates character actions with the logical extension of rational  outcomes.

Now  some may say that this doesn't matter, that such a play style can be rationalized by "The character just doesn't care what other people think."  

Yet the circumstances of your typical RPG adventurer precludes this basic premise. Getting good at adventuring takes waaaay too much  effort to "not care." A fighter who goes around killing  stuff, wenching, and drinking ale all the time isn't passively "not  caring," he's actively constructing an essence so that his worldview of  "not caring" can flourish. People who truly "don't care" aren't  adventurers--they're lazy sacks of crap (or if they are adventurers,  they're probably not very good ones).

An  action/adventure RPG, regardless of system, has to assume some level of  this rationality--that the characters within it consider the results of  their actions within the mileu. It's part of what makes RPGs great, and  a much different experience than playing Settlers of Catan, Dominion,  or even the Castle Ravenloft board game.

I'm rambling a bit here I realize, but the question comes back to, what does this have to do with dissociative mechanics?

The  answer is this: I don't play roleplaying games, at least for those  designed from the "Actor" perspective like D&D is, to "dissociate"  my character's rationality.

Dissociative  mechanics in general are just one more layer of abstraction, one more  set of arbitrary barriers to the type of roleplaying I enjoy, which is  entirely character associative. I want to play in roleplaying games that  push character association, because I enjoy exploring the sense of  human rationality that such association provides.

And  as I re-read the Alexandrian's essay, I was even more convinced that  dissociative mechanics are inherently at odds with this paradigm.


----------



## Beginning of the End

pemerton said:


> The examples that I gave weren't analaogous to knowing the DC of an open lock check, or d6 damage from fireballs.
> 
> To repeat them, they were: knowing that a 200' fall won't be fatal; knowing that a sword blow won't be fatal; knowing that one more blow _will_ be fatal.




All of these are the result of knowing precise numbers to which the PC doesn't have access to. I'm not seeing the distinction. If you're still seeing one that doesn't rely on knowing the precise numbers involved, please explain it.



pemerton said:


> Yes, it's metagaming. That's the _point_ of  the mechanic. It doesn't follow from that that it undermines  roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, which is what Justin  Alexander's essay claims.




The essay says nothing about dissociated mechanics promoting tactical skirmishing. When you just make up imaginary  like that, it's difficult to have a meaningful conversation with you.

The essay also explicitly states that nothing about dissociated mechanics undermines roleplaying around those mechanics. (OTOH, it's pretty much true by definition that you are not roleplaying during those times in which you are using dissociated mechanics and, therefore, not engaged in the process of making decisions as if you were your character.)


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I think I like the idea, as well as ThirdWizard's description of FATE Declarations, but if DMs can raise the DC as high as they want to effectively negate a fiction they don't want to exist (for "good" or "bad"), I don't see how it's any different than "old school" DM adjucation that some people enjoy being removed from.



At least in HeroQuest, it's not about the GM setting the DC very high to negate someting. It's about the GM telling the player, at the metagame level and before anything has happened or been attempted in the fiction, that a certain canvassed option isn't going to wash.

The difference from old school GMing would be (i) that it happens pre-emptively, in this metagame fashion, and (ii) because of that, it can be done, and is expected to be done, in a more consensual fashion. (I identify in more detail below how metagame mechanics, and mechanics that have a certain looseness of fit between mechanical resolution and ingame fictional events, help contribute to the second of these differences.)

Whether these differences are very siginficant overall, or for any given group, I don't know. They are significant for me.



ThirdWizard said:


> That is the problem with only going part way. Above, somewhere in this thread, I said that 4e was only kinda-sorta dissociated, not really dissociated in any meaningful way. What you just pointed out, that would be the "meaningful way" that I was referring to. Because there is no mechanical benefit to the narrative aspect.



I don't entirely agree. The narrative aspect, for example, can be pretty important for bringing page 42 into play.

One actual play example of this: before using Footwork Lure against a sonte golem, the player of the fighter in my game dropped a flask of wrestling oil onto the ground between himself and the golem, to increase the distance that he could slide the golem (and thereby get the benefits of Polearm Momentum against it). For this to work, the narrative aspect of Footwork Lure - that by deft work with his halberd the fighter lures the golem into stepping on the slippery patch of oil - has to be acknowledged. And the fact that the slipperiness was caused by oil itself became relevant when the party's wizard place a Wall of Fire in an adjacent square the next round - I decided to let the fighter roll a save for his patch of oil, which it failed, and the oil therefore combusted and the enhancement of Footwork Lure was lost.

One hypothetical example (at least, hypothetical relative to my table): a PC knocks a snake "prone". Following the Rules Compendium text (p 233), the table accepts that the prone condition

can affect limbless creatures, such as fish and snakes . . . when such a creature falls prone, imagine it is writhing or unsteady, rather than literally lying down.​
So the table agree that the snake has been flipped onto its back. Now one of the players remebers that the party was earlier warned by an oracle to look out for a snake with diamond markings on its back, and wants her PC to make a Perception check. The difficulty of that check, which the GM has responsibility for assigning on the spot, is clearly going to be affected by the fiction that the table has agreed to.

And the narration is crucial to resolving a skill challenge, per PHB p 259 and DGM pp 73-75:

Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter. Then you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail…

*Running a skill challenge*: Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. . . You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results...

When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it…

In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth…

However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation.​
But even in cases where the narrative doesn't have an immediate mechanical consequence, it can still be important to play - which relates to my earlier response to Yesway Jose about mechanics for love. Thus, if a player describes a PC's power or ability working in a certain fashion, this contributes to the persona that is being developed for that PC. This is in turn relevant to how NPCs, demons, gods etc will view with and interact with the PC. Which matters to exploration, to scene framing, and can also, in turn, have mechanical implications in the context of a skill challenge.

An actual play example: the drow chaos sorcerer in my game has recently become a Demonskin Adept. The way the player of this PC describes his various abilities working matters to the manner in which demons, demon worshippers, devils etc - in short, all those who care about chaos and its ways - perceive, and therefore interact with, the PC in question. And this is not irrelevant or an afterthought to the the game. This _is_ the game.

(A related point - a player, by choosing to narrate his/her PC's powers and abilities in a certain way, is also implicitly constructing the table's own "credibility test" paramters. This is another point of difference, I think, from classic D&D.)



Yesway Jose said:


> What is your and/or Average Joe's motivation to describe the action in fluff terms? Why not just announce "I trip the opponent"?
> 
> The mechanical result is fixed.



What I've said above helps answer this, I think. 



tomBitonti said:


> Anyone noticing the tension between having a detailed, tactical game and having narrative resolution?



Yep. But I'm used to it, because most of my GMing experience is with Rolemaster, which my group played in a vanilla narrativist fashion while still relishing every ounce of mechanical detail that Rolemaster provides both in character building and action resolution (OK, not every ounce, but many if not most of them).

For me, there are two keys, I think, to dissolving the tension. One is to make sure that the stakes of the combat are tightly integrated into the unfolding narrative. This doesn't mean no light-hearted or more peripheral conflicts - but even peripheral conflicts are still _peripheral_ ie on the periphery of the unfolding narrative, and not completely divorced from it.

The second key is to make sure that the combat itself, as it unfolds in its tactical richness, is also populated by moments that express the concerns of the unfolding narrative. A whole range of decisions made by the participants in the game feed into this. For me as GM, it's part of what I keep in mind in encounter building, and then in adjudicating the encounter and actuallly playing the NPCs - for example, in target selection, choosing which powers to use, etc I look for opportunities to push salient buttons (will the dwarf be defeated by a phalanx of hobgoblins? will the mage-invoker of Ioun and Vecna, having teleported into a room to blow the doomspeaker of Dagon out through the window, be able to survive the guardian demon she summons into the room as her final act? can I wipe the smile off the face of that cocky drow sorcerer?). I think 4e is very good for this, because it's underlying mechanics are robust enough that making decisions in this sort of way - at least in my experience to date - tends to yield a dramatic but mechanically "fair" fight. I generally don't have to worry about anti-climactic underkill or "oops, TPK" overkill (which is a definite difference from Rolemaster).

The players also contribute in this second way. By building their PCs and choosing certain classes, powers and abilities, they already introduce, by default as it were, certain material into the course of tactical play. And because of the same "flexibile" or "forgiving" character of 4e's underlying mechanical robustness, they can play to the narrative without concern that this will lead to mechanical suboptimality that costs the party. (To put it another way: at least in my experience, the mechanics are robust enough in this sense that they don't genrate a very strong push from narrativism to any sort of hardcore gamism. They leave room for more light-hearted gamism - "high-fiving" clever moves and the like - but I think this sort of gamism is fairly compatible with a relaxed narrativism that focuses more on aesthetic and thematic value than the "serious moral questions" that are sometimes identified with narrativism.)

A game like HeroQuest probably offers more immediate satisfaction for a narrativist agenda, but some of us like the crunchy bits of 4e. Burning Wheel and The Riddle of Steel are games that probably mix crunch and narrative control in comparable sorts of degrees, but both tend more to the gritty than the gonzo, I think, and my group likes gonzo fantasy (not necessarily silly fanatsy, but plane-travelling, mixing it up with devils, demons and gods, epic destinies, etc).


----------



## Pentius

Beginning of the End said:


> (OTOH, it's pretty much true by definition that you are not roleplaying during those times in which you are using dissociated mechanics and, therefore, not engaged in the process of making decisions as if you were your character.)




I think this sentence says a lot.  You, as well as innerdude above(and Alexander, if I'm reading him right) seem to be going by a definition for roleplaying that only accepts the Actor Stance as roleplaying, and puts Author and Director Stance outside it.  It's this rejection of the other two stances that leads to the attitude in the article that gets my hackles up.  Actor Stance is all well and good, but I've never been very fond of it, myself.  I play mainly in Author Stance, shifting to Director Stance whenever the mechanics let me.  It's the way the game makes the most sense to me, and has ever since I first picked up the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook nearly two decades ago, reading and rereading the introduction that promised me a game where my friends and I created our own exciting fantasy stories.  And you can bet your sweet can I consider myself a roleplayer.

I don't think the mechanics Alexander labels as "Disassociative"(still a very poor term, imo) are bad.  *If* you want to play exclusively in Actor Stance, then they aren't for you, and 4e may very well not be either.  But for those roleplayers who enjoy the other two stances, they're incredibly useful, even exciting tools, that we will happily go off and roleplay with.


----------



## pemerton

Beginning of the End said:


> All of these are the result of knowing precise numbers to which the PC doesn't have access to. I'm not seeing the distinction. If you're still seeing one that doesn't rely on knowing the precise numbers involved, please explain it.



Knowing that I can jump over a 200' cliff and survive isn't just about knowing precise numbers as a player, which the PC doesn't know. Likewise about knowing that one more blow will kill me.

These are about the player being in a cognitive state, which (i) almost certainly affects the way s/he plays his or her PC, and (ii) is a cognitive state that that PC could not possibly be in.

So, for example, the player who knows that the 200' fall can't kill his/her PC decides that her PC will jump. What can the PC possibly be thinking that allows him/her to make the jump with the same degree of insouciance? All I can think of is "I have a lucky feeling about this!" But if that's enough to make hit points "associated", why can't it do the job for 4e's metagame powers?

Similarly for the player who has his PC charge a bevy of archers because s/he knows that the damage from the arrows can't add up to a fatal total. What is the _PC_ thinking? Again, all I can think of is "I feel lucky!".

And now consider the player who decides that his/her PC will jump, and the PC does so - and the PC, in a bizzare coincidence, takes maximum damage, and therefore (let's suppose) has 1 hit point left. The very same PC, who just seconds before had a lucky feeling, now will act as cautiously as possible, because any weapon attack has a chance of killing him or her. What is the PC feeling? Not that every bone is broken - s/he gets up and walks away. Not that s/he can't dodge - her movement speed and Tumbling checks are unimpeded. She's feeling unlucky. Like the gods have deserted her. All her divine favour has been used up. Anyway, however you "associate" that, do the same when you play 4e!

TL;DR - there're are reasons that generations of RPGers have rejected D&D hit points for other, different, damage mechanics. One of those reasons is that hit points produce decision-making that has no correlation to the actual decisions that people who _don't_ have cognitive access to their future luckiness are able to make.



pemerton said:


> Yes, it's metagaming. That's the _point_ of the mechanic. It doesn't follow from that that it undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, which is what Justin Alexander's essay claims.





Beginning of the End said:


> The essay says nothing about dissociated mechanics promoting tactical skirmishing.



This mischaracterised what I said.

It's obvious to anyone who can read that Justin Alexander doesn't say that dissociated mechanics in general promote tactical skirmishing, given that he praises their role in _Wushu_. But I think it's equally obvious that I haven't imputed this view to him.

When I say "that's the _point_ of *the mechanic*", and then say that it doesn't follow from that point that it (ie the mechanic in question) undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, I am not talking about so-called dissociated mechanics in general. I'm talking about a particular mechanic - namely, a rogue using Trick Strike  - which is the the target of Justin Alexander's attack. (And to the extent that I'm generalising by way of implication, the implied generalisation is obviously to other martial daily and encounter powers in 4e.)



pemerton said:


> the essay appears to presuppose that a combat resolution mechanics that are complex and have a signficant metagame component are at odds with, or at best orthogonal, to player control over the narrative.





Raven Crowking said:


> Why, exactly, do you think this?  I see nothing in the essay that would lead one to that conclusion, and, frankly, rather the opposite.



Anyway, here are the bits of the essay that I particularly had in mind when making those above interpretive remarks:

Of course, When the characters' relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts. 

You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. 

At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game. mechanics that you're using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world -- and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook. 

In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that's entirely accidental. . .

[D]issociated mechanics can also be quite useful for roleplaying games. It's all a question of what you do with them. Specifically, dissociated mechanics can be useful if the reason they're dissociated from the game world is because they're modeling the narrative. . .

Traditional roleplaying games, like D&D, are based around the idea of players as actors: Each player takes on the role of a particular character and the entirety of play is defined around the player thinking of themselves as the character and asking the question, "What am I going to do?"

. . .

But there is another option: Instead of determining the outcome of a particular action, scene-based resolution mechanics determine the outcome of entire scenes. . .

Clearly, a scene-based resolution mechanic is dissociated from the game world. The game world, after all, knows nothing about the "scene". . . 

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a _different _way (through the narrative instead of through the game world). . .

There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project. . .

In the case of _Wushu_, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game. . .

[T]he easiest comeback would be to say that it's all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don't like the tactical wargaming.

That's an easy comeback, but it doesn't quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games.

My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the _roleplaying_ of roleplaying games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story. . .

There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn't actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you're playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.

To put it another way: I can understand why you need to accept the disadvantages of dissociated mechanics in order to embrace the advantages of narrative-based mechanics. But I don't think it's necessary to embrace dissociated mechanics in order to create a mechanically interesting game.  . .

In other words, I don't think the trade-offs in 4th Edition are necessary. They're sacrificing value and utility where value and utility didn't need to be lost.​
So the reason I think that Alexander's essay appears to presuppose that combat resolution mechanics that are complex and have a signficant metagame component are at odds with, or at best orthogonal, to player control over the narrative, is because the essay discusses such mechanics (namely, 4e martial dailies) at some length, and concludes that they are _not_ giving players control over the narrative, and rather are supporting a tactical skirmish game, in relation to which any fiction would be "dramatic improv" of no relevance to action resolution.

And the reason I say that Alexander's essay claims that 4e's martial daily powers undermine roleplaying and promote tactical skirmishing is that he says "In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game".

To be honest, I'm surprised that my reading of the essay - which is manifestly an attack upon 4e for being a tactical skirmish game, with the martial dailes picked out as exhibit A in the case for 4e's sacrificing of roleplaying to tactical skirmish play - is at all controversial.

I mean, the remark (that falls under a heading "Accepting Your Fate") that "you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game" is pretty unambiguous.



Beginning of the End said:


> 4E's goal appears to have been to create a balanced system for handling predictable strings of encounters.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 4E has a lot of dissociated mechanics. But it doesn't have much in the way of genre-emulation mechanics or narrative control mechanics.



This seems to me to make much the same presupposition as does Justin Alexander's essay.

Why is the player of a rogue, who chooses to use Trick Strike on a given occasion against a given foe - thereby bringing it about that, in the fiction, his/her PC shines in that particular duel against that particular foe - not exercising narrative control?

Here is Justin Alexander's characterisation of narrative control mechanics (from the same essay):

Second, you can create a story. In this approach you are focusing on the creation of a compelling narrative. . . . The dice you're rolling have little or no connection to the game world -- they're modeling a purely narrative property (control of the scene). . . [This] gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. For example, in the case of _Wushu _these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences . . .​
In what way is the player of a rogue, who has his/her PC use Trick Strike, not (i) using a mechanic that has little or no connection to the game world but rather models a purely narrative property (namely, of being a singularly impressive duelist), (ii) which is under the control of the player (because the player gets to decide when to use the power), (iii) in an advantageous way (namely, to create what the player regards as a compelling story about his/her clever, swashbuckling rogue).

Besides being narrative control mechanics in the sense suggested in the essay, 4e's daily powers are intended to play another obvious role in relation to the production of a compelling narrative, namely, of producing without effort a certain sort of pacing in the resolution of combat.

(And in case anyone things being a singularly impressive duelist doesn't count as a "compelling narrative", here is Alexander's example of a compelling narrative from _Wushu_ (again, this is from the same essay):

Since it's just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is . . .​
I think being John Woo in a modern action adventure RPG is about as compelling as being D'Artagnan in a fantasy adventure RPG - ie probably reasonably entertaining for the participants in the game, although fairly prosaic by overall standards of artistic quality. In any event, Alexander is not setting the bar for "compelling narrative" so high that a 4e game obviously lacks the capacity to clear it.)



Beginning of the End said:


> The essay also explicitly states that nothing about dissociated mechanics undermines roleplaying around those mechanics.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> OTOH, it's pretty much true by definition that you are not roleplaying during those times in which you are using dissociated mechanics and, therefore, not engaged in the process of making decisions as if you were your character.



This isn't the only, or self-evident, definition of roleplaying in relation to RPGs. For example, it renders author stance not roleplaying by definition, whereas a good chunk of pretty classic D&D play takes place in author stance - I, the player, decide what would be a clever thing to do - perhaps in conversation with my fellow playes, perhaps not - and then retroactively impute the relevant reasons and motivations to my PC.

It's also unclear how this notion of "roleplaying around dissociated mechanics" - ie adopting actor stance when you're not in author or director stance - relates to Alexander's claim that, if you do this in relation to 4e, "You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook."


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> Knowing that I can jump over a 200' cliff and survive isn't just about knowing precise numbers as a player, which the PC doesn't know. Likewise about knowing that one more blow will kill me.
> 
> These are about the player being in a cognitive state, which (i) almost certainly affects the way s/he plays his or her PC, and (ii) is a cognitive state that that PC could not possibly be in.
> 
> So, for example, the player who knows that the 200' fall can't kill his/her PC decides that her PC will jump. What can the PC possibly be thinking that allows him/her to make the jump with the same degree of insouciance? All I can think of is "I have a lucky feeling about this!" But if that's enough to make hit points "associated", why can't it do the job for 4e's metagame powers?




I don't buy that it's dissociative. People take more than 200' foot jumps all the time; if you could make the landing with as much safety as if you had a parachute (and the fact that anyone sane trusts a parachute is beyond me) then why wouldn't an adventurer make the jump? The fluff here is clear; high-level adventurers can survive long falls and reasonably know that. There's an exact parallel to something in the game world; you just don't like the fluff it implies.

(I'm not sure what's so different from getting in close combat with a dragon. A dragon's breath is realistically as sure a kill as a 200' foot fall, and a strike from its claw nearly so.)


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## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> I don't buy that it's dissociative.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The fluff here is clear; high-level adventurers can survive long falls and reasonably know that. There's an exact parallel to something in the game world; you just don't like the fluff it implies.



But _how_ do they survive? This is similar to my response upthread to Jameson Courage - you don't establish a coherent gameworld just by telling me that Heirophants have a non-magical ability to square the circle, and that it is teachable and learnable. I want to know, how are they doing it? What fiction am I being invited to imagine?

In the case of the fall, what might this be? Luck? Divine favour? (Surely not meat! Or really strong bones - after all, that is what a barbarian's DR models.) If you can regard knowing how lucky you are going to be, in advance, as associated, then I don't see why the same mind trick can't be played in respect of martial dailies.



prosfilaes said:


> I'm not sure what's so different from getting in close combat with a dragon. A dragon's breath is realistically as sure a kill as a 200' foot fall, and a strike from its claw nearly so.



Well, the answer to the claw thing is meant to be that it doesn't really hit you, it just grazes you or winds you slightly.

The breath I can't say so much about, and I think it's therefore not a coincidence that a more simulationist approach to breath weapons and saving throws is seen fairly early on in the history of D&D (I'm thinking of Roger Musson's "How to Lose Hit Points and Survive", in White Dwarf, but I'm sure it's not the only example).

To me the easy solution to both the breath and the fall is that _the player knows his/her PC will survive_, but the PC doesn't. That is, that hit points are a type of mechanical resource that the player draws on to help regulate his/her PC's exposure to risk, knowing that a certain degree of narrative protection is available, but apt to be ablated.

But this requires adopting author stance rather than actor stance. I think an actor-stance-only version of hit points will tend to produce play that is, in practice, indistinguishable from "hit points as meat", although most groups won't worry about what this means for the biology of their high-level PCs.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> I don't entirely agree. The narrative aspect, for example, can be pretty important for bringing page 42 into play.
> <snip>
> But even in cases where the narrative doesn't have an immediate mechanical consequence, it can still be important to play - which relates to my earlier response to Yesway Jose about mechanics for love.



If you're extrapolating from a general statement, then that's fine. However, I was trying to be specific about which kind of mechanics encourage narration and which don't. Page 42 is the most narrative-rewarding mechanic there is, probably because those mechanics are the most twiddly of them all.



> So the table agree that the snake has been flipped onto its back. Now one of the players remebers that the party was earlier warned by an oracle to look out for a snake with diamond markings on its back, and wants her PC to make a Perception check. The difficulty of that check, which the GM has responsibility for assigning on the spot, is clearly going to be affected by the fiction that the table has agreed to.



OK, well I find this example to be a bit offbase for a couple reasons, but I'll just say that I highly doubt any player will start narrating standard attack actions consistently in order to find easter eggs like that one.



> What is your and/or Average Joe's motivation to describe the action in fluff terms? Why not just announce "I trip the opponent"?
> The mechanical result is fixed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What I've said above helps answer this, I think.
Click to expand...


As per what I've said above, sorry, but not at all.

If we're asking if a mechanic encourages narration, it has to also be true for an average session with Average Joe. A mechanic that encourages narration in oddball corner cases or for storyteller players who are already inclined to narrate regardless, then it doesn't prove much to claim that a mechanic encourages narration 0.1% of the time -- as most of us are interested in the 99.9%.



P.S. Average Joe is Average Roleplaying Joe, not Average In-the-Country Joe. Just in case anyone was going to extrapolate on that...


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## ThirdWizard

Beginning of the End said:


> The essay also explicitly states that nothing about dissociated mechanics undermines roleplaying around those mechanics. (OTOH, it's pretty much true by definition that you are not roleplaying during those times in which you are using dissociated mechanics and, therefore, not engaged in the process of making decisions as if you were your character.)




I would ask that you don't dictate who is and who is not roleplaying. Being told that you aren't roleplaying on a message board dedicated to roleplaying is a bit inflammatory.


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## Raven Crowking

Removed


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## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> My point is that it's not enough for the game rules to stipulate that there is a method that can be learned, if the notion of such a method is contradictory or incoherent.
> 
> I would suggest that the notion, in D&D, of phasing my body as an EX rather than a SU ability, is an example of that sort of incoherence.
> 
> Hiding in plain sight perhaps not - but does it have clothing/camouflage requirements?




A quick notation of how EX and SU are actually used in 3.5 may help you to understand where I'm coming from:







> Extraordinary Abilities (Ex)
> *Extraordinary abilities are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics. They are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training.*
> 
> These abilities cannot be disrupted in combat, as spells can, and they generally do not provoke attacks of opportunity. *Effects or areas that negate or disrupt magic have no effect on extraordinary abilities. They are not subject to dispelling, and they function normally in an antimagic field.*
> 
> Using an extraordinary ability is usually not an action because most extraordinary abilities automatically happen in a reactive fashion. Those extraordinary abilities that are actions are standard actions unless otherwise noted.





> Supernatural Abilities (Su)
> *Supernatural abilities are magical and go away in an antimagic field but are not subject to spell resistance, counterspells, or to being dispelled by dispel magic.* Using a supernatural ability is a standard action unless noted otherwise. Supernatural abilities may have a use limit or be usable at will, just like spell-like abilities. However, supernatural abilities do not provoke attacks of opportunity and never require Concentration checks. Unless otherwise noted, a supernatural ability has an effective caster level equal to the creature’s Hit Dice. The saving throw (if any) against a supernatural ability is:
> 
> 10 + ½ the creature’s HD + the creature’s ability modifier (usually Charisma).



The big difference between the types of abilities? Whether or not they go away in an anti-magic field (SU abilities are magic). EX abilities do not have to obey the laws of physics (though they definitely can), though they "are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training."

Thus, my assertion that as long as there is a way for the ability to be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociative. Thus, again, if the rogue's ability is purely narrative control, it does not fit this definition, and makes it dissociative, as far as I can tell. If he had some ability to warp reality once per day for some reason, it's no longer dissociative.

EX and SU abilities really have nothing to do with it.


----------



## Mallus

Raven Crowking said:


> I cannot think of any RPG that doesn't blend role-playing (making decisions within the frame of the avatar), story-telling (narration from Director or Author stance, where one is not directly playing the role within the frame of the avatar), and gamism (engaging the mechanics).  I would also agree that these three things are at times indistinguishable, as they blend together during actual play.



Very well said, RC.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Raven Crowking said:


> The claim that, at times in the game in which you are not playing a role, you are not actively engaged in role-playing, shouldn't be seen as inflammatory.




When you start defining what mechanics are and which are not roleplaying, and who is and who is not roleplaying, things are going to start to take a turn for the worse.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> A quick notation of how EX and SU are actually used in 3.5 may help you to understand where I'm coming from
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The big difference between the types of abilities? Whether or not they go away in an anti-magic field (SU abilities are magic). EX abilities do not have to obey the laws of physics (though they definitely can), though they "are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training."
> 
> Thus, my assertion that as long as there is a way for the ability to be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociative.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> EX and SU abilities really have nothing to do with it.



Justin Alexander's essay makes reference to mechanics that are "nothing more than mechanical artefacts". If EX and SU mean nothing more than how something interacts with an anti-magic field, then they've become nothing more than mechanical artefacts. To the extent that they are something other than mechanical artefacts, it's because we have some more-or-less independent grasp of what is magical, and what not - and hence what anti-magic will affect, and what it won't.

Simply stipulating to me that an ability is EX, and therefore learnable, but leaving it completely mysterious as to the way in which it is not magical, doesn't strike me as very powerful association. What is actually happening in the gameworld when my sleeping thief evades a fireball? (For example, do I wake up? Does that mean that, if I'm under a permanent sleep curse, and so can't wake up, I lose my evasion? Or would that be a house rule?)


----------



## TwoSix

Raven Crowking said:


> I cannot think of any RPG that doesn't blend role-playing (making decisions within the frame of the avatar), story-telling (narration from Director or Author stance, where one is not directly playing the role within the frame of the avatar), and gamism (engaging the mechanics).  I would also agree that these three things are at times indistinguishable, as they blend together during actual play.
> RC



Two issues with that.  One, I think many players don't use term "role-playing" as defining merely the subset of play that occurs within Actor Stance.  Some use it for any activity involved within the play of a role-playing game, including the engagement of mechanics.  Others, myself included, would define it as encompassing all the decision-making process made at the table, whether in Actor, Director, or Author stance.

Second, defining "role-playing" as purely Actor Stance comes with the unfortunate side effect that one is also forced to define other table play as "not role-playing", which can easily come across as unnecessarily pejorative.

While the primacy of importance of Actor Stance in a traditional RPG is well understood (I think), there's probably a better term for it than "role-playing", at least within a group that includes both traditionalists and players of more modern games.

I don't actually have a problem with the Alexandrian's essay's use of that term, since he is fairly obviously preaching to the choir of trad players, and he also defines what he means by role-playing within the essay itself.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> If we're asking if a mechanic encourages narration, it has to also be true for an average session with Average Joe. A mechanic that encourages narration in oddball corner cases or for storyteller players who are already inclined to narrate regardless, then it doesn't prove much to claim that a mechanic encourages narration 0.1% of the time -- as most of us are interested in the 99.9%.



Average Joe looks to me here like boring Joe, or maybe Joe who doesn't care much for the dramatic/thematic elements of the fiction. Maybe I'm missing some obvious point, but I'm not sure why is it significant that this Joe care about narration. Presumably this Joe wouldn't narrate much in HeroQuest, either, or in the Burning Wheel - but what follows from that?

I'm really not getting what's at stake here (from your point of view). From my point of view, what's at stake is that - contra the essay referred to in the OP - the use of daily powers, and the consequences of their use, _do_ matter to the fiction, and that (among other consequence) the fiction in a 4e game is therefore not simply "improv drama linking a series of tactical skirmishes" (and if that's paraphrase rather than quote, it's not very loose paraphrase).


----------



## Crazy Jerome

innerdude said:


> This, in my mind, is the heart of roleplaying. Whatever class and skills a character possesses, whatever race, whatever "level" or proficiency a character has, all of that is merely a vehicle for the player to present themselves as a particular rational entity, and that the game world is expected to respond, act, and react to what is presented. Character backbround matters because of this reality. I've seen a lot of people say in essence that no character needs a background any more specific than "I grew up with an adventuring spirit."




Danger, danger!  You are edging right up the line of declaring all "develop in play" roleplaying as not roleplaying.  You are stopping short of crossing over, because the implication is that the thing you are rejecting is not develop in play versus develop before play but "don't develop at all."  

Timing matters, and it matters in different ways for different styles.  Don't confuse, "for us, this thing needs to happen at this point for it to work," with, "this things needs to happen at this point for it to happen at all."


----------



## pemerton

Which one of those has anything to do with player control over the narrative?[/quote]The bit where he says that 4e daily powers - unlike _Wushu_ - don't give narrative control, but only contribute to the mechanical crunchiness of the tactical skirmish game.

You paraphrase it here:



Raven Crowking said:


> (3) The dissociated mechanics in 4e do not allow the players enough narrative control to justify forcing the player to abandon the Actor stance, in the author's opinion.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> (5) The reason for (3) is that the designers of 4e desired to focus on tactical combat with minis on a battlemat, rather than on player-controlled narrative storytelling.




The other parts that I quoted are the warm-up act for this contention - they introduce the key (and by now familiar) rhetorical tropes, like the comparison to chess and the notion of the fiction as mere improv (which also implies that there must not be narrative control mechanics - because if there were, then the fiction wouldn't be mere improv, would it?).



Raven Crowking said:


> There is nothing whatsoever in (3) that has anything to do with _*complexity of mechanics*_.  Complexity of mechanics only arises in the context of attempting to re-associate dissociated mechanics to allow a player aware of the issues raised to re-assume the Actor stance.



The suggestion that mechanical and tactical richness, per se, does not make a good RPG, is what I am alluding to in my use of the word _complexity_. There's also the apparent implication that narrative control mechanics are OK if they operate at the level of the scene, but not if they are more finegrained than that (as in 4e combat resolution).



Raven Crowking said:


> I have to wonder what essay you are reading.



Oddly enough, the same one as you. The one from which you paraphrased the same claims that I made, namely, that 4e's tactical combat mechanics - with their complex and metagame character - aren't narrative control mechanics.

Which, as I indicated in my earlier post, strikes me as simply false in light of the very characterisation of narrative control mechanics given in the essay.

From the essay I learn that the author like _Wushu_ but not 4e - and thinks it's important that a player get to narrate sliding under a car, but not feinting an opponent around the battlefield - but that, to my mind, is hardly great insight into RPG design.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

ThirdWizard said:


> When you start defining what mechanics are and which are not roleplaying, and who is and who is not roleplaying, things are going to start to take a turn for the worse.




Yes. It is an interesting ground to investigage, especially from a game design perspective. But risky. Where I draw the line is that if I suspect, from my experience, that X doesn't fall under the roleplaying rubric, then I want to examine that. If as soon as I start examining it, people start telling me that they do X in their roleplaying all the time, I'm going to be really cautious.

It becomes very likely in such a situation that the thing worth investigating in X is not whether or not X contributes to roleplaying but how it so contributes.  Tell me who is most equipped to shed light on that subject--the guy who hasn't roleplayed with X, or the guy who has?


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Average Joe looks to me here like boring Joe, or maybe Joe who doesn't care much for the dramatic/thematic elements of the fiction. Maybe I'm missing some obvious point



I think that's a bit of an awful judgement value. Like I wrote, most people in my experience just announce "I attack with ____" and roll a die. I do it all the time myself. Are you calling all of us Boring Joe? Again, this is restricted to standard combat actions, not page 42, not skill challenges, not roleplaying romances. Perhaps if you didn't extrapolate so much, and stayed within the original context, then the point would be more obvious.



> I'm really not getting what's at stake here (from your point of view).



I don't know, I was responding to something that ThirdWizard mentioned, I wasn't leading up to bigger conclusions. Again, if you didn't extrapolate so much from what people state....


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> Justin Alexander's essay makes reference to mechanics that are "nothing more than mechanical artefacts".




He implies it, but not in the way it seems like you are.







			
				Justin Alexander said:
			
		

> Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever.
> 
> At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game. When the characters' relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts.





			
				Justin Alexander said:
			
		

> But in one scenario they have a 50% chance of climbing the wall and in the other they have a 75% chance of climbing the wall. Why? Because of a mechanical artifact that has absolutely nothing to do with the game world.




He called them "nothing more than mechanical artifacts" only if they're dissociated -that is, they have no place within the game world. So, again, if they cannot be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than they are "nothing more than mechanical artifacts." He does not, as you seem to imply, say that all mechanics are "nothing more than mechanical artifacts".



> If EX and SU mean nothing more than how something interacts with an anti-magic field, then they've become nothing more than mechanical artefacts.




If there is some tie from the mechanics to reasoning in-game, than it's not the case. The reasoning in-game must be able to be learned, explored, or observed, as far as I can tell. In this case, I think it's that EX abilities aren't magical by nature, while SU abilities are.



> To the extent that they are something other than mechanical artefacts, it's because we have some more-or-less independent grasp of what is magical, and what not - and hence what anti-magic will affect, and what it won't.
> 
> Simply stipulating to me that an ability is EX, and therefore learnable, but leaving it completely mysterious as to the way in which it is not magical, doesn't strike me as very powerful association.




Okay. It doesn't really need to strike you as a very powerful association. If there is a tie to something in-game related to the mechanic that is able to be learned, explored, or observed, than it's not dissociative, as far as I can tell.



> What is actually happening in the gameworld when my sleeping thief evades a fireball? (For example, do I wake up? Does that mean that, if I'm under a permanent sleep curse, and so can't wake up, I lose my evasion? Or would that be a house rule?)




Why do I feel as if you're being purposefully argumentative on this subject? Let me, once again, go quote myself:







JamesonCourage said:


> If there is some non-magical technique in-game that allows you to hide while being observed, than it can be taught (and thus learned by others). It can be explored. It can be observed. The same goes for evasion, though I'd probably see it as dissociative most of the time. If, however, it allowed you to phase your body reactively, without thought, when certain conditions were met, I could see it. I'd be hard pressed to accept it (my 3.5-based game doesn't allow Reflex saves while incapacitated), but at least it's associative.
> 
> This is such a simple thing to look at. Whether or not _anything_ can be explored in-game. How one would go about doing that is a little more tricky, depending on what it is, but it's still a very straightforward concept.
> 
> *Again, as far as I can tell, If there is an in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or observed, than I don't think it's dissociative. If the rogue can only get to use his ability 1/day, and if it's just narrative control, than it is dissociative. If there's some in-game reason that can be learned, explored, or otherwise observed, than it isn't dissociative.*
> 
> As always, play what you like



Again, if the mechanic is tied to something in-game that can be learned, explored, or observed, than it's not dissociative. If it's purely narrative control, it does not meet this criteria, and, again, as far as I can tell, this makes it dissociated.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Hussar

JC said:
			
		

> If there is some tie from the mechanics to reasoning in-game, than it's not the case. The reasoning in-game must be able to be learned, explored, or observed, as far as I can tell. In this case, I think it's that EX abilities aren't magical by nature, while SU abilities are.




Actually, you missed the major difference between EX and SU abilities.  EX abilities are almost universally passive - things like damage reduction and the like.  They are inherent to the character.  SU abilities are almost always active - things like the Binder's Vestige abilities are all SU, for example.  In other words, SU abilities are just SLA's that bypass magic resistance and can't be dispelled.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> Actually, you missed the major difference between EX and SU abilities.  EX abilities are almost universally passive - things like damage reduction and the like.  They are inherent to the character.  SU abilities are almost always active - things like the Binder's Vestige abilities are all SU, for example.  In other words, SU abilities are just SLA's that bypass magic resistance and can't be dispelled.




Taking context into consideration, those differences are, to me, not as big as the major difference presented within the game world (in my mind): whether or not it's magical in nature. Though you are not wrong in your assessment that those are also generally true (since many EX abilities are not "inherent" to the character before extensive training... see the Monk class ).

As always, play what you like


----------



## ThirdWizard

Raven Crowking said:


> What the article suggests is that, for purposes of game balance....and, in 4e terms, game balance is very much balance around the battlefield....the mechanics require that the aware player abandon the Actor stance.  If the player then was able to shift fully to the Author or Director stance, all would be well, _*but*_ full Author or Director stances are also denied the player, again due to game balance.




It's interesting to think about the stance shifting, because I feel that when I play, I can be in both the Actor and Author and Director stance at the same time. There's no mental shift associated with using Encounters or Dailies.

"I catch him off guard..."
"When he's looking at Morgan flanking him, I..."
"Waiting for just the right moment to show itself, I..."

Where "I" refers to my character.

When I do these things, I'm invoking a Director stance. Things are happening. These things do not involve my character's decision. But, I'm seeing it through my character's eyes, even though I'm the one dictating it.

This is in sharp contrast to FATE, where I might say something like:

"I need to get out of here. I want there to be a car with the keys in the ignition, what do I need to do?"

Where the first "I" is the character, but the second two are me, the player. In that case, I want to make a roll to create the situation where there is a nearby car that I can jump inside and speed off in. I've jumped out of the Actor stance temporarily, into the Director stance, because I, the player, need to do something to influence the flow of the game.

I'm not sure what that means, but it does serve as an example of the difference between the two implementations of the mechanics, at least in the mind of one person who plays both games.


----------



## MrGrenadine

innerdude said:


> Having read through most of the thread, and the Alexandrian's essay again, I'm just as firmly convinced as to the general premise and conclusion posited--that dissociated mechanics are bad, if they're used in the place of non-dissociated mechanics without any benefit in utility or substance (i.e., transfer of narrative control).
> 
> But the importance of that concept continues to grow in my mind, and it's based on something that struck me as I was writing my 2nd post on page 6 of the thread--namely that in order for roleplaying games to work at all, they have to represent a form of human rationality as it comes to dealing with other sentient, rational entities.




I can't XP you again, but your entire post is terrific, and I completely agree.  

In fact, what you've outlined in your post, combined with a consistent and understandable set of physical laws, (not real-world physics, per se, but consistent and reliable no matter how fantastic), is exactly what I'm looking for when I play.


----------



## Hussar

JamesonCourage said:


> Taking context into consideration, those differences are, to me, not as big as the major difference presented within the game world (in my mind): whether or not it's magical in nature. Though you are not wrong in your assessment that those are also generally true (since many EX abilities are not "inherent" to the character before extensive training... see the Monk class ).
> 
> As always, play what you like




But, OTOH, let's not be coy here.  Since the EX abilities can break physics, they're effectively magic by any other name.  The only reason they aren't "magic" is so they don't interact with anti-magic spells.  

Or, to put it another way, how do you explain Darkvision without referencing magic?  And, since Darkvision is an EX ability, how exactly do you "learn" it?

For that matter, how is Spell Resistance (EX) a "learned" ability?

If my Animal companion is in no way magical, then how come it improves as I level up?  Isn't that disassociated - after all, the animal companion could be sitting on my sofa the whole time, yet it gains hit points and whatnot regardless of what it does.

If raging is a "learned ability" then how come I can only do it a few times a day but that number increases as I go up levels?  And how come the fatigue caused by my non-magical rage only lasts to the end of the encounter?

While there are EX abilities which fit under your criteria of "learned ability" there are some pretty common ones that don't.

The primary reason that an ability is EX is because it's passive - not because it has any requirement to be learned.  At least, that't the way it seems.


----------



## Hussar

MrGrenadine said:


> I can't XP you again, but your entire post is terrific, and I completely agree.
> 
> In fact, what you've outlined in your post, combined with a consistent and understandable set of physical laws, (not real-world physics, per se, but consistent and reliable no matter how fantastic), is exactly what I'm looking for when I play.




But, how are the 4e mechanics inconsistent?  They are very consistent.  Granted, some of them involve the player taking a slightly higher altitude view of the game - shifting from Actor to other stances - but, at no point are they actually inconsistent.

Flipping back a ways to my Football example.  In a given game of football there are going to be bad calls.  That's part of the game.  But, in a given game, there is probably only one, or maybe two game-changing bad calls.  Typically these sorts of things don't happen all that often, although they do happen.

Is it inconsistent to allow the players to determine when that bad call comes instead of the DM or the dice?  Why?  The end result is the same - a given game has 0 to 1 game-changing bad call.  Sure there might be some real exception games out there where there's more bad calls, but, those are outliers.

So, how is it inconsistent to allow the players to determine when that bad call occurs?


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> But, OTOH, let's not be coy here.  Since the EX abilities can break physics, they're effectively magic by any other name.  The only reason they aren't "magic" is so they don't interact with anti-magic spells.




Thus, the in-game difference that can be learned (via proper Knowledges or experience), explored (trying to learn the knowledge, experimenting, etc.), or observed (watching how they interact within an anti-magic field, for example). This makes this mechanics different within the game world, thus they are not dissociated.



> Or, to put it another way, how do you explain Darkvision without referencing magic?  And, since Darkvision is an EX ability, how exactly do you "learn" it?




As someone who didn't buy, download, or play with splats, I might be wrong in saying this, but I imagine there's a prestige class out there that gets you Darkvision as a class ability. If the prestige class is being taught by a mentor of some sort, they could teach you a technique that allowed you to learn darkvision. You can explore how to obtain it (looking for the prestige class or mentor). You can observe darkvision within the game world (people with it can see in the dark!).



> For that matter, how is Spell Resistance (EX) a "learned" ability?




Again, prestige class, etc.



> If my Animal companion is in no way magical, then how come it improves as I level up?  Isn't that disassociated - after all, the animal companion could be sitting on my sofa the whole time, yet it gains hit points and whatnot regardless of what it does.




EX is not magical in nature, but it can break the laws of physics. The laws of nature. Trying to apply the laws of nature here is a little baffling after I quoted the SRD saying that EX abilities do not have to follow them.



> If raging is a "learned ability" then how come I can only do it a few times a day but that number increases as I go up levels?  And how come the fatigue caused by my non-magical rage only lasts to the end of the encounter?




Ah, now that's dissociated, unless there's some reason it's explained in-game (though I'd be as skeptical of that reasoning as I am a sleeping Rogue using Evasion).



> While there are EX abilities which fit under your criteria of "learned ability" there are some pretty common ones that don't.




That's probably true, but I never made the claim that all do.



> The primary reason that an ability is EX is because it's passive - not because it has any requirement to be learned.  At least, that't the way it seems.




I disagree, for the reasons stated above. As always, play what you like


----------



## BryonD

Raven Crowking said:


> The essay doesn't suggest that mechanical and tactical richness do not make a good RPG, although you would be correct in saying that it indicates that mechanical and tactical richness *alone* do not.



I believe that is a key point right there.

It seems to me that mechanical and tactical richness *alone* very much do provide all that is needed to numerous 4E fans I'v debated.  The players provide the role playing so the game does not need to worry about it.

At surface level, I even agree with the concept, I've certainly been adamant on multiple ocassions that you "can't find role playing between the covers of a book".

But, there is that association concept.  To me, the most satisfying experience requires that the narrative concept strong inform and dominate the mechanical and tactical elements.  The role play is not within the books.  But the material which is within the books must anticipate always being a complete slave to the role play.

Role playing "on top" of a rich system is ok.  But there is much better that can be had.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> I think this sentence says a lot. You, as well as innerdude above(and Alexander, if I'm reading him right) seem to be going by a definition for roleplaying that only accepts the Actor Stance as roleplaying, and puts Author and Director Stance outside it. It's this rejection of the other two stances that leads to the attitude in the article that gets my hackles up.






JamesonCourage said:


> He called them "nothing more than mechanical artifacts" only if they're dissociated -that is, they have no place within the game world. So, again, if they cannot be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than they are "nothing more than mechanical artifacts." He does not, as you seem to imply, say that all mechanics are "nothing more than mechanical artifacts".




The more I think I about it, I suspect the essay (or its implications) is not a rejection of any one stance per se, and I agree with Jameson's statement.

To take a very extreme example (because I need to find something that we can all agree upon!), your party has been plagued by the most obnoxious despicable annoying Kobold ever. You hatch a plan and spend days and days setting up a trap. Beyond all expectations, you actually manage to capture him in a force barred cage and it shrinks so that he's immobilized. You then toss the cage into a see-through force vat full of hellfire hot lava. The torrent of lava spews thru the bar cages, not affecting the force cage, but devastating everything inside it. Yet the kobold is inexplicably alive.

Assume this LoonyTunes Uberkobold is a standard kobold with 300 hit points. The lava does 100 hit points of damage with a save for half damage. Arguably, though, the mechanic of making a saving throw to take half damage is disassociated from the fiction of being immobilized, and the mechanic of hit points is disassociated from the fiction of obliterating lava.

In Actor stance, the player AND PC blink in astonishment. They can't believe their own eyes. While the PC wrestles with things beyond understanding, it's easy for the player to fall out of immersion and start questioning the mechanics or plot device instead of taking the fiction for granted.

In non-Actor stance, the PC blinks in astonishment while you just try to flesh out the cause-and-effect. The kobold is actually a god, or he has magic shielding, or the kobold snuck in last night and purposefully set off the trap with a lifelike replica that is actually a construct with immunity to heat.

So what actually happened?

If a 300 hit point immobilized kobold survived the lava, then it doesn't matter if you're in Actor stance or not. The mechanics are quite disassociated from the fiction.

If the kobold was a fake construct (and nobody made a spot check) with immunity to fire, then that mechanics is NOT disassociated from the fiction, and perhaps you'd be more likely to connect the dots in non-Actor stance.

However, whether you've picked Actor stance or not, (dis)association is still about matching up what mechanic to what fiction. The only difference is that each stance offers a different spectrum of fictional match-ups to any one mechanic.

With all its flaws as a single unlikely anectode, it can only go so far as to theoretically suggest that taking a non-Actor stance may provide more fictional options but does not make your game immune from potential disassociation. (Nor does it help much all those many people who do want to play in Actor stance.)

The counter argument is that this an extreme example, and in my game, I can always find a way to associate the mechanic to the fiction. The counter-counter argument is that I thought a lot of people have been discussing disassociation at the theoretical level and not actual average gameplay, plus I have to eat lunch now--


----------



## Neonchameleon

MrGrenadine said:


> I can't XP you again, but your entire post is terrific, and I completely agree.
> 
> In fact, what you've outlined in your post, combined with a consistent and understandable set of physical laws, (not real-world physics, per se, but consistent and reliable no matter how fantastic), is exactly what I'm looking for when I play.




Absolutely!  And this is one of the reasons I prefer 4e to any previous edition of D&D.  Even in the case of one of the supposedly disassociated mechanics, what happens mechanically models exactly what the PCs would expect.  The lead demon points, and orders his minions at the target backed up with a magical focus and they redouble their efforts, getting a bonus to the attack against that target.  This is _exactly_ what the PCs would expect to see in the gameworld.  The mechanics support the narrative very strongly in precisely the case that Mr. Alexander cherry-picked as an example of dissassociation.

As for it being dissassociated with no direct mechanical reason given, this is about as much of a worry as it never being defined exactly what is burning in a Fireball.

4e as a whole runs on a pretty consistent set of laws.  They are not, however, the laws of the real world.  They are more akin to Holywood Physics in which John McLane can be beaten to hell and back in one scene, spend a few healing surges, and be back in the fight.  A world where shotguns knock their targets backwards.  Or a mythological world where people bring out the big guns at the end rather than all the time and Hercules can wrestle a giant fire-breathing bull without being crippled by size and strength bonusses.



BryonD said:


> I believe that is a key point right there.
> 
> It seems to me that mechanical and tactical richness *alone* very much do provide all that is needed to numerous 4E fans I'v debated. The players provide the role playing so the game does not need to worry about it.




Tactical richness *alone* doesn't provide everything that is needed.  It provides the fundamental *difference *between 4e and previous editions.  For all I consider the 4e out of combat experience better, the difference boils down to one of tweaks rather than fundamentals.  

Is roll high (3e/4e) better than roll under (2e).  IMO yes - but the difference is trivial.  Is fewer broader skills (4e) an improvement over more narrower skills (3e).  IMO yes but this is haggling about the price.  Is it better to get generally more competent as you level?  IMO definitely - and I've argued this repeatedly, but this is a minor issue.  Is separating standard skills from feats (4e, 3e) better than lumping them into one group as NWPs (2e) or not having them (1e)?  Long threads have been made on this.  But the edition war is not a 4e vs the rest one.  It's a 3e vs 2e vs 1e with 4e joining in on the side of 3e.

In almost all cases it's haggling over the balance.  It's the tactical richness where 4e is most different from older versions of D&D and so that's where the arguments centre.  The rest (other than Vancian Magic) is simply a case of YMMV.


----------



## BryonD

Neonchameleon said:


> Tactical richness *alone* doesn't provide everything that is needed.



Cool.  You disagree with a lot of 4E fans.  That is a good thing.



> It provides the fundamental *difference *between 4e and previous editions.  For all I consider the 4e out of combat experience better, the difference boils down to one of tweaks rather than fundamentals.



There is no value in debating personal preference.

It has already been established that things which are important to me and missing in 4E are completely meaningless to you.  So we each play the game we like.

Telling me you like black a lot better than white neither makes black better than white nor has any value to the statement that black and white are different.

I'm glad we both have games we like.


----------



## Beginning of the End

pemerton said:


> It's obvious to anyone who can read that Justin Alexander doesn't say that dissociated mechanics in general promote tactical skirmishing, given that he praises their role in _Wushu_. But I think it's equally obvious that I haven't imputed this view to him.
> 
> When I say "that's the _point_ of *the mechanic*", and then say that it doesn't follow from that point that it (ie the mechanic in question) undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, I am not talking about so-called dissociated mechanics in general. I'm talking about a particular mechanic - namely, a rogue using Trick Strike  - which is the the target of Justin Alexander's attack.




But Justin didn't claim that about Trick Strike any more than he said it about dissociated mechanics in general. So your re-trenching here _still isn't true_.



> To be honest, I'm surprised that my reading of the essay - which is manifestly an attack upon 4e for being a tactical skirmish game,




The essay actually says the exact opposite of that. He likes the tactical skrimish elements of D&D.

I see you've got even more misquotes and misrepresentations in subsequent messages, although people have already tackled several of those. Is this really necessary? Cut it out.



> In what way is the player of a rogue, who has his/her PC use Trick  Strike, not (i) using a mechanic that has little or no connection to the  game world but rather models a purely narrative property (namely, of  being a singularly impressive duelist),




For the same reasons that choosing when to use your clue tokens in _Arkham Horror_ isn't a narrative mechanic.



ThirdWizard said:


> I would ask that you don't dictate who is and  who is not roleplaying. Being told that you aren't roleplaying on a  message board dedicated to roleplaying is a bit inflammatory.




You may want to skip over this next bit. It's filled with self-evident truths that you're going to find inflammatory:

You are not roleplaying when you grab a fistful of Cheetos and stuff 'em in your mouth.

You are not roleplaying when you get up from the table to hit the head.

You are not roleplaying when you stack your dice.

You are not roleplaying when you need to jump start your car because you left the headlights on.

Oh the horror! I'm not sure this thread can survive the hell-like inferno of such inflammatory rhetoric!


----------



## ThirdWizard

Beginning of the End said:


> You may want to skip over this next bit. It's filled with self-evident truths that you're going to find inflammatory:




There's no need for that. I was referring to Author and Director stances. 

And, I'm not looking to debate it. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, but it rubbed me the wrong way and I felt compelled to comment, which sometimes happens to even those with the most self control, of which I am, unfortunately, not one of _those_.


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> But _how_ do they survive? This is similar to my response upthread to Jameson Courage - you don't establish a coherent gameworld just by telling me that Heirophants have a non-magical ability to square the circle, and that it is teachable and learnable. I want to know, how are they doing it?




Why? If someone overturned Gauss's proof today, and exhibited a means to square the circle, would you study the proof? 



> In the case of the fall, what might this be?




High-level characters who fall long distances don't die. It's experimentally verifiable. If it's luck, it's reliable, consistent luck.



> To me the easy solution to both the breath and the fall is that _the player knows his/her PC will survive_, but the PC doesn't.




The PC can't assume that they're a 1 HD creature. The PC may not know with a mechanic certainty that they can survive a dragon's breath, but they aren't going to do a frontal assault of a dragon if they can't.



> But this requires adopting author stance rather than actor stance. I think an actor-stance-only version of hit points will tend to produce play that is, in practice, indistinguishable from "hit points as meat", although most groups won't worry about what this means for the biology of their high-level PCs.




And what's wrong with that? Very few of the creatures in D&D really survive thinking about their biology in real-world terms; why should the PCs be any different?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

BryonD said:


> Cool. You disagree with a lot of 4E fans. That is a good thing.




On this, he disagrees with the concept of "4E fans" that is apparently sometimes projected onto the whole body from a fairly small and, not infrequently, misread sample.

"I can find examples of" != "a lot of". Not even if you look at the sample with your biases raging full bore.

Edit:  In fact, the most common time I see a "4E fan" advocating playing the game as nothing but a tactical skirmish game, they seem to exhibit some of the same dismissiveness towards the possibility of roleplaying in 4E as is exhibited by the essay, and are either stuck in a game they don't like, or, to be more generous, are getting out of a game what they can.  

I guess you can call the girl that hates football, but went with her boyfriend, and mostly sat quitely and watched the spectacle, but complained about the heat, the game, the food, etc. as a "fan".  But we don't usually call someone like that a "fan".  And we don't usually look to them for a report about what is fun about the experience, either.


----------



## MrGrenadine

Hussar said:


> But, how are the 4e mechanics inconsistent?  They are very consistent.  Granted, some of them involve the player taking a slightly higher altitude view of the game - shifting from Actor to other stances - but, at no point are they actually inconsistent.
> 
> Flipping back a ways to my Football example.  In a given game of football there are going to be bad calls.  That's part of the game.  But, in a given game, there is probably only one, or maybe two game-changing bad calls.  Typically these sorts of things don't happen all that often, although they do happen.
> 
> Is it inconsistent to allow the players to determine when that bad call comes instead of the DM or the dice?  Why?  The end result is the same - a given game has 0 to 1 game-changing bad call.  Sure there might be some real exception games out there where there's more bad calls, but, those are outliers.
> 
> So, how is it inconsistent to allow the players to determine when that bad call occurs?




Well first let me make two things clear--I was referring to a consistency of physical laws in the game world, not to game mechanics, and in no way was I singling 4e out for inconsistency in this regard.  Every edition of D&D has inconsistencies.

In fact, I wasn't thinking of any specific inconsistencies when I made my comment.  I was just saying that the two main ingredients for a great TTRPG, for me, are what innerdude outlined--an expectation of rationality, or an expectation of consistency of character interactions--and an expectation of consistency in the broader game world, one with reliable and understandable laws.

Not that these laws have to be our laws--go ahead and create a game world where gravity falls up, and I'll have a blast playing in it.  I can understand the world--gravity pulls away from the "ground", whatever it may be.  Hell, create a game world where the movement of the heavenly bodies means that gravity pulls down sometimes, and up sometimes, and thats cool, too.  As long as its consistent, any "law" is fine with me, because I love dramatic stories with high stakes, and I believe consistent parameters allow you to have high stakes.  In terms of gravity, if the game world has gravity like our own, and my character slips while crossing a rope bridge, and is hanging by one hand over a 500' drop--well, those are some fun high stakes right there, born simply of past experience of the physical laws of the game world, and the expectation that those laws are still in play.


As for your football analogy, I'm honestly not trying to be obtuse, but I don't understand it.  I get that there are a couple bad calls a game, but by definition I would say _yes_, it would be inconsistent with the rules of football for the players to choose when those bad calls happen for their own game.  

Bad calls happen when a very human referee makes an error in judgment. And I could see the benefit for a team or player if a bad call could be created--in their favor, of course--out of thin air.  But at no time would the referee ever _choose_ to make a bad call, because his job is to always make the right call.  And in fact, the whole basis of the game as an honest contest between two teams is predicated on everyone following the rules.

Anyway, like I said, I'm not getting how it relates to disassociated mechanics, 
but I'd love if you would lay it out one more time.


----------



## Hussar

> The counter argument is that this an extreme example, and in my game, I can always find a way to associate the mechanic to the fiction. The counter-counter argument is that I thought a lot of people have been discussing disassociation at the theoretical level and not actual average gameplay, plus I have to eat lunch now--




And, this is an excellent point.  Virtually anything can be associated with a bit of effort.  It's not like the game happens in a vaccuum and you can't justify almost anything.  So, if that's true, then where's the problem?



			
				Mr. G said:
			
		

> As for your football analogy, I'm honestly not trying to be obtuse, but I don't understand it. I get that there are a couple bad calls a game, but by definition I would say yes, it would be inconsistent with the rules of football for the players to choose when those bad calls happen for their own game.
> 
> Bad calls happen when a very human referee makes an error in judgment. And I could see the benefit for a team or player if a bad call could be created--in their favor, of course--out of thin air. But at no time would the referee ever choose to make a bad call, because his job is to always make the right call. And in fact, the whole basis of the game as an honest contest between two teams is predicated on everyone following the rules.
> 
> Anyway, like I said, I'm not getting how it relates to disassociated mechanics,
> but I'd love if you would lay it out one more time.




But, we're playing a role playing game that takes place during a football game.  There is no "referee", only the people around the table playing the game.  The referee can't make an error in judgment, since he doesn't exist.

So, we need some sort of mechanic that adds in (well, maybe not need, but, work with me here) a "game changing bad call" to the game since many football games exhibit this thing.  Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature.  

About the closest you could get to an associated mechanic would be to have a Referee NPC with some sort of perception ability and then assign some sort of stealth rating to every rules infraction.  Possible but extremely cumbersome.  Particularly since we're not really concerned with minor infractions that get missed, and, well, trying to introduce yet another mechanic that would simulate infractions being committed is just adding yet more complexity.

It's possible to do, but, very, very cumbersome.

Another option, and pretty much completely disassociated from the in game fiction would be to have "bad call" occur randomly.  Let the dice gods decide.  Charts and tables govern when and how bad the call is.  Again, this works (and Rolemaster comes to mind here, as well as GURPS) but it's slow and often leads to somewhat illogical results because of the vagaries of the dice.

A third option would be to have the DM rule by fiat when the referee makes a bad call.  Again, possible, but problematic for the reasons I outlined earlier.  

A fourth option is to allow the players to decide when the bad call occurs, but turn it into a player resource so that they have to choose when the bad call happens.  Make a bad choice and you won't have that resource available later.

If you want to add in bad calls to the football game RPG, you have to design mechanics that will allow them to be added.  Which version you use will depend on all sorts of criteria.  If you want the most clearly associated mechanics, the first version will work, but, it's going to be a bear.  You have to accept that it's going to slow the game down.

OTOH, the least associated mechanics - Player Chooses - is probably the fastest and simplest one.  Not necessarily the best, depending on your criteria, but, certainly the one that will resolve the fastest.

It might be inconsistent with the rules of football, but, it is not inconsistent for the rules of FootBall The RPG.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> And, this is an excellent point. Virtually anything can be associated with a bit of effort. It's not like the game happens in a vaccuum and you can't justify almost anything.



To reiterate, I thought people were claiming that the essay was a rejection of non-Actor stances in a theoretical sense. So I tried to refute it in a theoretical sense.



> So, if that's true, then where's the problem?



I suppose the problem(s) can be discovered in the 28 pages of this thread, the 14 pages of the "He's beyond my healing ability..." thread, and every other other related thread ever to come into existence. You'll have to be more specific.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

Hussar said:


> And, this is an excellent point. Virtually anything can be associated with a bit of effort. It's not like the game happens in a vaccuum and you can't justify almost anything. So, if that's true, then where's the problem?




This is an excellent point, but also, there are some things that I, personally cannot justify in 4e. I've tried (maybe not hard enough, I'll grant you...my 4e DM is better at it than I am) but I've failed.


How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense. 

But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> And, this is an excellent point.  Virtually anything can be associated with a bit of effort.  It's not like the game happens in a vaccuum and you can't justify almost anything.  So, if that's true, then where's the problem?




If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than yes, everything can be fluffed so that it is no longer dissociated.

If we look at the rogue's Trick Strike, which has been presented as momentary narrative control (a dissociated mechanic), and we refluff it to say "he learned a trick that allows him to warp reality once per day" than it's no longer dissociated.

This can be problematic to people that want to play classes purely based in the mundane (even if their capabilities exceed mundane capabilities).

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with dissociated mechanics. Some people like them, some don't. Some dissociated mechanics are easier to refluff than others in a way that satisfies certain players. What making a dissociated mechanic does do is force players to associate the mechanic themselves, which can be difficult for some people to accept without falling back on "it's magic." And, for players who want a character firmly rooted in the mundane, this can be problematic indeed.

So, as usual, preferences vary, and mileage has varied. People have had different experiences and different levels of enjoyment. Some people have a hard time reconciling dissociated mechanics if they're too out there for us (even in a fantasy setting!), such as my problem with a paralyzed, unconscious rogue using Evasion in 3.X. Others don't have that problem, and they are no more objectively right or wrong than I am.

I don't understand why the definition of whether or not something is dissociated still seems to be in question, though.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Yesway Jose

JamesonCourage said:


> If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than yes, everything can be fluffed so that it is no longer dissociated.



As you mentioned on the previous page, your full definition is "if the *reasoning can* be learned, explored, or observed in-game" then it's not disassocciated. For example, from the essay:


> Me: So what is this thing you're doing?
> Rogue: I'm performing a series of feints and lures, allowing me to maneuver my foe right where I want him.
> Me: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
> Rogue: ... I have no idea.



The rogue is able to observe this phenomenon. He just can't explain it. The latter is what causes the disassociation.

Not to be a traitor or double agent, but if a fighter jumps off a 200' cliff every morning just for fun, then yes, he can observe that he has been incredibly lucky with every jump, but I don't think he could explain the reasoning for why he has been incredibly lucky in this regard. So technically, by your definition, that's disassociated too. (IMO, I agree with that, and I'd never have my fighter jump off cliffs as if he weren't afraid).


----------



## Pour

Aberzanzorax said:


> How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense.
> 
> But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.




I like to think of them not so much as special moves in a suite of moves warriors simply carry in their pocket- and I agree the 'stamina bar' argument is lame. Rather dailies are moments of martial brilliance in an otherwise calculable battle given mechanics and circumstances and quantifiable effects. Same with encounters, really. In any martial combat there will be weapon-swinging, shield-bashing, sidestepping, toppling, sure, and MBA's and at-wills are that (to say repeatable throughout). That is what I expect from any warrior worth his or her salt. However, victors must come up with something unexpected or extraordinary that will win the fight. And the more victories, the more these develop, and the more affect they have in battle.

I don't follow the belief just because it's defined through a gray-boxed power that it's the same Falcon Punch each time. I encourage my players to take it a step further in the context of each fight and terrain, and they do with flying colors. I love how convenient powers are laid out, but more often than not players and DMs end there, when you can abstract to your heart's content. This should be explained in the PHB, with examples, in the beginning of the class chapter.

Would you believe I allow powers to affect things out of combat on a regular basis? They're used in my groups' problem solving and skill challenges, and not only do conditions and damage type lend credence to certain applications, I even factor in the power name/flavor in my rulings!


----------



## Nagol

Yesway Jose said:


> As you mentioned on the previous page, your full definition is "if the *reasoning can* be learned, explored, or observed in-game" then it's not disassocciated. For example, from the essay:
> 
> The rogue is able to observe this phenomenon. He just can't explain it. The latter is what causes the disassociation.
> 
> Not to be a traitor or double agent, but if a fighter jumps off a 200' cliff every morning just for fun, then yes, he can observe that he has been incredibly lucky with every jump, but I don't think he could explain the reasoning for why he has been incredibly lucky in this regard. So technically, by your definition, that's disassociated too. (IMO, I agree with that, and I'd never have my fighter jump off cliffs as if he weren't afraid).




Whereas in _CHAMPIONS_ as the GM, I'll often make a note of "safety flier" found in hotel rooms that show jumping out of the window when faced with a kitchen grease fire anywhere below say the 15th floor.  Environmental damage is just _*nasty*_ compared to falling damage in that game (in many more heroic games I houseruled environmental damage to more believable levels).  The odds of a normal human surviving the fire are miniscule compared to the broken bones and possible death from the fall.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Yesway Jose said:


> As you mentioned on the previous page, your full definition is "if the *reasoning can* be learned, explored, or observed in-game" then it's not disassocciated. For example, from the essay:
> 
> The rogue is able to observe this phenomenon. He just can't explain it. The latter is what causes the disassociation.
> 
> Not to be a traitor or double agent, but if a fighter jumps off a 200' cliff every morning just for fun, then yes, he can observe that he has been incredibly lucky with every jump, but I don't think he could explain the reasoning for why he has been incredibly lucky in this regard. So technically, by your definition, that's disassociated too. (IMO, I agree with that, and I'd never have my fighter jump off cliffs as if he weren't afraid).




Unless reasoning is presented, you're correct. If reasoning is presented (the gods love certain people, and protect and look after them; people really _are_ that physically tough; luck is a tangible force to some extent, and favors certain individuals -usually those who take risks [fortune favors the bold and all that]) than it's not dissociated.

If there's no reasoning, then yes, it's dissociated. I don't at all see how this is contradictory to what I've been saying.


----------



## Yesway Jose

JamesonCourage said:


> Unless reasoning is presented, you're correct. If reasoning is presented (the gods love certain people, and protect and look after them; people really _are_ that physically tough; luck is a tangible force to some extent, and favors certain individuals -usually those who take risks [fortune favors the bold and all that]) than it's not dissociated.
> 
> If there's no reasoning, then yes, it's dissociated. I don't at all see how this is contradictory to what I've been saying.



That's fine, I was just helping out. The post you wrote "If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game". You left out "reasoning". People will attack you for it if you leave out a word like that.

EDIT: Although you do realize this circles back all the way back to the bottom of page 1 of this thread?


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I think that's a bit of an awful judgement value. Like I wrote, most people in my experience just announce "I attack with ____" and roll a die. I do it all the time myself. Are you calling all of us Boring Joe?



Not at all. Presumably  you're imagining and contributing to the fiction - saying where your PC is moving, who it is attacking, with what, etc.

In 4e, the player of the thief who says "I use Trick Strike against X" is also contributing to the narrative - because s/he is now brining it about that her/his PC will engage, and be more likely to prevail, in a particularly showy duel with X. And subsequent play will bring this about in the fiction - eg the player will explain where her PC is shifting X to - which is part of the narrative.

Which is why I disagree with the Alexandrian essay that 4e's martial daily powers are not narrative control powers.

In my personal view, if nothing else ever turns on this - if X isn't, as an enemy of the PC, in some fashion integrated into the fiction in some deeper fashion, and if the PC being an impressive duelist doesn't ramify through the game in any deeper way - then it's probably not a game I'm that interested in playing. When those sorts of connections are in play - and nothing about 4e prevents them, and many aspects of it in my view encourage them - then I think that the narrative starts to have significant implications, direct and indirect, for future mechanical resolution, and either bigger implications for future encounter building by the GM.

But even a narrative that is just confined to the drama of each individual combat, with no broader ramifications through the game, is still a narative - to which the player contributes in part by choosing when to use daily powers.



Yesway Jose said:


> Again, this is restricted to standard combat actions, not page 42, not skill challenges, not roleplaying romances. Perhaps if you didn't extrapolate so much, and stayed within the original context, then the point would be more obvious.



Well, what you see as extrapolation I see as full contextualisation. After all, page 42 is a key part of 4e's combat resolution mechanics, so even standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42, and feed into it. And romances (or emnities, or whatever) are going to be central, presumably, to a lot of encounter set ups, and thereby provide the context in which it becomes meaningful for the players to makes choices about using their daily powers.

There is a picture of 4e that is pushed fairly strongly in the Alexandrian's essay, which in my experience bears no relation to the way the game plays, or the way the rulebooks present the game. (The adventures published by WotC are, in most cases, a different matter.) Part of that picture is that 4e is a series of roleplaying-and-narrative-free skirmishs linked together by improv drama. This is what I'm disagreeing with.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> Why do I feel as if you're being purposefully argumentative on this subject?



Well, if by "purposefully argumenative" you mean "knowingly disagreeing", then you'd be right.

The reason I disagree is that I do not accept that an association between a mechanic and the fiction can be created _without telling me what the relevant element of the fiction actually is_. So you don't create an association between the Evasion mechanic, and the gameworld, simply by telling me that when a sleeping rogue evades a fireball, s/he is using a learnable EX ability. I want to be told - what ability is she using? How? In paticular, how does she do it while sleeping? Without waking up?

If your answer is that she phases, then my response is, What the hell is this non-magical phasing?

At which point the debate is no different from the debate about knocking a snake or an ooze prone. Suddenly "magic" doesn't have its ordinary meaning, but is a term of art (like "prone" in 4e). And suddenly Evasion means a range of different things, including phasing, in different circumstances - just like knocking something prone. And we get other parallel questions to, like Why can't the rogue phase through walls?

4e's answer to all these questions is that its mechanics are metagame (or, if you prefer, "dissociated")? What is 3E's answer?



JamesonCourage said:


> If there is some tie from the mechanics to reasoning in-game, than it's not the case. The reasoning in-game must be able to be learned, explored, or observed, as far as I can tell.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It doesn't really need to strike you as a very powerful association. If there is a tie to something in-game related to the mechanic that is able to be learned, explored, or observed, than it's not dissociative, as far as I can tell.



Well, as I've said, in my view you don't show that the mechanic relates to something in the gameworld until you've actually told me what is happening in the gameworld.



prosfilaes said:


> Why? If someone overturned Gauss's proof today, and exhibited a means to square the circle, would you study the proof?



No. I'm not a mathematician. But given that no such proof exists, I remain confident that circles can't be squared. 

Is the D&D gameworld meant to be different in all these respects from the real world? I've always assumed not.



prosfilaes said:


> High-level characters who fall long distances don't die. It's experimentally verifiable. If it's luck, it's reliable, consistent luck.



Well, this is where I play my game very differently. Plot protection isn't experimentally verifiable by the protagonists of a story, because it is a phenomenon that exists only at the meta-level.

Again, others may play differently. I'm not really interested in playing that way, though. (It also raises other questions, like - what is the relationship between the luck conferred by hit points, and the luck that _can_ be conferred ingame by spells, items etc?)



prosfilaes said:


> The PC can't assume that they're a 1 HD creature. The PC may not know with a mechanic certainty that they can survive a dragon's breath, but they aren't going to do a frontal assault of a dragon if they can't.



But what does "1 HD" even mean here? Does it refer to skill? Meat?

The PCs know they're more skilled than the aveage villager. The fighters know they're also tougher than the average villager. But do they know that they're less vulnerable to physical punishment than the typical elephant? I've always played the game under the assumption that the PCs don't know this, and that the _players'_ knowledge of this is metagame knowledge.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Yesway Jose said:


> That's fine, I was just helping out. The post you wrote "If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game". You left out "reasoning". People will attack you for it if you leave out a word like that.




True enough. I appreciate your help, honestly. So many people get caught up in semantics rather than intent sometimes that you're probably correct to point this out.



> EDIT: Although you do realize this circles back all the way back to the bottom of page 1 of this thread?




Yeah. Lost Soul is a reasonable guy, and I agree with that post, to an extent. I don't think it's as character-based as the post makes it seem. I think it's more setting-based. I mean, wolves can't really reason much out, but attack rolls are dissociated for them, in my mind.

Anyways, I like your posts, too. Thanks for constructively contributing to the discussion.

As always, play what you like


----------



## pemerton

Beginning of the End said:


> But Justin didn't claim that about Trick Strike any more than he said it about dissociated mechanics in general. So your re-trenching here _still isn't true_.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I see you've got even more misquotes and misrepresentations in subsequent messages



I notice that when I correct your misinterpretation of what I said I'm "retrenching", and when I - in your view - misinterpret Alexander's essay (or is it your essay?- for some reason I had the impression that you _are_ Justin Alexander), I'm "misrepresenting".

No doubt you are a very virtuous reader and writer, and I a very malicious one.

In any event, I deny that I have misquoted. All the text I have attributed to the essay is found within it. I also do not believe that my ellipses have in any material way distorted or misrepresented the content of what I am quoting.



Beginning of the End said:


> The essay actually says the exact opposite of that. He likes the tactical skrimish elements of D&D.



Yes. I've read the essay. And I never said that the author does not like the tactical skirmish elements of AD&D or 3E.

But the essay _denies_ that the tactical skirmish elements of 4e contribute to roleplaying, or support the game as roleplaying game.

Tell me - in what way is the following _not_ an attack upon 4e for being a tactical skirmish game rather than an RPG?

Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. 

At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game. When the characters' relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts. 

You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics that you're using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world -- and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook.

In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that's entirely accidentally. . .

Games are fun. But games don't require roles. There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn't actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you're playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.​


Beginning of the End said:


> For the same reasons that choosing when to use your clue tokens in _Arkham Horror_ isn't a narrative mechanic.



I believe that Arkahm Horror is a boardgame.

How is the player getting to determine that, against _this_ particular foe, I will have a dramatic duel that is more likely to be successful than my other duels in the fight, _no more narrative control_ than playing a boardgame?

That's right - because 4e is just like playing chess except giving my rook a funny name!



Beginning of the End said:


> You are not roleplaying when you grab a fistful of Cheetos and stuff 'em in your mouth.
> 
> You are not roleplaying when you get up from the table to hit the head.
> 
> You are not roleplaying when you stack your dice.
> 
> You are not roleplaying when you need to jump start your car because you left the headlights on.



I don't want to do any misreading or misrepresenting. So I'll just ask - how is the nature of urinating, eating or driving remotely relevant to thinking about whether or not a player using 4e martial dailies is roleplaying?


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> Well, if by "purposefully argumenative" you mean "knowingly disagreeing", then you'd be right.




Nope, not what I meant at all. I meant it exactly as I said it. You can disagree without argument. I tend to think of that as a method of constructively discussing something. It feels, to me, that in some of your posts, that you're arguing, rather than discussing. 



> The reason I disagree is that I do not accept that an association between a mechanic and the fiction can be created _without telling me what the relevant element of the fiction actually is_. So you don't create an association between the Evasion mechanic, and the gameworld, simply by telling me that when a sleeping rogue evades a fireball, s/he is using a learnable EX ability.



I'll assume that we're pretending it's not dissociated in this discussion.


> I want to be told - what ability is she using?



Evasion.


> How?



The rogue learned the technique.


> In paticular, how does she do it while sleeping?



The technique, once learned, allows the subject to phase out when certain conditions are met (such as area attacks).


> Without waking up?



It does not require conscious thought.


> If your answer is that she phases, then my response is, What the hell is this non-magical phasing?



It's an ability that is not magical in nature that breaks the natural laws of the world. Most laymen within the setting might indeed think it's magic. It, however, is not technically magic. It is a fantastical ability within a fantasy setting. Do you at least grasp the concept being presented? If you do, I'll expand on it more if you have questions. If you don't, I do not think I can put it any more plainly.  

If the evasion ability is not explained within the setting yet still allows for the mechanic to be utilized, it's dissociated. 



> At which point the debate is no different from the debate about knocking a snake or an ooze prone. Suddenly "magic" doesn't have its ordinary meaning, but is a term of art (like "prone" in 4e).



Magic in D&D means something magical. It does not mean supernatural, as the term is normally used. If, in 4e, prone does not mean prone in the traditional sense, then those terms would have something in common.



> And suddenly Evasion means a range of different things, including phasing, in different circumstances - just like knocking something prone. And we get other parallel questions to, like Why can't the rogue phase through walls?



It depends on the technique in question. If it's only against area attacks, it could not then be used to move through walls (unless the wall was making an area attack). It cannot be used consciously.

If you're trying to make me defend a dissociative mechanic, then let's talk about barbarian rages. Of course, I'll say that they're dissociated unless they're given fluff in-game that notes otherwise. As, as far as I can tell, that's the definition of what's dissociative and what isn't.



> 4e's answer to all these questions is that its mechanics are metagame (or, if you prefer, "dissociated")? What is 3E's answer?




If 4e's answer is that its mechanics are metagame, than they are indeed dissociative. If 3e does not have reasonable in-game explanations, than those mechanics are dissociative. Why you think I'm attacking 4e, or even defending 3e, is beyond me.

Some people in this thread have said they don't believe in dissociative mechanics. I think that's obviously false. Now, people are saying, "other editions have them too!" That's obviously true. It seems as if 4e embraced them, while other editions merely used them. It rubbed some people the wrong way. Your mileage varied.

I don't get why you're trying to make me defend any particular mechanic. I have no problem admitting that mechanics are dissociated pre-4e. As I told Hussar when he brought up this same thing, I never said that there aren't dissociated mechanics in 3e, much less in other editions. I'm even of the opinion that all abilities, even dailies, can become associated if they're explained in-game, though I expressed a problem this presents to some people.



> Well, as I've said, in my view you don't show that the mechanic relates to something in the gameworld until you've actually told me what is happening in the gameworld.




I'm pretty sure that's been covered. Again, this seems overly argumentative. I have very little interest in argument. If you'd like to discuss the topic, I'd find that interesting.

As always, play what you like


----------



## MrGrenadine

[sblock=Hussar's post]







Hussar said:


> But, we're playing a role playing game that takes place during a football game.  There is no "referee", only the people around the table playing the game.  The referee can't make an error in judgment, since he doesn't exist.
> 
> So, we need some sort of mechanic that adds in (well, maybe not need, but, work with me here) a "game changing bad call" to the game since many football games exhibit this thing.  Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature.
> 
> About the closest you could get to an associated mechanic would be to have a Referee NPC with some sort of perception ability and then assign some sort of stealth rating to every rules infraction.  Possible but extremely cumbersome.  Particularly since we're not really concerned with minor infractions that get missed, and, well, trying to introduce yet another mechanic that would simulate infractions being committed is just adding yet more complexity.
> 
> It's possible to do, but, very, very cumbersome.
> 
> Another option, and pretty much completely disassociated from the in game fiction would be to have "bad call" occur randomly.  Let the dice gods decide.  Charts and tables govern when and how bad the call is.  Again, this works (and Rolemaster comes to mind here, as well as GURPS) but it's slow and often leads to somewhat illogical results because of the vagaries of the dice.
> 
> A third option would be to have the DM rule by fiat when the referee makes a bad call.  Again, possible, but problematic for the reasons I outlined earlier.
> 
> A fourth option is to allow the players to decide when the bad call occurs, but turn it into a player resource so that they have to choose when the bad call happens.  Make a bad choice and you won't have that resource available later.
> 
> If you want to add in bad calls to the football game RPG, you have to design mechanics that will allow them to be added.  Which version you use will depend on all sorts of criteria.  If you want the most clearly associated mechanics, the first version will work, but, it's going to be a bear.  You have to accept that it's going to slow the game down.
> 
> OTOH, the least associated mechanics - Player Chooses - is probably the fastest and simplest one.  Not necessarily the best, depending on your criteria, but, certainly the one that will resolve the fastest.
> 
> It might be inconsistent with the rules of football, but, it is not inconsistent for the rules of FootBall The RPG.



[/sblock]

Aha!  I see now.  Interesting.  I'm not sure how the concept of "bad calls"  relates to the PC power structure in 4e, but  I'll take a stab at commenting.  Full disclosure--I'm no expert on football or dissociated mechanics, so someone jump in if anything I say doesn't make sense.

[sblock=Football the RPG assumptions]Just to make sure we're working under the same assumptions--Football the RPG follows the same rules as American football, in a world with real-world physics, and either each of the 22 players on the field is a PC, or the two PCs are the coaches, and the players are NPC henchmen.  The ref, umpire, head linesman, and various other judges are NPCs.

So, in a game with coach PCs, I guess the 4e version would at least involve coaches choosing different plays and defensive set ups (stances?) from a list, and then using the interaction of the choices and die rolls to calculate success/failure resulting in yardage forward/back.  Sounds fun.[/sblock]

Early in your post you state "Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic [for bad calls] we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature", and right off the bat I have to disagree.  Even though there's no live ref, (controlled by a player), there _is_ an NPC ref (or seven officials total) on the field, and we can easily assign them qualities that can be used to determine all sorts of actions and reactions.  Also, the first of your examples is associated.

[sblock=Your options]
1)  Perception/stealth checks.  This seems associated to me, too, although I agree its certainly not an elegant solution.  I can see adding stealth ratings to players, modified by how many others players are adjacent, referee LOS, the type of infraction, how many times the infraction is attempted, etc.

2)  Random die rolls to determine if a bad call happens, and charts to determine results.  I see how this is dissociated, since it doesn't have anything to do with whats happening on the field, (or more specifically, what choices the PCs are making on the field).

3)  DM fiat.  I also think this is dissociated for the same reason as option 2and a bad choice, since nothing so game changing should be decided by fiat!

4)  Player resource.  Dissociated.  As an example, each coach gets a "bad call" card to play which turns a call from "against" to "for".  The card can be used once per game.[/sblock]

Given your options, you concluded you would choose option 4, which is dissociated, but would resolve the fastest.

And given that, I have to ask--is that what this is all about?  How fast something is resolved in-game?  Because your pref (option 4) is definitely resolved quicker, no argument there, but in terms of 4e (which I play every week) I'm not seeing the dissociated mechanics speeding anything up significantly.  During combat, I'm seeing a lot of searching lists of powers, reading definitions of conditions, marking and re-marking PCs or NPCs, resolving attacks that affect multiple enemies or an area after making sure all modifiers--which may be different for every target--are present and accounted for, etc etc.

Fun, it is!  But not elegant or speedy.  I'm sure we can think up some specific dissociated mechanics that _are_ elegant and fast, though, just as I'm sure that we could think of a few quickly resolved associated ones, but although fast resolution is a huge plus to me, too, the issue, as far as I'm concerned, isn't about speed of play.

My preference for associated mechanics has more to do with the feel of the game world, and how the characters fit into that world.  As mentioned earlier, I like PC/NPC behavior and the game-world's physical laws to be observable, consistent, and reliable, and there's no reason that a mechanic can't preserve that _and_ be elegant. 


So in the case of Football the RPG and bad play calls, I would assign each official a bad call rating of some sort, based on the rate that bad calls occur in real football.  If a real football game averages about 120 plays, we have 120 opportunities for a blown call.  Based on 2 bad calls a game, thats about 1.6%.

So, if an average official has basically a 2% chance of botching a call, then after every play we roll percent dice to see if the nearest official got the call right.  That seems associated to me.  (This doesn't resolve blatant fouls, or cheating, especially between plays--but I think for those cases you're back to stealth and perception checks.)

And if rolling d% after every play is too much, then maybe just roll once for each official per quarter.  A roll of 01 or 02 means that official will botch a call that quarter--and then you'd need some sort of mechanic to figure out which call.  And if you wanted to make it more associated (and complex), you could modify the roll based on distance from the play, how many players are involved, the type of play, etc.


In any case, I'm just always going to prefer an associated mechanic based on the official's abilities and the physical laws of the world, over the more gamist "player chooses" mechanic.  Playing a "bad call" card on an opponent's successful game-winning hail mary pass with no time on the clock would be fun, sure--at least for one team--but forcing that to happen when needed, although dramatic, lacks the feel I'm looking for in an RPG.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Aberzanzorax said:


> How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting?




Adrenaline.  And the same way I'd explain the pulling out the stops only at the end of a film.



JamesonCourage said:


> This can be problematic to people that want to play classes purely based in the mundane (even if their capabilities exceed mundane capabilities).




That they pick specific powers that don't fit their character concept is indeed a problem.  I don't see that offering powers that do not fit all possible character concepts and relying on the players to built to their concept is one.



prosfilaes said:


> Why? If someone overturned Gauss's proof today, and exhibited a means to square the circle, would you study the proof?




In much the same way I would if they demonstrated water was made up of Helium and Potassium.  Someone has just changed the laws of the universe without informing me.



BryonD said:


> Cool. You disagree with a lot of 4E fans. That is a good thing.




Find me those 4e fans.  4e critics, certainly.  But find me the fans.  There may be a few.  But I have ssen no evidence that it's lots.  Now people leaving 4e after Encounters is a different story.  Encounters is Lowest-Common-Denominator 4e that is all about the combat.



> There is no value in debating personal preference.




Agreed with the exception of trying to understand where the other person is coming from.  Which is why things concentrate on the combat system that's overwhelmingly different.  And it is my belief that this is what gives you the IME mistaken impression that it's just the tactical that matters to 4e fans.



> I'm glad we both have games we like.




Agreed.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Aberzanzorax said:


> This is an excellent point, but also, there are some things that I, personally cannot justify in 4e. I've tried (maybe not hard enough, I'll grant you...my 4e DM is better at it than I am) but I've failed.
> 
> 
> How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense.
> 
> But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.




In thinking about this, I have perhaps several implied assumptions that aren't universal, which is difficult to convey, because in my mind they are implied. I don't consciously think about them. For example, perhaps something important, although I'm not sure, is that in my implied narrative, the martial character is just fighting. They take advantage of situations that come up better than non-martial characters in many cases, but for the most part, they aren't concously using any "abilities" - this term would have no meaning for the character.

So, to the character, it isn't that once per day they can use Trick Strike which does... you know I've forgotten at this point.  But, the use of the "ability" is just their natural ebb and flow of the battlefield, how they react to situations that come up every once in a while - not too often but often enough. To them, an opening has shown itself, whether that be an opponent tripping, a quick feint, a distraction, or whatever. To them, that's just how they fight.

So, there is no explaination for daily powers within the setting. Within the setting, they don't exist. They are a construct. The fact that you can describe Trick Strike twenty ways in twenty uses helps with this. The character has no clue they are using a "daily power" because to them they simply aren't. There's nothing observable about the game mechanics in character.

I guess this is wildly different than how some people play, and how I actually used to play, where the game mechanics define the physics of the world. The mechanics, in that sense, are all observable to people living in the game world under that viewpoint. This is a different way of looking at the game, where the rules of the game arent' necessarily reflected in what the characters see around them.


----------



## BryonD

Crazy Jerome said:


> On this, he disagrees with the concept of "4E fans" that is apparently sometimes projected onto the whole body from a fairly small and, not infrequently, misread sample.
> 
> "I can find examples of" != "a lot of". Not even if you look at the sample with your biases raging full bore.



Shrug.

I'm not saying "I can find examples of".  I'm saying this is, or at least has been, an extremely typical position in discussion after discussion.

A more appropriate statement would be "the great majority" != "everyone".  And I don't remotely dispute that.  But I'm talking about the audience as a whole and the fact that I readily accepted NC as not being in that group should clearly demonstrate that.

Of course there have also been several more recent examples of 4E fans being offended when terms that used to be considered rallying crys of the new edition are used to describe it.  So this fits right in to the evolution.


----------



## BryonD

Neonchameleon said:


> Find me those 4e fans.  4e critics, certainly.  But find me the fans.  There may be a few.  But I have ssen no evidence that it's lots.



No, I'm sorry but that is the position that comes from FANS.  



> Now people leaving 4e after Encounters is a different story.  Encounters is Lowest-Common-Denominator 4e that is all about the combat.



 HA!!!!

This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system.  You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.  

I guarantee you there are people who reject your characterization of essentials just as vehemently as you reject other people's view of 4E.  

And I accept that all these views can be reasonable opinions.  But it seems something of a double standard coming from you.

(And just to clarify, I personally don't think 4E is nearly that bad.  I just think there are other games that are a whole lot better.  So if Essentials is the default approach going forward for new material, and you see it is "Least-Common-Denominator", then you may be a bigger "H4TER" than me.      )



> Agreed with the exception of trying to understand where the other person is coming from.  Which is why things concentrate on the combat system that's overwhelmingly different.  And it is my belief that this is what gives you the IME mistaken impression that it's just the tactical that matters to 4e fans.



It is my knowledge of the system and routinely repeated comments from actual fans that led me to my correct assessment of the overall position.  And I don't claim this is at all limited to the combat system, that is just the easiest talking point.

I embrace the idea that there are exceptions.




totally unrelated:
I initially typoed Least-Common-Denominator as Least-Common-Demoninator.
There's gotta be an idea buried in there somewhere.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Neonchameleon said:


> That they pick specific powers that don't fit their character concept is indeed a problem.  I don't see that offering powers that do not fit all possible character concepts and relying on the players to built to their concept is one.




I totally agree. My knowledge of powers in 4e is remarkably lacking, and if players are able to to avoid dissociated powers entirely, that's great. If, however, 4e has indeed embraced narrative powers (which are dissociative), and they make up a substantial portion of the options for characters, I do see another problem with those players who want both variety and associated abilities.

Now, like I said, I think all powers in 4e could be associated. You can move them from narrative to in-game easily enough. But, this causes the same problems I noted earlier -that people may have a hard time associating abilities in a way that doesn't break their concept.

Now, for people that like narrative control abilities (of which there is nothing wrong with -I for one love Hero Points in Mutants and Masterminds 2e, and use a similar mechanic in my 3.5-based game), making all powers or abilities associated becomes an issue.

I'm not damning dissociated mechanics in this discussion. I originally put my input in when people seemed to be denying whether or not they existed. I, personally, do not like them in large quantities, but I know that preferences vary.

Which leads me to: as always, play what you like


----------



## Crazy Jerome

ThirdWizard said:


> So, to the character, it isn't that once per day they can use Trick Strike which does... you know I've forgotten at this point.  But, the use of the "ability" is just their natural ebb and flow of the battlefield, how they react to situations that come up every once in a while - not too often but often enough. To them, an opening has shown itself, whether that be an opponent tripping, a quick feint, a distraction, or whatever. To them, that's just how they fight.




This is the way I see it, more or less.  It happens to correspond to the closet real-world analogs of how things might work:  How a fencer occasionaly goes with "what feel right" in a split second decision, even at world-class level.  (I know someone who has medaled in veteran world championship.)  Playing tennis, and reaching back across your body to volley a fast volley right back into the face of the guy charging the net, and it going exactly where you want.  Being in a car accident, and though it only took a few seconds, "time stood still," and you noticed and reacted to every little detail.  

If anything, any failure my imagination suffers in relating the characters to the world is not the timing, but the frequency.  1/day is way too often by that above criteria.   But in a fantasy game, about heroic characters, I can put this down to the genre.  (And really, I'd expect time to slow down for Conan a lot more reliably than I'd expect it to slow down for real-world accident victims.)  

Truth is stranger than fiction, but 4E made a pretty good stab at making its fiction almost as strange as truth.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Not at all. Presumably you're imagining and contributing to the fiction - saying where your PC is moving, who it is attacking, with what, etc.



For some reason, explaining this feel painstakingly obvious to me, so I'm still not conscious of where the disconnect is.

Of course, such mechanics contribute to the narrative. I *assume* there are very few (if any at all?) mechanics that never contribute directly or indirectly the narrative.

I was asking ThirdWizard: why certain mechanics (like 1xday) *encourage* the player to announce *more* narrative (on top of the narrative already implied by stating the action itself).

Let me clarify what I mean by *more* (in this example, I believe the 1xday power was defined and/or flavored as "Trip opponent"):
1) "I trip the opponent" = (minimum?) contribution to narrative
2) "I trip the opponent with a leg sweep, bringing him crashing down to the tiles" = contributing *more* narrative

Let me clarify what I mean by *encourage*:
A) some people (hereby defined as "Storytelling Joe") are inclined to #2 for its own sake
B) most people (hereby defined as "Average Roleplaying Joe") are inclined to #1
C) Average Roleplaying Joe may do #2 with extrinsic motivation to do so
D) C (above) is usually NOT true if #1 and #2 are perceived to result in the same (mechanical or non-mechanical) outcome *from the viewpoint of Average Roleplaying Joe* (and NOT how YOU define to be a different outcome, because I don't define YOU as Average Roleplaying Joe)
E) a mechanic that *encourages* *more* narrative is one that provides the motivation that makes C to be true and D to be false

To summarize (but not to be taken out of context from the above anally obvious statements), Average Roleplaying Joe is always inclined to do #1 instead of #2 if he perceives that the outcome is the same either way (in this case, the target is prone is the outcome that's relevant to him and not the narrative process that resulted in said outcome). Or to put it another way, #1 is the easiest most efficient 'shortcut' to achieving the said outcome.


> In 4e, the player of the thief who says "I use Trick Strike against X" is also contributing to the narrative - because s/he is now brining it about that her/his PC will engage, and be more likely to prevail, in a particularly showy duel with X. And subsequent play will bring this about in the fiction - eg the player will explain where her PC is shifting X to - which is part of the narrative.



As above, I agree that Trick Strike contributes to the narrative, but who has been arguing otherwise?

Maybe it's your definition of "contributes" that you're not seeing eye-to-eye with me and/ others. I'm reading it literally. Do you mean contributing to the narrative in a certain way, or just in an absolute sense?

Like if the power is "Purple Teddybear Strike". The rogue throws purple stuffed teddybears at the opponent and pushes them back 1 square. Technically, that power DOES contribute to the narrative. Before, an opponent was standing in one spot. Rogue uses Purple Teddybear Strike. Opponent is now 10 feet away from his original position. The narrative has changed, and the use of Purple Teddybear Strike contributed to that change in narrative. Did I missing some key factor here?



> Well, what you see as extrapolation I see as full contextualisation. After all, page 42 is a key part of 4e's combat resolution mechanics, so even standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42, and feed into it. And romances (or emnities, or whatever) are going to be central, presumably, to a lot of encounter set ups, and thereby provide the context in which it becomes meaningful for the players to makes choices about using their daily powers.



I don't understand this. I think Page 42 is a great example of E (above). But "standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42" and the rest -- I don't know what that means!

I must also insist that, in this framework, we are restricting our discussion to an average game with Average Roleplaying Joe, so that you do not wander off to corner cases or new "contextualizations" which does not represent common gameplay.


----------



## Teemu

BryonD said:


> HA!!!!
> 
> This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system.  You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.



I think you're confusing D&D Encounters with D&D Essentials.


----------



## Hussar

Aberzanzorax said:


> This is an excellent point, but also, there are some things that I, personally cannot justify in 4e. I've tried (maybe not hard enough, I'll grant you...my 4e DM is better at it than I am) but I've failed.
> 
> 
> How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense.
> 
> But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.




I'd explain it from a results point of view, which is where I was going with the football example above.

Take a simple daily that lets you do buckets of damage.  We'll ignore the rider effects for the moment.

Now, compare this to a really brilliant critical hit from 3e.  At the end of the day, there's not much of a difference - both attacks do buckets of damage.  The difference is, with the daily, the player chooses when it occurs, and with the 3e critical hit, the dice do the deciding.

But, let's keep looking at our 3e crit.  How likely is it that you get that brilliant critical?  For one, you've got to threaten the crit in the first place, then you have to confirm the crit, and then you have to roll well enough on your damage that you have a crit and not just a high damage regular hit.  Plus, you have to score that crit on a target that will notice the extra damage as well.  Critting a baddie that has 2 hit points doesn't really show off the crit does it?  Dead is dead.  How would you differentiate between a crit on someone with 2 hit points and a regular hit that does enough damage to outright kill the target (ie, more than 12 points of damage)?

After all, if you crit, but do minimum damage, how do you explain, in game, the difference between that crit and a really good regular hit?  They did the same (or close enough) damage after all.

Let's ballpark the figures and say that there's about a 3% chance on any given attack that you will score a great critical hit.  Yes, I know that's a totally arbitrary number, but, stick with me here.

Now, let's assume that in a given fight, a fighter gets ten attacks.  I personally think that's pretty high, but, again, we're ballparking.

That means I'm going to get a spectacular crit a bit more often than once per four fights, but, again, it's in the neighbourhood.  

So, now, it looks like a crit mechanic looks a lot like a daily mechanic.  Most of the time, it gets pretty much the same results.  Over the course of 40 attacks, you get one big crit.  Which is likely pretty close to how many attacks a fighter will make between rest periods.

Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter?  Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource?  The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.


----------



## Hussar

Mr. G - while I totally agree that 4e combat isn't the speediest thing to resolve, having played in games which use the concepts like the Type 1 Referee I was talking about (making some sort of perception check against a DC etc. etc) like, say, GURPS combat, I've seen games that are WAYYY slower to resolve than 4e.


----------



## Neonchameleon

BryonD said:


> No, I'm sorry but that is the position that comes from FANS.




Links?



> HA!!!!
> 
> This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system. You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.




I had to re-read what I wrote to check I did what I intended to. Because you have apparently completely misread me and made a mistake with your terminology. Encounters is not Essentials. Essentials is a set of rulebooks and rules for 4e. Encounters is an organised play program. And it is designed to be drop in and lowest common denominator set up for new players.

Any set of games designed for drop in sessions with completely new players and DMs who have never DMd before and that is using exactly the same scenarios throughout the world _must_ be lowest common denominator. And there is a point to it being lowest common denominator. Calling it lowest common denominator is no more an insult than many descriptions of the Tomb of Horrors. I can criticise The Forest Oracle or Tomb of Horrors without it being a reflection on the system. And Encounters is effectively a set of modules like those two. It's excellent at getting people through the door to start playing 4e and from that perspective is a resounding success. But can leave people with the impression that's all 4e is at which point I don't blame them for giving up any more than I would people who thought that ToH was all there was to AD&D.

Essentials on the other hand is effectively a set of splatbooks that adds some nice things to D&D 4e for players that had been left in the cold.  And for the record, the Essentials thief is more competent out of combat than the PHB rogue while being less tricky in combat.  Likewise for the ranger builds.  So saying that Essentials was all about the combat when compared to pre-Essentials D&D is IMO counter-factual (although they should have provided much more ritual support).


----------



## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter? Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource? The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.



What if encounter 1 was with a water elemental, encounter 2 was with a rock elemental, and encounter 3 was with a fully armored/scaled monster with a missing piece/scale on its backside exposing a fleshy weak spot.

Only the DM knows that of course, you can't predict the series of encounters no matter what stance you're in.

Would it feel at all unsatisfactory to you if you used the crit daily for the 1st or 2nd encounter, and thus were unable to use it for encounter 3, and you end up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because nobody has a crit power left to get at that weakspot?

What if you didn't use the daily up to encounter 3, but you withheld using the power because the monster didn't seem powerful enough to use up a daily and you preferred to save it for the climactic battle encounter 4, and then found out that there was no encounter 4 that day? So you ended up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because the player wanted to save the power for an encounter that never happened?

What if used your daily crit on encounter 1, and then at encounter 3, there was some sort of mechanic and/or DM adjudication that allowed you to recharge your daily crit in order to exploit the fiction, would that be satisfying?

What is more satisfying -- to apply a critical daily to a powerful water elemental, or to a weaker armored foe with a fictionally obvious weak spot?

Finally, do these kinds of issues never come up in actual 4E game play?

BTW, I get it that it's not like your PC lost the ability to try to critical in-game. I assume that if you used the daily in encounter 1, then fictionally, your PC was trying to get at that weak spot and just couldn't do it. That's the disconnect for me. I can visualize that weak spot in the armor. I can imagine having some chance (not a certainty, but a hope) to get that blade there and skewer the monster's heart. But I can't. By that point, the story is already written in stone. There's no hope.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Hussar said:


> Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter? Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource? The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.




Hussar, I agree with your analysis, but I do want to point out that what you just provided was the best argument I have seen yet for changing or removing criticals from 4E. The actual criticals in 4E still behave in the same random way, albeit somewhat more rarely than in 3E. (It is really uncanny how often the players at our table critical on a minion or on an almost dead foe.)

Now that I think about it from that slant (preferring to let the player use the thing as a resource), I believe that I'd like to replace the "good thing happens when we roll a 20" aspect of criticals with something renamed, because it isn't really a critical at all anymore. Something like a "recharge", where you get an encounter power back or get the free use of one. Mechanically, that is a bit of a "delayed critical," in that you do get to do more damage later in the fight. But since the player gets to pick, it only fails to matter if the fight is nearing a concluson.

From a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser style of emulation, I think that might often simulate the genre a bit better, in ways that might be somewhat more palatable to those on the other side of the main argument here. The "critical" nature of the lucky roll is that the current opponent is put at an unexpected disadvantage, which the error then must take advantage of. The (almost dead) opponent stumbled and went down to the lightning thrust, which mean that the Mouser rolled past him into the axeman in the second rank who was not expecting it. Or the (healthier) opponent stumbled from Fafhrd's brutal hit, setting him up for the backswing on the next blow. 

Hmm, I rather like the dynamic possiblities implied by this, not to mention the implications for anticipation. You get a "crit", people want to get through the round in a hurry to see what you do with it. Meanwhile, you've got a round to decide what you do with it.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> What if encounter 1 was with a water elemental, encounter 2 was with a rock elemental, and encounter 3 was with a fully armored/scaled monster with a missing piece/scale on its backside exposing a fleshy weak spot.
> 
> Only the DM knows that of course, you can't predict the series of encounters no matter what stance you're in.
> 
> Would it feel at all unsatisfactory to you if you used the crit daily for the 1st or 2nd encounter, and thus were unable to use it for encounter 3, and you end up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because nobody has a crit power left to get at that weakspot?




That's just a badly designed monster or badly designed adventure pacing, take your pick. The fun of an encounter shouldn't rely on the party having specific resources. Take the flipside, where criticals aren't a daily power but random. Now you're sitting there waiting to roll a 20? Is that any better? "Did you roll a 20?" "Nope" "Okay next in intiative" It sounds just as boring. So, your scenario really has nothing to do with daily powers at all!

Also, this doesn't have to do with dissociated mechanics, but resource usage. Resource mechanics can be daily and still be associated, as any player of previous editions of D&D can attest. 



Yesway Jose said:


> Finally, do these kinds of issues never come up in actual 4E game play?




Not if you design your minsters well. A monster really shouldn't interact with powers on that level. Making a monster that can only be hurt by fire is different than making a monster who can only be hurt by _fireball_, after all. One is tied to something that can be engineered by intelligent players/PCs, the other requires that PCs happen to have a particular class in the party with a particular resource.



Yesway Jose said:


> BTW, I get it that it's not like your PC lost the ability to try to critical in-game. I assume that if you used the daily in encounter 1, then fictionally, your PC was trying to get at that weak spot and just couldn't do it. That's the disconnect for me. I can visualize that weak spot in the armor. I can imagine having some chance (not a certainty, but a hope) to get that blade there and skewer the monster's heart. But I can't. By that point, the story is already written in stone. There's no hope.




Wouldn't that be defined in the game mechanics by the monster having a high AC, though?

But, its the same thing as saying "This troll can only be damaged by _fireball_" in 3e, and the wizard going "I used that spell on the minotaur" and then having frustrated players afterward. It's just bad DMing.

EDIT: I'll add that in 4e, you can get through encounters without using any daily powers without problems. They're just nice. Thus, it is extremely rare that a party stops because they are out of daily powers. So, you might be ascribing too much importance to them in this instance.


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Also, this doesn't have to do with dissociated mechanics, but resource usage. Resource mechanics can be daily and still be associated, as any player of previous editions of D&D can attest.



I admit it wasn't the best mechanical example, I was kinda rolling with a vague "spectacular crit" daily, and not intended as a 3e is the best vs 4e sux either.

I disagree that it's unrelated to disassociation. It's about disconnect between the mechanical 1xday limit vs the player's resource management of that limitation vs the optimal timing for that to occur in the narrative either from actor stance and/or author stance.


----------



## BryonD

Teemu said:


> I think you're confusing D&D Encounters with D&D Essentials.



Yep.  My bad.  Sorry.


----------



## BryonD

Neonchameleon said:


> I had to re-read what I wrote to check I did what I intended to. Because you have apparently completely misread me and made a mistake with your terminology. Encounters is not Essentials.



Yes I did.  My bad.  I apologize.


----------



## BryonD

Neonchameleon said:


> Links?



I'm not going to play that game.

Please declare victory and pat yourself on the back.  But I'm not here to prove past conversations existence to anyone, much less one specific naysayer.  

The conversations happened over and over and anyone who has been paying attention to these boards knows it.

But, if you don't accept that, so be it.  You win in your mind and the actual events remain unchanged.

And if we can't agree on that level of basic understanding, then no fun or productive conversation will follow.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> I admit it wasn't the best mechanical example, I was kinda rolling with a vague "spectacular crit" daily, and not intended as a 3e is the best vs 4e sux either.
> 
> I disagree that it's unrelated to disassociation. It's about disconnect between the mechanical 1xday limit vs the player's resource management of that limitation vs the optimal timing for that to occur in the narrative either from actor stance and/or author stance.




But, a daily resource can be associated and still have this problem. How can it be related to dissociated mechanics?


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> But, a daily resource can be associated and still have this problem. How can it be related to dissociated mechanics?



Because of the definition that the reasoning cannot be observed, explored, or learned by the character? I don't know even what we're talking about any more


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Because of the definition that the reasoning cannot be observed, explored, or learned by the character? I don't know even what we're talking about any more




We are collectively going 'round and 'round a central point, never quite getting agreement, or failing to understand each other, or something like that.  But some of the peripheral stuff is sparking interesting discussion.  So we keep doing it.  

At least, being generally optimistic, if not an optimist, I choose to believe that is what is happening.


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> Because of the definition that the reasoning cannot be observed, explored, or learned by the character? I don't know even what we're talking about any more




[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] You started this! What was my point again?


----------



## Neonchameleon

BryonD said:


> I'm not going to play that game.
> 
> Please declare victory and pat yourself on the back.  But I'm not here to prove past conversations existence to anyone, much less one specific naysayer.
> 
> The conversations happened over and over and anyone who has been paying attention to these boards knows it.




*I've been part of those conversations.*  And my memory of them is different to yours.  My memory is that they focus on the tactical because that is what is different.  This is also an understanding that isn't just about slanderous to anyone.  Your memory is that they focus on the tactical because it is the only thing that matters - and you are imputing an extremely negative reason to people you disagree with (always dangerous).  

Indeed the most recent conversation that you could have read that way _I_ was the one who brought up what you might see as the tactical focus.  The one involving shifty.



> But, if you don't accept that, so be it.  You win in your mind and the actual events remain unchanged.
> 
> And if we can't agree on that level of basic understanding, then no fun or productive conversation will follow.




Indeed.  If you can not back your claims when you effectively slander roleplayers of a system you dislike then no productive conversation will follow.  Strange, that.


----------



## Raven Crowking

Removed


----------



## Aus_Snow

Grr. I need to spread XP around, before giving any more to RC, blah. 

Anyway, that was... perfect.


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> That's just a badly designed monster or badly designed adventure pacing, take your pick. The fun of an encounter shouldn't rely on the party having specific resources.



 We have the fiction. This is an almagam informed by:
- real life (human behavior, politics, etc. which we can't agree upon and constantly have debates and even wars over)
- history (knights, castles, etc. and all the arguments about anachronisms, longswords vs katanas, etc.)
- fantasy literature (dragons, magic, none of the which are exactly the same according to any one author)
- D&D fiction (rust monsters and other D&D originals)
- other genre laws (Hollywood action movie tropes and cliches, not exactly consistent)

The sum of all that incoherence is what the in-game characters experience to be true.

But then we have extraneous interests that want to clarify the truth of the fiction:
- adventure format (cliches such as tons of dungeon delves because we don't have time, money and/or inclination to think of more interesting stories) 
- game mechanics (surviving 200" jumps, oozes being knocked prone, powers that are effective 1/day, etc.)
- what the DM says
- what the players say

Now on top of that, we also have:
- adventure pacing (narrative that is structured to optimize player experience of the game mechanics, which has arguably changed over editions)

So where do you draw the line? Where's the baseline? Where do you separate what you want to be fictionally true vs what isn't or shouldn't necessarily be true?

Because if you accept that ALL of the above is part of the reality that IS true in D&D fiction, then there cannot be any disassociation.

If you say 1/day mechanism is not disassociated from the fiction, because in the fiction that power is only used 1/day, then it's a closed circle. 
There's nothing to argue about.

Conversely, I think I draw my baseline somewhere between points 4 and 5. Which is not to say that anything is set in stone, I often rethink a fictional construct, but that's the general vicinity. So the adventure format, game mechanics, adventure pacing, even DM/player input, may or may not support my vision of what the fiction could/should be. You know how some people say, if you don't like the rules, change them? That's where my head is at. That's how I can see disassociation between mechanics and my baseline for the fiction.

Did I argue that correctly? Or am I belaboring the obvious?


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> As you mentioned on the previous page, your full definition is "if the *reasoning can* be learned, explored, or observed in-game" then it's not disassocciated. For example, from the essay:
> 
> Me: So what is this thing you're doing?
> Rogue: I'm performing a series of feints and lures, allowing me to maneuver my foe right where I want him.
> Me: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
> Rogue: ... I have no idea.
> 
> The rogue is able to observe this phenomenon. He just can't explain it. The latter is what causes the disassociation.




Alternatively:
You: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
Rogue: What? I can try it as often as I've got the energy for, because it is pretty tiring, but that doesn't mean it'll work all the time. Sometimes people react the way I want, sometimes I just get a decent hit in before they manage to block my attack.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> Alternatively:
> You: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
> Rogue: What? I can try it as often as I've got the energy for, because it is pretty tiring, but that doesn't mean it'll work all the time. Sometimes people react the way I want, sometimes I just get a decent hit in before they manage to block my attack.



Sorry, still illogical to me in the bigger context. Too bad your Hypnotism spell can't mind-control me to think otherwise


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> If you say 1/day mechanism is not disassociated from the fiction, because in the fiction that power is only used 1/day, then it's a closed circle.
> There's nothing to argue about.




I apologize, but I don't really know what you mean.

The dissociation between the 1/day mechanic and the character with the 1/day mechanic _by definition_ means that they don't have any concept of a 1/day mechanic. This is what dissociated mechanic means as far as I'm aware.

So, the character can't even tell that there is a 1/day mechanic. One character cannot ask the rogue why they can only do something 1/day because the fact that they can only do something 1/day is not observable in the game world.

Does that make sense?



Yesway Jose said:


> Sorry, still illogical to me in the bigger context. Too bad your Hypnotism spell can't mind-control me to think otherwise




Here's how the conversation would happen in game.

Me: So what is this thing you're doing?
Rogue: Fighting, taking advantage of any openings I see to injure and hinder the enemy.
Me: Nifty. Keep it up.


----------



## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> The dissociation between the 1/day mechanic and the character with the 1/day mechanic _by definition_ means that they don't have any concept of a 1/day mechanic. This is what dissociated mechanic means as far as I'm aware.
> 
> So, the character can't even tell that there is a 1/day mechanic. One character cannot ask the rogue why they can only do something 1/day because the fact that they can only do something 1/day is not observable in the game world.



Why isn't it observable in the game world? With Trick Strike, the rogue is maneuvering/forcing/scaring every opponent back, and he's successfully at doing this for an entire encounter. And it only happens up to once per day.

This isn't even a difficult observation to make make. The rogue is an experienced fighter, he's not fighting in a bewildered state. As in a boxing ring or street fight, the rogue is probably cognitive if your opponent seems to be holding the center and intimidating you into withdrawing, or whether you feel you have the upper hand and forcing him back all the time.



> Me: So what is this thing you're doing?
> Rogue: Fighting, taking advantage of any openings I see to injure and hinder the enemy.
> Me: Nifty. Keep it up.



Me: Oh, by the way, can I put you in a boxing ring?
Rogue: Sure, I'll make some extra cash.
Me: How about 3 fights today every day?
Rogue: More money for daddy!
[after the fight]
Me: Did you notice that in one of the 3 fights, you were always able to maneuver the guy exactly where you wanted him -- back against the ropes?
Rogue: Yep!
Me: Why were you 100% successful at doing this for an entire match, but not the other 2 matches?
Rogue: Beats me!
[next day]
Me: Did you notice that in one of the 3 fights, you were always able to maneuver the guy exactly where you wanted him -- back against the ropes?
Rogue: Yep!
Me: Why were you 100% successful at doing this for an entire match, but not the other 2 matches?
Rogue: Beats me!
[next day]
...repeat to infinity...


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> ...Conversely, I think I draw my baseline somewhere between points 4 and 5. Which is not to say that anything is set in stone, I often rethink a fictional construct, but that's the general vicinity. So the adventure format, game mechanics, adventure pacing, even DM/player input, may or may not support my vision of what the fiction could/should be. You know how some people say, if you don't like the rules, change them? That's where my head is at. That's how I can see disassociation between mechanics and my baseline for the fiction.
> 
> Did I argue that correctly? Or am I belaboring the obvious?




It's a good framework for looking at the issue from the big picture angle, instead of zeroing in on details. Since I think that angle is sorely neglected, I'm all for the attempt. 

Given that framework, I think the next piece of information that is most relevant is that every group is going to collectively (and sometimes individually, as well) make decisions that will constrain that universe, and thus try to make it manageable. There is not only nothing wrong with this effort, it is practically required--and natural to do, anyway. You couldn't stop it, anymore than you could stop the sun rising in the east.

Every time someone makes one of these decisions, the world become more coherent, according to what that group wants. However, other options are closed off--and this includes options that would make perfect sense in some other group, that has made different decisions.

What you often end up with, and have ever since the first version of D&D came down the pike, is that some people will decide A, B, C, D, and E. Then suddenly, they realize that Rule X is now goofy, unrealistic, too slow, or any number of such things. And then they want that rule changed. If they are particularly insightful on this whole decision process, they realize that the whole thing stops working for them because of those A-E decisions. (Most people aren't that insightful most of the time. This isn't a failing, as being that insightful on a regular basis would be impressive.) So then they'll decide whether A-E is worth dealing with the rule as is or a house rule to replace it.  The rest of us just kind of guess what we want and try to work around it.

If you want to evaluate Rule X holistically, though, you have to go back before all those decisions are set in stone. Then look at the rule as it was intended to work. And then, from a practical standpoint, look at some of the common decisions that people want to make, and have made, and decide which ones will be supported--keeping in mind, that if you don't have good market research, you are just guessing. (And maybe just guessing even if you do have such research. Educated guessing, but still guessing.) 

Someone saying that they want A-E decisions to mesh with most every rule in the book is stating a preference. If the designers don't satisfy that, then they probably won't like the game. Failure to satisfy them, however, is not much of a basis for a holistic criticism of Rule X. It's just a data point. If enough people feel this way, it's a data point for a business plan criticism and/or a criticism of the aforementioned market research, or the educated guesses done from it. It is still not a useful criticism of Rule X alone, though, because if fails to take into account all the other people that made a different set of decisions, about the coherence of their game world.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

An analogy by way of explanation of the above:  You go into a sports bar.  They show various sports on television screens.  They ask you what you want to watch.  You say, something besides football (American or soccer; highschool, college, club, or pro; male or female--all out), baseball, basketball, golf, tennis, rugby, track and field, rowing, bobsledding, or timber tossing, or any form of skating whatsoever. 

The bartender says, "O ... K... let's see what we got on right now.  What'll it be then, an ESPN documentary on grade school dodge ball?  Or maybe the middle-aged software developer beach ball tournament?"

Your turn to your friend, and say, "Man, this place sucks."

Your friend says, "Yeah, and I'm scared to see what is left after you tell him your exceptions for drinks."

For purposes of clarity, this example may have included some hyperbole...


----------



## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> Why isn't it observable in the game world? With Trick Strike, the rogue is maneuvering/forcing/scaring every opponent back, and he's successfully at doing this for an entire encounter. And it only happens up to once per day.
> 
> This isn't even a difficult observation to make make. The rogue is an experienced fighter, he's not fighting in a bewildered state. As in a boxing ring or street fight, the rogue is probably cognitive if your opponent seems to be holding the center and intimidating you into withdrawing, or whether you feel you have the upper hand and forcing him back all the time.




This is a difficult thing to answer. I get where you're coming from. I'm coming from a different direction, and it is hard to convey my thoughts on the matter in a way that could be satisfying to you. So, it isn't that either of us is right or wrong, its that the way we approach the characters, world, and mechanics all interacting with each other is slightly different.

It's very frustrating not being able to express myself on this directly. I'm going to have to take some time to think about it.


----------



## JamesonCourage

ThirdWizard said:


> This is a difficult thing to answer. I get where you're coming from. I'm coming from a different direction, and it is hard to convey my thoughts on the matter in a way that could be satisfying to you. So, it isn't that either of us is right or wrong, its that the way we approach the characters, world, and mechanics all interacting with each other is slightly different.
> 
> It's very frustrating not being able to express myself on this directly. I'm going to have to take some time to think about it.




Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you're saying the rogue has the trick from a meta sense, but doesn't know he has it. He never consciously decides to use the trick, he just attempts to feint (or whatever), and succeeds (if the trick is used on the meta level). At other times, he attempts to feint, but it does not succeed (the power was not used on the meta level).

If that's the case, the power is a form of direct narrative control with no in-game reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed. This makes the power dissociated.

And, once again, I feel I should state there's nothing wrong with dissociated mechanics inherently. I use them in the game I created. I don't play D&D 3.5, and I'm not here to defend it or tear 4e down. Previous editions have had dissociated mechanics.

But, if 4e does indeed embrace narrative (dissociative) mechanics (which many, _many_ people prefer), this causes some problems previously discussed for some people. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with dissociative mechanics.

And, once again, correct me if I'm wrong on how you see the rogue's Trick Strike playing out.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Plane Sailing

I may be wrong, but I think the crux of the matter is that 4e powers typically are used by the player to exercise some narrative control over what is happening while 3e activities were typically consciously 'used' by the character

The real 'dissociation' if you will is that for some players it seems quite natural for the activities to represent what they want to happen for the characters, while for other players it seems natural that a character has a range of capabilities which the character themselves 'could choose'.

( magic tends to be excluded from this issue because it is magic and thus limited use rules don't seem jarring in the same way that limited use of martial powers does)


----------



## Hussar

Crazy Jerome said:


> /Snip for all sorts of juicy goodness.
> 
> Hmm, I rather like the dynamic possiblities implied by this, not to mention the implications for anticipation. You get a "crit", people want to get through the round in a hurry to see what you do with it. Meanwhile, you've got a round to decide what you do with it.




Now there's a houserule that's getting yoinked for the next time I'm DMing.  That's a freaking fantastic idea.  Crit and regain an encounter power.  Might even go so far as to say that if you crit with a full load out of encounter powers, you get a daily back.  Or may an action point.  

Actually, that might be interesting - you get an action point every time you crit.  You can spend 2 action points to regain an encounter power or 3 action points to regain a daily.

Although, the downside of this is characters that favour area attacks are going to get a lot more mileage out of this than, say, strikers.


----------



## Hussar

Gonna take another stab here.

From what I understand, we're saying that a mechanic is disassociated if there is no way for the PC to cause the effect to occur.  There's no way that a rogue "forgets" how to Trick strike, so, it's disassociated.

The problem I'm having here, is that there are different levels to the narrative.  What's been said here is right - there really is no way that someone "forgets" how to do their martial dailies.  But, if you move up a level, from the individual PC to the larger picture, then suddenly the mechanics don't look so disassociated.

That's where I was going with the football example.  Since a given game won't have too many bad calls, then it's not really disassociated if the game has only one bad call.  It's perfectly fitting with expectations.

Let's take everyone's favourite whipping boy, Come and Get It.  Now, from the individual level, there's no way my fighter can "choose" to have a bunch of baddies mob me, dogpile style, and then me burst through them with flashing blades.  Completely disassociated at that level.

But, move up a level.  The warrior steps up and a bunch of mooks dog pile him.  He slashes left and right and bodies drop and he bursts through the scrum.  This is a scene that has been repeated in genre fiction for years.  Pretty much every sword and sorcery style book and a number of others as well, have a scene like this.  Sometimes several scenes like this.

But, it rarely, if ever, happens twice in a given fight.  The mooks swarm Conan, ignoring the scrawny bugger in the back and get beaten back.  In the next scene, yet more mooks swarm Conan and get beaten back, still ignoring that scrawny little schmuch hanging behind Conan.  So on and so forth.  ((Note, it's late and I'm dog tired, so, no, I have no idea if these scenes ACTUALLY occur in a Conan story - work with me here))

So, from the level of the overal narrative, suddenly Come and Get It makes perfect sense.  It's not disassociated at all - in fact, its very much in keeping with genre expectations.

Now, all that being said, I totally understand that some people don't want to look at things from that perspective.  They don't want their game to take on that level of narrative.  Totally understandable.  But, that doesn't make the mechanics bad, it's simply a case of matching different tastes.


----------



## JamesonCourage

It really is a matter of taste, Hussar. You're right. And I agree, there's nothing inherently wrong with dissociated mechanics. If I recall correctly, Justin Alexander doesn't think so either (he likes them in another game he mentions, I believe).

I don't think he meant associated to the narrative. I think he meant associated to the in-game world. To that end, narrative mechanics -which cannot be learned, explored, or observed- are dissociative. That doesn't mean they aren't fun.

I love Mutants and Masterminds 2e, and I stole the Hero Point mechanic for my game (modified it, but it's based on it). That's a mechanic that lets you use points on a meta level to modify game results, get clues, or even shape the world to very minor degrees. It's definitely a dissociated mechanic, but, like you indicate, it definitely helps build the feel of playing in a superhero genre.

Now, my problem with dissociative mechanics (and this is a very personally subjective problem) is that it pulls me out of character, and kills my immersion very quickly. This isn't a problem with Mutants and Masterminds, since that's not what I want out of the game. But, then again, I only play M&M as one-shots every couple of months.

I definitely agree that having such narrative power could be very natural to use for some people, though, and wouldn't disrupt their game much or at all. It's just not universally shared, though. Just like you said, Hussar, it's a matter of taste. And, that's why people have often spoken up against dissociated mechanics. If they're extrapolating their preference to anyone else's game, though, they're wrong to do so.

As always, play what you like


----------



## BryonD

Bluenose said:


> Alternatively:
> You: Nifty. So why can you only do that once per day?
> Rogue: What? I can try it as often as I've got the energy for, because it is pretty tiring, but that doesn't mean it'll work all the time. Sometimes people react the way I want, sometimes I just get a decent hit in before they manage to block my attack.



But this idea is already accounted for.  It happens exactly like this in my games.
The players rolls a die to see how if something works or not.

The idea that it ALWAYS works ONCE PER DAY (or encounter) and NEVER works more than once per day is not addressed by your alternative.  You have answered a question that did not need an answer and ignored the real problem.

In my game a character MIGHT succeed seven times in a row.  He might fail all day long.  And probably it is something in between.  

Dailies completely ignore the story and characters and everything else except the mechanics.  Then the story is required to build itself around the mechanics.


----------



## BryonD

If I was reading a novel and a guy feinted once and then it didn't work anymore against his opponent, I would not think twice about it.  It works perfectly, and if you only look at 4E at that level, it works perfectly.

But, if I was reading a story and he pulled off an awesome feint in one fight and later that day he could not, then that might seem weird.  But, certainly you could be an excuse around it.  He just got unlucky in the second fight, it didn't work and now the trick is spoiled.  So, ok, it still works.

But the next day it happens once again.  And the next day.  And the next day.  The pattern would become clear.  And if you wrote a novel of your 4E characters adventures, these patterns would emerge for every character.It might take a whole lot of reading before the patterns really emerged.  So you could get away with it for a long time.  But, eventually, the patterns would be obvious.  And there is no narrative reason that those patterns would exist and no author simply writing a story would shoehorn those patterns onto their narrative.  Stories are not tied to these kinds of arbitrary patterns.  4E brings those patterns in to serve the purposes of balance, ease of prep and "the math works". 

But, sitting around the table is different.  We know there are mechanics there.  So instead of needing to read hundreds of thousands of pages before the pattern appears and starts to stick out, you know from the first moment that the pattern is imposing itself.  

I want to feel like I am inside a great novel.  And if something would stick out as wrong in a novel it will stick out as wrong in the game.  The fact that you can retrofit your narrative to conceal these mandates does not remove them.  And any mandated revision is still a detraction from the first preference.

I know that the pattern is there from the word go.  I absolutely have the ability to suspend disbelief and roll with it.  But I also have the ability to play a better game that doesn't make this requirement in the name of mechanics.

Make it feel exactly like a novel if you want my interest.


----------



## Yesway Jose

This is more of a summary, than stating anything new...



JamesonCourage said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you're saying the rogue has the trick from a meta sense, but doesn't know he has it. He never consciously decides to use the trick, he just attempts to feint (or whatever), and succeeds (if the trick is used on the meta level). At other times, he attempts to feint, but it does not succeed (the power was not used on the meta level).
> 
> If that's the case, the power is a form of direct narrative control with no in-game reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed. This makes the power dissociated.
> 
> And, once again, I feel I should state there's nothing wrong with dissociated mechanics inherently. I use them in the game I created. I don't play D&D 3.5, and I'm not here to defend it or tear 4e down. Previous editions have had dissociated mechanics.






Plane Sailing said:


> The real 'dissociation' if you will is that for some players it seems quite natural for the activities to represent what they want to happen for the characters, while for other players it seems natural that a character has a range of capabilities which the character themselves 'could choose'.



I think the above is a great summary of the core of this entire discussion.



Hussar said:


> From what I understand, we're saying that a mechanic is disassociated if there is no way for the PC to cause the effect to occur. There's no way that a rogue "forgets" how to Trick strike, so, it's disassociated.



In non-Actor stance, the rogue might explain the phenomenon differently than the "real" reason. The rogue might observe and explain that on Monday, he was able to maneuvere the ogre around the cave but other opponents that day proved to be more wily. Whereas the "real" reason, of course, is because of the player's acceptance and implementation of the 1/day rule.

Two parallel processes leading to the same effect and the rogue can observe and explain the "in-game" version of the phenomenon.

However...


BryonD said:


> If I was reading a novel and a guy feinted once and then it didn't work anymore against his opponent, I would not think twice about it. It works perfectly, and if you only look at 4E at that level, it works perfectly.
> <SNIP>
> But the next day it happens once again. And the next day. And the next day. The pattern would become clear. And if you wrote a novel of your 4E characters adventures, these patterns would emerge for every character.It might take a whole lot of reading before the patterns really emerged. So you could get away with it for a long time. But, eventually, the patterns would be obvious.



The rogue is going to have the exact same trouble explaining the 'big picture' pattern as the abovementioned hypothetical author, so the mechanic is disassociated.


----------



## ThirdWizard

On the topic of observing 1/day effects...

I'm going to switch gears to FATE for a moment. Take a theoretical FATE stunt called "Split the Arrow" that uses a fate point to literally shoot an arrow and cause it to split another arrow. A character with a Refresh 5 will start play with 5 fate points. If he wants, he can immediately and always after refreshing his fate split an arrow the first five times he tries and then never again. Every time. He can then ask himself "Why?"

But, doing this goes against the basis of the game. 

I know there's a lot of good theoretical discussion going on, but in play, it would never even occur to anyone to go down this line of thought, in my experience. I think there's a difference between analyzing a game, looking over it in a theoretical context, and playing the game with a group of friends. 

There's also expectation. Once you've been playing with dissociated mechanics for a while, they are going to look different to you than when you first started using them.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

ThirdWizard said:


> But, doing this goes against the basis of the game.




EXCELLENT PONT (the whole post, but this in particular).

Hell, if I were naive enough to claim it, I'd be tempted to say "this is the reasoning behind the edition wars! Now we've solved them!"

Of course it's more complicated than that (there's no single reason for edition wars), but I mean that as a compliment to you. That was a really good point.


I think that 4e may have subtly tipped the balance from one stance to another.

By that I mean, I've contributed to (or started) threads about how much D&D can change before it isn't D&D (with no real conclusion), threads about what is or isn't different in 4e (which have been vague or confusing with some observing large changes others view as small and vice versa), threads about how 4e does x,y, or z better or worse than 3e (which always seems to result in anecdotes about how 3e also did the same things better or worse also).

The editions ARE different, and I've never been fully able to wrangle the actual differences conceptually. I'm starting to wonder if this focus (again, focus, not existence of dissociated mechanics for good---not evil.) is a big part of the change from 3e to 4e.

I'll also point out that dissociated is a pejorative tone on it's own. Perhaps if we embraced terms describing the major differences in POSITIVE terms, it might be more acceptable/reasonable/enjoyable for all of us.


I'm going to put forth the terms of:

dissociated/narrativist/actor driven for 4e, as a set.
and
associated/simulationist/character driven for 3e, as a set.


I'd like to improve upon dissociated and associated though. They're the terms we're using here, but again, I recognize they have weight in terms of quality.

What about, instead of them, using (and I may need some help here with better suggestions)...

"storytelling players" versus "rules tell the story for players".


I'm going to flat out admit that last distinction was clumsy, but if people agree with the rest of the post, perhaps we can come together and find positive terms for "associative" versus "dissociative", because it seems we're beginning to understand what we mean, but the terms have unnecessary baggage.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

@Aberzanzorax 

It is a big part of the objection to "disassociated" that it was a made up term to distinguish one set of narrativist/stances/metagaming behaviors in a game from that *same* set of narrativist/stance/metagaming behaviors in another game, because the author wanted to condemn the set in one case but not in another. If all he had wanted to do is say, "Hey, I don't like this set of behaviors in my D&D, or I don't think they did them very well," he could have done that without making up a term.

But to your larger point, yes 4E very much did tip a balance towards this set of behaviors, consciously. Those of us who had already pushed previous versions in this direction (and you can, if you want to), were naturally pleased.

As for replacement terms, I'm not sure anyone is going to do better than simulation/narrative and the stances. Swtiching between Actor/Author stance is a powerful, neutral description of a great deal of the difference. To the degree that someone wants to make distinctions inside the Actor stance, they are going to need to explain their take on immersion, anyway. At the boundary of Actor/Author stance, there is this ground that I have seen occupied quite a bit, where the player is improvising from the Author perspective and then immediately Acting, using this newly authored material.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Dissociated mechanics seem to be used mostly in fiction-sim games such as James Bond 007 and Mutants & Masterminds. Dissociating the characters makes more sense in such games because they are already dissociated from the rules of the fiction. Action movie heroes don't realise that the 'million to one shot' is actually certain to succeed. A comicbook superhero doesn't know that when he tries to use his power to do something he's never attempted before, like using his energy blasts to fly, it will definitely work because his player spends a hero point or the writer lets it.

We should note that in 4e, by the justification in the game text, daily powers are not a dissociated mechanic. The character would know that he is tired, the reason given on page 54 of the PHB. In fact 4e has, as far as I'm aware, only one fiction-sim mechanic - minions. The rest of the non-naturalistic or arguably non-naturalistic mechanics - easily recoverable hit points, dailies, action points, monster power recharges - are as they are because of gamism or greater playability. D&D has, imo, never been a fiction sim game and it still isn't.

It's worth considering why fiction sim games have hero points. Why put the control of the 'million to one shot' succeeding in the hands of the player and not the dice or GM? I think the reason is simply because it's more fun.


----------



## BryonD

I have not played fate, so forgive me if I'm missing something here.

Fate points sounds somewhat similar to action points is a very general sense.
I use action points in my games.

A part of the conversation is around player control of narrative elements.  And I don't think there is a lot, if any, resistance to that concept if done well.  In my games, as any game, I think, APs can be used for a wide variety of tasks.  It can be as simple as improving the chances of an attack hitting or making a save.  But it can also provide narrative control.  Players tend to ask "Can I swing on a vine to get there if I spend an action point?"  "Can I find this thing I need if I spend and action point?"  Sometime I say no.  It depends.  But I default to yes unless there is a reason to say no.  The concept of narrative control and heroes having "heroic" moments, like in novels and movies, is very much embraced.  But the mechanics that support that need to be both good and unobtrusive.

And the fact that APs apply to such a wide variety of things applies to that.  You could read millions of pages of novel reflecting my games and the only pattern you would ever see is that the heroes are a little more likely to get lucky when the chips are down.  And THAT is a story convention that applies.  So, again, the mechanics are a slave to the narrative, not the other way around.  We expect moments of greatness, so we allow a mechanic that produces that result.  And if that convention was not expected, I wouldn't use the mechanic.

In 4E we are not talking about a limited resource that applies to a vast range of elements.  We are talking about daily or encounter limited uses of specific actions.  It is completely different.

It never occurs to us to go down the pattern line of thought with APs because the pattern isn't there.  And I suspect it is exactly the same as with Fate.

But in 4E the thought walks up and slaps us in the face.  When you choose to use a daily or not you are doing exactly that, making a conscious choice that impact not only that moment, but the narrative allowances of other unrelated moments.  The player, and everyone else at the table knows that a choice has been made and the pattern must be complied with.  When you use that daily, you know it is gone for the day.

You example works for FATE.  But you were forced to talk about FATE rather than 4E because it does not hold up for 4E.

Again, that isn't to say that 4E is a bad game.  There are very real, fun, benefits provided by the 4E system.  But, my point is that if your priority is the same as mine, being inside a story without these patterns or anything else showing themselves, then there are going to be other systems that you will find clearly more satisfactory.


----------



## BryonD

Doug McCrae said:


> Dissociated mechanics seem to be used mostly in fiction-sim games such as James Bond 007 and Mutants & Masterminds. Dissociating the characters makes more sense in such games because they are already dissociated from the rules of the fiction. Action movie heroes don't realise that the 'million to one shot' is actually certain to succeed. A comicbook superhero doesn't know that when he tries to use his power to do something he's never attempted before, like using his energy blasts to fly, it will definitely work because his player spends a hero point or the writer lets it.
> 
> We should note that in 4e, by the justification in the game text, daily powers are not a dissociated mechanic. The character would know that he is tired, the reason given on page 54 of the PHB. In fact 4e has, as far as I'm aware, only one fiction-sim mechanic - minions. The rest of the non-naturalistic or arguably non-naturalistic mechanics - easily recoverable hit points, dailies, action points, monster power recharges - are as they are because of gamism or greater playability. D&D has, imo, never been a fiction sim game and it still isn't.



Good point.

4E does do a good job of being a "simulation" of the world which it defines.
But you are obligated to play within the world that it defines.

If you play 3E, by the book, you are obligated to quasi-Vancian magic system.  Running out of spells is a narrative driven mechanical constraint.  But if you don't like the Vancian approach, then you are not going to like 3E.  But, at least the option is there to completely replace that system.  A lot of good alternates are out there and simply swapping that system works well.   Powers are much more entrenched in 4E.

And, obviously, I deeply disagree with your opinion.  I'm really only a "fan" of one edition.  But that one edition, in the hands of a capable DM is very capable of producing the sense of being inside a novel that could be in turn actually written without the mechanics ever showing through in any way that runs against the narrative expectations.  I don't know if you call that "being a faction sim" or not.  But whatever you call it, it is the thing I want, the thing I have, and the thing 4E doesn't intend to offer.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> As for replacement terms, I'm not sure anyone is going to do better than simulation/narrative and the stances. Swtiching between Actor/Author stance is a powerful, neutral description of a great deal of the difference. To the degree that someone wants to make distinctions inside the Actor stance, they are going to need to explain their take on immersion, anyway. At the boundary of Actor/Author stance, there is this ground that I have seen occupied quite a bit, where the player is improvising from the Author perspective and then immediately Acting, using this newly authored material.



I remember once a time when it was called "metagame thinking" and it was generally frowned upon to influence what you knew as a player with what your character knows. Very few players if any were able to Act their characters as if they, the Player, were completely and utterly oblivious to the mechanics -- but many of us followed a line in the sand and enjoyed it. Now "metagame thinking" has been repurposed like it's the New Black. 

This has been a big learning curve for me, personally. The main reason is the issue of immersion. For example, as I wrote before, D&D fiction is already incoherent as is (a maleable mishmash of real-life, fantasy, historical, D&D and genre laws). If my PC is trying to anticipate the NPC's next step, am I supposed to imagine what the character would do, or am I supposed to account for how the rules dictate what the character will likely do? What if the DM didn't apply any stats to the NPC, is the character more "free" to act in a plausible way than if a rules "straight-jacket" was applied? You end up have several different paradigms both inside and outside of combat and unsure of which PC or NPC is operating at which level at any one time.

If people say that, in actual game play, that 'disassociated' patterns based on various mechanics (including but not limited to 1/day) do not feel like implausible mandates poking out from a convincing flow of narrative... then I believe you. To be a honest, a 1/day mechanic on its own is hardly worth arguing about. IMO I have a stronger feeling about the sumtotal impression of the number and nature of various mechanics.

I read in an essay that in Author stance, the player narratively decides the outcome, and then retroactively motivates the character to do so (otherwise, it's Pawn stance). So I don't see how non-Actor stance is necessarily immune from the definition of 'disassociated' mechanics, unless it is Pawn stance? That retroactive motivation could be just in your head or you can announce to the group how you use Come and Get it, but some retroactive motivations must be better than others, so call that a "degree of disassociation" instead of "association" or no "disassociation"?


----------



## Yesway Jose

Doug McCrae said:


> We should note that in 4e, by the justification in the game text, daily powers are not a dissociated mechanic. The character would know that he is tired, the reason given on page 54 of the PHB.



The disassociation there is that the character is ONLY tired enough to product one certain outcome, but NOT tired enough to do any other number of equally tiring actions.



> In fact 4e has, as far as I'm aware, only one fiction-sim mechanic - minions.



Although I'm ambivalent about minion rules, they are not disassociated from genre laws, which I believe is what inspired them in the first place.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> This has been a big learning curve for me, personally. The main reason is the issue of immersion...




And this is why I keep saying--though I don't remember if I said it in this topic yet or not--that one of the things really missing from game theory writing is a good treatment of immersion--specifically, deep immersion.

What happens, in all of these topics that touch on immersion, is that all the people really invested in immersion always disagree with those that aren't, and vice versa.  Apparently, the requirements of immersion are strong enough that they move the basis for how other elements, and likewise for those who do not.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> And what's wrong with that? Very few of the creatures in D&D really survive thinking about their biology in real-world terms; why should the PCs be any different?



Sure. But then isn't the same thing true of martial dailies - in the same way that we don't worry too much about how hit points and biology interact (and so the question of whether we're in Actor or Author stance doesn't come up very often - only when, for example, the hero knowingly charges the five crossbow-wielding hobgolbins), so likewise we don't worry too much about how martial powers and training, luck etc interact (and so the question of whether we're in Actor or Director stance doesn't come up very often - only when, for example, the hero uses Come and Get It against a group of ranged-attack-only magic users).

In other words, what Third Wizard describes reflects my experience also:



ThirdWizard said:


> in my implied narrative, the martial character is just fighting. They take advantage of situations that come up better than non-martial characters in many cases, but for the most part, they aren't concously using any "abilities" - this term would have no meaning for the character.
> 
> So, to the character, it isn't that once per day they can use Trick Strike which does... you know I've forgotten at this point.  But, the use of the "ability" is just their natural ebb and flow of the battlefield, how they react to situations that come up every once in a while - not too often but often enough. To them, an opening has shown itself, whether that be an opponent tripping, a quick feint, a distraction, or whatever. To them, that's just how they fight.
> 
> So, there is no explaination for daily powers within the setting. Within the setting, they don't exist. They are a construct. The fact that you can describe Trick Strike twenty ways in twenty uses helps with this. The character has no clue they are using a "daily power" because to them they simply aren't. There's nothing observable about the game mechanics in character.



As I said, this is how it plays at my table.



Yesway Jose said:


> if a fighter jumps off a 200' cliff every morning just for fun, then yes, he can observe that he has been incredibly lucky with every jump, but I don't think he could explain the reasoning for why he has been incredibly lucky in this regard. So technically, by your definition, that's disassociated too.



This has been exactly my point for several posts upthread. And I've added - if a player has some way of reconciling these consequences of the hit point mechanic with Actor rather than Author stance, than why can't that player use the same method to reconcile martial dailies with Actor stance?



Yesway Jose said:


> I read in an essay that in Author stance, the player narratively decides the outcome, and then retroactively motivates the character to do so (otherwise, it's Pawn stance). So I don't see how non-Actor stance is necessarily immune from the definition of 'disassociated' mechanics, unless it is Pawn stance? That retroactive motivation could be just in your head or you can announce to the group how you use Come and Get it, but some retroactive motivations must be better than others, so call that a "degree of disassociation" instead of "association" or no "disassociation"?



I'm not sure I follow the idea of "degree of dissociation" or "immunity" from the definition of "dissociation", but if you're saying that Author stance that is not Pawn stance _does_ involve roleplaying, because it involves engaging the fiction, than I agree 100%. That is why I regard the definition of roleplaying put forward upthread, and contested by Third Wizard and me, as so inflammatory - because it attempts to establish, by definition, that only Actor stance is roleplaying.

Here is an example of (what I think is) Author stance, that seems to me to be clearly roleplaying: 

I (that is, my PC) am exploring the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. I am unhurt and undaunted (ie at full hit points), and I see a big group of giants approaching. I can either fight them, and risk dying, or I can jump over the edge of the cliff into the rift 100' or so below. I know that there is a risk to jumping, but I am an experienced adventurer and I know the gods smile on me. I also have a ring that protects me from falls (mechanically, a ring of protection in AD&D grants -1 per plus to each die of falling damage). So I jump!​
As a _player_ of that PC, what influences me is precise knowledge of my hit point total, of the mechanics for falling damage, and of the bonus from my ring - so let's say I know that my hit points are currently 80, and I can't take more than 60 hp damage from the fall. All this reasoning takes place in Author stance - my PC does not have access to this mathematical information - but I process it and "retroactively" come up with reasoning for my PC almost simultaneously.

I think a lot of classic AD&D play has this sort of element to it. I think it is obviously roleplaying. It's me playing my PC. Whether or not its immersion-enhancing, immersion-neutral or immersion-destroying I have no view on. (Immersion isn't a notion that I find helps me undertand my own play experience very much.)



JamesonCourage said:


> If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than yes, everything can be fluffed so that it is no longer dissociated.
> 
> If we look at the rogue's Trick Strike, which has been presented as momentary narrative control (a dissociated mechanic), and we refluff it to say "he learned a trick that allows him to warp reality once per day" than it's no longer dissociated.
> 
> This can be problematic to people that want to play classes purely based in the mundane (even if their capabilities exceed mundane capabilities).





JamesonCourage said:


> If reasoning is presented (the gods love certain people, and protect and look after them; people really _are_ that physically tough; luck is a tangible force to some extent, and favors certain individuals -usually those who take risks [fortune favors the bold and all that]) than it's not dissociated.



Why wouldn't you use the explanation given in the second quote, rather than the "warping reality" in the first quote, if you wanted to "associate" Trick Strike? (ie the gods love the rogue, and/or luck is a tangible force to some extent, but gods and luck strike at most once per day).



JamesonCourage said:


> Some people have a hard time reconciling dissociated mechanics if they're too out there for us (even in a fantasy setting!), such as my problem with a paralyzed, unconscious rogue using Evasion in 3.X.



Huh? I must have misread your earlier posts, because I thought you were disagreeing with the suggestion that Evasion is "dissociated", and were saying that because it is an EX ability that a rogue can learn that it _is_ "associated".



Yesway Jose said:


> Why isn't it observable in the game world? With Trick Strike, the rogue is maneuvering/forcing/scaring every opponent back, and he's successfully at doing this for an entire encounter. And it only happens up to once per day.
> 
> This isn't even a difficult observation to make make.



I think the game proceeds under an assumption that the PCs are not documenting this sort of information. (Just as it proceeds under an assumption that the PCs don't notice that nearly every exciting event that they hear of has _them_ at the very heart of it.)

It's something like "genre blindness".



Plane Sailing said:


> I may be wrong, but I think the crux of the matter is that 4e powers typically are used by the player to exercise some narrative control over what is happening while 3e activities were typically consciously 'used' by the character





JamesonCourage said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you're saying the rogue has the trick from a meta sense, but doesn't know he has it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If that's the case, the power is a form of direct narrative control with no in-game reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed.



My view of martial dailies is that they are a metagame mechanic of the sort described in these two posts. I have been making that assertion throughout this thread, and indeed in many threads on these boards over the course of the past three years or so.

Upthread, however, Beginning of the End (who is either an associate of, or actually is, the author of the Alexandrian essay) has _denied_ that martial dailes are narrative control mechanics - he has said that they are no different from moves in a board game. _This_ is partially what is at stake in the language of "dissociation", because the original essay states that narrative control mechanics are, in a certain sense, _not_ at odds with roleplaying:

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a _different _way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).​
So if the description of martial dailies as metagame, narrative control mechanics is accepted, then the key contention of the original essay - that their presence in 4e is an obstacle to roleplaying and one reason that the game is just a series of tactical skirmishes linked by improv drama - falls over.

I am not suggesting that either Jameson Courage or Yesway Jose accepts that key contention. But it is at the heart of the original essay, and is therefore (by implication) at the heart of any defence of the theory of "dissociated" mechanics.



BryonD said:


> A part of the conversation is around player control of narrative elements.  And I don't think there is a lot, if any, resistance to that concept if done well.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In 4E we are not talking about a limited resource that applies to a vast range of elements.  We are talking about daily or encounter limited uses of specific actions.  It is completely different.



Yes, 4e's metagame mechanics are different from action points. Oddly enough, they are closer to HeroQuest's freeform descriptors (getting to choose your class and race from two long lists, and then your feats and powers from more long lists, begins to approximate building a character from freeform descriptors, provided you don't want to buck the genre tropes too much).

Why do I say this? Because, unlike action points and like descriptors, they (i) ensure that a given PC will be doing his/her particular schtick on a regular and reliabe basis, but (ii) give the player rather than just the dice and/or the GM a degree of control over when that schtick will be realised.

A 4e PC, in my experience, does a very good job of exmplifying itself. The power mechanics are a key part of this.



Yesway Jose said:


> I remember once a time when it was called "metagame thinking" and it was generally frowned upon to influence what you knew as a player with what your character knows.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now "metagame thinking" has been repurposed like it's the New Black.



Well, to be fair, this trend in RPG design is at least 15 years old. (I think Maelstrom Storytelling is from 1996 or thereabouts.) And of course there are instances of these sorts of mechanics going back to the 80s - like the James Bond hero(?) points - which predate whole games built around the idea.

I also think there is the issue of, which (part of the) metagame? The example I gave above, of deciding whether or not my PC will jump over the cliff, requires metagame thinking - ie thinking about the mechanics in a fashion that is not just a model for thinking about the fiction - but I think most D&D tables would let it pass. Not all would - for example, at some tables the player wouldn't be told his/her PC's hit point total, and would rather just be given descriptions by the GM - "You are at full health", "You are feeling tired and sore", etc precisely to stop the sort of metagaming involved in such decision-making.

And historically, of course, many who disliked that sort of metagaming moved to damage mechanics that don't permit/require it (eg Runequest, Rolemaster, etc).



JamesonCourage said:


> Some people in this thread have said they don't believe in dissociative mechanics.



Following on from my previous paragraph, I'm one of the people to whom you refer. But that's not because I don't believe in the existence of metagame mechanics, or of a range of stances (heck, I'm the one who introduced the definitions of different stances into the thread).

But even though I believe that combustion occurs from time to time, I don't believe in phlogiston - because phlogiston is associated with a bad theory of combustion.

Likewise, even though I think that a reflection on metagame mechanics, stances etc is useful for understanding RPG play and RPG design, I don't believe in so-called dissociated mecahcnis - because "dissociation" is a term associated with what I regard as a poor theory of roleplaying and of the relationship between stance, game and metagame.

Furthermore, as [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] and [MENTION=64209]Aberzanzorax[/MENTION] have indicated upthread, the word "dissociated" has obviously been chosen because of its connotations of psychological and cognitive pathology. That is, it has pejorative judgements built right into it.

As I said upthread, and what I stand by, is that the original essay is not primarily a contribution to the analysis of RPGs in terms of the variety and consequences of metagame mechanics, but is rather an attack upon 4e (motivated, I guess although don't know, by the author's dislike of the particular metagame mechanics found in 4e).


----------



## pemerton

Semi-random factoid: chatting with a couple of my players before yesterday's session, I asked whether they thought that the fighter's marking is a metagame mechanic or not.

One answered that he assumed it is happening ingame: taunting, threatening etc (the exact details being a bit hazy); the other answered that he thinks it has to be metagame, because how (for example) could the fighter taunt an ooze?

The logic of the mark as a metagame mechanic would be that it gives the GM a mechanical incentive to have marked monsters focus on the fighter, thereby generating a fiction in which the fighter is at the centre of the combat action. So it would be a type of narrative control mechanic exercised by the player of the fighter.


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## innerdude

> Here is an example of (what I think is) Author stance, that seems to me to be clearly roleplaying:I  (that is, my PC) am exploring the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.  I am unhurt and undaunted (ie at full hit points), and I see a big  group of giants approaching. I can either fight them, and risk dying, or  I can jump over the edge of the cliff into the rift 100' or so below. I  know that there is a risk to jumping, but I am an experienced  adventurer and I know the gods smile on me. I also have a ring that  protects me from falls (mechanically, a ring of protection in AD&D  grants -1 per plus to each die of falling damage). So I jump!​As a _player_  of that PC, what influences me is precise knowledge of my hit point  total, of the mechanics for falling damage, and of the bonus from my  ring - so let's say I know that my hit points are currently 80, and I  can't take more than 60 hp damage from the fall. All this reasoning  takes place in Author stance - my PC does not have access to this  mathematical information - but I process it and "retroactively" come up  with reasoning for my PC almost simultaneously.
> 
> I think a lot of classic AD&D play has this sort of element to it._* I think it is obviously roleplaying*_



 (emphasis added). 

That last sentence there, pemerton, is probably why you and I disagree on this issue, and on the general applicability and veracity of dissociative mechanics. 

Having played the last 8 years, primarily in a D&D 3.x group that almost exclusively plays in "Author" stance, I've come to quite believe that the "roleplaying" element of RPGs can only really originate from Actor stance. 

Now this doesn't mean that Author stance doesn't have the ability to provide enjoyment of other gameplay elements. It's great for narrative control over a given scene, as this entire thread as discussed. It's great for engaging the tactical battle elements of the rule system. 

But in my mind, "roleplaying" comes back to the idea I posited earlier, that the core difference between an RPG and any other type of game is that it simulates some form of human rational capacity, and the capacity to respond to other rational entities. Again, it's my opinion only, obviously, but that's the difference, the thing that sets RPGs apart from Risk, Settlers, and the Ravenloft board game. 

"Author" stance actions usually involve some form of metagaming, and can include mechanical dissociation. And while they do provide tactically interesting moments, and can lead to interesting game "decisions," at its core, Author stance typically moves away from "RP" and into the "G" elements of RPGs, at least as I see it. 

Now I totally get that you, and many other people will disagree with that. That you don't have to be in "Actor" stance to be "roleplaying," that engaging with an RPG on some other level other than as a character enveloped inside a game mileu is a valid way to play a game. And to a point, that's true; it's possible to enjoy a game of any kind, RPGs and otherwise, on many different levels, for many different aspects. But when I think "roleplaying," i.e., the thing that truly makes an RPG and RPG, I think "Actor stance." And I think anyone who tries to play RPGs without at least _attempting _to experience the "Actor stance" elements of an RPG is really trying to substitute one kind of enjoyment for another (again, I realize that may not be a popular stance, telling people how to play their RPGs. But I'm entitled to the opinion  ). 

But, even that being said, I respect your position, and in some ways am grateful that you've stated it as you have. It's made me realize that my own taste in RPGs will require different "hot buttons" than other players, and that to get the kinds of experiences I want out of the games I play and run, I'll need to seek more Actor stance, and less Author stance elements, and look for rules systems that support that view. 

Interestingly, the thread has focused more on defining what is and isn't dissociated, and not on the original intent of my OP, which was to discuss the idea that roleplaying at its core IS, in fact, a simulation, it's only a question of varying degree and kind, and how the rules effectively support the model. Continues to be interesting stuff all around.


----------



## haakon1

To me, the heart of D&D 3.5e (and AD&D, the only other edition I played much of) is:

The party is running out of HP.  Some people are down.  I'm playing a Fighter or a Paladin, or perhaps a Cleric or Wizard who is out of a useful spells.  While I await my turn, I scan my character sheet, looking for long-ago acquired items and start wondering what I can possibly do to save the day.  I or a friend comes with some hair-brained scheme, like:
- dumping all 10 flasks of oil from my backpack and lighting them to make a mini-wall of fire to hold off the monster, 
- jumping off the bridge into what I hope is an underground river to try to get away,
- casting Rope Trick and scooting up the rope just before the rolling earth elementals coming from both directions smash together beneath us,
- trying to Bull Rush the one gargoyle into smashing its magic horn against the damage-resistant other gargoyle when we don't have magic weapons, 
- use the chain to entangle your friend in mid-air just before he falls to his death,
- go ahead and turn on the deactivated robot because hey maybe it will kill the monster before it kills you,
- summon a celestial monkey behind the archer at the arrowslit and hope it messes with his aim long enough for you to race by,
- or trying to leap onto the Nightmare to grapple with the rider.

Out of crazy ideas comes victory from the jaws of defeat, or TPK, but either way it is glorious!


Whereas with 4e, I haven't seen this joy yet.  Admittedly, we've only played about a dozen sessions.  But it seems like when the chips are down, it's NOT the time to pull out the "sounds kinda crazy, but it just might work" ideas and act like Captain Kirk or Erroll Flynn.  Nope, it's time to keep grinding with the old reliable At Wills, because you already used all the Dailies and Encounter Powers and the Action Point/heal move early in the fight (using the traditional D&D maxim: kill them before they get a chance to kill you) and it doesn't seem like you're ALLOWED to think outside the box.

In other words, to me, AD&D and 3/3.5e are story telling games, where anything you can dream of is possible, if not terribly likely.  Whereas 4e feels like a game, with more solid rules and only the rules -- like a board game or a computer game -- if the idea is not a predetermined thing you can do as determined by the official game author, you can't do it.

Maybe the fault is how we play 4e, since we are still new to it, rather than in the game rules itself . . .

But this does seem like the same basic argument here -- too much "gamism" in 4e as being the grognard indictment of it.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> That last sentence there, pemerton, is probably why you and I disagree on this issue, and on the general applicability and veracity of dissociative mechanics.
> 
> Having played the last 8 years, primarily in a D&D 3.x group that almost exclusively plays in "Author" stance, I've come to quite believe that the "roleplaying" element of RPGs can only really originate from Actor stance.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "Author" stance actions usually involve some form of metagaming, and can include mechanical dissociation. And while they do provide tactically interesting moments, and can lead to interesting game "decisions," at its core, Author stance typically moves away from "RP" and into the "G" elements of RPGs, at least as I see it.
> 
> Now I totally get that you, and many other people will disagree with that. That you don't have to be in "Actor" stance to be "roleplaying," that engaging with an RPG on some other level other than as a character enveloped inside a game mileu is a valid way to play a game. And to a point, that's true; it's possible to enjoy a game of any kind, RPGs and otherwise, on many different levels, for many different aspects. But when I think "roleplaying," i.e., the thing that truly makes an RPG and RPG, I think "Actor stance." And I think anyone who tries to play RPGs without at least _attempting _to experience the "Actor stance" elements of an RPG is really trying to substitute one kind of enjoyment for another (again, I realize that may not be a popular stance, telling people how to play their RPGs. But I'm entitled to the opinion  ).



I guess you're entitled to your opinion. (I'm not enitrely sure what the emoticon is for.)

But if we were playing Against the Giants as per the example I gave and that you quoted in your reply, _I don't even know how you would tell that I was in Author rather than Actor stance_. Probably thousands of tables have played through G2. I imagine many of them must have had at least one player go through the decision process I described: the terrain of the Rift, the encounter set-ups and the rules of D&D make it quite a likely question to arise. Given that in playing D&D I have to think about risks and damage in terms of hit points, _how can you tell_ when I'm metagaming and when I'm not?

That was part of the point of my example: that D&D's hit point mechanics makes the difference between Actor and Author stance virtually imperceptible. Again, in my view this is why many of those who wanted clear-cut Actor stance play went for RM, RQ etc instead. While those who keep playing D&D because they like the "plot protection" element of hit points are thereyb opting for a mechanic that obscures the line between ingame and metagame (as is implicit in the very notion of "plot protection").

Going beyond the particular example, I don't accept your notion of "levels" to RPGing, such that "Actor stance" is the highest level. And I could provide an argument for that preference, if you like, along these lines:

The thing that makes an RPG truly unique is the capacity for a group of participants to shape a dramatically satisfying story, _at the same time_ as each of the non-GM participants (ie the players) has responsibility only for advocating for one particular protagonist within the fiction. (On the relevant notion of advocacy, see this blog, esp under the heading "The standard narrativistic model". The core idea is that, once gameplay is underway, a player makes choices _only on the basis of_ his or her PC's needs and desires, without having to have any broader conception of what would make for a good story.)

This requires adopting Author stance, because sometimes a PC won't him- or herself know what choices in a given situation will best lead to his or her interests being realised. Anyone who tries to play RPGs without at least _attempting _to experience this "Author stance" element of an RPG is really trying to substitute one kind of enjoyment for another - namely, a certain passive form of "let's pretend" rather than active participation in co-authoring a worthwhile story.​
All this shows is that most people who have clear aesthetic preferences, and have thought a bit about them, can articulate those preferences to some extent. But it doesn't show that there is, in any sense beyond an individual's preferences, some "hierarchy" of sophistication, or of genuiness, in roleplaying. Or that those who prefer to play in one fashion rather than another are doing it wrong.


----------



## pemerton

haakon1 said:


> To me, the heart of D&D 3.5e (and AD&D, the only other edition I played much of) is:
> 
> The party is running out of HP.  Some people are down.  I'm playing a Fighter or a Paladin, or perhaps a Cleric or Wizard who is out of a useful spells.  While I await my turn, I scan my character sheet, looking for long-ago acquired items and start wondering what I can possibly do to save the day.



I just wanted to ask - is this Actor stance or Author stance? That is, is your PC really mentally running through his/her inventory and concocting crazy schemes? Or is this you, the player, thinking about what is potentially viable and then getting ready to impute a decision to your PC?

For anyone (not just haakon1) who thinks that it _is_ Actor stance, does it make a difference what the INT and/or WIS of your PC is?


----------



## haakon1

pemerton said:


> I just wanted to ask - is this Actor stance or Author stance?




Honestly not sure what that means, as I skipped over many pages of this discussion.



pemerton said:


> That is, is your PC really mentally running through his/her inventory and concocting crazy schemes? Or is this you, the player, thinking about what is potentially viable and then getting ready to impute a decision to your PC?




Both.  I'm looking at the inventory, and trying to think of things I would do if I were my character and had his abilities and gear and were in his situation.  The personality of the PC is almost always an offshoot of my personality -- me or an aspect of me that's exaggerated and fitted into a D&D character.  Whether that's Actor or Method Actor or Author or something different, I leave to you to interpret, but it's the approach I've almost always take to role playing (and DM'ing NPC's and Monsters).

Perhaps it's more clear in DMing.  The NPC or monster is never doing something because it seems cool or it makes a challenge for the PC's -- they only do stuff that they think (often incorrectly, since they don't have perfect knowledge anymore than PC's do) will advance their goals.

When I'm playing or DMing NPC's/monsters,  I'm definitely NOT making calculations like the example of estimating how many feet a fall is and how much damage it would do v. how many HP I have left.  I am thinking about whether it seems like a better way to achieve my goals by jumping, or running away, or fighting.  And generally survival is a top priority for any character.

I'm also not metagaming about whether I think the DM will look kindly on my hairbrained scheme, or most of the time consciously wondering whether it will seem cool or not.



pemerton said:


> For anyone (not just haakon1) who thinks that it _is_ Actor stance, does it make a difference what the INT and/or WIS of your PC is?




Generally not, but I tend to play character with decent (12) to high intelligence, even in playing Fighters and so forth -- partially because I like skill points, but probably also so I don't need to play dumb.  And I figure whatever I can think of at a gaming table, a decently intelligent PC could think of with a wealth of real combat experience and training, and with his life actually in the balance.

When I last played an low Intelligence character (around 2004?), I did play him as less creative and more of a follower.  He was a half-orc cleric/fighter who looked up to the party paladin and tried to follow his lead (we began the campaign under AD&D rules when half-orcs weren't allowed to be paladins, which was kind of the point of the character -- defined by his limitations).

Ah, in DMing NPC's, yes, INT or WIS does matter -- dumb characters or creatures do suboptimal things (like open themselves to an AOO) more often that clever ones do.  But sometimes arrogance and stupidity are interchangeable in driving the monster/NPC to do suboptimal things.  Which is good, because when I make a boneheaded call for a monster and step right into some PC scheme, they never quite know if I was roleplaying the monster as stupid/arrogant, or if I made a mistake.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> For some reason, explaining this feel painstakingly obvious to me, so I'm still not conscious of where the disconnect is.
> 
> Of course, such mechanics contribute to the narrative. I *assume* there are very few (if any at all?) mechanics that never contribute directly or indirectly the narrative.
> <snip>
> 
> As above, I agree that Trick Strike contributes to the narrative, but who has been arguing otherwise?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Maybe it's your definition of "contributes" that you're not seeing eye-to-eye with me and/ others. I'm reading it literally. Do you mean contributing to the narrative in a certain way, or just in an absolute sense?



You're making me be more self-conscious on this particular issue than I had been! (Which is a good thing, I think.)

I think that, in this particular thread's discussion of whether or not mechanics contribute to, or lead players to contribute to the narrative, I have in mind the claim in the original essay - and reiterated upthread by Beginning of the End - that martial dailes in 4e are _not_ narrative control mechanics, any more than making a move in a boardgame is a narrative control mechanic.

I disagree with that contention, and my remarks about contribution to the narrative have been made by me in the context of that disagreement.

So when considering whether or not a player's decision to use Trick Strike (for example) contributes to the narrative, I've been asking myself - By using Trick Strike, does a player make a difference to the story that is salient to the participants in the game? I think that the answer is, Yes.

What would be a decision that is non-salient? Perhaps the player writes down on his or her character sheet that his/her PC's 10' pole has chocolate-colour swirls in its grain. Off the top of my head, I can't possibly imagine a situation in which this matters to the narrative of a D&D scenario (short of a GM including, as a favour to the player in question, a monster whose love in life is chocolate-swirl-grained wooden poles).

Is using Trick Strike like that? I don't think so. It has an immediate and salient effect on the story, namely, of the PC rogue out-fencing some NPC or monster. (Or, if used against an ooze, of the rogue deftly luring the flesh-seeking beast now here, now there. Or whatever might be the case.) Sometimes this will be expressly articulated (the ooze case might call for this, depending on the table's expectations about how corner cases will be narrated). Often I imagine it won't - what is happening in the combat will speak for itself. Still, an immediate contribution to the narrative is being made.

A longer term contribution is also being made, insofar as use of this power against this foe helps build up, over time, a certain persona for the rogue. S/he is the deft fencer, or skirmisher, or however it is that the table comes to see her. (In my own game, the fighter is the master of the polearm, who manipulates his foes here and there and cuts them all down with great sweeps of his halberd: footwork lure, passing attack, 3 encounter close bursts including Come and Get It (un-errata-ed at our table), and one or two daily close bursts as well. He, rather than the wizard, is the most obvious candidate for party battlefield controller.)

Would a mechanical system in which these martial PCs got to do their schtick at random times as permitted by the dice, rather than when and where they choose to, undermine the ability of the player to contribute to the narrative in these ways? I think that it would. It would tend to leave the persona of the PC less under the control of the player and more at the mercy of the dice. Others might have different views and/or experiences.



Yesway Jose said:


> What if encounter 1 was with a water elemental, encounter 2 was with a rock elemental, and encounter 3 was with a fully armored/scaled monster with a missing piece/scale on its backside exposing a fleshy weak spot.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Would it feel at all unsatisfactory to you if you used the crit daily for the 1st or 2nd encounter, and thus were unable to use it for encounter 3, and you end up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because nobody has a crit power left to get at that weakspot?
> 
> What if you didn't use the daily up to encounter 3, but you withheld using the power because the monster didn't seem powerful enough to use up a daily and you preferred to save it for the climactic battle encounter 4, and then found out that there was no encounter 4 that day? So you ended up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because the player wanted to save the power for an encounter that never happened?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What is more satisfying -- to apply a critical daily to a powerful water elemental, or to a weaker armored foe with a fictionally obvious weak spot?
> 
> Finally, do these kinds of issues never come up in actual 4E game play?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I can visualize that weak spot in the armor. I can imagine having some chance (not a certainty, but a hope) to get that blade there and skewer the monster's heart. But I can't. By that point, the story is already written in stone. There's no hope.



I like this post (but can't XP you yet). I have some sympathy for ThirdWizard's reply, that encounter design has a lot to answer for here, but I agree with you that that's not all that's going on.

Upthread BryonD contrasted 4e's mechanics with an action point mechanic. I agree with the contrast (although not with all of the work that BryonD wants to do with it!), and in my reply to Bryon pointed out that one consequence of 4e's design is that a PC really exemplifes their persona. I've tried to get across the same idea in my discussion above about contributing to the narrative.

What I think you do in your post is identify a way in which that feature of 4e can potentially come unstuck, because the player is suddenly deprived of the means of exemplification just when the fiction seems to call for them. And I think this issue can come up in 4e game play. But I think the game also has certain means of mitigating against it.

Some of thse means come into play _before_ and encounter. For example, the PC build rules encourage players to select magic items, feats and powers that overlap and synergise to a certain extent (eg if you have a feat that enhances forced movement, or psychic damage, then you will choose powers that deliver forced movement or deal psychic damage). This means that even if one power has been used, another power which is comparable in certain respects might still be available.

Some of these means come into play as part of the action resolution rules. Action points are earned, for example, which - especially at Paragon tier - open up certain options in downstream encounters even as the use of daily powers closes them off.

And page 42 is also relevant at the action resolution stage. It gives players a way to leverage the fictional details of a scene outside the scope of the powers that they have on their character sheets.

But sometimes, yes, the story becomes one about how the expert, on this occasion, failed to rise to the challenge that his/her player has - through the way s/he has built and played that PC - posed for him/her. I don't have a view on whether this is just a flaw in the game, or whether it is a necessary consequence of having limited use (ie daily-style) powers, or whether it is in fact a virtue, because it builds a certain possibility of a certain sort of failure into the game.

A pure action point mechanic, or a power point mechanic, would avoid the problem, but it would also lose the virtue that comes not just from spending points for bonuses, but actually building a PC who exemplifies a certain persona.



Yesway Jose said:


> I was asking ThirdWizard: why certain mechanics (like 1xday) *encourage* the player to announce *more* narrative (on top of the narrative already implied by stating the action itself).
> 
> Let me clarify what I mean by *more* (in this example, I believe the 1xday power was defined and/or flavored as "Trip opponent"):
> 1) "I trip the opponent" = (minimum?) contribution to narrative
> 2) "I trip the opponent with a leg sweep, bringing him crashing down to the tiles" = contributing *more* narrative



I think I'm focusing mostly on (1), but trying to think about what (1) actually involves, not just through what is stated by a player at the moment of ininitiating a PC action, but also the way the resolution of the action ramifies through the shared fiction. With a power like Trick Strike I think this ramifying stuff is more important - what the player probably _says_ is just at the moment of action declaration is "I use Trick Strike", which on its own is not all that rich, but there are then ongoing consequences at the table, which everyone playing the game is presumably engaging with, of the rogue toying with his/her foe, leading/driving it around the battlefield, etc. (In many 4e games this is probably represented visually via a battlemap of some sort, but not necessarily - certainly my group has resolved some simple combats without a battlemap, but not many that involve a lot of forced movement.)

At least for me, it is this narrative that arises not because someone at the table expressly states it, but because it emerges out of the shared attention on action resolution, that makes up a lot of the substance of the game. And I think 4e's power design delivers a lot of this sort of stuff, often with all sorts of interesting and unexpected consequences.

I think that your number (2) is sometimes important - especially for page 42 sort of stuff, and also if a table wants to know what's going on when the rogue Trick Strikes an ooze - but often can be glossed over. In the same way that 4e doesn't care particularly about facing most of the time (but does sometimes, such as when stealth is used out of combat) so it doesn't care about these sorts of details of bodily positioning and manoeuvring most of the time (but does sometimes, such as in some page 42 situations). [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] plays a 4e variant of his own devising that makes your number (2) stuff much more important: under LostSoul's rules, nubmer (2) narrations act as the triggers for martial encounter powers (which can be used at will as long as the triggering conditions are met).



Yesway Jose said:


> Like if the power is "Purple Teddybear Strike". The rogue throws purple stuffed teddybears at the opponent and pushes them back 1 square. Technically, that power DOES contribute to the narrative. Before, an opponent was standing in one spot. Rogue uses Purple Teddybear Strike. Opponent is now 10 feet away from his original position. The narrative has changed, and the use of Purple Teddybear Strike contributed to that change in narrative. Did I missing some key factor here?



What is missing, here, is that I don't have any clear sense of why throwing purple stuffed teddybears pushes an enemy back 1 square. (Do they get a surprise?) It also seems a bit silly. Trick Strike I think makes it clearer what is going on - I'm doing clever footwork while fighting with my rapier - and seems more genre appropriate.

At least for me, this links back to the idea of a PC's build playing an exemplifying role. What does having the power Purple Teddybear Strike tell me about the place of this PC in a (semi-)serious fantasy adventure fiction?

There are some races and paragon paths I don't like, for similar reasons (eg I'm not a big warforged fan). If I had a player who wanted to play a warforge, or who wanted to refluff Blinding Barrage as Purple Teddybear Strike (the enemies are so fixated on the bears that they lose all track of their surroundings!), then I guess we'd have to work something out at the table.

TL;DR on Purple Teddybear Strike - for me it's a practical issue, about taste and social contract, rather than a deep mechanical or conceptual issue.



Yesway Jose said:


> But "standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42" and the rest -- I don't know what that means!



By _the shadow of page 42_ I mean that - at least with my players - when they're declaring actions for their PCs using their ordinary combat powers, they're also thinking about page 42 (and by "standard" I meant "ordinary", not "standard" in the sense of contrasting with "move" or "minor" or "free"). That is, they're thinking about ways in which they can exploit the environment, or ways in which it might affect them

I think upthread I gave the example of the player who had his PC throw a flask of wrestling oil onto the ground to enhance his Footwork Lure slide, so that he could then get the benefit from his Polearm Momentum feat of knocking prone a foe whom he slides 2 or more squares. Another example involved the PCs fighting in a market square surrounded by shops and houses, while an enemy mage attacked them through an open, upper-storey window. The wizard PC teleport into the room behind the enemy mage (using Arcane Door) and then Thunderwaved her from behind, blasting her out the window (he failed the Arcana check that I'd set for having his spell have this additional effect, but not by much, and then when the attack itself was a crit the general mood at the table was that a failed check shouldn't be held against the player!).

This feature of the action resolution mechanics, at least in my experience, helps keep the players engaged with the fiction, and encourages them to anchor their PCs' actions in the fiction - not necessarily at the level of granularity of "I feint towards his head and then strike at his groin as he raises his shield", but that aspect of the fiction doesn't particularly interest me (so I make no great effort to include it) and presumably doesn't especially interest my players (as they make no great effort to include it either).

The rest of the stuff that didn't make sense was my reference to relationships (romances, enmities, etc) being central to a lot of encounter set ups, and thereby provide the context in which it becomes meaningful for the players to makes choices about using their daily powers. What I had in mind, there, was that a GM who wants the narrative to matter, and who wants power use to contribute to the narrative, should be desiging situations so that they engage with the relationships and values that matter to the players (as expressed via their PCs) - so if your PCs worship the Raven Queen, you present them with undead and Orcus worshippers, or if they are tieflings you give them devils and dragonborn, or if they're drow you give them eladrin and spiders, etc - I hope the idea is pretty clear. This will mean that when the players decide how to resolve an encounter - including what sorts of powers to use against what or whom - it's not just generic tactical exercise #XYZ against generic foes A, B and C. The decision is part of that whole process of building up the PC as an exemplar, and realising the PC's persona through play. It helps build up a shared memory, among the players, of a campaign that they are invested in.

For me as a GM, the biggest attraction of 4e is that it gives me tools - tools for mechanical balancing, and game elements that are rich in these sorts of thematic relationships, and very many and easy ways to combine the two sets of tools - that let me build just these sorts of encounters for my players. Which is why my experience with the game could not be further from the Alexandrian's description of improv drama linking tactical skirmishes whose main participants have funny names and occasionally chat among themselves in an epiphenomenal way. Which is, as I said above, what initially motivated my comments about contributing to the narrative.



Yesway Jose said:


> I must also insist that, in this framework, we are restricting our discussion to an average game with Average Roleplaying Joe, so that you do not wander off to corner cases or new "contextualizations" which does not represent common gameplay.



I don't know if I've obeyed this injunction or not (but I haven't deliberately ignored it). My impression of ENworld is that a majority (perhaps a sizeable majority) of posters have intuitions about mechanics that tend towards a purist-for-system orientation, but intended to support at least moderately gamist play (for some at the combat level, for some at the more operational/exploratory/Gygaxian level). Given that many of them also play D&D, they've somehow reconciled hit point mechanics with those preferences, in a whole host of ways.

Given this, any reflection on play and play experience that is focused on the PC as exemplar, and on the contribution that action resolution mechanics make to the unfolding narrative of the game, might be wandering away from common gameplay.

I had always assumed that the way I play RPGs was pretty typical of the mainstream, but the past few years' debate over 4e and related mechanical issues have made me doubt that assumption.


----------



## Mallus

Crazy Jerome said:


> What happens, in all of these topics that touch on immersion, is that all the people really invested in immersion always disagree with those that aren't, and vice versa.  Apparently, the requirements of immersion are strong enough that they move the basis for how other elements, and likewise for those who do not.



Heh... I recall reading a recent thread on RPG.net where, by several posters definition, most of the time I'm not "deeply immersed" in being _me_. 

Anyway, this is an interesting thread, and I'll have something more on-topic to say once I get to my office...


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> Why wouldn't you use the explanation given in the second quote, rather than the "warping reality" in the first quote, if you wanted to "associate" Trick Strike? (ie the gods love the rogue, and/or luck is a tangible force to some extent, but gods and luck strike at most once per day).




Why wouldn't I, personally? I wouldn't, because I don't try to associate 3.X barbarian rages, either. Or any Reflex saves while asleep.

Why wouldn't someone else? They could. That's sorta been my point.



> Huh? I must have misread your earlier posts, because I thought you were disagreeing with the suggestion that Evasion is "dissociated", and were saying that because it is an EX ability that a rogue can learn that it _is_ "associated".




I'm pretty sure you missed it, then. You can feel free to go back and reread my posts. I said it _can_ be associated, even if it breaks our views of realism, which you seemed to imply it was self-contradictory somehow.

Like I've said, it can be associated, though it'd be weak at best to me. Same thing with 3.X barbarian rages. Feel free to go reread something I've said if you think you've missed it.

I do, honestly, feel like sometimes you place other people's arguments or opinions onto me, and ask me to defend them (or say they're wrong, as if to show something to me). Maybe it doesn't happen often, if at all, but I very often feel like you're lumping me in with others in this thread (or others). I don't defend what others say, unless I specify what it is, and usually why. If something has specifically not been said by me on the topic, it was probably for a reason (though I may miss something, so you never know).

I'm not defending the article in its entirety. I'm not saying dissociated mechanics are bad. I'm not saying there haven't been dissociated mechanics in D&D in the past. I'm not saying that 4e dailies aren't narrative control. I'm not saying those things, and it feels like you keep questioning those things, and directing them at me. Whether or not that's the case, I feel like my points are sliding past you, and you look at someone else and say, "see, here's where I disagree" even if we're not talking about it.

Like I said, it just feels that way. It may not be as bad as I'm making it out to be, but it's making discussion difficult.



> My view of martial dailies is that they are a metagame mechanic of the sort described in these two posts. I have been making that assertion throughout this thread, and indeed in many threads on these boards over the course of the past three years or so.
> 
> Upthread, however, Beginning of the End (who is either an associate of, or actually is, the author of the Alexandrian essay) has _denied_ that martial dailes are narrative control mechanics - he has said that they are no different from moves in a board game. _This_ is partially what is at stake in the language of "dissociation", because the original essay states that narrative control mechanics are, in a certain sense, _not_ at odds with roleplaying:
> 
> The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a _different _way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).​
> So if the description of martial dailies as metagame, narrative control mechanics is accepted, then the key contention of the original essay - that their presence in 4e is an obstacle to roleplaying and one reason that the game is just a series of tactical skirmishes linked by improv drama - falls over.
> 
> I am not suggesting that either Jameson Courage or Yesway Jose accepts that key contention. But it is at the heart of the original essay, and is therefore (by implication) at the heart of any defence of the theory of "dissociated" mechanics.




That's just utterly absurd to me. I don't care what the writer's biases are. I'm saying dissociated mechanics obviously exist. I've stated -very clearly- that I'm not here to tear down 4e or build up 3e (which I don't play).

What I am here to say is that dissociated mechanics _definitely_ exist. And saying, "see, part of his argument is irrational!" isn't going to change that. And I think it's absurd that you seem to think that's the case.



> Following on from my previous paragraph, I'm one of the people to whom you refer. But that's not because I don't believe in the existence of metagame mechanics, or of a range of stances (heck, I'm the one who introduced the definitions of different stances into the thread).
> 
> But even though I believe that combustion occurs from time to time, I don't believe in phlogiston - because phlogiston is associated with a bad theory of combustion.
> 
> Likewise, even though I think that a reflection on metagame mechanics, stances etc is useful for understanding RPG play and RPG design, I don't believe in so-called dissociated mecahcnis - because "dissociation" is a term associated with what I regard as a poor theory of roleplaying and of the relationship between stance, game and metagame.
> 
> Furthermore, as [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] and [MENTION=64209]Aberzanzorax[/MENTION] have indicated upthread, the word "dissociated" has obviously been chosen because of its connotations of psychological and cognitive pathology. That is, it has pejorative judgements built right into it.
> 
> As I said upthread, and what I stand by, is that the original essay is not primarily a contribution to the analysis of RPGs in terms of the variety and consequences of metagame mechanics, but is rather an attack upon 4e (motivated, I guess although don't know, by the author's dislike of the particular metagame mechanics found in 4e).




This really doesn't matter to me. I really don't mind you being upset that someone took an obvious shot at your game. His article basically says, however, that mechanics that do not have reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game pull you out of role you're playing. This will not be true for everyone, obviously -general, blanket statements are _always_ bad - but it is true for many. Even a few posting in this thread.

That means his conclusion is correct, in my mind. It doesn't really matter to me how he got there. Saying, "no, it's a thinly-veiled attack on 4e, and the term is obviously made to be insulting" isn't going to make me change my mind. Obviously his blanket statements are wrong; your mileage has differed. However, you being upset doesn't make the conclusion wholly obsolete. You'll have to actually convince me why that's not the case.

Irrational people hurt discussions most of the time. That's true. The writer of the article obviously was biased. No doubt about it. He made some claims I really disagree with. Trust me on that. But, again, just because I do math wrong, it doesn't make me wrong when I give you the correct result (for some people, obviously, as it's subjective).

As always, play what you like


----------



## wrecan

One aspect that people keep discussing is the fact that daily martial powers could be examined scientifically in world, and I don't think that's true.

4e powers are intended to be used in combat, and only where the combat is "meaningful" as in, the PC will be earning XP.  If two adventurers are practice-sparring against one another, they aren't using dailies or encounters.  They're just roleplaying sparring.  So in that instance, the player may very well succeed in replicating a martial daily, because it has no consequence in the game.

In addition, in other instances outside combat, the player may accomplish what, to them in-game, appears to be another use of that daily power.  These would be replicated with Athletics and Acrobatics checks, possibly.  or even just narrated as part of roleplay, depending on the context.

The only time a daily power is truly daily, is when the player is fighting in meaningful combat.  Now, 4e is designed for 30 levels, each level having about 10 encounters (which will include skill challenges, puzzles, quests).  But, at most, a character will have at most 300 meaningful combats over his entire career, but more likely to be about 200-250.  These encounters are designed to be about 4-5/day, possibly less.  So that's only 60-75 adventuring days, but most likely only about 40 adventuring days with multiple encounters per day.  (Those days are spread can be spread out over months, years, or decades of travel, research, recuperation, and other downtime.)

I don't really think that's enough combats for a person -- not cognizant that his life is governed by game rules -- to determine that he in-game has daily powers.  

In short, the combat rules of the game don't have to accommodate the daily mundane activities of the heroes.  That's handled narratively, or through Skill checks.  It only has to handle the combats that the game anticipates, and that's not a lot of combat.

Now, let's go back to the scenario in which the rogue used a daily power in combat to great effect, and the fighter asks him how he did it.

Fighter: That was a great move.
Rogue: Thanks.  I wasn't sure I could pull it off.
Fighter: How did you do it?
Rogue: Well, I just grabbed him here, and then used by rapier to move him like this.
[Repeats maneuver on fighter]
Fighter: That's great.  That must have taken you awhile to learn.
Rogue: I could teach it to you if you like.  (Translation: If you multiclass into rogue, and take the right feats, you can swap it for one of your dailies)
Fighter: I don't think I could ever twist that way.  (Translation: I don't have the Dexterity required to multiclass into rogue.)

There's no reason for either character to ever discover that a daily power is a daily power.  In fact, there's no reason for a character to even think he has powers, just as the characters in this and prior editions have no reason to know they have feats.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> if a fighter jumps off a 200' cliff every morning just for fun, then yes, he can observe that he has been incredibly lucky with every jump, but I don't think he could explain the reasoning for why he has been incredibly lucky in this regard. So technically, by your definition, that's disassociated too.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This has been exactly my point for several posts upthread. And I've added - if a player has some way of reconciling these consequences of the hit point mechanic with Actor rather than Author stance, than why can't that player use the same method to reconcile martial dailies with Actor stance?
Click to expand...


But I can *not* reconcile hit points and falling damage with the fiction IF the pattern started becoming embarrasingly obvious to me, so I do *not* act the character to jump off cliffs every morning.

Please re-reference this post:


BryonD said:


> If I was reading a novel and a guy feinted once and then it didn't work anymore against his opponent, I would not think twice about it. It works perfectly, and if you only look at 4E at that level, it works perfectly.
> <SNIP>
> But the next day it happens once again. And the next day. And the next day. The pattern would become clear. And if you wrote a novel of your 4E characters adventures, these patterns would emerge for every character.It might take a whole lot of reading before the patterns really emerged. So you could get away with it for a long time. But, eventually, the patterns would be obvious.



Substitute feint (=Rogue Strike) with jumping off cliffs every morning, and you have my personal answer to your question above, which is: I can't and I don't.



pemerton said:


> I think a lot of classic AD&D play has this sort of element to it. I think it is obviously roleplaying. It's me playing my PC. Whether or not its immersion-enhancing, immersion-neutral or immersion-destroying I have no view on. (Immersion isn't a notion that I find helps me undertand my own play experience very much.)



I find that 'disassociated mechanics' is already contentious enough and prone to cyclical discussions, thus trying to relate that to any one's definition of 'roleplaying' (which you keep trying to do) is so fraught with danger of fragmenting into infinite sub-threads, that I prefer to abstain from it. Play/discuss as you like, of course, but I will politely decline to engage from that angle.



> Why wouldn't you use the explanation given in the second quote, rather than the "warping reality" in the first quote, if you wanted to "associate" Trick Strike? (ie the gods love the rogue, and/or luck is a tangible force to some extent, but gods and luck strike at most once per day).



I guess the rogue could always come up with some sort of explanation like "I had a dream from Lady Luck, it is my destiny to succeed at this but once per day, so I don't even try to do it more often."

I think it technically fails the definition because the in-game reasoning ("Praise the gods, it's a miracle!") cannot be explored in-game.

More importantly, I find it incredibly unsatisfying, more of "excuse", rather an "explanation" IMO.

What's the difference between an "excuse" vs an "explanation"? Are we likely to read novels where rogues believe that Lady Luck allows him to maneuver opponents but once per day, and Mister Fate has separately declared the rogue's destiny to use a different ability (or produce a different outcome) once per day, and so forth? Is this the fate/destiny/luck version of the Vancian system?

Or to put it another way, which explanation passes a D&D Credibility Test with flying colors, and which falls flat or barely passes with a groan and much looking away?

Or to put it another way, what kind of stories do you want to tell? Do you want to tell the story of the rogue who has observed the improbable of pattern of being able to feint and maneuver opponents but once per day, so he declares that Lady Luck has fated this to be so, and he advances to become a Rogue of Great Epicness, and lo, it comes to pass that he strides up to Gates of Heaven itself, and he asks "Oh, Lady Luck, why is it that you have limited my fortune such that I can maneuver my opponents but once per day?" and Lady Luck doth respond "Smile, you're on D&D Camera!" and there is much rejoice and Breaking of Fourth Walls -- is that the kind of story that you want to tell?



BryonD said:


> I think the game proceeds under an assumption that the PCs are not documenting this sort of information. (Just as it proceeds under an assumption that the PCs don't notice that nearly every exciting event that they hear of has them at the very heart of it.)
> It's something like "genre blindness".



Aaah, but *I* am documenting this sort of information. And so are the DMs and the other players. And so is the hypothetical author as per above.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=64825]wrecan[/MENTION], a great post that unfortunately I can't XP at this time.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

innerdude said:


> Now this doesn't mean that Author stance doesn't have the ability to provide enjoyment of other gameplay elements. It's great for narrative control over a given scene, as this entire thread as discussed. It's great for engaging the tactical battle elements of the rule system.
> 
> But in my mind, "roleplaying" comes back to the idea I posited earlier, that the core difference between an RPG and any other type of game is that it simulates some form of human rational capacity, and the capacity to respond to other rational entities. Again, it's my opinion only, obviously, but that's the difference, the thing that sets RPGs apart from Risk, Settlers, and the Ravenloft board game.
> 
> "Author" stance actions usually involve some form of metagaming, and can include mechanical dissociation. And while they do provide tactically interesting moments, and can lead to interesting game "decisions," at its core, Author stance typically moves away from "RP" and into the "G" elements of RPGs, at least as I see it.




You can, of course, have any opinion that you want. The problem comes in, that I read the above, and the first thing that springs to mind is that you are telling me that things that happen at my table do not happen. It's hinted in all of that, but is especially clear in that second paragraph. In short, there are different ways to "respond to other rational entities," and the focus on narrative play, while useful, is a bit misleading here.

The whole business about tactical battle elements is mainly an aside to all of this, and unnecessarily confusing because it is really an orthogonal discussion. (Do people play versions of D&D, any of them, as tactical skirmish games? Why yes, they do. Do some people enjoy that element and roleplaying too? Why yes, that too. Do some people enjoy only the roleplaying element? No doubt. Does the last group frequently get confused about the distinctions in the first and second group? Posters prove it every day!)

We can and have talked about stances. They are useful to distinguish core activities during discussion. However, I think it is a mistake to take the distinct parts of a discussion as somehow always distinct in reality. You can talk about water and dirt, but the mixture has a quality that is very distinct from each element in isolation, for many purposes (not all, of course). 

I come back to improvizational jazz as the best analogy for "this thing that happens at our table that we call roleplaying for which other people keep insisting does not happen, or if it does, isn't roleplaying." In improvizational jazz, from a musician analogous point of view, you are simulataneously engaged in author and actor stance. You are playing the piece. You are changing the piece, consciously. And you are doing this in a group, where direction passes on cues, to different people. 

My opinion, is that a person who doesn't get that style of what we do well enough to include it in their analysis has a fatal gap in their understanding that prevents them from defining roleplaying as it *actually practiced by people*. (There may be other gaps, including some that I share. I wouldn't know about those. We are talking "necessary" here, not "sufficient.")  Furthermore, it is difficult for those of us practicing this different style to convey it to people who insist, as a starting point to all such discussions, that it does not exist.  

Notice, from a strictly discussion analysis, that our position is much less ambitious.  We only claim that something we do, happens as we say it does.  This says nothing about what others do.  

You can say politely, "Play what you like." You can't politely say, "Play what you like, but when you play what you like, you aren't playing what you think you are." It is difficult to define hard boundaries for roleplaying and not run that risk.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> .
> 
> What's the difference between an "excuse" vs an "explanation"? Are we likely to read novels where rogues believe that Lady Luck allows him to maneuver opponents but once per day, and Mister Fate has separately declared the rogue's destiny to use a different ability (or produce a different outcome) once per day, and so forth? Is this the fate/destiny/luck version of the Vancian system?




The difference?  The difference is one of credible adaption to different media versus too slavish adaptation.  That is, if I am reading a novel with some before or after relation to a version of D&D, I'll take Raymond Feist, Steven Brust, or Leiber or Vance themselves.  Their worst stuff is noticably better than the best slavish adaptations.  And it is no accident that some of the better "system" novelist of D&D have felt the most free to diverge from the mechanics (e.g. Elaine Cunningham).  There is also an example of the problem in reverse, where Ed Greenwood actually let his novels sink another notch in order to preserve a game conceit!  (I forget the titles.  The books were very forgettable.  It was the ones where the characters were burning magic items all the time to power their spells.)

That is, given the choice between playing out something like a novel and then reading a faithful report of it, or playing out something like an RPG session and then reading an adapation to the a novel of it--I'd pick the latter every time--on both counts.  I think that not only will the novel be better to read, but the game will be more fun to play.  YMMV on the game side, and I can see why it would.  From a critical perspective, though, I think practical history thus far has born out my conclusions on the novel.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I find that 'disassociated mechanics' is already contentious enough and prone to cyclical discussions, thus trying to relate that to any one's definition of 'roleplaying' (which you keep trying to do) is so fraught with danger of fragmenting into infinite sub-threads, that I prefer to abstain from it.



Maybe there's some difference of perspective here. The notion of "dissociated mechanics", as far as I know, has no general currency in RPG design discussions other than the essay from the Alexandrian cited in the OP.

And the whole point of that essay is to characterise "dissociated mechanics" by reference to their adverse effect on roleplaying. _That_ is what the alleged "dissociation" consists in.

This has been reiterated, in this thread, by Beginning of the End.

It is precisely _this_ aspect of the notion of "dissociated mechanics" that makes them contentious. If an essay had been written about the use of metagame mechanics in 4e it wouldn't be contentious, but the author presumably wouldn't write such an essay, because without the (pseudo-)notion of "dissociation" there wouldn't be a starting point for a series of characterisations of 4e as a tactical skirmish game whose skirmishes are linked by improv drama, etc.



JamesonCourage said:


> That's just utterly absurd to me. I don't care what the writer's biases are. I'm saying dissociated mechanics obviously exist.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This really doesn't matter to me. I really don't mind you being upset that someone took an obvious shot at your game. His article basically says, however, that mechanics that do not have reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game pull you out of role you're playing. This will not be true for everyone, obviously -general, blanket statements are _always_ bad - but it is true for many. Even a few posting in this thread.



I think my response to this is to repeat Crazy Jerome and chaochou's points from way upthread: if so-called dissociated mechanics are defined in terms of the effect they have on some particular players' RPing experience, then _any_ mechanic is potentially dissociated, because who knows what effect it might have on some or other player.

Conversely, if we're talking about metagame mechanics, than the claim that they have some general, or even interesting, tendency to impede roleplaying is highly controversial, and denied at least by me.

The claim that 4e has some interesting category of mechanics that can't be learned or reasoned about ingame is itself obviously contentious, as Third Wizard's posts have shown by implication, and as wrecan's post shows explicitly. For example, a rogue's fencing skill, which Trick Strike exemplifies, obviously _is_ learnable in the gameworld - after all, the rogue learned it - s/he wasn't born with a rapier in hand!

I don't dispute that 4e has metagame mechanics - this is obvious, and I've been one of the main posters on these boards over the past three years discussing this aspect of 4e, and the influence of contemporary RPG design that it obviously reflects.

I don't dispute that some RPGers don't like games with metagame mechanics in general, or don't like 4e's metagame mechanics in particular. And that for some of them, it's because they find it hard to roleplay, or to enjoy roleplaying, in a game that has such mechanics.

But it doesn't follow from this that there is an interesting category of mechanics, which 4e possesses in some distinctive fashion, and which have any general or interesting tendency to impede roleplaying. And which are therefore "dissociated" in some interesting fashion.

It can be quite interesting to reflect on the way different games, with different mechanics, seem naturally to fit with the adoption of various stances. What does using the notion of "dissociation" - ie a contentious and disputed claim that some particular mechanics are at odds with roleplaying - add to the discussion? Or to our analytic vocabulary?


----------



## Yesway Jose

> The only time a daily power is truly daily, is when the player is fighting in meaningful combat. Now, 4e is designed for 30 levels, each level having about 10 encounters (which will include skill challenges, puzzles, quests). But, at most, a character will have at most 300 meaningful combats over his entire career, but more likely to be about 200-250. These encounters are designed to be about 4-5/day, possibly less. So that's only 60-75 adventuring days, but most likely only about 40 adventuring days with multiple encounters per day. (Those days are spread can be spread out over months, years, or decades of travel, research, recuperation, and other downtime.)



Thank you. As someone who has been struggling with this, your post is the most beneficial at explaining it at a level that means something to me. All other reasons haven't addressed this 'big picture' pattern. If the above is true, then it explains the difference between how the mechanics read vs how they play out in practice.

Then again, I wrote earlier, for myself, 1/day on its own was not a gamebreaker. I'm not yet satisfied about Hypnotism, marking oozes, zombies knocking hydras prone, come and get it, etc. and I am more interested in the sumtotal experiene of these and other 'diassociations'. 

But one step at a time (still catching up on all the other new posts)...


----------



## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> It can be quite interesting to reflect on the way different games, with different mechanics, seem naturally to fit with the adoption of various stances. What does using the notion of "dissociation" - ie a contentious and disputed claim that some particular mechanics are at odds with roleplaying - add to the discussion? Or to our analytic vocabulary?




Can't XP you right now.  Everything you said was right on the money, especially this last bit, considering that "pull you out of a role you are playing" already has a useful and long accepted term--immersion.  I think people conceded that 4E has many elements that were anti-immersion from about 90 days prior to launch.


----------



## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> We can and have talked about stances. They are useful to distinguish core activities during discussion. However, I think it is a mistake to take the distinct parts of a discussion as somehow always distinct in reality. You can talk about water and dirt, but the mixture has a quality that is very distinct from each element in isolation, for many purposes (not all, of course).



Agreed. This is, as I understand it, the same (or very closely related) point to that which I was trying to make with my example, upthread, of the decision as to whether or not to jump over the edge of the Rift in G2.

I think that there is a certain logic to the tendency of D&D mechanics - hit points, daily powers, etc - to blur the line between adopting Actor stance and Author or Director stance. It makes the players advocacy for the character crystal clear. And it helps with D&D's tradition of having a fairly strong simulationist chassis to support other agendas for play.



Crazy Jerome said:


> I read the above, and the first thing that springs to mind is that you are telling me that things that happen at my table do not happen.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> My opinion, is that a person who doesn't get that style of what we do well enough to include it in their analysis has a fatal gap in their understanding that prevents them from defining roleplaying as it *actually practiced by people*. (There may be other gaps, including some that I share. I wouldn't know about those. We are talking "necessary" here, not "sufficient.")  Furthermore, it is difficult for those of us practicing this different style to convey it to people who insist, as a starting point to all such discussions, that it does not exist.
> 
> Notice, from a strictly discussion analysis, that our position is much less ambitious.  We only claim that something we do, happens as we say it does.  This says nothing about what others do.
> 
> You can say politely, "Play what you like." You can't politely say, "Play what you like, but when you play what you like, you aren't playing what you think you are." It is difficult to define hard boundaries for roleplaying and not run that risk.



100% agreed.

This really captures what I find frustrating about the Alexandrian's essay, about the notion of "dissociated mechanics", and about many discussions of 4e on these boards. Instead of looking to see what the mechanics actually do, and how they are used by those who use them, the analysis begins with an assumption that 4e play _must_ be at a lower level, or that these mechanics _must_ be compensating for some other lack, or be a second-best solution to some "problem" that serious roleplayers would deal with in a superior fashion.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Then again, I wrote earlier, for myself, 1/day on its own was not a gamebreaker. I'm not yet satisfied about Hypnotism, marking oozes, zombies knocking hydras prone, come and get it, etc. and I am more interested in the sumtotal experiene of these and other 'diassociations'.




Just a note here on this.  Even if you suddenly adopted/embraced this style of play that some of us are discussing, it is likely that a few elements would always remain unsatisfying in this manner.  I suspect that there are very few, if any, people for whom there are no such elements.  

This relates back to what I talked about earlier, where as each element is integrated into the fiction in a way that the table can accept, decisions are made, and this cuts off some future avenues.  What typically happens is that you end up with a handful of things that simply won't fit, unless you go back and revisit the earlier decisions.  (And if you do that, then something else won't fit.)  

Not infrequently, though, the last few elements that don't fit are likely to be things you don't like, anyway.  I don't much care for tieflings, but for our game, it isn't merely dislike.  Other decisions we have made have tended to not leave a coherent space for something like tieflings.  And if we did make a space for them, it would be semi-parody.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> It is precisely _this_ aspect of the notion of "dissociated mechanics" that makes them contentious. If an essay had been written about the use of metagame mechanics in 4e it wouldn't be contentious, but the author presumably wouldn't write such an essay, because without the (pseudo-)notion of "dissociation" there wouldn't be a starting point for a series of characterisations of 4e as a tactical skirmish game whose skirmishes are linked by improv drama, etc.



So what definition would you apply to the question of "This is the story I want to tell, and do I think these mechanics help or hinder me telling the story I want to tell?"


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## pemerton

Another semi-random factoid: at least one of my players regards some NPC "until end of next turn" effects as metagame effects.

What had happened was that a cultists had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.

Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."

There we have an example of a player taking narrative control on the back of an NPC's mechanic that the player knew nothing of until encountering it in the course of actual play. And at least for me, as a GM, that is the player of the paladin playing his role. And driving the story forward. On the back of a so-called "dissociated" mechanic.

I'm sure that player, or one of the other players in my game, could find interesting things to make out of the war devil's Beseiged Foe power, too.


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> So what definition would you apply to the question of "This is the story I want to tell, and do I think these mechanics help or hinder me telling the story I want to tell?"



Personally, I don't think that there is any useful technical (or semi-technical) characterisation of such mechanics, because what they are and how they will work will vary from group to group and game to game.

I mean, when I GMed Rolemaster I made the mechanics work for me, even though there are very few metagame mechanics in that ruleset.

And now that I GM 4e I make its mechanics work for me, including the very many metagame mechanics it has.

But I don't think that the fact that I can make both sets of mechanics work for me doesn't mean that they have anything more fundamental in common, from the perspective of RPG design. The way I used them was pretty different, precisely because of their differences.

As to how the metagame mechanics that are found in 4e work for me, I've tried to describe that in a lengthy reply to a couple of your ealier posts about 15 or so posts up.


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."



If I acted the paladin character, I might wonder after the battle:
1) Whenever an evil caster turns me into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn me back to normal a minute later?
2) When an evil caster turns someone else into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn them back to normal a minute later?
3) If an evil caster affects me with another foul spell, will the Raven Queen save me too, or does she only help with frog-related spells?
4) If (gods forbid!) I ever fell out of the Queen's favor, will she still save me? Would I be a frog forever? Or would I revert to normal after a minute whether or not I have the Queen's favor?
5) If I seek a wizard for advice, will he laugh and sing: What's the Raven Queen got to do with, got to do with it...?

The player's narration was nice for that moment, but it's still 'disassociated' from the big picture.

I DO respect players contributing to the narrative and making it more interesting and imaginative world. I just don't know that ad hoc narratives make the entire story plausible and consistent enough that resolves concerns of 'disassociation' for everyone else, except to those who are already on board.


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## TwoSix

pemerton said:


> What had happened was that a cultists had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.
> 
> Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."




I would lay good money on the fact that several posters will have a visceral reaction against that anecdote.


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## ThirdWizard

Didn't read the thread over the weekend. I missed so much!



Aberzanzorax said:


> I'll also point out that dissociated is a pejorative tone on it's own. Perhaps if we embraced terms describing the major differences in POSITIVE terms, it might be more acceptable/reasonable/enjoyable for all of us.
> 
> 
> I'm going to put forth the terms of:
> 
> dissociated/narrativist/actor driven for 4e, as a set.
> and
> associated/simulationist/character driven for 3e, as a set.




I feel largely the same way. I've been using the term in the thread for clarity, but I would rather use the "usual" term narrativist. 

One of the thing that really strikes me in this thread is that people of all spectrums, from simulationist to narrativist to everything in between (where most people probably are) see what they are doing through a different lens, but see very similar outcomes.

Think about it. 

The simulationists see the game as defined through the simulation, a perfect cogwheel that can run on its own and that they can throw themselves into, where they can think about their character to the exclusion of all else while the world ticks away around them, giving them the freedom to live within it. _This_ is what makes a living breathing world. This is roleplaying.

The narrativists see the game as defined through the narrative, a cohesive environment with a depth created through play by all participants toward the end goal of a better game, a better world, and a better story. _This_ is what makes a living breathing world. This is roleplaying.

It isn't the same for everyone, there are all sorts of spectrums and individual ideas of what constitutes a good roleplaying game, but I find the above humorous.



Yesway Jose said:


> I remember once a time when it was called "metagame thinking" and it was generally frowned upon to influence what you knew as a player with what your character knows.




Metagaming is a fearsome beast.

The metagame is a huge landscape, populated by all sorts of inhabitants. One thing you can do with metagaming is read a module beforehand and use that information to influence how you interact with the situations before you. Another way is to use knowledge of your DM to help determine what to do next. Another way is to take consideration of another player's feelings at the table and let that influence how you react to their PC. Some of these creatures are gentle gameplay helpers, while others can wreck a game, a group, and sometimes friendships.

So, you can't say "that's metagaming, I thought it was supposed to be bad, why are we encouraging it?" It's not always bad. And, there are many ways to use it for good or ill, to make the game better or to use it for your own desires. Having your character step back in a negotiation because one of the quiet players at the table is starting to come out of their shell is a great use of metagaming. Trying to concoct some gunpowder in a medieval game "by accident" is a despicable use of metagaming. 

In the case of narrative mechanics, the metagame is built into the actual rules of play. In this way, they are a structured aspect of the game itself, just as much as a wizard's _fireball_ spell or a rogue's sneak attack. It takes an aspect of play that has always been there and using it to enhance the play experience in a controlled even manner.



Yesway Jose said:


> I read in an essay that in Author stance, the player narratively decides the outcome, and then retroactively motivates the character to do so (otherwise, it's Pawn stance). So I don't see how non-Actor stance is necessarily immune from the definition of 'disassociated' mechanics, unless it is Pawn stance? That retroactive motivation could be just in your head or you can announce to the group how you use Come and Get it, but some retroactive motivations must be better than others, so call that a "degree of disassociation" instead of "association" or no "disassociation"?




I wouldn't say that is correct. With narrativist rules, I don't imagine any kind of retroactive change and/or motivation, unless that is the purpose of the rule. The narrative rule either works in tandem with the character's action or it occurs completely autonomously.

Take a rule that allows a player to roll Search and if the roll is high enough, treasure is there. If it is too low, no treasure is present. The sequence of events is: 1) PC decides to look for treasure, 2) Player rolls Search skill, 3) Depending on roll, PC either finds or does not find treasure.

There's no retroactive motivation going on. There's no paradox shifting timetable. The player is simply using the rules of the game to determine success/failure, while at the same time a traditional responsibility that you would ascribe to the DM is reassigned to dice rolled by the player. When you look at it on a metagame level, it really isn't all that different. And, to the PC, nothing is different.

You used Come and Get It. Lets take the unerrated version. A bunch of enemies rush the fighter and he attacks them. Sure, its the _player_ saying the enemies rush the player, but there is no re-ascription of motivation going on. It's simply the player, again, taking on a role that the DM is usually in charage of: that of deciding the actions of the NPCs. As a narrative mechanic, the player is coming in and using the power "Come and Get It" to affect the flow of combat _directly_ through narrative control instead of _indirectly_ through PC action.

But, here's the thing. You don't have to step out of Actor stance for any of this. You use your power, you describe the action from your character's point of view, and all those secondary events, whether the treasure exists or what the actions of the enemies are, are secondary to your own PC's actions. Just like you can have a novel written in the first person point of view describing other actions than those of the main protagonist, you can have a PC in the Actor Stance describe the actions of non-player characters who are around their protagonist, the player character.


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## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Take a rule that allows a player to roll Search and if the roll is high enough, treasure is there. If it is too low, no treasure is present. The sequence of events is: 1) PC decides to look for treasure, 2) Player rolls Search skill, 3) Depending on roll, PC either finds or does not find treasure.



Does the die roll determine the existence of treasure to be found, or the success of the character at finding treasure that is pre-determined by the DM or module to be there?

I get confused about Author vs Director stance, but either way, the player CAN or COULD retroactively motivates the character with something like "Hmm, I wonder if there's something interesting here?" or "I happen to notice a glint of gold over there" or "I think I smell gold!". My point is that some explanations can be better than others, but this isn't the best example.

In this example, it's something that's usually assumed, in many games anyway, but it doesn't mean that there isn't implicit or explicit retroactive motivation.


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## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> Does the die roll determine the existence of treasure to be found, or the success of the character at finding treasure that is pre-determined by the DM or module to be there?
> 
> I get confused about Author vs Director stance, but either way, the player CAN or COULD retroactively motivates the character with something like "Hmm, I wonder if there's something interesting here?" or "I happen to notice a glint of gold over there" or "I think I smell gold!". My point is that some explanations can be better than others, but this isn't the best example.
> 
> In this example, it's something that's usually assumed, in many games anyway, but it doesn't mean that there isn't implicit or explicit retroactive motivation.




The gold is there because of the Search Roll.

Is any retroactive quality any different than 1) Player says PC is searching for gold, 2) DM rolls to see if gold is there, 3) PC finds gold? The only difference is in #2 the player is rolling to see if the gold is present. I don't see how that is retroactive in any way.

Retroactive abilities exist. A power that lets your reroll an attack roll is a mechanic that changes an already existent roll. To the PC, though, it isn't retroactive, because time itself isn't turning back, they only see the hit. To the player, however, it is retroactive in that they did see a miss that turned into a hit.

This doesn't qualify for that, because the sequence of events unfolds with each step actually leading to the next.


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## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Is any retroactive quality any different than 1) Player says PC is searching for gold, 2) DM rolls to see if gold is there, 3) PC finds gold? The only difference is in #2 the player is rolling to see if the gold is present. I don't see how that is retroactive in any way.



I think this is a semantic misunderstanding. I think "retroactively motivating the character" simply means that the player decided to go from A to B, and B is the definite incontrovertible outcome, so now let's assume or explain how the character simultaneously decided to go from A to B. It's retroactive because the player already learned or decided the outcome, now he has to go back and give the character a reason to do it, mostly for the sake of the narrative. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. Whereas in Actor stance, the player hasn't decided or learned the outcome -- he wants to discover what B is, or "I search for treasure... is there any?" (roll die) If he fails the search check, he doesn't even know if the treasure is there and he didn't find it, or if there really isn't any treasure. In non-Actor stance, the player knows if treasure exists or not. In Actor stance, you'll almost never objectively know.


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## ThirdWizard

Yesway Jose said:


> I think this is a semantic misunderstanding. I think "retroactively motivating the character" simply means that the player decided to go from A to B, and B is the definite incontrovertible outcome, so now let's assume or explain how the character simultaneously decided to go from A to B. It's retroactive because the player already learned or decided the outcome, now he has to go back and give the character a reason to do it, mostly for the sake of the narrative. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. Whereas in Actor stance, the player hasn't decided or learned the outcome -- he wants to discover what B is, or "I search for treasure... is there any?" (roll die) If he fails the search check, he doesn't even know if the treasure is there and he didn't find it, or if there really isn't any treasure. In non-Actor stance, the player knows if treasure exists or not. In Actor stance, you'll almost never objectively know.




I get what you're saying, and why that wasn't the best example. You're going for more metagame knowledge between PC and player, I think? So there is a difference, that in traditional D&D the PC and player knowledge remains tightly coupled, whereas with the Search rule above, the player starts having metagame knowledge that he'll have to start compartmentalizing in his head.

That's definitely a valid concern. I should stop making up rule examples that don't exist probably for that reason. Rules don't exist in a vacuum and in D&D a Search rule like that wouldn't really work. It would work better in a game that less emphasized physical item acquisition, maybe... or maybe not.

How about this, from FATE? Say you're PC is out hunting a monster that's been preying on people. You don't know what it is yet, so you're investigating. All of a sudden, you're ambushed by a werewolf!

Did you have silver bullets? You never claimed to have brought them with you, but it is possible you have them with you. In this case, you can make a Guns check to see if you remembered to bring them. You dig around in your side pouch, and as luck would have it, they're there (successful roll)! You start frantically loading them into your gun.

In fact, I've seen this kind of thing happen in D&D all the time. Does your character remember a key quality about the NPC? Roll an Int check. Did you think to pack your things in a watertight bag before exploring the cave? Roll Wisdom.

Is that closer or am I still off?


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> If I acted the paladin character, I might wonder after the battle:




Let me guess.  You're an atheist.  You are asking questions from the top down like a scientist and expecting empiricism.  Let me resurrect one of my Paladin PCs (RIP), convert him to the worship of the Raven Queen and ask him the same questions.



> 1) Whenever an evil caster turns me into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn me back to normal a minute later?




She will do as She wills.  It is not my place to question Her acts.  Besides, it was a few seconds before She released me from the curse.



> 2) When an evil caster turns someone else into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn them back to normal a minute later?




Of course not.  They have their own Gods to protect them.  And some anti-magic charms.  And wizards have limited strength, seeking to match their own powers against those of the Universe.  Few wizards would last a minute.



> 3) If an evil caster affects me with another foul spell, will the Raven Queen save me too, or does she only help with frog-related spells?




Thou shalt not put thy Queen to the test.  Her aid is a blessing and not to be trifled with.  I believe she will save me, but if she does not that is a test of my faith, not of her.



> 4) If (gods forbid!) I ever fell out of the Queen's favor, will she still save me? Would I be a frog forever? Or would I revert to normal after a minute whether or not I have the Queen's favor?




There but for the grace of the Raven Queen go I.



> 5) If I seek a wizard for advice, will he laugh and sing: What's the Raven Queen got to do with, got to do with it...?




He's only a wizard.  And if he does that he needs to be taught some _respect_.  Besides, why should I go to a wizard for advice?



> The player's narration was nice for that moment, but it's still 'disassociated' from the big picture.




It was about as 'disassociated' from the big picture as Quantum Physics is from normal human thoughts.  There was not one single thing in the Paladin's thoughts that was incompatable with roleplaying a paladin of The Raven Queen.  If anything I'd say that the narration was perfect for a Paladin _whether or not the Paladin's explanation was true_ - and few Paladins other than those of Erathis or Vecna would care to investigate any of your questions.  A Paladin is seldom an empirical modernist in terms of philosophical outlook.  And I don't see the immersive problems if the worldview hangs together even if it's wrong.


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## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> Let me guess. You're an atheist. You are asking questions from the top down like a scientist and expecting empiricism. Let me resurrect one of my Paladin PCs (RIP), convert him to the worship of the Raven Queen and ask him the same questions.
> <SNIP>
> It was about as 'disassociated' from the big picture as Quantum Physics is from normal human thoughts. There was not one single thing in the Paladin's thoughts that was incompatable with roleplaying a paladin of The Raven Queen. If anything I'd say that the narration was perfect for a Paladin _whether or not the Paladin's explanation was true_ - and few Paladins other than those of Erathis or Vecna would care to investigate any of your questions. A Paladin is seldom an empirical modernist in terms of philosophical outlook. And I don't see the immersive problems if the worldview hangs together even if it's wrong.



Nope, I am NOT an atheist, or being empirical. I don't care if the Paladin decided that the Flying Spaghetti Monster came to save him. I don't care if the Paladin is correct or not.

If the Paladin did assume that the Raven Queen did save him for that moment, but he never explored this philosophy further, and the idea never came up again, then it's not something that's consequential to the fiction -- it's only a brief "aha!" moment.

It's like a fart, it comes, has its moment, goes, and means nothing afterwards.

It's the difference between a real character with a personality and philosophy vs a caricature that makes a clever comment to serve one paragraph of a narrative.


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## Yesway Jose

ThirdWizard said:


> Did you have silver bullets? You never claimed to have brought them with you, but it is possible you have them with you. In this case, you can make a Guns check to see if you remembered to bring them. You dig around in your side pouch, and as luck would have it, they're there (successful roll)! You start frantically loading them into your gun.
> 
> Is that closer or am I still off?



That's fine with me. That's not disassociated to me. It's perfectly plausible to me that they had the bullets and didn't remember until they checked. See, I think non-Actor stance can be in tune with however one defines 'association' 

However, if the character is completely naked with no pockets, and the rules say that he has bullets, so fictionally, where is he hiding those bullets


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> It's the difference between a real character with a personality and philosophy vs a caricature that makes a clever comment to serve one paragraph of a narrative.




He was a real character with a personality.  And a philosophy.  He just wasn't an intellectual, or interested in such questions.  What was was.  And he was the servant of his God.  Why should he bother about metaphysics?  There were more pressing concerns like dragons or like starving orphans.

And for the record a lot of his responses just there are only slight translations of real world approaches to theology.  And translations, not caricatures.  "Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test" is a famous phrase.  And then there are miracles.  And things people claim are miracles - which is _precisely_ what this was.

And it's not that the Paladin never explored it further.  He was simply secure in his faith that that was what happened.  Why would he need to search for further explanations?  It could come up again - and due to observer bias he would once more be convinced.


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## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> And it's not that the Paladin never explored it further. He was simply secure in his faith that that was what happened. Why would he need to search for further explanations? It could come up again - and due to observer bias he would once more be convinced.



I fear you might be missing the point. I don't care about the objective legitimacy of his philosophy or if he intellectually investigates it.

I care if his philosophy informs his behavior for the entire narrative such that it associates the mechanics to the fiction in a meaningful consistent way, and not in a superficial momentary and ultimately meaningless instance.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> I care if his philosophy informs his behavior for the entire narrative such that it associates the mechanics to the fiction in a meaningful consistent way, and not in a superficial momentary and ultimately meaningless instance.



It doesn't need to, because the scope of the game is limited in duration.  There are 300 encounters in a D&D campaign.  Most quirks of mechanics are not going to repeat itself to the player more than a handful of times.

Let's look at your polymorph example.  A wizard turns a paladin into a frog and six seconds later, he turns back.  You are treating these mechanics as if the paladin could set up an experiment where he and the wizard agree that the wizard will polymorph him and other "control" subjects repeatedly to determine the parameters of the mechanics.

But that's not how the game is set up to operate.  The mechanics you are examining are combat mechanics and they apply only when there's bona fide combat.  Everything else is narrative.  The paladin is not going to arrange for the paladin to cast this on him repeatedly, because D&D isn't a game for investigating the ins and outs of transmutation magic.  It's a game of heroic fantasy.

Even if he did, out of combat, the wizard's ability to polymorph operates however the DM thinks it appropriate to operate in his campaign world.  Maybe he'll adopt the paladin's justification.  Maybe he won't.  Maybe the wizard acknowledges that his spell only works for less than a minute.  Maybe the wizard has a personal polymorph ritual, which is a stronger version of his polymorph power when he has the time and components needed to enhance that power.  Who cares?  

If a person's disbelief is affected by some requirement that the game mechanics apply as physical laws both in and out of combat, that is a different and much larger problem than disassociated mechanics.


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> The paladin is not going to arrange for the paladin to cast this on him repeatedly, because D&D isn't a game for investigating the ins and outs of transmutation magic. It's a game of heroic fantasy.



Your example of the paladin arranging to cast this on him repeatedly is what I said is not the point (ie., intellectually investigating). Is that called a straw man argument, I don't know the exact definitions.

If the Paladin did arrange for that, he could just say "Oops, I was wrong, I guess it wasn't the Raven Queen after all." The theory could all be in his head anyway.

And if the Paladin was an intellectual Paladin, then who are you as a DM or the player to say that the character cannot explore this question? (I'm sorry, this is a herotic fantasy game, we're not going to be repeatedly turned to frogs in this game, that's wrongbadfun)


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## MrGrenadine

Hussar said:


> Let's take everyone's favourite whipping boy, Come and Get It.  Now, from the individual level, there's no way my fighter can "choose" to have a bunch of baddies mob me, dogpile style, and then me burst through them with flashing blades.  Completely disassociated at that level.
> 
> But, move up a level.  The warrior steps up and a bunch of mooks dog pile him.  He slashes left and right and bodies drop and he bursts through the scrum.  This is a scene that has been repeated in genre fiction for years.  Pretty much every sword and sorcery style book and a number of others as well, have a scene like this.  Sometimes several scenes like this.
> 
> But, it rarely, if ever, happens twice in a given fight.  The mooks swarm Conan, ignoring the scrawny bugger in the back and get beaten back.  In the next scene, yet more mooks swarm Conan and get beaten back, still ignoring that scrawny little schmuch hanging behind Conan.  So on and so forth.  ((Note, it's late and I'm dog tired, so, no, I have no idea if these scenes ACTUALLY occur in a Conan story - work with me here))
> 
> So, from the level of the overal narrative, suddenly Come and Get It makes perfect sense.  It's not disassociated at all - in fact, its very much in keeping with genre expectations.
> 
> Now, all that being said, I totally understand that some people don't want to look at things from that perspective.  They don't want their game to take on that level of narrative.  Totally understandable.  But, that doesn't make the mechanics bad, it's simply a case of matching different tastes.




Apologies for being a little late with this response, but just wanted to say that I totally agree with your last sentence.  Here's my take on Come and Get It, however:


Instead of a power I can use once a fight that _forces_ mooks to surround my fighter so he can respond with a cool attack, I would like a power I can use anytime mooks _choose_ to surround my fighter, or he can position himself inside a group.

In both cases, the actual power will probably only go off once a fight, but on the rare occasion that a wave of mooks tries to take my guy down en masse, and he uses the power, and then a few rounds later another group of mooks appears on the scene and try to pile on my fighter, I want to be able to use that power again.  Its situational.  I always know that power--its in my bag of tricks, and I pull it out when the situation warrants it.

And if no mooks surround my fighter, or he doesn't get the opportunity to step into a group, then that power will not be used, but I'm cool with that.  And I doubt I'd be able to use it twice a fight, because I count on the DM playing the NPCs at the top of their intelligence.


I guess in the end the difference for me is that I prefer that certain elements of the narrative--what the NPCs choose to do, for instance--stay out of my character's control so I can react in character, naturally.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Your example of the paladin arranging to cast this on him repeatedly is what I said is not the point



Then I don't understand your point in any way.  What does it mean to "associate the mechanics to the fiction in a meaningful consistent way,  and not in a superficial momentary and ultimately meaningless instance"?

I thought I had addressed those quoted words in my post, but you labeled it a "straw man".  So clearly those words mean something else, but I can't figure out what you intend them to mean.

Let me try again.

For purposes of D&D, a "meaningful consistent" association of mechanics and fiction need not be applicable in all situations; it only has to apply in the limited number of situations in which it arises in game, and those are should number less than 5, at most.  The game assumes no more than 300 encounters throughout a campaign.  It further assumes that some of those encounters will not be combat (and the mechanics we have been discussing apply to combat only).  Moreover, each instance of a mechanic one might have to "associate" to the fiction are going to apply in a small fraction of combat encounters.

Thus, any association of fiction to mechanics needs only to be meaningfully consistent for a handful of events at most.  So the paladin who justifies his save against a polymorph by the intervention of the Raven Queen is unlikely to come across a scenario in which that justification is shown to be faulty, for many reasons.  First, it is very likely that the wizard who cast the polymorph is defeated and won't be re-encountered.  Second, it is very likely that the DM is not going to have another encounter in which the paladin is polymorphed by someone using the same technique as the wizard.  

Because any given scenario is exceedingly unlikely to repeat itself, the disassociation of fiction and reality is almost entirely hypothetical.  It shouldn't actually come up in the game.


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Then I don't understand your point in any way. What does it mean to "associate the mechanics to the fiction in a meaningful consistent way, and not in a superficial momentary and ultimately meaningless instance"?



I'm in the process of clarifying that, but need more time to hack out an articulate response...



wrecan said:


> Because any given scenario is exceedingly unlikely to repeat itself, the disassociation of fiction and reality is almost entirely hypothetical. It shouldn't actually come up in the game.



I was with you in the beginning.
"There is a story of a rogue who uses a tricky combat strategy multiple times per day in practice sparring and meaningless battles. This is not that story..."

I get that (or that it's true for a 4E foreground story of a meaningful combat).

Now we have a Paladin who is affected by a spell and the player narrates it in a certain way, and you're telling me:

"And there was also a story of an intellectual Paladin who wanted to learn if his deity would protect him from transmutations. This is not that story..."

It feels as if any question along the lines of "but how do we explore in-game the reasoning of...", is now met with:

"There is a story of a ____________. This is not that story..."

Am I being contravened for poking around too much? What story am I allowed to have left?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> It feels as if any question along the lines of "but how do we explore in-game the reasoning of...", is now met with:
> 
> "There is a story of a ____________. This is not that story..."



We can explore it, but it is explored *narratively*.  You seem to think that "explore the in-game reasoning" means ferreting out the objectivity of the combat mechanics as if they were physical laws that could be discovered.

The mechanics operate to approximate combat, not to exactly replicate it.  Just as characters can't investigate why they can walk diagonally faster than they walk horizontally, and they can't actually determine they can fall from a 50-foot height without any fear of death, they can't figure out that everybody has a 55% chance of being released from a polymorph spell in precise six-second intervals.

Because those mechanics you're "exploring" only apply in the no more than 300 combat situations any character will experience over his lifetimes.  Because they are approximations created to allow us to play a game, not to explain a world.

In game, your paladin can absolutely "explore" why the polymorph spell ends so abruptly.  And the answer to that question (and whether the paladin's exploration will even be fruitful) will be determined by the story written by the DM.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> If a person's disbelief is affected by some requirement that the game mechanics apply as physical laws both in and out of combat, that is a different and much larger problem than disassociated mechanics.



I missed this before, but this is a good point. This almost seems to fault the player with having absurd expectations of expecting that in-game magical and physical laws are different in meaningful combat than outside. Which I think is an incredulous ironic position to take, especially in a discussion about disassociation between rules and fiction.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> This almost seems to fault the player with having absurd expectations of expecting that in-game magical and physical laws are different in meaningful combat than outside.



I think that is an absurd expectation in a role-playing game.  Because I think it absurd that anybody who has played combat in a roleplaying game thinks that combat is in any way a simulation of what's happening in the game world.

Nobody really thinks that combatants patiently wait their turns to take actions until everyone else has acted.  Nobody really thinks that if two combatants stand back to back and walk at the same rate of speed, but 45 degrees from one another, that one will walk 60' and the other about 85' (55' in a 1-2-1 system).  Nobody really thinks their character knows that he can fall form a fifty-foot drop without any fear of death.

Nobody plays a fantasy RPG and thinks that what's going on during combat at the table is precisely illustrating what is happening in the game world.  I do think it's an absurd notion.  I would have thought so under any game system I've ever played (which includes every edition of D&D).


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> The mechanics operate to approximate combat, not to exactly replicate it.



So if the Paladin was deemed to have been a frog for 1 round, and then after the battle is over, the character are unable to explore that because it didn't happen the way, we the players, experienced it. Maybe he was a frog for a minute. Maybe was a frog for 3 minutes. Maybe he is still a frog and always was. The mechanics used to approximate combat are so abstracted or surreal that they cannot be explored because they aren't part of the fiction. And when the Paladin thought the Raven Queen de-frogged him, that was all part of that weird dream that may or may not be true.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> So if the Paladin was deemed to have been a frog for 1 round, and then after the battle is over, the character are unable to explore that because it didn't happen the way, we the players, experienced it.



The players didn't experience it.  The players weren't there.  They merely narrated it base don the roll of dice.



> Maybe he was a frog for a minute. Maybe was a frog for 3 minutes. Maybe he is still a frog and always was.



The explanation still has to fit the results of the mechanics, Yesway, and I think you understand that.  When you want to discuss this without the sarcasm and smarm, let me know.


----------



## Aberzanzorax

wrecan said:


> I think that is an absurd expectation in a role-playing game. Because I think it absurd that anybody who has played combat in a roleplaying game thinks that combat is in any way a simulation of what's happening in the game world.
> 
> Nobody really thinks that combatants patiently wait their turns to take actions until everyone else has acted. Nobody really thinks that if two combatants stand back to back and walk at the same rate of speed, but 45 degrees from one another, that one will walk 60' and the other about 85' (55' in a 1-2-1 system). Nobody really thinks their character knows that he can fall form a fifty-foot drop without any fear of death.
> 
> Nobody plays a fantasy RPG and thinks that what's going on during combat at the table is precisely illustrating what is happening in the game world. I do think it's an absurd notion. I would have thought so under any game system I've ever played (which includes every edition of D&D).




No, I don't think people think it's _precisely_ illustrating what is happening. However, I DO think that it is illustrating what is happening.

Also, depending on the character, I might assume, in character, that I can fall/jump down without risk of dying (e.g. a wushu style monk). It's about degree, sure, and works bettern in some ways than others, but generally, I'm using the rules to try and picture what my guy is doing. For me, the rules do illustrate what is actually happening in combat.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

wrecan said:


> Nobody plays a fantasy RPG and thinks that what's going on during combat at the table is precisely illustrating what is happening in the game world. I do think it's an absurd notion. I would have thought so under any game system I've ever played (which includes every edition of D&D).




I think the more a system approximates the combat in ways that fit a persons ideas, the more they begin to gloss over and suspend disbelief for the ways it does not.  Especially, this is true about things that might have annoyed at first blush, but rather got forgotten in the heat of dealing with the rest.  This can lead to some rather interesting ideas about what is and is not acceptable.

Personally, any system that doesn't involve weapons and shields breaking, strained muscles, jammed fingers, bruises that really hurt, etc. isn't going to remind me of much of a simulation of anything remotely resembing medieval combat, magic included or not.  Thus, having suspended my disbelief for ease of play, genre fidelity, and any number of other reasons, I find it easier to extend the suspension to other elements.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Nobody really thinks that combatants patiently wait their turns to take actions until everyone else has acted. Nobody really thinks that if two combatants stand back to back and walk at the same rate of speed, but 45 degrees from one another, that one will walk 60' and the other about 85' (55' in a 1-2-1 system). Nobody really thinks their character knows that he can fall form a fifty-foot drop without any fear of death.



If you've read my posts, you'll know that I understand that some mechanics are an abstraction.

Correct me, if I'm wrong, but you seem to be taking the position that combat is abstracted to a level in which magical and physical laws as we perceive them exist in a separate bubble, and the difference between a polymorph spell in and out of combat can cannot be compared or explored in-game by the characters.

Yet the reactions and narratives that the characters are having as dictated by the player are in fact true, even though they are reactions to an alternate abstracted virtual fiction.

It doesn't follow. If combat as we perceive isn't real, then the character saying "The Raven Queen de-frogged me" cannot be real, or not exactly so, and may or may not contribute to the narrative as pemerton's players hoped it would.


----------



## wrecan

Aberzanzorax said:


> No, I don't think people think it's _precisely_ illustrating what is happening. However, I DO think that it is illustrating what is happening.



Which is exactly why I used the word "precisely".  Everyone accepts that the combat mechanics are not precise recreations of fantasy combat.  The only difference is the degree of abstraction we are willing to accept.  And I don't think there's an objectively optimal amount of abstraction any given system shoudl have.



Yesway Jose said:


> you seem to be taking the position that combat is abstracted to a level in which magical and physical laws as we perceive them exist in a separate bubble



You keep using the word "we perceive".  Who is this "we"?  The characters don't perceive anything.  The process of associatin the mechanics to the fiction determines what they perceive.  So they perceive nothing untoward.

And the players don't "perceive" anything except the results of the die rolls.  The players accept, necessarily, that combat is going to be abstracted in ways noncombat is not.  (Noncombat may be abstracted in other ways, of course.)



> If combat as we perceive isn't real



We don't perceive combat.  All that happened is the DM rolled a die and described what happened.  The player accepted that description, rolled a save and decided to associate the effect of that save to a specific cause.  And the DM in this case accepted that association.  (He could have negated that association and substituted his own -- "No, the spell only lasts a few seconds at any rate; the Raven Queen had nothing to do with it" -- but he chose not to.)

The only perceptions are what the players envision in their minds' eyes occurring in the fictional game world.  The perception is the result of associating the mechanics to a narrative; it is not the cause.



> the character saying "The Raven Queen de-frogged me" cannot be real, or not exactly so, and may or may not contribute to the narrative as pemerton's players hoped it would.



The game world's reality is whatever the DM and players accept it to be.  If the DM says the person is turned into a frog, that's the reality.  If the player rolls a save, they then determine why and that becomes the reality.  The rules can offer explanations (and they almost always do) to reduce the time the DM and players spend explaining mechanics.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> The only perceptions are what the players envision in their minds' eyes occurring in the fictional game world. The perception is the result of associating the mechanics to a narrative; it is not the cause.



What if my character knows Hypnotism, the spell I love to hate. DM and I have agreed that outside of meaningful combat, the spell's applications are allowed to fully live up to its name. So I am using Hypnotism to influence the bouncer to let me into the club as a VIP, to make the shopkeeper believe that the gold crown is merely junk which he can sell to me for 1 copper, etc. My PC also has a great number of unmeaningful encounters, that is combats where I influence all the opponents to commit suicide (ie., using the spell in a non-official way and not receiving any XP).

When I have meaningful combat, it is abstracted such that the Hypnotism spell is restricted to 2 mechanical results: move or attack another.

Yet in my head, I know that the combat is abstracted such that in-game characters cannot explore the difference between magic in-combat vs out of combat. So I'm imagining that my wizard does influence the monsters to do all sort of things, but these are not made explicit by the mechanics.

When the combat abstraction ends, I laugh and talk about how wonderful it was to make the monsters dance like chickens and kill themselves.

The other players look at me and think I'm out of my mind.

With the level of abstraction you're talking about and the kind of schism between association of mechanics to narrative in and out of meaningful combat, I'm surprised DMs and players are able to have a consensual narrative.

It's like a rule that an encounter is won by a single die roll, higher die wins -- OK, now players narrate how you won.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> What if my character knows Hypnotism, the spell I love to hate. DM and I have agreed that outside of meaningful combat, the spell's applications are allowed to fully live up to its name. So I am using Hypnotism to influence the bouncer to let me into the club as a VIP, to make the shopkeeper believe that the gold crown is merely junk which he can sell to me for 1 copper, etc. My PC also has a great number of unmeaningful encounters, that is combats where I influence all the opponents to commit suicide (ie., using the spell in a non-official way and not receiving any XP).
> 
> When I have meaningful combat, it is abstracted such that the Hypnotism spell is restricted to 2 mechanical results: move or attack another.
> 
> Yet in my head, I know that the combat is abstracted such that in-game characters cannot explore the difference between magic in-combat vs out of combat. So I'm imagining that my wizard does influence the monsters to do all sort of things, but these are not made explicit by the mechanics.
> 
> When the combat abstraction ends, I laugh and talk about how wonderful it was to make the monsters dance like chickens and kill themselves.
> 
> The other players look at me and think I'm out of my mind.



Right, because you the player are trying to force the other players to accept your description.  Go back and read the paragraph I wrote about associating mechanics.  Better yet, let me reprint it for you, with my emphasis added:
We don't perceive combat.  All that happened is the DM rolled a die and  described what happened. * The player accepted that description*, rolled a  save and decided to associate the effect of that save to a specific  cause.  And *the DM in this case accepted that association*.  (He could  have negated that association and substituted his own -- "No, the spell  only lasts a few seconds at any rate; the Raven Queen had nothing to do  with it" -- but he chose not to.)​In your quoted example above, you rolled dice and then described how you envisioned it happened.  And by your description of the other players' faces, they didn't accept that description.  This is a shared gameworld.  In the end, the DM will have to decide how to describe what happened, particularly since he decided to allow you to have some pretty potent mind control powers outside of combat.



> With the level of abstraction you're talking about and the kind of schism between association of mechanics to narrative in and out of meaningful combat, I'm surprised DMs and players are able to have a consensual narrative.



You don't really think that anybody who isn't a complete jerk would behave in the way you're quoting.  Once again, you're proposing an argument ad absurdum.  The game presumes everybody is at the game to have fun with friends.  And in those competitions where people are not gaming with friends, it is expected the DM will run tables with a bit more firmness.  (In other words, the DM will dictate what the dice mean, rather than letting the gaming group as a whole create a shared experience.)

When people are reasonable, this is not a problem.  When people are unreasonable, they generally don't game together, or the event is such that the DM is given absolutely authority to dictate the narrative.

But now you've completely changed what we were discussing.  Before we were discussing whether people can accept the association between the mechanics and the fiction.  On that sentence it should be pretty obvious that everybody has a different tolerance for association, not only in quantity, but in quality.  

You're now appearing to make an argument that a system that requires us to associate the mechanics to the fiction is inherently doomed to failure, and that argument appears to be based on the notion that players are going to purposefully come up with the most inconsiderate narrative and then unilaterally impose that narrative on their gaming companions.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> You don't really think that anybody who isn't a complete jerk would behave in the way you're quoting. Once again, you're proposing an argument ad absurdum. The game presumes everybody is at the game to have fun with friends. And in those competitions where people are not gaming with friends, it is expected the DM will run tables with a bit more firmness. (In other words, the DM will dictate what the dice mean, rather than letting the gaming group as a whole create a shared experience.)
> 
> When people are reasonable, this is not a problem. When people are unreasonable, they generally don't game together, or the event is such that the DM is given absolutely authority to dictate the narrative.
> 
> But now you've completely changed what we were discussing. Before we were discussing whether people can accept the association between the mechanics and the fiction. On that sentence it should be pretty obvious that everybody has a different tolerance for association, not only in quantity, but in quality.
> 
> You're now appearing to make an argument that a system that requires us to associate the mechanics to the fiction is inherently doomed to failure, and that argument appears to be based on the notion that players are going to purposefully come up with the most inconsiderate narrative and then unilaterally impose that narrative on their gaming companions.



With all due respect, I don't understand how you've managed to jump to that conclusion.

Beforehand, many of us were having a very civil discussion and approaching this game theory from different angles. You came with a novel approach and implications that I did not and do not quite understand.

Your responses to me have ranged from 'this is not that story' to 'this is abstracted and does mean that' to 'you'd have to be a complete jerk to do that' and putting words in my mouth about association being 'doomed to failure'. I know I am more moderate than that, and I thought my previous contribution to this thread might indicate that.

Your argument seems to be a problem, at least for me, of wanting to eat your cake and have it too, and I don't know how to see it differently. A retort about complete jerks and having fun seems unfair and tangential to the rationale IMO.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> You keep using the word "we perceive".  Who is this "we"?  The characters don't perceive anything.




Well obviously, the characters are a fictional construct, we get that. But if you're not willing to accept the  conceit of a character avatar, what's the point  of roleplaying at all? 




> And the players don't "perceive" anything except the results of the die rolls.



I cannot disagree more strongly with this statement. They perceive the results of the die rolls, _but_ _within the context of understanding the nature of the resolution mechanic, and how that mechanic exists within an agreed upon, pre-existing model of rationality.

_Players perceive that a particular die roll _associates_ to a particular mechanic, that _associates _to some inference about the in-game effect, which _associates_ to some model, simulation, mileu that allows the effect to happen. 

If the GM has to pre-set every condition of "reality" for every single game, it would be pointless. Every RPG is based in some way on the pre-existent knowable, observable facts about the way our universe works--the only question is which rules force deviation from those observed "norms," and how the player's "perception" and expected results of "rolling the die" is based on them. 

Dissociative mechanics are problematic not because they can't ultimately be "explained" in context, but because every single explanation is necessarily "reconstructing" the reality of the game when it happens. 

And for a number of reasons, this is hardly an ideal situation while playing the game. The Alexandrian is fairly clear about this phenomenon--if you do this, and then apply that "reconstruction" from there on out, you've essentially created a house rule. The reason for creating a consistent "reconstruction" at all is so players can later act and react to the inferences and assumptions such a reconstruction  will present in future instances. 




> The only perceptions are what the players envision in their minds' eyes occurring in the fictional game world.  The perception is the result of associating the mechanics to a narrative; it is not the cause.
> 
> The game world's reality is whatever the DM and players accept it to be.



Yes--but the players have to also accept that the fiction _exists_, and that it follows basic rules that exist outside of "invoking narrative." 

_Narrative_ doesn't exist in a vacuum. Dissociative mechanics are dissociative because they inherently disrupt the concept of, "I accept this world's internal 'rules'."

It's pretty clear we inherently disagree on this point, though, so I don't know how much more useful discussion will be.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Your responses to me have ranged from 'this is not that story' to 'this is abstracted and does mean that' to 'you'd have to be a complete jerk to do that' and putting words in my mouth about association being 'doomed to failure'.



None of the things you put in quotes were actually written by me.  They are all inaccurate recharacterizations of what I wrote, and I specifically told you they were inaccurate the first time you made the mischaracterization.  So please don't play the "putting words into my mouth" card, okay?

I have been civil and in response you keep coming up with absurd hypotheticals.  I have, without rancor, explained why they are absurd and rather than respond to that, you continue to toss out absurd hypotheticals.

Do you really not understand what was wrong with the hypothetical in which one player unilaterally told the other players that the entire encounter was won because of his mind control abilities?  I specifically quoted the section where I had addressed the point, before you had even posed that hypothetical.  

Roleplaying is a shared world.  The players and DMs must necessarily interpret what the dice mean and make it a believable narrative.  In D&D particularly, the combat rules cannot be a precise retelling.  They require the players and DM to interpret them and contextualize them into a shared narrative.

I am happy to explain this to you further, but I would ask that you not try to tell me what I'm saying.  You clearly didn't like it when I did it to you, since it triggered your latest and quite ironic statement about how I am putting words into your mouth.



> Your argument seems to be a problem, at least for me, of wanting to eat your cake and have it too, and I don't know how to see it differently.



I can almost guarantee that the more you try to recharacterize what I write, the less likely you will be to see it differently.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> None of the things you put in quotes were actually written by me. They are all inaccurate recharacterizations of what I wrote, and I specifically told you they were inaccurate the first time you made the mischaracterization. So please don't play the "putting words into my mouth" card, okay?



I used single quotes --- which is paraphrasing, but not quoting -- or so I thought, but apologize if you misunderstood the spirit of it.

Let's take a break/breather?


----------



## wrecan

innerdude said:


> They perceive the results of the die rolls, _but_ _within the context of understanding the nature of the resolution mechanic, and how that mechanic exists within an agreed upon, pre-existing model of rationality._



But that model can be that the DM (or the DM and players jointly) will interpret the result within the context of the shared narrative.  



> Dissociative mechanics are problematic not because they can't ultimately be "explained" in context, but because every single explanation is necessarily "reconstructing" the reality of the game when it happens.



It's not "*re*constructing", which implies that the reality of the moment had already been constructed.  

Every die roll in a game contributes to the ongoing construction of the reality.  When you roll your d20 to hit something in a D&D game of any edition, and then you get a "hit" that doesn't necessarily mean anything concrete in game.  You still roll your damage, apply any other effects, and the DM then compares that to the stats of the NPC your character hit.  In that moment between the roll of damage and the DM deciding what that means, has any reality been "constructed"?  No.  The DM could narrate that the blow staggered the creature filling his eyes with fear, or that it was a grazing blow that did little damage, or a solid shot to the jaw that causes the creature to smile and say "Is that all you've got?"

The dice dictate a mechanical effect.  Its' the DM and players who determine what their characters perceive, based on that mechanic.  Sometimes the mechanic leaves little room for interpretation.  Sometimes it leaves a lot of room for interpretations.  But invariably, between the dice and the DM's narrations, there is going to be an interpretation of some sort.



> The reason for creating a consistent "reconstruction" at all is so _players can later act and react to the inferences and assumptions such a reconstructions presents_.



I don't think theAlexandrian is giving an accurate presentation of how the process of interpreting dice works.  Any inferences and assumptions of what a given die roll means has to be on an ad hoc basis, until the DM and players obtain a shared set of assumptions.  

Let's take hit points.  I've seen games in which it is assumed that every "hit" on an attack roll is an actually hit, that 10th level fighters may emerge from a battle against archers looking like porcupines.  I've seen games in which a "hit" means nothing concrete unless it knocks you into the negative numbers.  And in other tables, the players and DM decide when a "hit" means physical contact and it doesn't, usually based on how entertaining it would be one way or the other.  I don't think anybody is playing incorrectly at any of these tables.  It's just a matter of preference.



> _Narrative_ doesn't exist in a vacuum. Dissociative mechanics are dissociative because they inherently disrupt the concept of, "I accept this world's internal 'rules'."



I think that assumes that the combat mechanics represent some sort of "internal rules", as opposed to game rules designed to evoke a feeling of heroic fantasy combat.  

For me, the rules help the DM and players construct a narrative.  The dice ensure that some of that narrative is beyond the control of the DM and the players, and that adds an element of gambling-style fun.  The rules and dice don't act as physical laws, but rather of narrative ones.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> I used single quotes --- which is paraphrasing, but not quoting -- or so I thought, but apologize if you misunderstood the spirit of it.
> 
> Let's take a break/breather?



No problem.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> Roleplaying is a shared world.  The players and DMs must necessarily interpret what the dice mean and make it a believable narrative.  In D&D particularly, the combat rules cannot be a precise retelling.  They require the players and DM to interpret them and contextualize them into a shared narrative.




Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

The entire gist of this thread is that we're debating whether interpretation and contextualization comes first, and the narrative follows; or the narrative comes first, then the contextualization and interpretation that support the narrative. 

So, the question is, what forces interact with the GM and players' collective interpretation and context? 

It would be my contention that it is an amalgamation of: 



The known physical laws of the world/reality we inhabit.
Accepted/observed notions of sociality, law, economics, etc.
The stated conditions of the rules.
The GM's personal interpretation of the fictional world construct.
The player's vision of their avatar construct.
Our own perceived real-world experiences.

To me, the problem with dissociated mechanics is that it imposes "the stated conditions of the rules" as the primary contextualization factor above the others. This is germane to 4e, because most of the mechanics are directly tied to the player's avatar. 

If I'm reading you correctly, wrecan, you're in essence stating that the narrative itself can supersede contextualization, if that's what the players and GM agree on. 

I can see that as a valid position to take. I don't think it produces the types of gameplay and rules I would enjoy, but the position itself is reasonable.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Quick re-post, related to above:







Yesway Jose said:


> We have the fiction. This is an almagam informed by:
> - real life (human behavior, politics, etc. which we can't agree upon and constantly have debates and even wars over)
> - history (knights, castles, etc. and all the arguments about anachronisms, longswords vs katanas, etc.)
> - fantasy literature (dragons, magic, none of the which are exactly the same according to any one author)
> - D&D fiction (rust monsters and other D&D originals)
> - other genre laws (Hollywood action movie tropes and cliches, not exactly consistent)
> 
> The sum of all that incoherence is what the in-game characters experience to be true.
> 
> But then we have extraneous interests that want to clarify the truth of the fiction:
> - adventure format (cliches such as tons of dungeon delves because we don't have time, money and/or inclination to think of more interesting stories)
> - game mechanics (surviving 200" jumps, oozes being knocked prone, powers that are effective 1/day, etc.)
> - what the DM says
> - what the players say
> 
> Now on top of that, we also have:
> - adventure pacing (narrative that is structured to optimize player experience of the game mechanics, which has arguably changed over editions)
> 
> So where do you draw the line? Where's the baseline? Where do you separate what you want to be fictionally true vs what isn't or shouldn't necessarily be true?
> 
> Because if you accept that ALL of the above is part of the reality that IS true in D&D fiction, then there cannot be any disassociation.
> 
> If you say 1/day mechanism is not disassociated from the fiction, because in the fiction that power is only used 1/day, then it's a closed circle.
> There's nothing to argue about.
> 
> Conversely, I think I draw my baseline somewhere between points 4 and 5. Which is not to say that anything is set in stone, I often rethink a fictional construct, but that's the general vicinity. So the adventure format, game mechanics, adventure pacing, even DM/player input, may or may not support my vision of what the fiction could/should be. You know how some people say, if you don't like the rules, change them? That's where my head is at. That's how I can see disassociation between mechanics and my baseline for the fiction.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> It's not "*re*constructing", which implies that the reality of the moment had already been constructed.
> 
> The dice dictate a mechanical effect.  It's the DM and players who determine what their characters perceive, based on that mechanic.  Sometimes the mechanic leaves little room for interpretation.  Sometimes it leaves a lot of room for interpretations.  But invariably, between the dice and the DM's narrations, there is going to be an interpretation of some sort.




Okay, here's where we disagree then--the "reality of the moment," as you say, has not been constructed, absolutely true. But how that "reality of the moment" _becomes_ constructed is either based on something that the avatar characters, _if they actually existed_, could rationally observe and understand based on their knowledge of the game world construct, or it is based on something else. 

You can have two mechanics, one dissociated, one not, that produce the exact same narrative effect.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

innerdude said:


> The GM's personal interpretation of the fictional world construct.
> The player's vision of their avatar construct.




I think those two are too limited, as written. Each person at the table has their interpretation of the fictional world construct. The GM's simply carries more weight, usually. Then each character portrayed by one of those people has a portrayed interpretation, of their part of that world. 

That is, when a GM plays a goblin with a personality, he may have in his mind the broader picture and something more or less akin to what a player with a character similar to that goblin might have. 

I'm not sure that's all I see missing from the list, either, but those two jumped out.


----------



## wrecan

innerdude said:


> If I'm reading you correctly, wrecan, you're in essence stating that the narrative itself can supersede contextualization, if that's what the players and GM agree on.



I'm not sure I understand how narrative can supersede contextualization since the narrative is a result of the contextualization of what happens at the game table.



> To me, the problem with dissociated mechanics is that it imposes "the  stated conditions of the rules" as the primary contextualization factor  above the others.



I don't think that's specific to disassociated mechanics.  All mechanics place themselves above the other factors because only mechanics are rules that dictate specific results.

Let's take the good old "Stinking Cloud" spell.  The spell dictates that the victim (assuming he fails his save) begins to retch and vomit for a specific period of time.  That's a specific mechanical effect, and I would not classify it as a disassociated effect.  Barring the DM and players agreeing to ignore it, this effect applies even if the victim had been established as having an empty belly, even if the heroic sweep of the story is ruined by making the hero retch in a given circumstance.  The Stinking Cloud mechanic has elevated itself above what some might consider to be the physical laws of the world, above the player's vision of his avatar's construct, our own perceived real-world experiences, perhaps the GM's own personal interpretation of the fictional world construct.  

But that's because that's what mechanics do.  They demand to be applied, well, mechanically.  In this respect, disassociated mechanics like hit points, attack rolls and daily powers are no different than associated mechanics like stinking cloud spells.

In the end, with respect to contextualization and narrative, I think the narrative follows (and is in fact created by) the contextualization of the mechanics.  The basic flow is:

Player/DM declares what action is attempted
Player/DM rolls dice to determine if action is successful
Player/DM consults the mechanical effect of the results
Player/DM describes (i.e., contextualizes) those results into the narrative
Other Players/DM almost always accept that description.  If not, then the group will replace it with one the group can accept.
Most of this time this occurs so quickly, that you don't even note the discrete steps.  

This can also occur without dice or mechanics.  Does the following sound familiar:

DM: After you knock, a loud chime resounds through the hall and the doors open.  You enter the duchess' chambers.  She is in an exquisite gown, and she is flanked by her exchequer, her master-of-arms and some guards wielding halberds.  She acknowledges you and says "I have heard much of you, Heroes of Westerly.  I wodner how much of the legends are true."

Tom: I say "Nice knockers!"

DM: No, you don't.

Tom: What?  I meant in the hall.

DM: Don't say that.

Harry: Tom, don't be a jerk.

Tom: Fine.  

What happened?  The player (Tom) declared his attempted action (a blue joke) and the DM and other players rejected that addition to the narrative and replaced it with their own (no blue joke).  It happens all the time in games and we rarely consider them.  It's only when the mechanics are of a style who contextualization we haven't yet internalized, does it become jarring to us.


----------



## wrecan

innerdude said:


> how that "reality of the moment" _becomes_ constructed is either based on something that the avatar characters, _if they actually existed_, could rationally observe and understand based on their knowledge of the game world construct, or it is based on something else.



I don't understand how disassociated mechanics do not result in something the characters could rationally observe and understand based on their knowledge of the game world construct.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> I have, without rancor, explained why they are absurd and rather than respond to that, you continue to toss out absurd hypotheticals.



I apologize once again for the "absurd hypotheticals" (quoting now, not paraphrasing).

I will try again....

You didn't like the example of a complete jerk winning the encounter on his own via mind control. That was not my intention, so let's tone it down to say that the DM agrees that, out of combat, Hypnotism can also be used to mechanically add some bonus to diplomacy rolls or make the target fall prone.

This player is very much in Actor stance. Now the PC engages in meaningful combat. The player remains faithful to his vision of the character operating as if he's a wizard who is using Hypnotism in that slightly more versatile way. I don't know how you can fault this hypothetical player for this, because you've indicated that the in-game the character cannot observe a difference between magic in and out of meaningful combat, and the player is thinking accordingly in Actor stance.

So the player has one narrative vision (=Hypnotism that can be used to move a target, attack another, influence people, and make them fall prone) whereas the meaningful combat mechanisms only allows for a more limited narrative (=move a target, or attack another).

To remain true to his narrative, the player can pretend that his character does try to use Hypnotism (behind the scenes, beyond the abstraction of combat as suggested by the mechanics) to make a target fall prone or be nicer to him, but that will never have any mechanical affect on the shared narrative with the other players and DM.

(Again, I don't know how you can fault this hypothetical player for this, because you've indicated that the in-game the character cannot observe a difference between magic in and out of meaningful combat)

Since his fictional POV (which is oblivious to the shift from default to combat reality) has no mechanical effect, the player cannot narratively share this conceit with the other players who are operating by what the mechanics dictate to be true to the narrative.

To remain true to the shared narrative as defined by the mechanics, the player must stop pretending that his hypnotism can do what it does out of combat. In doing so, it breaks immersion for him, because he is no longer faithful to his narrative.

(If you don't like the Hypnotism example for any reason, sub with any other fictional construct that works differently in and out of meaningful combat).

James is absolutely right, I think, that it all boils down to immersion in the end.

Some (many?) players want to tell a story of fictional constructs being more or less consistent regardless of combat vs non-combat, and the mechanics of 4E combat are hindering those players from telling that story. Therefore, the mechanics are disassociated from the story that those players want to happen.

This is NOT about anybody acting like a jerk, or ruining fun for everyone else. Going back to the Paladin with the toads, you've insisted that the character in-game cannot observe and explore the difference between Baleful Polymorph in and out of combat, and that's why it's not disassociated (if I extrapolate correctly). This is a premise I cannot agree with. Not because combat is not an abstraction (I agree it is), but because IMO your implications are completely disassociating the mechanics from the story I want to tell.

Does that help to explain my position?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Does that help to explain my position?




Your hypothetical is of a character who is given a specific out-of-combat ability (a bonus to Diplomacy checks or making the target fall prone) and want to explain why he can't do this in combat.  And you are raising my prior statement that characters can demonstrate daily powers out of combat because daily powers are only intended to be used in combat.  Do you not understand how these situations differ?  If your character has a noncombat power, then mechanically it cannot be used in combat.  (That's why the "non-" modifies combat -- we don't call combat powers "nonsocializing" powers.)

Combat powers can be approximated outside combat by using other mechanics (which is what I stated) -- Skills.  But noncombat powers cannot be approximated inside combat because everything that occurs in combat is a power.  And the explanation is simple: noncombat isn't measured in rounds or initiative.  Noncombat occurs over the duration of a short rest.  So the noncombat application of hypnotism has no action cost.  It requires more than a full uninterrupted round to invoke and that makes it inapplicable within combat.  In other words, that noncombat application requires an expenditure of time and mental preparedness that isn't possible to accomplish in combat.



> (If you don't like the Hypnotism example for any reason, sub with any other fictional construct that works differently in and out of meaningful combat).



The specific power isn't the problem.  The problem is that there can be no noncombat-exclusive power that operates in combat.  That's what makes it, by definition, a *non*combat power.  If it could be used in combat it would be a combat power.  What you did was take a noncombat power and create a character that ignored the "non-".  Is it really incredible to you that a person may be able to accomplish more out of combat than in combat?



> Not because combat is not an abstraction (I agree it is), but because IMO your implications are completely disassociating the mechanics from the story I want to tell.



No, the problem is that the story you want to tell isn't justified by the mechanics, whether associated or disassociated.  You want a character with a power that doesn't exist.  Now, if you could find a power that made people fall prone in combat (like horrid whispers), and you took it, then you could call that another aspect of your hypnotism.  The more powers you took and attributed to hypnotism, the more potent a combat hynotist you become.

This isn't an issue with disassociation, imo.  This is a problem when someone can't find a spell that does what they think it should do.  In every edition, it's been a given that combat is a time of incredible stress and you can't do things in the pressure of combat that you could do outside combat.  In 3rd edition, there are penalties for skill checks made in combat, and some things (like Diplomacy checks) that can never succeed if combat has begun.  What you're raising is no different.  It's not a problem of disassociation; it's a recognition that stuff that can be done in the calm of noncombat cannot be accomplished within combat.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Is it really incredible to you that a person may be able to accomplish more out of combat than in combat?



Yes, absolutely. I don't understand why not.



> No, the problem is that the story you want to tell isn't justified by the mechanics, whether associated or disassociated.



If combat mechanics are an abstraction of what you can do in meaningful combat, and the Hypnotism power is an abstraction of using the Hypnotism spell in meaningful combat, then neither defines anything absolute about what the Hypnotism spell is fictionally true from the character's POV in-game.

You indicated that initiative, rounds, etc. does not define what is happening if the characters were explaining it after the combat to an NPC.

You indicated that Baleful Polymorph (and I added Hypnotism) powers do not define what is happening when the Paladin or Wizard is explaining it to an NPC.

Therefore, the fictional construct that is the Hypnotism, Baleful Polymorph spells is TBD according to Page 42 and DM/player agreement.

Therefore, that agreed fictional construct is the fictional truth baseline. There is now room for the mechanics to be disassociated by that baseline, especially when that narrative meets the Twilight Zone of meaningful combat. You're denying the right of the DMs and players to establish a narrative or story that is different from the mechanics, even though the mechanics themselves are not cognizant of the disconnect.

The supposed freedom of Page 42 for roleplaying and immersion remains beholden to the unyielding combat rules.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> I don't understand how disassociated mechanics do not result in something the characters could rationally observe and understand based on their knowledge of the game world construct.




Paladin, in game: "By the Power of Helm, I compel thee, beast, to mark me as your foe!" 

(6 seconds later). 

Fighter, in game: "Hey beast, watch my awesome sword-ery, you must mark me!" 

(6 seconds later). 

Paladin: "Beast, mark me!"

(6 seconds later)

Cleric, across the room: "Beast, ignore those two and mark me instead!" 

(6 seconds later)

Fighter: "Ah hah! Mark me again!" 

(6 seconds later)

Warlord, in a different corner: "Actually, beast, I shout at you, compelling you to ignore the fighter, and mark the rogue instead!"

(6 seconds later)

Fighter: "No, beast, YOU MUST MARK ME!"

I'm sure any of us could come up with an explanation for how this might actually work "in the game world," given the time and inclination, but really, why would we want to, and more to the point, why should the game rules FORCE US TO DO SO to maintain an "in the moment" semblance of rationality? 

If you don't think this is "dissociation," then I'm not sure there's much left to discuss, as your tastes and mine are so divergent that making headway in the conversation isn't really tenable at this point.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> I think my response to this is to repeat Crazy Jerome and chaochou's points from way upthread: if so-called dissociated mechanics are defined in terms of the effect they have on some particular players' RPing experience, then _any_ mechanic is potentially dissociated, because who knows what effect it might have on some or other player.




If the reasoning of the mechanic in question cannot be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than I'll agree. Otherwise, it doesn't fit his definition. That's just changing his definition to expand upon the more accepted use of the term "dissociated" when he's actually defining a particular type of mechanic.

So, yes, anything _could_ be dissociated, as long as non-dissociated mechanics were refluffed to be dissociated instead. Otherwise, I really don't think you're correct here.

Dissociated mechanics do matter how they affect the player, yes, but that's only half of it. The other half has to do with whether or not the reasoning of the mechanic can be learned, explored, or observed in-game. As far as I can tell, you have to have both in order to have a dissociated mechanic.



> Conversely, if we're talking about metagame mechanics, than the claim that they have some general, or even interesting, tendency to impede roleplaying is highly controversial, and denied at least by me.




That's really not controversial at all if it's not a blanket statement. If someone says that all metagame mechanics impede role playing, than I could see why you think it's controversial, though I'd personally disregard it as someone either having a different definition of role playing than myself, or as someone being irrational.

As intellectually invested as I can get into these discussions, I have yet to be emotionally invested (other than amused). 



> The claim that 4e has some interesting category of mechanics that can't be learned or reasoned about ingame is itself obviously contentious, as Third Wizard's posts have shown by implication, and as wrecan's post shows explicitly. For example, a rogue's fencing skill, which Trick Strike exemplifies, obviously _is_ learnable in the gameworld - after all, the rogue learned it - s/he wasn't born with a rapier in hand!




Fencing skill is obviously different from a once per day power. Is the once per day power able to be learned, explored, or observed in-game as what it is (an ability that can be used once per day)? If so, it's not dissociated. If it is not able to be learned, explored, or observed in-game as what it is (it's actually narrative control), than it's dissociative.



> I don't dispute that 4e has metagame mechanics - this is obvious, and I've been one of the main posters on these boards over the past three years discussing this aspect of 4e, and the influence of contemporary RPG design that it obviously reflects.




I know you don't dispute that. Neither do I. And, as I've pointed out, _I use metagame mechanics in the game I created and currently run_. I personally don't find anything inherently wrong with them.



> I don't dispute that some RPGers don't like games with metagame mechanics in general, or don't like 4e's metagame mechanics in particular. And that for some of them, it's because they find it hard to roleplay, or to enjoy roleplaying, in a game that has such mechanics.




That seems reasonable to me. I don't dispute that it enhances role playing for others, or that others greatly prefer games with large amounts of metagame mechanics to games that don't have them.



> But it doesn't follow from this that there is an interesting category of mechanics, which 4e possesses in some distinctive fashion, and which have any general or interesting tendency to impede roleplaying. And which are therefore "dissociated" in some interesting fashion.




I agree. I think it spreads, obviously, to all systems that include them. To single out 4e is obviously incorrect. That doesn't mean that 4e might have more detractors than other systems, though. It's honestly hard to say. For example, I've seen a lot less people (percentage-wise) who have looked into Mutants and Masterminds 2e dislike the metagame mechanics (Hero Points mechanics, GM fiat mechanics, etc.) than those who dislike 4e metagame mechanics. But, we're talking about two different pools of players, so it's hard to measure it other than by anecdotal information, which is not my preferred methodology.

Even if 4e had less detractors than Mutants and Masterminds 2e when it comes to metagame mechanics, I'd still say that the assertion of whether or not 4e has dissociated mechanics is solid. It obviously applies to the game, as far as I can tell, and some people certainly feel pulled out of their role because of them. Dismissing that proposition because the writer that posited it is inflammatory is baffling to me. It's unreasonable, in my opinion.



> It can be quite interesting to reflect on the way different games, with different mechanics, seem naturally to fit with the adoption of various stances. What does using the notion of "dissociation" - ie a contentious and disputed claim that some particular mechanics are at odds with roleplaying - add to the discussion? Or to our analytic vocabulary?




It defines a type of mechanic that (I'd anecdotally say) a large portion of role players dislike. To some people, whether or not they dislike 4e, this term makes for great ease of communication. Instead of saying "I don't know, it was harder to immerse, and I just kept feeling like I wasn't really playing an RPG" or _other_ inflammatory statements that do indeed accurately describe their feelings, they can use a single term that sums it up completely, and also can describe entirely new game systems potentially.

The benefits of such a term are obvious, to me. It definitely beats "metagame mechanics" as those don't have to pull you out of your role. As BryonD pointed out, something like Action Points or Hero Points rarely seem to pull someone out of their role, and thus it wouldn't fit into the "pulls someone out of their role" half of dissociated mechanics. Someone can say, "I found dailies to be dissociated, while hit points, to me, were just kinda metagame" and there's a certain clarity to be had for separating the terms.

I understand the objection to bias, pejorative naming, or the like, but I feel that no name would be acceptable given his article, as inflammatory as it was. I also do not feel that his biases should get in the way of any possible merit his article has in the broad sense, and to dismiss it because of blanket statements is still unreasonable to me. Yes, those statements are incorrect in that dissociated mechanics do not extend to a large portion of the player base. However, his assertion that there are dissociated mechanics seem obvious to me, and no amount of "it's inflammatory, so it's wrong" is going to reasonably convince me otherwise.

As always, play what you like 



Crazy Jerome said:


> Everything you said was right on the money, especially this last bit, considering that "pull you out of a role you are playing" already has a useful and long accepted term--immersion.




What's slightly amusing about this is, to me, that's how I feel about "actor stance" being used. We have term for that--immersion.

I know that people have differing views on things, but once we start getting personal definitions and terminology involved, I think our communication will ironically break down. As always, play what you like 



pemerton said:


> Personally, I don't think that there is any useful technical (or semi-technical) characterisation of such mechanics, because what they are and how they will work will vary from group to group and game to game.




Maybe that's why we're disagreeing on this. I find this type of definition both common and useful. It's like the word "beautiful" or any other subjective definition. I can say, "she's beautiful to me" or "the music sounded beautiful to me" and people know what I'm trying to communicate. They don't have to agree that it's beautiful to them.

To me, this is the same as "it's dissociated to me" or the like. You don't have to agree that it's dissociated to you.

As always, play what you like


----------



## rkwoodard

*wolfpack*



innerdude said:


> Paladin, in game: "By the Power of Helm, I compel thee, beast, to mark me as your foe!"
> 
> (6 seconds later).
> 
> Fighter, in game: "Hey beast, watch my awesome sword-ery, you must mark me!"
> 
> (6 seconds later).
> 
> Paladin: "Beast, mark me!"
> 
> (6 seconds later)
> 
> Cleric, across the room: "Beast, ignore those two and mark me instead!"
> 
> (6 seconds later)
> 
> Fighter: "Ah hah! Mark me again!"
> 
> (6 seconds later)
> 
> Warlord, in a different corner: "Actually, beast, I shout at you, compelling you to ignore the fighter, and mark the rogue instead!"
> 
> (6 seconds later)
> 
> Fighter: "No, beast, YOU MUST MARK ME!"
> 
> I'm sure any of us could come up with an explanation for how this might actually work "in the game world," given the time and inclination, but really, why would we want to, and more to the point, why should the game rules FORCE US TO DO SO to maintain an "in the moment" semblance of rationality?
> 
> If you don't think this is "dissociation," then I'm not sure there's much left to discuss, as your tastes and mine are so divergent that making headway in the conversation isn't really tenable at this point.




Isn't that pretty much standard wolfpack type tactics? I admit I don't have a full grasp of the whole Dissociation thing, but this example seem completely normal.

By way of disclosure, I don't play 4e, 3e, or any MMORPGs.

RK


----------



## BryonD

Yesway Jose said:


> Substitute feint (=Rogue Strike) with jumping off cliffs every morning, and you have my personal answer to your question above, which is: I can't and I don't.



Certainly,  but as with my previous example, you are equating a specific aspect of the game (falling) to the core powers system.  "Feinting" was just an example of the problem.  The powers system itself IS the problem.

You can "fix" the falling thing if you want.  If you want to fix 4E powers, the solution is to play a different game.

In my games I use falling damage as written except that all 1s are treated as 1 point of CON damage instead of 1 HP damage.  Also, I also play with good players who don't fling themselves off cliffs because they understand that the story is the point and abusing the system undermines the fun.

Which I think is yet another point on that.  You required an example of abusing a specific subset of the 3E rules to create the same flaw that is observed in using the fundamental 4E system as intended.


----------



## innerdude

BryonD said:


> Certainly,  but as with my previous example, you are equating a specific aspect of the game (falling) to the core powers system.  "Feinting" was just an example of the problem.  The powers system itself IS the problem.
> 
> You can "fix" the falling thing if you want.  If you want to fix 4E powers, the solution is to play a different game.
> 
> In my games I use falling damage as written except that all 1s are treated as 1 point of CON damage instead of 1 HP damage.  Also, I also play with good players who don't fling themselves off cliffs because they understand that the story is the point and abusing the system undermines the fun.
> 
> Which I think is yet another point on that.  You required an example of abusing a specific subset of the 3E rules to create the same flaw that is observed in using the fundamental 4E system as intended.




Somebody rep/XP this post for me. Great points.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> Yes, 4e's metagame mechanics are different from action points. Oddly enough, they are closer to HeroQuest's freeform descriptors (getting to choose your class and race from two long lists, and then your feats and powers from more long lists, begins to approximate building a character from freeform descriptors, provided you don't want to buck the genre tropes too much).
> 
> Why do I say this? Because, unlike action points and like descriptors, they (i) ensure that a given PC will be doing his/her particular schtick on a regular and reliabe basis, but (ii) give the player rather than just the dice and/or the GM a degree of control over when that schtick will be realised.
> 
> A 4e PC, in my experience, does a very good job of exmplifying itself. The power mechanics are a key part of this.



I can accept that.  But I don't see that as a winning achievement.  

And, frankly, I've never found that PCs in my 3E/PF games have done anything less than be excellent at capturing the concept intended.  

I suppose I could agree that is a little more absolute ("bolted on") in 4E.  And if that is win for you then great.  But it is, at best, a break even on that score from my POV.  And the price for this break even is a break down in the feeling of being in the novel.  The patterns are arbitrarily forced.  For my enjoyment value I am paying a steep price for no gain.


----------



## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> (If you don't like the Hypnotism example for any reason, sub with any other fictional construct that works differently in and out of meaningful combat).




I don't like the Hypnotism example, but I'm not sure that subbing another power would fix it.  I'll try to explain.  What you're describing with it does indeed sound to me like a player problem.  You and the Dm have decided that a combat power Y can be used outside of combat to create effect X, but now when you are in combat, you cannot create effect X by using power Y.  The conflict wouldn't arise if you had not ascribed other possible effects to power Y, or if you had ascribed other possible effects that you wouldn't want to use for combat, or if you went ahead and houseruled power Y to include those effects in combat.  I can't think of any power that specifically has different combat and noncombat effects(please suggest one if you can think of it), which means that whenever they work differently in and out of combat, it is because the players and DM have agreed to use it that way.  Now, I think using powers outside of combat and for a wide and varied range of effects is all well and good, but it is the responsibility of the players and the DM to make sure that they don't put themselves in a position like you described.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> What you're describing with it does indeed sound to me like a player problem. You and the Dm have decided that a combat power Y can be used outside of combat to create effect X, but now when you are in combat, you cannot create effect X by using power Y.



Or to put it another way, the rules in meaningful combat dictate that Y can be used to make effect Z, but I think Y should also produce effect X in and out of combat...



> T...or if you went ahead and houseruled power Y to include those effects in combat.



I would love this, but considering what seems to be a strong inclination against modifying combat rules for fictional reasons (you can see much evidence on this thread that there's nothing wrong with any one combat mechanic but it is the players' responsiblity to self-regulate their narrative), not to mention game balance...



> I can't think of any power that specifically has different combat and noncombat effects(please suggest one if you can think of it)



That wouldn't be my first choice. I would prefer to have a power with the same combat and noncombat effects, whenever plausible anyway. However, as per above, it seems easier to houserule different non-combat applications (as per Wrecan's example of using Rogue Strike for combat, and replicating it outside of combat with some combo of Athletics and Acrobatics for non-combat).

The catch 22 seems to be:
-if you are worried about immersion and associated mechanics, use page 42 to create new shared fictional constructs
-BUT you may not extrapolate that new fictional construct to meaningful combat, even if it disrupts immersion
-and if you complain about this dilema, that's your problem as a player
-and none of the above is a problem of mechanics disassociated from the story you want to tell

Please correct me if I'm wrong.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> you are equating a specific aspect of the game (falling) to the core powers system.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You required an example of abusing a specific subset of the 3E rules to create the same flaw that is observed in using the fundamental 4E system as intended.



Does "flaw" here actually mean _flaw_, or does it mean "feature disliked by Bryon D"?



BryonD said:


> the price for this break even is a break down in the feeling of being in the novel.  The patterns are arbitrarily forced.  For my enjoyment value I am paying a steep price for no gain.



Does "arbitrarily" here mean _without reason_, or "not for a reason that speaks to or engages BryonD"?

It's clear that you don't like 4e. It's clear that this is, at least in part, because of certain mechanics, the existence of which is uncontentious.

It's clear that one reason you don't like those mechanics is because, if you were to play losing them, you would not experience a certain feeling.

You haven't given me any reason to think either (i) that all RPGers should want to experience that feeling, nor (ii) that experiencing that feeling is at the heart of RPGing, nor even (iii) that others, when using the mechanics in question, won't experience the feeling that you can't.

I'm not sure whether pointing these things out is combative or not, because - as the questions at the start of this post indicate - I'm uncertain as to what you intend by your key evaluative statements, and in particular how far they are meant to go beyond describing your own personal preferences and experiences. If they aren't meant to go beyond that, then presumably you agree with me about (iii), and perhaps also (i) and (ii).


----------



## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> The catch 22 seems to be:
> -if you are worried about immersion and associated mechanics, use page 42 to create new shared fictional constructs
> -BUT you may not extrapolate that new fictional construct to meaningful combat, even if it disrupts immersion
> -and if you complain about this dilema, that's your problem as a player
> -and none of the above is a problem of mechanics disassociated from the story you want to tell
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong.




The second bullet point is where you lose me.  I think applying your new fictional construct to combat is fine, if you follow the same basic guidelines/responsibilities as you should with any ruling.  That is, tinker with it at your own risk.  That's not to say don't tinker with it, it's to say that you should be aware that you might break something, so you should be careful and also be prepared to fix something if you break it.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> Fencing skill is obviously different from a once per day power.



I don't agree with this at all.

The rogue - a fictional being - has fencing skill. The player - a real being playing a game with rules - is entitled, by the rules of the game, to use a daily power. The player, by using that power, brings it about that in the fiction, the rogue's fencing skill is evinced.

To repeat - it is not the _rogue_ who uses the power. It is the player. The rogue is just fencing.

And the rogue's fencing skill can be explored and explained and understood by the inhabitants of the fictional world.



innerdude said:


> <snip hypothetical mark dialogue>
> 
> I'm sure any of us could come up with an explanation for how this might actually work "in the game world," given the time and inclination, but really, why would we want to, and more to the point, why should the game rules FORCE US TO DO SO to maintain an "in the moment" semblance of rationality?



I posted about marks upthread, actually. Of two players in my group I talked to, one assumed that fighter marking is metagame, the other that it is ingame.

I also suggested, upthread, that a war devil's Besieged Foe power may best be viewed as a metagame tool for bringing about the result that a foe of the war devil is "besieged" by the devil's allies.

If you don't want to play a game with metagame mechanics, I don't think anyone is FORCING YOU TO. If you want to know why I don't mind the marking mechanics in 4e, it's because (i) they tend to produce a story which is about the fighter and the paladin holding off the slavering hordes, and (ii) the fighter mark produces immediate interrupt attacks, which keep the combat moving quickly.

Why, in game, do the marks override? Well the player of one of those two PCs will generally check with the other before placing a mark. In game, I assume that when the fighter's mark overrides the paladin's this is because the paladin is dropping his challenge, and when the paladin's mark overrides the fighter's this is because the paladin is divinely challenging the foe (I focus on the paladin's marking mechanic rather than the fighter's, here, because I think it is more naturally interpreted as having an ingame as well as - perhaps even instead of - a metagame aspect).



MrGrenadine said:


> Instead of a power I can use once a fight that _forces_ mooks to surround my fighter so he can respond with a cool attack, I would like a power I can use anytime mooks _choose_ to surround my fighter, or he can position himself inside a group.



Well, the dwarf halbedeer PC in my game has the following powers and abilities:

*+14 Athletics bonus;

*Mighty Sprint: encounter move action, gain +4 speed, ignore difficult terrain, and gain a +5 bonus to any Athletics checks during the move;

*Create Opening: encounter minor action, allow an adjacent ally threatened by an adjacent enemy to shift away, in return for suffering an attack from that enemy;

*Opportunity Attacks that gain +3 to hit and on a hit force a moving enemy to stop;

*Footwork lure: at will, on a hit shift and then slide the target into the vacated square;

*Sweeping Blow, Battle Cry: both encounter, attack all surrounding enemies;

*Come and Get It: encounter, pull nearby enemies adjacent and then attack all surrounding enemies;

*Passing Attack: encounter, attack one enemy, and if hit shift, attack another enemy;

*At least one daily that lets him attack and push surrounding enemies ("Own the Battlefield"?);

*Polearm Momentum is a feat lets him knock prone targets whom he slides or pushes;

*Deadly Draw is a feat that lets him gain combat advantage against targets he pulls (and maybe slides also?) at least 2 squares;

*And he wears Rushing Cleats, which are magic footwear that enhance his pushes and slides by 1 square.​
This is a character who has no trouble moving into a group of enemies, drawing his enemies to him, pushing them away if necessary, keeping them locked down where he wants them and keeping his allies safe. If he is surrounded by mooks, he can definitely deal with them!

One reason I've listed all these abilities is to help give a sense of how the mechanics support this aspect of the PC's persona. In the fiction, it's not as if the PC is once per encounter performing Come and Get It, and twice per encounter performing a close burst, etc. In the fiction, rather, there is a dwarf halbedeer who is constantly moving around the battlefield, using his finesse with his polearm to force his foes where he wants them and to keep them from his allies, etc. The suite of encounter powers, daily powers, feats etc are the _player's_ tools for making it the case that this fictional character exists.

It's not quite the same for the wizard PC, whose abilities represent discrete spells that he has learned. And the sorcerer is somewhere between the wizard and the fighter on this spectrum of degree of correlation between (i) powers as player tools, and (ii) what it is that the PC is actually doing in the fiction.



wrecan said:


> if you could find a power that made people fall prone in combat (like horrid whispers), and you took it, then you could call that another aspect of your hypnotism.  The more powers you took and attributed to hypnotism, the more potent a combat hynotist you become.



This is a good example of how you might go about building a wizard who is moving along that spectrum, away from the position of the wizard in my game and towards the position of the fighter in my game.

Just as the 4e mechanics don't require that every PC be located on the same place on that spectrum, so there is no need for every instance of a given class to be located on the same place on that spectrum.


----------



## pemerton

TwoSix said:


> I would lay good money on the fact that several posters will have a visceral reaction against that anecdote.



Only one so far, unless I missed some posts!

But as far as I have noticed, no one else in this thread is posting any actual play experiences. And the Alexandrian doesn't seem to draw on any actual play in the original essay - he just gives us stupid imaginary dialogues between PCs in a non-existent games.

If people are going to say that metagame mechanics, or narrativist mechanics, per se draw players out of the game, or out of roleplaying, or "dissociate" them from their PCs, I want them to have to actually engage with the evidence of my (and perhaps others') play, which is entirely contrary to that claim.

It's like Crazy Jerome said upthread - some claims being made in this thread seem to implicitly, but not all that subtlely, deny that stuff is happening in my game, which in fact happens every session.



Yesway Jose said:


> If I acted the paladin character, I might wonder after the battle:
> 1) Whenever an evil caster turns me into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn me back to normal a minute later?
> 2) When an evil caster turns someone else into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn them back to normal a minute later?
> 3) If an evil caster affects me with another foul spell, will the Raven Queen save me too, or does she only help with frog-related spells?
> 4) If (gods forbid!) I ever fell out of the Queen's favor, will she still save me? Would I be a frog forever? Or would I revert to normal after a minute whether or not I have the Queen's favor?
> 5) If I seek a wizard for advice, will he laugh and sing: What's the Raven Queen got to do with, got to do with it...?
> 
> The player's narration was nice for that moment, but it's still 'disassociated' from the big picture.
> 
> I DO respect players contributing to the narrative and making it more interesting and imaginative world. I just don't know that ad hoc narratives make the entire story plausible and consistent enough that resolves concerns of 'disassociation' for everyone else, except to those who are already on board.





Yesway Jose said:


> If the Paladin did assume that the Raven Queen did save him for that moment, but he never explored this philosophy further, and the idea never came up again, then it's not something that's consequential to the fiction -- it's only a brief "aha!" moment.
> 
> It's like a fart, it comes, has its moment, goes, and means nothing afterwards.
> 
> It's the difference between a real character with a personality and philosophy vs a caricature that makes a clever comment to serve one paragraph of a narrative.



I don't know how you are in a position to know whether or not the episode of play I reported is or is not "dissociated" from the big picture, that makes no contribution to a consistent story, "like a fart", nothing but a caricature rather than a contribution to a real character. That can't _possibly_ be inferred from a single reported instance of play.

As it happens, the whole raison d'etre of that PC is to explore his personal relationship to the Raven Queen, as well as her relationship to the rest of the mortal world. Being saved from toad-dom by her power is just one part of that ongoing focus of play.

Your measure for coherence and consistency of story seems to be concerned entirely with the causal mechanicsm whereby events are produced. I don't read a lot of fiction, but the most recent modern novel that I read was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Like most modern fiction that I read, causation of the sort that seems to concern you wasn't at its core. Theme, emotion, history, politics, love, hate, fear, struggle - these are what make for a satisfying drama, at least in my view. Whether or not the Raven Queen came to the aid of her paladin in need contributes to that sort of drama.



Yesway Jose said:


> If the Paladin did arrange for that, he could just say "Oops, I was wrong, I guess it wasn't the Raven Queen after all." The theory could all be in his head anyway.
> 
> And if the Paladin was an intellectual Paladin, then who are you as a DM or the player to say that the character cannot explore this question? (I'm sorry, this is a herotic fantasy game, we're not going to be repeatedly turned to frogs in this game, that's wrongbadfun)





Yesway Jose said:


> Going back to the Paladin with the toads, you've insisted that the character in-game cannot observe and explore the difference between Baleful Polymorph in and out of combat, and that's why it's not disassociated (if I extrapolate correctly). This is a premise I cannot agree with. Not because combat is not an abstraction (I agree it is), but because IMO your implications are completely disassociating the mechanics from the story I want to tell.





BryonD said:


> I also play with good players who don't fling themselves off cliffs because they understand that the story is the point and abusing the system undermines the fun.



Happily for me, I also play with good players.

Why would a player, who - as I made clear in my first post on the topic - himself decided to treat the duration of the effect as a metagame mechanic to which he could attach his preferred narrative - then decide to have his PC undertake an investigation that would wreck the very narrative that he has decided to create?

Or, conversely, if the player decides that his PC is undergoing a crisis of faith, and therefore _does_ decide to undertake the investigation that would show that the Raven Queen didn't save him at all, what would be the problem? And who are you saying would stop him? Where are the mechanics that would get in the way of the player pursuing this story about his PC?



wrecan said:


> We can explore it, but it is explored *narratively*.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In game, your paladin can absolutely "explore" why the polymorph spell ends so abruptly.  And the answer to that question (and whether the paladin's exploration will even be fruitful) will be determined by the story written by the DM.



I would just add to this - and written by the player also. (As in my crisis-of-faith hypothetical above.)

Also, your discussion of the way that the mechanics work in relation to encounters rather than in relation to the ficitonal world per se is first rate!



innerdude said:


> Dissociative mechanics are problematic not because they can't ultimately be "explained" in context, but because every single explanation is necessarily "reconstructing" the reality of the game when it happens.
> 
> And for a number of reasons, this is hardly an ideal situation while playing the game. The Alexandrian is fairly clear about this phenomenon--if you do this, and then apply that "reconstruction" from there on out, you've essentially created a house rule.



This is just false. In what way is the player of the paladin, in the ACTUAL PLAY EXAMPLE that I gave, reconstructing the reality of the game when it happens? 

And what is the house rule that's been created?

And why is this not ideal?

There have been a couple of recent Tomb of Horrors threads on this forum. From those threads, I've learned that the best way to play the ToH is using a thief on a rope with a fly spell (the thief is more expensive than driving sheep through the dungeon ahead of the party, but also a more reliable and versatile scout).

Now, I want to say "Playing a game in which a thief scouts ahead flying while attached to a rope is hardly ideal - it's tedious and stupid, and bears no resemblance to either modernist fantasy like Howard or anti-modernist fantasy like Tolkien". But that would obviously just be an expression of my aesthetic preferences. So, until now, I've refrained.

Maybe _you_ don't like a game where it is open to you, as a player, to decide that the reason the effect ended on you is because of the benevolence of your deity. But it would be easier to talk together about playing RPGs if you didn't start from the assumption that everyone likes and dislikes the same things as you.



Yesway Jose said:


> Some (many?) players want to tell a story of fictional constructs being more or less consistent regardless of combat vs non-combat, and the mechanics of 4E combat are hindering those players from telling that story. Therefore, the mechanics are disassociated from the story that those players want to happen.



All this tells me is what I already knew - namely, that some players don't like various sort of metagame mechanics, don't like stances other than Actor stance, etc.

Maybe those players shouldn't play 4e.

I don't want to tell stories about superheroes, after all. That's why I don't play Champions or Mutants & Masterminds.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> I don't agree with this at all.




That makes for good discussion 



> The rogue - a fictional being - has fencing skill. The player - a real being playing a game with rules - is entitled, by the rules of the game, to use a daily power. The player, by using that power, brings it about that in the fiction, the rogue's fencing skill is evinced.




I'm assuming that someone can have fencing skill without the daily. Thus my statement that they're different.



> To repeat - it is not the _rogue_ who uses the power. It is the player. The rogue is just fencing.




Indeed. It's narrative control. Which is a dissociated mechanic (to those who it separates from their role, obviously; I'll be using that as part of my definition  for dissociated from this point on).



> And the rogue's fencing skill can be explored and explained and understood by the inhabitants of the fictional world.




Right, except that's not the mechanic being measured. People are measuring the rogue's attack roll (fencing skill). If they measured how often the rogue could produce the result of Trick Strike, it'd be once per day. If they cannot measure that, then yes, it's narrative control (a dissociated mechanic).

As always, play what you like


----------



## Gantros

I'd like to try nudging this discussion in a different, hopefully more productive direction.  There seems to be a pretty clear divide between the people here who grok the idea of dissociated mechanics and take issue with them, and those that have a "blind spot" for them (either not understanding the distinction, or not caring about it).  Certainly we can agree that neither side is more correct than the other, but at least acknowledging and understanding the divide may provide some insights into how it can be bridged in the future.

One implication of this blind spot idea is that it opens up the possibility of creating mechanics and descriptions that could satisfy both types of player. Since martial daily powers have been a recurring point of contention and are pretty central to the 4e rules, let's use them as an example and try replacing the existing description:

... you’re reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​
with this one:

Characters with martial powers have a limited ability to see and subtly shape future events through their dreams.  During each extended rest, they are able to visualize themselves performing one or more amazing combat exploits that will inevitably come to pass within the next day. These are no more than vague glimpses and are impossible to remember clearly upon waking, but the character will know instantly whenever the right moment to pull off an exploit arrives.​Now some questions for each side...

For those who have issues with dissociated mechanics - do you agree that a description like this would help make the daily power mechanic easier to accept without changing it mechanically?  It attempts to associate the ability to use multiple challenging yet non-magical maneuvers once each per day with something the character could perceive directly (i.e. dreams), without relying on notions like "reserves of energy" that overlap with other mechanics like HP or Con.

For those who don't believe in or care about dissociated mechanics - would this alternative description unduly limit your narrative opportunities or have any other negative impact on your enjoyment of the game?  And if so, would you have any issues with simply ignoring it or re-skinning it to better fit the specifics of your campaign?


----------



## JamesonCourage

Gantros said:


> I'd like to try nudging this discussion in a different, hopefully more productive direction.




I can't XP you again yet, but I do like your post and your motives.



> Since martial daily powers have been a recurring point of contention and are pretty central to the 4e rules, let's use them as an example and try replacing the existing description:
> 
> ... you’re reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​
> with this one:
> 
> Characters with martial powers have a limited ability to see and subtly shape future events through their dreams.  During each extended rest, they are able to visualize themselves performing one or more amazing combat exploits that will inevitably come to pass within the next day. These are no more than vague glimpses and are impossible to remember clearly upon waking, but the character will know instantly whenever the right moment to pull off an exploit arrives.​Now some questions for each side...
> 
> For those who have issues with dissociated mechanics - do you agree that a description like this would help make the daily power mechanic easier to accept without changing it mechanically?




Definitely. It still becomes a problem for players who want to play a mundanely-based character, no matter how fantastic he might be. Those character concepts seem to suffer when every martial character is a type of prophet.

I imagine you'll get some people on the other side against this as well, but we'll see. I might even be alone on this.

As always, play what you like


----------



## innerdude

pemerton said:


> It would be easier to talk together about playing RPGs if you didn't start from the assumption that everyone likes and dislikes the same things as you.




*mumble mumble* something about the doctor taking his own medicine  *mumble mumble*

I'm not particularly worried about whether someone likes or dislikes the same things I do. But that doesn't mean I have to apologize for liking the things I do, nor exploring the possible meanings of why I do or don't like them, as it pertains to my RPG hobby. 

It's clear that you and your group have no problem with mechanical dissociation (assuming you believe it's a real phenomenon to begin with), and are willing to accept, ignore, or re-appropriate their effects to achieve your groups' aims. No harm, no foul. 

I'm just not particularly interested in playing RPGs with that mindset, and have been exploring the reasoning and possibilities for that sensibility. 

I completely agree with Gantros in his post that there's 



> a pretty clear divide between the people here who "grok" the idea of  dissociated mechanics and take issue with them, and those that have a "blind spot" for them (either not understanding the distinction, or not  caring about it).




Obviously you fall in the latter category, as is your right and prerogative. Play with your group as you see fit.


----------



## Hussar

Innerdude said:
			
		

> I'm sure any of us could come up with an explanation for how this might actually work "in the game world," given the time and inclination, but really, why would we want to, and more to the point, why should the game rules FORCE US TO DO SO to maintain an "in the moment" semblance of rationality?




Well, that's the crux of the issue isn't it?  Why would we want to?

Well, to give a number of reasons:


To allow players greater control over the action in the game.
To lessen the impact random events have in the game
To create games which fit specific thematic concepts rather than having loose, organic mechanics where we might get something we like, if we're lucky.
To recognize precisely what Wrechan said earlier about a character only existing for a finite time and having something that only comes up 1 time in 1000 means it might as well not exist at all.

There are some reasons that jumped up out of my head without really trying.


----------



## Hussar

JamesonCourage said:


> /snip
> 
> Definitely. It still becomes a problem for players who want to play a mundanely-based character, no matter how fantastic he might be. Those character concepts seem to suffer when every martial character is a type of prophet.
> 
> I imagine you'll get some people on the other side against this as well, but we'll see. I might even be alone on this.
> 
> As always, play what you like




No, they really, really don't.  

I mean, LOOK at the powers for each level of a martial character - we'll say fighter or rogue.  At every single level, there is at least one power that is not disassociated.  Or at least, no more disassociated from the fiction than, say, critical hits or Action Points.

And, as an added bonus, because the math for 4e actually works reasonably well, there's no penalty for taking Power X over Power Y.  They're all pretty close, although they do different things.

If you want a character or characters in 4e where the in-game reality is closely tied to the effects that character can generate, simply pick the right powers.

Is Tide of Iron disassociated?  Is Cleave?  Pretty much every level of power for fighters has the choice of "Hit something really hard now."  That satisfies your definition JamesonCourage, of something that can be taught and learned.  And it's not any more disassociated than critical hits.

The idea that the mechanics are forcing players to take these options is not true.  The OPTION is there, of course.  But, the option of playing a traditional character is there as well.


----------



## innerdude

Gantros said:


> For those who have issues with dissociated mechanics - do you agree that a description like this would help make the daily power mechanic easier to accept without changing it mechanically?  It attempts to associate the ability to use multiple challenging yet non-magical maneuvers once each per day with something the character could perceive directly (i.e. dreams), without relying on notions like "reserves of energy" that overlap with other mechanics like HP or Con.




For a game/setting that wasn't particularly tied to D&D, I'd have no problem with it. In some ways, it would even be an interesting characterization concept for the martial characters ("Why do we keep having these dreams? Is it destiny?"). 

For D&D, it falls just a bit too far outside the right "feel" and common tropes, at least in my opinion. 

To me, simply changing all dailies to encounter powers, then creating a "pool" from which the player can choose their encounter powers, makes a whole lot more sense for "burning through reserves of engergy." You can do so many "cool tricks" per encounter, then you're forced to go "conservative" to not exhaust yourself fully. Having never looked at the rules I don't know if it's true, but it's my understanding that this is one of the basic "tacks" that Essentials tried to take. 

Of course, even then there's still too many dissociations directly in the power descriptions and effects to make 4e wholly palatable.


----------



## innerdude

Hussar said:


> Well, that's the crux of the issue isn't it?  Why would we want to?
> 
> Well, to give a number of reasons:
> 
> 
> To allow players greater control over the action in the game.
> To lessen the impact random events have in the game
> To create games which fit specific thematic concepts rather than having loose, organic mechanics where we might get something we like, if we're lucky.
> To recognize precisely what Wrechan said earlier about a character only existing for a finite time and having something that only comes up 1 time in 1000 means it might as well not exist at all.
> 
> There are some reasons that jumped up out of my head without really trying.




All reasonable answers if you're willing to accept the trade-offs such an approach engenders--less "immersiveness," more work for the players and GM to maintain consistency, and the loss of fidelity to antecedent/consequence rationality. 

The trade-offs simply don't justify the use of dissociative mechanics, IMHO.


----------



## Hussar

innerdude said:


> All reasonable answers if you're willing to accept the trade-offs such an approach engenders--less "immersiveness," more work for the players and GM to maintain consistency, and the loss of fidelity to antecedent/consequence rationality.
> 
> The trade-offs simply don't justify the use of dissociative mechanics, IMHO.




I'm going to assume that you mean, "less immersiveness" for you.

Unless you're going to argue that granting limited editorial control to players objectively destroys immersion, in which case I'm going to strongly disagree with you.  For one, that means no DM can ever be immersed.  For two, there are far, far too many games out there that grant a great deal of player editorial control that are considered pretty darn immersive.

As far as consistency goes, again, I disagree.  Going back to the football example, having one bad call per game is completely consistent with expectations of a football game.  Having one FANTASTIC catch is consistent with a football game.  Granting the ability to choose when that happens to the players instead of the dice does not require any loss of consistency.  

As far as cause and effect goes, I really don't get this one.  What difference does it make if the player declares that the mooks rush him and he bulls his way through (Come and Get It) or the DM declares the mooks rush him and he bulls his way through?  Cause and effect are both exactly the same.  The mooks rushed in and got creamed.  Perfectly in keeping with genre expectations.

I can totally understand if this bugs *you*.  That's perfectly fine.  Different strokes and all that.  But, that doesn't make the mechanics bad, just different.  I think it was you that said upthread that the same narrative effects can be gained from different means.

If the end result is the same, what difference does it really make, other than personal preference?


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> No, they really, really don't.




I can only guess at what "they" you're referring to. If you're replying to my statement of "Those character concepts seem to suffer when every martial character is a type of prophet" then I'm curious how characters than can see their own future isn't going to be a problem who wants their character rooted in the mundane.

Maybe you've thought of something I haven't.



> I mean, LOOK at the powers for each level of a martial character - we'll say fighter or rogue.  At every single level, there is at least one power that is not disassociated.




Cool. Of course, I didn't say that wasn't the case, so I'm not sure why you're trying to argue with me on it. I said that if dailies were refluffed to be premonitions, you're moving out of the realm of mundane for some players, and that fluff proves to be a problem.

Again, I feel like people keep attaching things to me that I haven't said, and then attacking it.



> Or at least, no more disassociated from the fiction than, say, critical hits or Action Points.




I'd say critical hits are abstract (not dissociated), and that Action Points are usually dissociated (but may not be). There's a big difference between the concepts of abstract and dissociated.



> And, as an added bonus, because the math for 4e actually works reasonably well, there's no penalty for taking Power X over Power Y.  They're all pretty close, although they do different things.




Cool? I'm not sure if you think you're refuting me on something I've said.



> If you want a character or characters in 4e where the in-game reality is closely tied to the effects that character can generate, simply pick the right powers.




Awesome? Again, not sure what you think you're refuting. If, however, the fluff of dailies was "premonitions while sleeping" than it becomes impossible to  "pick the right powers" if you wish to remain solidly mundane. Because now, no matter what daily you choose, no matter how mundane the move is, you're only utilizing it because you can see the future (decidedly not mundane).



> Is Tide of Iron disassociated?




No idea what that is.



> Is Cleave?




It definitely can be. I'd call it abstract, though.



> Pretty much every level of power for fighters has the choice of "Hit something really hard now."




Alrighty then.



> That satisfies your definition JamesonCourage, of something that can be taught and learned.




You'll have to enlighten me more on how my thinking works on this.



> And it's not any more disassociated than critical hits.




Those are abstract, as far as I can tell, not dissociated. If the fighter is using narrative control, as pemerton or others imply, than they are using dissociated mechanics. If they are using an ability which has reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociated.

It's like you think I called all 4e powers dissociated. I said that all dailies would be associated with the given fluff (the opposite of that), though it would cause problems for players who have a mundane character concept in mind (as all martial characters can now see the future). This doesn't make their combat moves any more dissociated. 



> The idea that the mechanics are forcing players to take these options is not true.




Good thing I only ever implied it was true was when I was responding to someone who said "what if we changed all dailies to this fluff?" then, huh?



> The OPTION is there, of course.




Not according to the context of the quote of mine you're replying to.



> But, the option of playing a traditional character is there as well.




Again, not according to the context of the quote of mine you're replying to.

As always, play what you like


----------



## innerdude

Hussar said:


> If the end result is the same, what difference does it really make, other than personal preference?




To some degree, none at all. I was pretty up front in the first post that it was an absolute certainty that many of us wouldn't agree on the range or degree of effects dissociated mechanics have on gameplay--and that many would not find them onerous, and some even consider them a feature, not a bug. 

To another degree, however, it simply is what it is--if one mechanic is dissociated, and another is not, even if they arrive at the same end result, it's the point of _consistency_ that matters to me. Dissociation = inconsistent with the concept of rationality that I believe to be central to the core of RPGs. 

I personally happen to agree with Justin Alexander, and find his view on what constitutes "fun roleplaying" mirrors my own. But my original point was that the theory of dissociation is interesting because in my mind, it lays bare that RPGs by nature must, on some level, be assumed to be both "simulative," and rational. I wasn't all that interested in trying to analyze their application to any one rule set.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> I'm assuming that someone can have fencing skill without the daily. Thus my statement that they're different.



The rogue is the one with fencing skill. And has no daily.

The player may or may not have fencing skill (Crazy Jerome apparently has some; I have none) but does have the daily.

So I find your assumption a little hard to parse.

If you mean that another player might have a PC who has fencing skill, although that player's PC build does not include Trick Shot or any other salient daily power (perhaps, eg, the PC in question is an Essentials Thief), then yes, that is true. But why does what is on player B's character sheet "dissociate" player A from his or her PC?



JamesonCourage said:


> If the fighter is using narrative control, as pemerton or others imply, than they are using dissociated mechanics. If they are using an ability which has reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociated.



This gets my position wrong. In my view, the PC - who is a mere element of the overall fiction - does not use narrative control. The _player _uses narrative control. The ability that the PC uses - the success of that use being determined, in part, by the player's exercise of narrative control - may well have reasoning that can be learned, explored or observed in-game.

(Not always. Sometimes when the player of the dwarf fighter in my game uses Come and Get It, this corresonds to skillful polearm techniques that manipulate the enemy on the battlefield. This is a skill that can be learned, explored or observed in game. But sometimes when Come and Get It is used, this corresponds to "coincidence" or "good luck" as the enemies rush in to get the dwarf, who then lays them all low with his halberd. That sort of "coincidence" or "good luck" cannot be learned, explored or observed in game. It is more like the sort of thing that some Fate Point mechanics - such as those in OGL Conan - permit.)



JamesonCourage said:


> If they measured how often the rogue could produce the result of Trick Strike, it'd be once per day. If they cannot measure that, then yes, it's narrative control (a dissociated mechanic).



I don't quite follow this, either. Let's put to one side wrecan's very salient points about the relationship between the combat mechanics, combat powers, and the passage of time and events in the gameworld. Clearly the fictional characters in the gameworld can notice how often the rogue produces the result of Trick Strike (ie how often the rogue fences really well, in such a fashion as to force his/her opponent to move across the battlefield at the rogue's whim).

Whether such a result occurs once per day, or more often, or less often, depends on some mixture of (i) the GM's encounter design, (ii) the way the players' engage the GM's encounters, (iii) what other powers and abilities the rogue has, etc.

Suppose, for example, the party includes a leader who has a power that lets his/her allies slide their enemies when they hit them. How often the rogue produces the result of Trick Strike will depend, at least in part, on how that leader power is used.

Or suppose the rogue, as well as Trick Strike, has the Low Slash and/or Positioning Strike encounter powers - which, on a hit, allow sliding the target. Then it is quite likely that the rogue will produce the result of Trick Strike multiple times per day. (This would be a rogue build that, structurally, resembles the build of the dwarf fighter PC in my game, which I described upthread.)


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> I'm not particularly worried about whether someone likes or dislikes the same things I do. But that doesn't mean I have to apologize for liking the things I do



No one has asked you to. I've just asked you to refrain from telling me, whether directly or by implication, that my roleplaying is inadequate, or on a shallower level, when compared to yours.



innerdude said:


> nor exploring the possible meanings of why I do or don't like them, as it pertains to my RPG hobby.



But if your explanation carries as an implication that others aren't playing properly, or adequately, or seriously, I don't think you can complain if they contest an explanation that carries this untoward implication.



innerdude said:


> It's clear that you and your group have no problem with mechanical dissociation (assuming you believe it's a real phenomenon to begin with), and are willing to accept, ignore, or re-appropriate their effects to achieve your groups' aims. No harm, no foul.



I've given some actual play examples upthread - the detailed anecdote upthread about the paladin turned to a frog, and the more general sketch I've given upthread of the dwarven halbedeer. Where do you think the "dissociation" is occurring in these examples? Where is the player being "dissociated" from the playing of the PC?



innerdude said:


> I'm just not particularly interested in playing RPGs with that mindset, and have been exploring the reasoning and possibilities for that sensibility.



As is your prerogative. But your reasons generate implications. Which I reject. Hence I doubt your reasons. In particular, and as chaochou and Crazy Jerome suggested way upthread, I think that you are too readily assuming that the sort of experience or "mindset" that _you_ have when dealing with 4e's mechanics are the same ones that I, or others who enjoy 4e, have.

My own view is that this assumption is false. That your experiences are different from the ones that I and my players have. Because you have said that such mechanics force you out of character, force you to "dissociate". Whereas I have actual play experiences - some of which I've recounted upthread - in which the use of metagame mechanics by a player to exercise narrative control _reinforces_ that player's experience of, and engagement with, their PC. That is to say, at my table, the very mechanics that you label "dissociated" _did not cause any dissociation_!



innerdude said:


> All reasonable answers if you're willing to accept the trade-offs such an approach engenders--less "immersiveness," more work for the players and GM to maintain consistency, and the loss of fidelity to antecedent/consequence rationality.



Again, you appear to be positing _your_ experiences as universal.

No more work is required at my table to maintain the consistency of my 4e game, than of my Rolemaster game. As I posted upthread in response to Yesway Jose, you seem to be measuring consistency mostly (i) by reference to law-of-nature causation, and how many arrows are remaining in a PC's quiver, under (ii) an assumption that it is the job of the action resolution mechanics to model these things.

The sort of consistency that matters to my game is consistency at the level of emotion, value, relationships - if someone measurement of the money remaining in their PC's pouch goes wrong, we'll just go back and fix it - this is not a big deal. If yesterday the NPC mage worshipped Vecna, and today he worships Ioun, _that_ would matter.

And the action resolution mechanics don't have to _model_ these things - rather, they should allow this sort of consistency to _emerge_ in play.

By the standards of consistency that I care about, my story upthread about my paladin player narrating the ending of an NPC's spell on his PC as the Raven Queen restoring him from frog form _enhances_ consistency, because it keeps the deep emotional, spiritual and magical relationship between that PC and his god at the forefront of play. It _increases_ the consistency of the fiction that recovering from an adverse magical effect, in the case of a character who is so utterly devoted to his god, should be the result of her divine handiwork.

If the NPC had turned (let's say) the chaos sorcerer into a toad as well, then when that PC turned back I'm sure something else could be said by way of explanation. And as I said way upthread, what you are calling _work_ in relation to narrating these events, I call _playing the game_. For me, a principal _point_ of the game is to think about, understand and participate in the creation of the story.



innerdude said:


> Dissociation = inconsistent with the concept of rationality that I believe to be central to the core of RPGs.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But my original point was that the theory of dissociation is interesting because in my mind, it lays bare that RPGs by nature must, on some level, be assumed to be both "simulative," and rational.



Let's leave aside the implication that this generates that 4e play is in some sense non-rational or irrational. And the fact that you seem to be identifying your personal preference as "central to the core of RPGs".

There is nothing irrational about a fanatsy world in which a god liberates her paladin from a Baleful Polymorph. No "antecedent/consequence" rationality has been violated in this occuring in the fiction. As best as I can work out, your objection seems to be that the mechanics that produced this outcome don't do it _of themselves_, without the need for narrative or interpretive intervention by the participants in the game. (That sort of intervention is why we might call the mechanics "metagame" ones or "narrative control" ones.)

Which is to say, your objection is that the mechanics are not a certain sort of simulationist mechanics. Which then seems to me to suggest that your conception of the "core of RPGs" is that they are about participating in a model. And that the rationality you are interested in would be - at least ideally - "built into" the workings of the model.

No doubt that's one viable sort of RPG. I personally don't feel that D&D is this sort of RPG (as I've explained upthread, I simply can't see how hit points can be reconciled with non-magical human biology under a simulationist approach), but Classic Traveller, Runequest, and (at least played in a certain fashion) Rolemaster all fit the bill. But those are not the only games in town.



Hussar said:


> there are far, far too many games out there that grant a great deal of player editorial control that are considered pretty darn immersive.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Granting the ability to choose when that happens to the players instead of the dice does not require any loss of consistency.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What difference does it make if the player declares that the mooks rush him and he bulls his way through (Come and Get It) or the DM declares the mooks rush him and he bulls his way through?  Cause and effect are both exactly the same.  The mooks rushed in and got creamed.  Perfectly in keeping with genre expectations.



Agreed on all points. That's why the only way I can make sense of "consitency", "rationality" etc, is under a simulationist reading ie the mechanics are the model that guarantees this, and playing is participating in the working of the model.

A quote from Ron Edwards' essay on simulationism seems to capture this approach to play pretty well:

*Internal Cause is King:* Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, _cause_ is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. The way these elements tie together, as well as how they're Colored, are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to _emerge_ without extra attention. . .  the relationship is supposed to turn out a certain way or set of ways, since what goes on "ought" to go on, based on internal logic instead of intrusive agenda. . . Clearly, System is a major design element here, as the causal anchor among the other elements.​


Gantros said:


> I'd like to try nudging this discussion in a different, hopefully more productive direction.  There seems to be a pretty clear divide between the people here who grok the idea of dissociated mechanics and take issue with them, and those that have a "blind spot" for them (either not understanding the distinction, or not caring about it).



I know this post is meant to be conciliatory rather than provocative, but in dividing the thread into two it seems to leave out the bit that I belong to - namely, those who understand what metagame mechanics are, what Actor and Author stance are, etc, who understand why some people don't like playing with them, but don't object to the existence of a game (namely, 4e) that has them.



Gantros said:


> One implication of this blind spot idea is that it opens up the possibility of creating mechanics and descriptions that could satisfy both types of player.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For those who don't believe in or care about dissociated mechanics - would this alternative description unduly limit your narrative opportunities or have any other negative impact on your enjoyment of the game?



Your diagnosis of a blind spot is in my case, and I think also in the cases of Hussar, chaochou, wrecan, Third Wizard, and Crazy Jerome as well, a _mis_diagnosis.

That is to say, we _want_ a game with metagame mechanics. A game in which players are able to exert narrative control by adopting Author stance or, more often in the case of 4e, Director Stance (as in the case of the player of the paladin in my actual play example above, or of the fighter using Come and Get It). (It may not be the _only_ sort of game we want. But it is _a_ game that we want.)

So your attempt to rewrite 4e martial powers as simulationist prophetic powers changes the game in a way that I don't want (on this point, the others I've mentioned can of course speak to their own preferences).

Not that I would have any objection to introducing prophetic powers into the game. And I wouldn't even object if the player of a martial PC flavoured his/her powers as prophetic ones, although I would probably prefer some skill training in Religion or Arcana, and/or multi-class into an appropriate class, to help support the flavouring. (Unlike some 4e players, I like to stick to the published flavour for classes (as opposed to powers) fairly closely rather than do a lot of re-flavouring, because of the way the class flavour feeds into my use of the generic 4e setting to run my game. This is a mere preference, but important to my current game.)



Gantros said:


> And if so, would you have any issues with simply ignoring it or re-skinning it to better fit the specifics of your campaign?



Everything else being equal, I prefer to play the game as it is written. Apart from a certain irrational aesthetic preference in doing so, it lightens the cognitive load.

In the case of martial encounter and daily powers I particular want them to stay as they are, because they are Exhibit A in the clear commitment of the 4e rules (and, by implication, the 4e designers) to producing a good, coherent yet mainstream fantasy RPG that is easy, even trivial, to drift to narrativist play. Every move that they make away from that (eg some featuers of Essentials, the errata to Come and Get It) is reducing the likelihood of material being published that will support the game I want to run.

If 4e was just 3E cleaned up a bit, I wouldn't be playing it. I'd probably be trying to get HARP to work for my group instead, or perhaps try to switch them to Burning Wheel.

None of the above is any reason that anyone else should take any notice of (unless WotC think I'm an especially valuable customer, or a representative one). I say it really just to elaborate the way in which I think your "blind spot" diagnosis is a misdiagnosis. It is _because_ of its so-called "dissociated" mechanics that I play 4e. (And, as I said above, those mechanics generally do not cause dissociation at my table.)



Hussar said:


> Well, that's the crux of the issue isn't it?  Why would we want to?
> 
> <snip reasons>
> 
> There are some reasons that jumped up out of my head without really trying.



Can't XP you again yet, but that's a good list of reasons. One that I would add - which overlaps with your first three reasons, but that I want to pull out on his own because to me it is very important - is to allow the player to play his/her PC _as she envisages it_. To player her PC as an exemplar.



innerdude said:


> I completely agree with Gantros in his post
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Obviously you fall in the latter category



No. As I have explained above, I am not blind to metagame mechanics or the vagaries of stance. I can see them. And I like them.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> The rogue is the one with fencing skill. And has no daily.




I disagree. I'll note why momentarily.



> The player may or may not have fencing skill (Crazy Jerome apparently has some; I have none) but does have the daily.




If the player swaps characters, does he keep the daily? If another player were to step in and run the character for a session, would that character still have the daily, or would they no longer have access to it since the regular player isn't there?

Since the daily is attached to whoever is running the character, than I attribute the daily to the character. The mechanic is meta in usage, yes, so it is a player resource, not a character resource, but it most definitely is attached to the character. To me, this makes it clear the the rogue indeed have the daily, even if it is a meta mechanic.



> So I find your assumption a little hard to parse.




Hopefully that clears up my thinking on it.



> If you mean that another player might have a PC who has fencing skill, although that player's PC build does not include Trick Shot or any other salient daily power (perhaps, eg, the PC in question is an Essentials Thief), then yes, that is true. But why does what is on player B's character sheet "dissociate" player A from his or her PC?




I don't think I said that was the case. What I said was that fencing skill can be measured without the daily being factored in.



> This gets my position wrong.




Regardless of this discussion, I do sincerely apologize if I misrepresented your position. It was never my intention to do so.



> In my view, the PC - who is a mere element of the overall fiction - does not use narrative control.




I'd say that the character uses it, though he does not consciously activate it.



> The _player _uses narrative control.




I agree that the player activates the power from a meta standpoint, and that the character never thinks to activate it (it's a meta device).



> The ability that the PC uses - the success of that use being determined, in part, by the player's exercise of narrative control - may well have reasoning that can be learned, explored or observed in-game.




Can the reasoning that he can only "use" it once per day be learned, explored, or observed? If that's the case, it's not dissociated. If it isn't the case, than it is. I'm not judging how fun it is either way, I'm just setting up definitions.



> (Not always. Sometimes when the player of the dwarf fighter in my game uses Come and Get It, this corresonds to skillful polearm techniques that manipulate the enemy on the battlefield. This is a skill that can be learned, explored or observed in game. But sometimes when Come and Get It is used, this corresponds to "coincidence" or "good luck" as the enemies rush in to get the dwarf, who then lays them all low with his halberd. That sort of "coincidence" or "good luck" cannot be learned, explored or observed in game. It is more like the sort of thing that some Fate Point mechanics - such as those in OGL Conan - permit.)




Which would make it dissociated. Again, it's not necessarily bad. If it doesn't draw you out of your role (a subjective judgment), I'd say it's a metagame mechanic, not dissociated. If it does draw you out of your role (and by that I mean immersion, not "performing tankly duties"), it's dissociated.

Depending on who's playing, it can be either one.



> I don't quite follow this, either. Let's put to one side wrecan's very salient points about the relationship between the combat mechanics, combat powers, and the passage of time and events in the gameworld. Clearly the fictional characters in the gameworld can notice how often the rogue produces the result of Trick Strike (ie how often the rogue fences really well, in such a fashion as to force his/her opponent to move across the battlefield at the rogue's whim).
> 
> Whether such a result occurs once per day, or more often, or less often, depends on some mixture of (i) the GM's encounter design, (ii) the way the players' engage the GM's encounters, (iii) what other powers and abilities the rogue has, etc.
> 
> Suppose, for example, the party includes a leader who has a power that lets his/her allies slide their enemies when they hit them. How often the rogue produces the result of Trick Strike will depend, at least in part, on how that leader power is used.




I think that the power needs to effectively be tested in a vacuum. That is, can characters learn, explore, or observe that the rogue can only use that power once per day if that particular skill of the leader is not present? Can the rogue do the ability more than once while he's alone in combat? If not, why not?

It can be associated, as I've stated several times. If, however, it's narrative control, it's dissociated.



> Or suppose the rogue, as well as Trick Strike, has the Low Slash and/or Positioning Strike encounter powers - which, on a hit, allow sliding the target. Then it is quite likely that the rogue will produce the result of Trick Strike multiple times per day. (This would be a rogue build that, structurally, resembles the build of the dwarf fighter PC in my game, which I described upthread.)




Is there a limit on the number of times per encounter that the rogue can perform such a maneuver? Can the reasoning of such a limit be learned, explored, or observed in-game? If so, it's not dissociated. If not, it is dissociated.

As always, play what you like


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> I disagree.



I'm having trouble seeing where you come from.

That is, I can read the words and parse the grammar, but I don't understand what sort of play experience you have in mind.



JamesonCourage said:


> If the player swaps characters, does he keep the daily?



Of course not. If the player starts being the GM instead, s/he doesn't keep the daily either. This doesn't show that it is the character who uses the daily, though. It just shows that it is _the player of that character_ who uses the daily. The authority to use any given power attaches to the particular role a given participant occupies - GM, player of character X, player of character Y, etc.



JamesonCourage said:


> Since the daily is attached to whoever is running the character, than I attribute the daily to the character.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it is a player resource, not a character resource, but it most definitely is attached to the character.



As you yourself state, the daily attaches to whoever is running the character. That is not the character. It is a real, actually existing participant in the game. The player, for whom the daily power is a resource.

Furthermore, this understanding of the power produces a coherent conception of the fiction, whereas your alternative doesn't. Your alternative produces the bizarre result that a being is exercising meta- or narrative control over his/her own life - which is fine for the Order of the Stick or, sometimes, The Simpsons, but isn't how I play my RPGs. The fact that it produces coherence seems to me a strong reason in favour of my understanding.

It's similar to a GM's power to roll for wandering monsters, or decide whether or not a certain room in the dungeon has caved in after a heavy earthquake. These are powers that the GM - a real person - enjoys in virtue of occupying a certain role as participant in the game, analogous to the role of being player of character ABC.



JamesonCourage said:


> I'd say that the character uses it, though he does not consciously activate it.



I don't even understand what this means. What does it mean for a PC - who exists, as a character, only in the fiction - to _use_ an ability to manipulate or author that fiction?



JamesonCourage said:


> I agree that the player activates the power from a meta standpoint, and that the character never thinks to activate it (it's a meta device).



Well, I agree with this. But given that "activate" and "use" are synonyms in this context - as far as I can tell - I don't see how it can be the case _both_ that the player activates it, but the PC uses it.



JamesonCourage said:


> Can the reasoning that he can only "use" it once per day be learned, explored, or observed?



And this is the crux - it is, as you say, the _player_ who can activate the power once per (fictional) day. So the notion of "using" or "activating" the power has no meaning within the fiction. So within the fiction there is nothing to be learned, explored or observed other than that the rogue, at least on occasion, pulls off some pretty fancy moves.



JamesonCourage said:


> I think that the power needs to effectively be tested in a vacuum. That is, can characters learn, explore, or observe that the rogue can only use that power once per day if that particular skill of the leader is not present? Can the rogue do the ability more than once while he's alone in combat? If not, why not?



I don't know whaqt you mean by "testing a power in a vacuum". Given that you yourself have said that there is no such thing as the rogue consciously using the power (and by that I assume you don't mean the rogue uses it subconsciously); and given that the only coherent account of usage consistent with this seems to me to be that it is the player uses the power; I don't know what "testing" would consist in, let alone "testing in a vacuum.

I mean, how do the inhabitants of the fictional world even _frame_ the question in terms of "Did the footwork result from use of Trick Strike, or from use of Positioning Strike"? Let alone answer it.


----------



## Neonchameleon

JamesonCourage said:


> I can only guess at what "they" you're referring to. If you're replying to my statement of "Those character concepts seem to suffer when every martial character is a type of prophet" then I'm curious how characters than can see their own future isn't going to be a problem who wants their character rooted in the mundane.




Because not all dailies are anything that are remotely a problem.  Brute Strike (to pick one obvious daily) just does [3W] damage.  It's the fighter pulling out every erg of power he has.  It just does damage.  Is this a problem - that he can sometimes really pull out all the stops?  Even if he doesn't feel quite right afterwards.  And what's wrong with a simple answer of "I was in the zone, man".

And if it isn't _why are you taking powers you have a problem with?_  A 4e character gets a maximum of _four_ daily powers.   You can say that you having Trick Strike would break your immersion.  So why are you taking it?  Or are you saying that you feel the need to police _everyone's_ characters at the table?



JamesonCourage said:


> If the player swaps characters, does he keep the daily?




Of course not.  *Not all fencers fence the same way.*  This is true even in the real world.  Now do all fencers trained by that one fencing master who passed on his tricks have that daily?  Don't know.



> I don't think I said that was the case. What I said was that fencing skill can be measured without the daily being factored in.




Fencing is a competative activity.  Every trick is part of the skill.



> No idea what [Tide of Iron] is.




You mean other than one of the most basic and commonly used Fighter At Wills?  Must be using a shield and weapon - you attack with the weapon and if you hit, you not only do damage you push the enemy back a square and move into their space.



pemerton said:


> I mean, how do the inhabitants of the fictional world even _frame_ the question in terms of "Did the footwork result from use of Trick Strike, or from use of Positioning Strike"? Let alone answer it.




Exactly.  Powers are an abstraction of what is done by the characters.  And six seconds is more time than you need to swing your sword and kill someone.  D&D is not, and has never been GURPS.  Positioning strike isn't one cut, it's a sequence of cuts accompanied by fancy footwork just bundled into one grouping in the same way that any melee attack roll was in previous editions.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> Happily for me, I also play with good players.



I don't doubt it.


> Why would a player, who - as I made clear in my first post on the topic - himself decided to treat the duration of the effect as a metagame mechanic to which he could attach his preferred narrative - then decide to have his PC undertake an investigation that would wreck the very narrative that he has decided to create?
> 
> Or, conversely, if the player decides that his PC is undergoing a crisis of faith, and therefore _does_ decide to undertake the investigation that would show that the Raven Queen didn't save him at all, what would be the problem? And who are you saying would stop him? Where are the mechanics that would get in the way of the player pursuing this story about his PC?



Well, you have quoted my direct response to a comment about 3E characters throwing themselves off cliffs and you are somehow making that be about events in your 4E game.

As I have said, if you take every event in 4E and look at in in isolation, you can always come up with a perfectly valid explanation.    But if you look at the patterns that surface due to the mechanics, then the validity falls away.  And because we are playing a game and know the mechanics are there, that pattern surfaces on the very first use.

You are switching out different ideas for the point I am making.  You can "pursue" any story you want.  I don't dispute that.  But the events that happen along that path will be informed by the mechanics, rather than the mechanics being informed by the story.  Yes, you can come up with virtually limitless ways to rationalize why the narrative works out in a way that matches the powers system.  But the instant you are expected to do that, THERE is the problem.

Several times over the past months I have expressed this issue and several times you have responded with examples of how it is easy.  I agree.  It is easy.  Easy or hard is not the question.  You have not resolved my issue.  And I really don't think you can.  Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is as fundamental to 4E as putting shapes in squares is to tic tac toe.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Why would a player, who - as I made clear in my first post on the topic - himself decided to treat the duration of the effect as a metagame mechanic to which he could attach his preferred narrative - then decide to have his PC undertake an investigation that would wreck the very narrative that he has decided to create?



I don't want to say, to take responsibility for declaring that narrative, but it is one possible way to take ownership of and live up to the promise hinted at by this narrative.



> Or, conversely, if the player decides that his PC is undergoing a crisis of faith, and therefore _does_ decide to undertake the investigation that would show that the Raven Queen didn't save him at all, what would be the problem?



No problem, I love it. I don't want to say, to take responsibility for declaring that narrative, but it is another possible way to take ownership of and live up to the promise hinted at by this narrative.

Did your player explore the 'Raven Queen is my guide and savior' philosophy throughout the campaign? If yes, then I was wrong to assume that your anecdote was a fleeting thing of momentary consequence.

EDIT: 'Explore' as in roleplay semi-consistently, etc. not 'explore' as in intellectual investigation of its merit as a theory.



> All this tells me is what I already knew - namely, that some players don't like various sort of metagame mechanics, don't like stances other than Actor stance, etc.
> 
> Maybe those players shouldn't play 4e.
> 
> I don't want to tell stories about superheroes, after all. That's why I don't play Champions or Mutants & Masterminds.



I don't want to conflate genre preferences with mechanical preferences.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> Does "flaw" here actually mean _flaw_, or does it mean "feature disliked by Bryon D"?
> Does "arbitrarily" here mean _without reason_, or "not for a reason that speaks to or engages BryonD"?



It means without reason that needs to be applied to the plot.

But it is circular logic to say that when I don't like A because of B that B exists because I don't like A.



> It's clear that you don't like 4e. It's clear that this is, at least in part, because of certain mechanics, the existence of which is uncontentious.
> 
> It's clear that one reason you don't like those mechanics is because, if you were to play losing them, you would not experience a certain feeling.
> 
> You haven't given me any reason to think either (i) that all RPGers should want to experience that feeling, nor (ii) that experiencing that feeling is at the heart of RPGing, nor even (iii) that others, when using the mechanics in question, won't experience the feeling that you can't.



First, Huh?
How many times have I pointed out that 4E does a great job of doing what it intends to do and clearly a lot of people like it.

Now, if we are going to be confrontational about it, go look at the "one picture" thread.  You'll notice a pattern that a lot (not "all", but a notable portion) of anti-3E posts do not portray anything to do with the narrative merits of the game but simply portray it as really hard or complex or daunting.  I readily stipulate that this has NOTHING to do with you personally.  But if you want to compare fan bases as a whole, then 4E would take a serious hit if it lost the "save me from the hard" portion.  

Which is fine.  An easy relaxing fun experience is commendable.  But "all RPGers" doesn't offer a lot of support to your claim.



> I'm not sure whether pointing these things out is combative or not, because - as the questions at the start of this post indicate - I'm uncertain as to what you intend by your key evaluative statements, and in particular how far they are meant to go beyond describing your own personal preferences and experiences. If they aren't meant to go beyond that, then presumably you agree with me about (iii), and perhaps also (i) and (ii).



It isn't that I "can't", it is that the mechanics "can't".  As I said, no novelist anywhere would preconceive that a character has a set of capabilities that work once a day and never more regardless of circumstances, much less have all major characters, regardless of their individual nature, have this same encounter/daily metric on their behavior.  So, if you want to produce a game experience that exactly feels like being inside a natural story then the encounter/daily system is "wrong".  Explaining to me how you can take individual events out of context and justify them is both completely accepted and also fully futile in changing the point.  

Now, on your points, I completely agree with (i), I think that is clear.  I certainly agree that (ii) in that it is not at all required, just as a random example with no implications intended, a one evening kick in the door "beer and pretzels" style game can be huge fun and my point is pretty well irrelevant to that.

On (iii), in the strictest terms I don't agree with it.  They may play 4E and feel exactly like they are in a novel.  I accept that.  But, if they are then they are either ignoring or unaware of the differences.  And since they are having fun that is all that matters.  But they are not achieving the same feeling I am talking about.  There is a different standard for that.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Gantros said:


> Characters with martial powers have a limited ability to see and subtly shape future events through their dreams. During each extended rest, they are able to visualize themselves performing one or more amazing combat exploits that will inevitably come to pass within the next day. These are no more than vague glimpses and are impossible to remember clearly upon waking, but the character will know instantly whenever the right moment to pull off an exploit arrives.



I respect the sentiment very much, thank you. I thought about this before. I don't know if association and immersion is resolved for me with a luck/destiny/fate Vancian system. As a fictional construct, can it be explored? Can the fighter reach Epic levels and find out where the dreams were coming from? It's a bit different than the Vancian spell system.

IMO I might be OK with a luck/destiny/fate Vancian system in a single campaign, although I think there's a danger the narrative can veer towards touching if not quite breaking the Fourth Wall.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Yes, absolutely. I don't understand why not.



You don't understand why someone under the pressure of combat can't do things they'd be able to do when the lives of they or their allies are not being actively threatened?  I guess then, that we have to agree to disagree.  I don't understand how anybody could not be capable of understanding this.



> You're denying the right of the DMs and players to establish a narrative or story that is different from the mechanics, even though the mechanics themselves are not cognizant of the disconnect.



The DM and players can always ignore the rules.  I have no idea what your point is on this score. 



> The supposed freedom of Page 42 for roleplaying and immersion remains beholden to the unyielding combat rules.



What?  If the DM wants to use page 42 to let you improvise an action in combat that mimics the events that your character can produce out of combat, he certainly can.  I'd like page 42 to more robustly explain how to improvise actions that impose conditions.  In fact, there's even a recent *online article on the Wizards' website* that offers advice on that.  I wonder who wrote that... oh yes, I did.

Is that what you wanted?  A way to improvise non damaging effects in combat so your hypnotist can try to dominate people in combat as an at-will power?

At this point, your problem isn't disassociation, but that you can come up with character concepts that don't have sufficient support to meet your needs.  You're trying to couch this problem in the nomenclature we've been using to discuss disassociation, but the problem isn't disassociation.  



innerdude said:


> I'm sure any of us could come up with an explanation for how this might  actually work "in the game world," given the time and inclination, but  really, why would we want to, and more to the point, why should the game  rules FORCE US TO DO SO to maintain an "in the moment" semblance of  rationality?



What's the big deal with this?  Each action causes the creature to have to concentrate on the most recent threat.  I see nothing remotely problematic with it.



> If you don't think this is "dissociation," then I'm not sure there's  much left to discuss



No, I see *everything* in combat as disassociation because combat rules are never precisely simulative.  All combat is necessarily abstract based on the mechanics I've described numerous times that have existed in all editions of the game (initiative, attack rolls, hit points, defenses/saves).



> your tastes and mine are so divergent



That's it!  Now you've got it.  There's nothing inherently game-breaking about disassociative mechanics.  It's all a matter of preference.  You don't like marking (I presume, based on your example).  You have a problem enjoying combat where that's a factor.  I see absolutely nothing problematic about it.  You don't appear to have a problem with sequential initiative, non-simultaneous actions, a lack of dismemberment mechanics, or all of the other things that emphasize that combat is always an exercise in disassociated roleplaying.  That's not an objective truth -- it's just aesthetics.



Pentius said:


> The conflict wouldn't  arise if you had not ascribed other possible effects to power Y, or if  you had ascribed other possible effects that you wouldn't want to use  for combat, or if you went ahead and houseruled power Y to include those  effects in combat.



Precisely this.  Yesway's example has a house-ruled Hypnotism ability that he specifically did not house-rule to be used in combat and then he complains that the ability doesn't work in combat.  But that's because of the house-rule that he built with that inconsistency!



Yesway Jose said:


> I would love this, but considering what seems  to be a strong inclination against modifying combat rules for fictional  reasons (you can see much evidence on this thread that there's nothing  wrong with any one combat mechanic but it is the players' responsiblity  to self-regulate their narrative), not to mention game  balance...



You house-rule a power with an inconsistency and then complain about the inconsistency.  Don't try to blame the people on the other side of the discussion because of your flawed hypothetical.  If you and your DM are going to house-rule it, then do so, boldly.  Don't do it half-assed and then complain that people might object to the whole ass.



Gantros said:


> There seems to be a pretty clear divide between the people here who grok  the idea of dissociated mechanics and take issue with them, and those  that have a "blind spot" for them (either not understanding the  distinction, or not caring about it).



What about people like me who grok the idea of disassociated mechanics and don't take issue.  What about people who take issue with disassociated mechanics and have a "blind spot" for the disassociated mechanics they don't even realize they've accepted for years?

I agree with pemerton.  You may have intended this phrase to be conciliatory, but man, is it insulting!  



Gantros said:


> would this alternative description unduly limit your narrative  opportunities or have any other negative impact on your enjoyment of the  game?  And if so, would you have any issues with simply ignoring it or  re-skinning it to better fit the specifics of your campaign?



I think any explanation necessarily limits narrative opportunities.  I do think it unnecessarily limits people who want to play nonmagical heroes.  (Unnecessary because, unlike others, I have no issues with martial daily powers.) I would have no issues re-skinning or ignoring it.



BryonD said:


> Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is as  fundamental to 4E as putting shapes in squares is to tic tac  toe.



Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is a necessary consequence of D&D combat in all editions because all D&D combat has a level of disassociation.  Those people who were put off by the disassociation required in prior editions have already left the hobby.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> You don't understand why someone under the pressure of combat can't do things they'd be able to do when the lives of they or their allies are not being actively threatened? I guess then, that we have to agree to disagree. I don't understand how anybody could not be capable of understanding this.



I understand why that would happens sometimes. I don't understand why it would happen all the time for all things. I can think of many examples, none of which are absolute black-and-white either-or stark differences and nothing inbetween, even when you account for combat abstraction. 



> Is that what you wanted? A way to improvise non damaging effects in combat so your hypnotist can try to dominate people in combat as an at-will power?



No, or least not in the game-changing way you are inferring.



> At this point, your problem isn't disassociation, but that you can come up with character concepts that don't have sufficient support to meet your needs. You're trying to couch this problem in the nomenclature we've been using to discuss disassociation, but the problem isn't disassociation.



I see. So if I was holding up a box and a widget, I'm saying the widget doesn't fit in the box, and you're saying the widget doesn't fit the box, and you're accusing me of couching this problem in nomenclature with no hint of irony.



> That's it! Now you've got it. There's nothing inherently game-breaking about disassociative mechanics. It's all a matter of preference.



Agreed, but...



> You house-rule a power with an inconsistency and then complain about the inconsistency. Don't try to blame the people on the other side of the discussion because of your flawed hypothetical. If you and your DM are going to house-rule it, then do so, boldly. Don't do it half-assed and then complain that people might object to the whole ass.



Ignoring the "half-assed" comment (quoting, not paraphrasing), the "flawed" hypothetical is only flawed as much as you keep missing the point.



> I agree with pemerton. You may have intended this phrase to be conciliatory, but man, is it insulting!



Perhaps you need a breather.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> I'm having trouble seeing where you come from.
> 
> That is, I can read the words and parse the grammar, but I don't understand what sort of play experience you have in mind.




If you have questions, I have answers. I think we obviously have very different play styles, so unless you find it highly beneficial to ask, no need to worry about it.



> Of course not. If the player starts being the GM instead, s/he doesn't keep the daily either. This doesn't show that it is the character who uses the daily, though. It just shows that it is _the player of that character_ who uses the daily. The authority to use any given power attaches to the particular role a given participant occupies - GM, player of character X, player of character Y, etc.




Right. Which is why I say it's attached to the character, and thus a specific-character mechanic. The character cannot consciously activate it, I agree.



> As you yourself state, the daily attaches to whoever is running the character. That is not the character.




Agreed.



> It is a real, actually existing participant in the game. The player, for whom the daily power is a resource.




I'd say that by that definition, all mechanics that the player controls are then, including the character. That's such a detached view from how I think I'd like to look at things that I cannot relate to it very easily.



> Furthermore, this understanding of the power produces a coherent conception of the fiction, whereas your alternative doesn't. Your alternative produces the bizarre result that a being is exercising meta- or narrative control over his/her own life - which is fine for the Order of the Stick or, sometimes, The Simpsons, but isn't how I play my RPGs. The fact that it produces coherence seems to me a strong reason in favour of my understanding.




I think you may be misunderstanding my view, as this isn't the case from what I've talked about. I've said that the player gets to decide on a meta level, not the character. We're in agreement on that.

The character is affected by the narrative control feature (the daily power) attached to his character that the player activates.



> It's similar to a GM's power to roll for wandering monsters, or decide whether or not a certain room in the dungeon has caved in after a heavy earthquake. These are powers that the GM - a real person - enjoys in virtue of occupying a certain role as participant in the game, analogous to the role of being player of character ABC.




Yeah, I understand that. Which is why I said earlier that it's a meta power the player activates ("I agree that the player activates the power from a meta standpoint, and that the character never thinks to activate it (it's a meta device").



> I don't even understand what this means. What does it mean for a PC - who exists, as a character, only in the fiction - to _use_ an ability to manipulate or author that fiction?




It doesn't mean that. It means that when the player activates the meta ability attached to the PC, the PC then goes on to use the power -sliding a creature one square, or the like. While the daily power is narrative in use, the character "uses" it not by activating the ability (that's what the player does), but by actually sliding the creature one square.



> Well, I agree with this. But given that "activate" and "use" are synonyms in this context - as far as I can tell - I don't see how it can be the case _both_ that the player activates it, but the PC uses it.




Hopefully you understand somewhat better what I mean here now.



> And this is the crux - it is, as you say, the _player_ who can activate the power once per (fictional) day. So the notion of "using" or "activating" the power has no meaning within the fiction. So within the fiction there is nothing to be learned, explored or observed other than that the rogue, at least on occasion, pulls off some pretty fancy moves.




That'd make it dissociated to people that it disengaged from their role.



> I don't know whaqt you mean by "testing a power in a vacuum". Given that you yourself have said that there is no such thing as the rogue consciously using the power (and by that I assume you don't mean the rogue uses it subconsciously); and given that the only coherent account of usage consistent with this seems to me to be that it is the player uses the power; I don't know what "testing" would consist in, let alone "testing in a vacuum.




You're saying that the rogue can be controlled in a narrative manner by the player to slide a creature one square, and the rogue is unconscious of it. I agree with that.

You went on to say that the rogue could do this more often if he had "the Low Slash and/or Positioning Strike encounter powers" or "a leader who has a power that lets his/her allies slide their enemies when they hit them."  These were brought up to show how often the rogue could be controlled each day (by the player using the daily power).

To that end, you've added outside factors to the mix; instead of looking at how often the rogue can slide a creature one square, we're looking at how often he can do it with help, or with new powers. Looking at his powers without help from outside forces would be the vacuum I mentioned in my last post. And, even if we add the encounter powers, he can still only do it so often in a single encounter, no matter how long the encounter might last.

Testing would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers. Testing in a vacuum would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers without outside aid (from a leader, for example). If the rogue can consistently pull off one type of move a set number of times per encounter (or per day), no matter how long the encounter is, and this can be repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that would be the testing I mentioned.

So, the rogue is unaware of this narrative control. The problem in my mind is that a pattern can certainly still manifest itself, even though the rogue should have no grasp on the narrative mechanic whatsoever. That would mean that the mechanic could potentially be observed in-game, but the reasoning could not be learned, explored, or observed in-game. That would make the mechanic dissociated to anyone that it caused to lose focus on their role (lose immersion).

While rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way _can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players_. I accept that it doesn't happen to you, your group, others in this thread, others on this board, maybe even others at large.



> I mean, how do the inhabitants of the fictional world even _frame_ the question in terms of "Did the footwork result from use of Trick Strike, or from use of Positioning Strike"? Let alone answer it.




They wouldn't. Exactly right.

As always, play what you like


----------



## JamesonCourage

Neonchameleon said:


> Because not all dailies are anything that are remotely a problem.  Brute Strike (to pick one obvious daily) just does [3W] damage.  It's the fighter pulling out every erg of power he has.  It just does damage.  Is this a problem - that he can sometimes really pull out all the stops?  Even if he doesn't feel quite right afterwards.  And what's wrong with a simple answer of "I was in the zone, man".




Did you or Hussar actually read the post I was responding to? Or the rest of my posts for that matter? If you did, and have the same questions still, I'll answer them. Just let me know.



> And if it isn't _why are you taking powers you have a problem with?_  A 4e character gets a maximum of _four_ daily powers.   You can say that you having Trick Strike would break your immersion.  So why are you taking it?  Or are you saying that you feel the need to police _everyone's_ characters at the table?




I feel like I'm getting punked here. Honestly. The post I was responding was one where someone asked how I (amongst others) would feel if martial powers were replaced with "you go to sleep, see the future, and forget it consciously until the moment arises." I said, "yep, that'd make it associated, but now _all_ martial powers become a problem for anyone that wants a character that is firmly rooted in the mundane, and thinks prophecy isn't mundane."

I have no idea what you're really replying to.



> Of course not.  *Not all fencers fence the same way.*  This is true even in the real world.  Now do all fencers trained by that one fencing master who passed on his tricks have that daily?  Don't know.




Exactly.



> Fencing is a competative activity.  Every trick is part of the skill.




Right. I was saying that you do not need the daily to show fencing skill, however. I'd imagine momentary narrative control isn't exactly a skill enhancement, but others may see it differently. And that's fine with me. As I've said before. Do you even read how I finish most posts? 



> You mean other than one of the most basic and commonly used Fighter At Wills?




Why would I know? I've admitted to stunning lack of knowledge on powers in the recent past, asked for clarification on things, and accepted what those who play say it is mechanically.



> Must be using a shield and weapon - you attack with the weapon and if you hit, you not only do damage you push the enemy back a square and move into their space.




Okay.

As always, play what you like


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> I understand why that would happens sometimes. I don't understand why it would happen all the time for all things.



It only happens for those things that are defined that way.  If something is built for combat it can also be used outside combat.  So it's not "all the time for all things".  If you want a power to be used in combat, build it to be used in combat.



> I see. So if I was holding up a box and a widget, I'm saying the widget doesn't fit in the box, and you're saying the widget doesn't fit the box, and you're accusing me of couching this problem in nomenclature with no hint of irony.



No.  I'm saying if you build a widget specifically to be bigger than the box, and then complain that it's bigger than the box, and I ask you why didn't you design it fit in the box, you accuse me of "couching this problem in nomenclature with no hint of irony".

You designed the hypothetical.  In your hypothetical, you specifically stated that you and the DM designed a power than operates differently in combat and noncombat.  Then you complain that the power operated differently in combat than in noncombat.  The problem is not the rules, and it's not even remotely about disassociated mechanics.  The problem is that your hypothetical was flawed.



> the "flawed" hypothetical is only flawed as much as you keep missing the point.



Then explain the point without the use of analogies or hypothetical.  Use short simple declarative sentences and I'll see if I can help you.



> Perhaps you need a breather.



Or perhaps conciliatory posts should not describe people as having blind spots.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

I'm going to say something that maybe pushes the edges a little bit, for the sake of clarity.  And as soon as I do, someone is going to come in and say, "Well, you described my experiences, and I disagree, and I'm not like that!"  But ya pick your poison and ya take ya chances. 

Posit a person with some modest fencing experience, taught in the older style.  (That is, taught still as the sport, but with the combat origins of the sport in mind, rather than, say, what a high school fencing coach might do with limited time to get people ready for competition on a team.)  Now, assume this same person has some modest knowledge of ancient combat, if only academic, and the imagination and appreciation of the differences. And then the modest imagination necessary to extrapolate to a fantasy genre, or at least appreciate some of the famous fights from the source material.

The combination of all of this is not most people, by any means, but it is not something terribly difficult, either. And people can of course switch in an out bits and pieces and still get some appreciation of the issues involved.  All else being equal, a tennis player is likely to have somewhat of a better appreciation of the capabiltities and limits of having a stick in your hand, and what you can do with it (albeit, also likely to be misleading if the appreciation of the differences in weight and someone not trying to hit you aren't acknowledged).

No one so described would find any 4E combat-related mechanics "disassociated".  Not one.  Not even Come and Get It, with or without errata.  This is because, among other things:


Every fencers uses a minority of their skills in an actual bout.  In a life or death situation, they would use *far* less.  An Olympic level fencer or near to it might use 30% of what they know in a bout, because those are things that are honed to perfection *right now*. Another 10% to 20% might get tried occasionally if the situation warrants, but with only so so success.  In a moment of inspiration, once or twice during a match, they *might* improvise (but only by mixing techniques--not totally new).
It is easy for a fencer to make people move.  You simply put them into a position where the alternative to not moving is not acceptable to them.
It is an acknowledged technique among all surviving texts on the subject of dealing with multiple foes with a melee weapon, and also of any recreationist, modern parallel hobbyist (e.g. martial art practioners), and fantasy authors who have dealt with the subject in some detail (e.g. Lieber)--that the primary means of dealing with mulitple foes is to fight such that your foes get in each others' way.  You cause this via your own movement, and making attacks that force individuals to move where you want them.  Naturally, endurance and skill are highly important in such a contest.
Accordingly, none of these mechanics are inherently "disassociated".  Any disassociation is because of what the player brings to the mechanic.  

Now, if you happen to agree with all of that, then you might still object that a mechanic that asks for such experience is asking too much--as if it were necessary for a person to be an engineer to appreciate certain abstract and narrative but realistic mechanics in a Sci/Fi game.  That is a valid objection.  It is the same objection that people have had, at various times, to hit points, Armor as AC, and so forth.  (It actually takes quite a sophisticated and nuanced appreciation of how armor really works to accept Armor as AC, and not everyone that has the appreciation will necessarily like it, even then.)

Therefore, any felt "disassociation" is an opportunity for the one so feeling to develop a wider or deeper or simply different appreciation for possibilities in gaming styles.  One need not.  There is no moral or even artistic imperative here.  It is merely a game, after all.  Some things will come easier than others, and thus some will never be worth the trouble, for the expected reward.  That's all fine.  

I like spinach.  You might not.  No problem.  If you want to say you don't like spinach because of the taste, because of the color, because of the texture, a general dislike of "rabbit food", or because your great aunt Matilda served it unwashed and overcooked to you when you were four--then I've got no complaint.   I think if that last one is the only reason, you might think about trying it under better circumstances, but that's your business.

On the other hand, if you want to claim that spinach is particularly odious out of all vegetable, due to extreme bitterness, and should be cast into the outer darkness, then I might have several words to say about soil composition and other factors.  (Particularly sandy soil makes very fine tomatos, but can cause bitterness in green vegetables, for example.) 

Of course, if you want to make these unwarranted claims about yellow squash, which is inherently demonic, then give me a few seconds to change clothes, and I'll be right there on the barricades with you. I never said I had no blindspots of my own.


----------



## Hussar

JamesonCourage[/quote said:
			
		

> Those _(critical hits and action points - ed.)_ are abstract, as far as I can tell, not dissociated. If the fighter is using narrative control, as pemerton or others imply, than they are using dissociated mechanics. If they are using an ability which has reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociated.




Really?

How can I learn to make critical hits?  What skill am I using to score a critical?  At what point can my character choose to make a critical hit?

Or are critical hits entirely guided by the dice mechanic and actually have zero linkage to the in game fiction?  

A critical hit in D&D only occurs when the dice say they do.  They could happen at any time regardless of the actions of the character.  

I would argue that criticals are most certainly disassociated by your definition.  They can neither be learned, nor taught, nor can they be initiated by the character at any point in time.


----------



## wrecan

JamesonCourage said:


> If the rogue can consistently pull off one type of move a set number of times per encounter (or per day), no matter how long the encounter is, and this can be repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that would be the testing I mentioned.



But it can't be tested in that way.  A campaign as, at most, 300 encounters.  Those encounters are not in the player's control.  Many of those encounters won't involve combat.  Many of those encounters won't involve situations where the rogue's player would want to use any given encounter power.  That rogue may have other ways to slide people, using terrain powers, improvised actions, and other powers in the players arsenal.

The game understands that play is sufficiently limited and not susceptible to controlled testing conditions to have to deal with this.  A character is simply highly unlikely to have sufficient numbers of encounters that are so similar that the limited resource mechanic would become apparent.

We only discuss it because we can peer behind the curtain and see the game rules.  But the character in-game should not have occasion to suspect such a thing exists.



> The problem in my mind is that a pattern can certainly still manifest itself, even though the rogue should have no grasp on the narrative mechanic whatsoever.



I think that's only because you are not considering the context of the game and the duration of a given campaign.



> While rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way _can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players_.



No doubt.  But that's true of every abstract mechanic, not just the disassociated ones.  It's just that the people alienated by abstract mechanics have already been alienated form the hobby.  So we've got the anthropic principle at work here too.

Those of us still playing weren't sufficiently alienated by initiative, hit points, falling damage to stop playing.  But every rule change has the potential to alienate someone still playing and those people will search for patterns, because humans have an intrinsic need to find patterns.

But the pattern isn't there.  It's just people have an aesthetic disprefrence for a given change.  It's taste and emotion, and there's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing objective about it either.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> It only happens for those things that are defined that way. If something is built for combat it can also be used outside combat. So it's not "all the time for all things". If you want a power to be used in combat, build it to be used in combat.



Depending in what I think you're stating (not that I honestly care anymore), that's part of the disassocation for me.



> No. I'm saying if you build a widget specifically to be bigger than the box, and then complain that it's bigger than the box, and I ask you why didn't you design it fit in the box, you accuse me of "couching this problem in nomenclature with no hint of irony".



If I built a widget that is purposefully bigger than the box, it was to illustrate that the box was not designed with a little extra space to fit some unaccounted-for widgets. I would have, but haven't even been able to get around to showing you the regular-sized widgets yet, because you refuse to allow me to discuss that one widget *on its own terms*.

Look back at the other pages of this thread and other threads. They are full of hypotheticals from many different people. Please start accusing them of being absurd and half-assed. When you're done, get back to me. EDIT: Actually, don't.



> Or perhaps conciliatory posts should not describe people as having blind spots.



He put it in quotes. That was more than I received with half-assed and absurd without the quotes. I "think" you are being "hypocritical", unless you weren't trying to be conciliatory, which is a whole other thing.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Hussar said:


> A critical hit in D&D only occurs when the dice say they do. They could happen at any time regardless of the actions of the character.
> 
> I would argue that criticals are most certainly disassociated by your definition. They can neither be learned, nor taught, nor can they be initiated by the character at any point in time.




Paradoxically, using the logic of disassociation, criticals would be least disassociated coming from the inexperienced and most disassociated for high level, highly trained characters. A lucky shot that you can't control or explain is fairly common for beginners--and not infrequently the result of the beginner fighting someone who also doesn't much know what they are doing. Give two untrained, stupid 14 year-old boys broadswords, and let them go at it, and I can almost guarantee that you'll see a real-life critical before the police haul you away.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Posit a person with some modest fencing experience, taught in the older style.
> <snip>
> No one so described would find any 4E combat-related mechanics "disassociated". Not one. Not even Come and Get It, with or without errata. This is because, among other things:
> 
> 
> It is easy for a fencer to make people move. You simply put them into a position where the alternative to not moving is not acceptable to them.



I may be missing a key point here, but what if the fencer (above) was facing an opponent with full plate and shield and a reach weapon that is longer then the fencing blade. In reality, is it equally easy for that fencer to make that opponent move? If not, and if D&D is full of opponents in full plate and shield and reach weapons, then would the fencer find any 4E combat-related mechanics to now be disassociated (compared to your analogy in which all other opponents are also fencers like him/her). If yes, then doesn't go to prove that the fictional context is important? I believe you are illustrating that the players' expectations and preferences are an important part of the equation, and I don't disagree, but it seems to me that the other (perhaps equally) important part of the equation is the context.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> Well, you have quoted my direct response to a comment about 3E characters throwing themselves off cliffs and you are somehow making that be about events in your 4E game.



Maybe that was a bit cheeky - if so, I apologise for it. I was just trying to make the point, by showing rather than just saying, that the same sorts of table conventions or understandings that can preserve immersion or simulation for those who want it, can make narrativist play smoothly for those who want it.



BryonD said:


> But if you look at the patterns that surface due to the mechanics, then the validity falls away.  And because we are playing a game and know the mechanics are there, that pattern surfaces on the very first use.



When I read this, I feel that you are confusing the "we" of the participant/audience and the "we" of the fictional protagonists. When you say it, I imagine you don't feel that there is a confusion of the sort I feel when reading it.

If I'm right about the difference of your feelings from mine on that particular point, that may explain (in part, to some extent) why we have different preferences in RPGs.



BryonD said:


> But the events that happen along that path will be informed by the mechanics, rather than the mechanics being informed by the story.  Yes, you can come up with virtually limitless ways to rationalize why the narrative works out in a way that matches the powers system.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is as fundamental to 4E as putting shapes in squares is to tic tac toe.



I think you intend this to have a force that I'm not feeling. Which is not to say that you've forgotten something, or mispoken, or made a mistake. But something is resonating for you that is not resonating for me.

To try to explain, as best I can from my side (which, of course, may not resonate with you!): when you talk about the plot adjusting to meet the mechanics, my first thought is "In a game of AD&D, or 3E, or Rolemaster, or Traveller, an important part of the plot might be whether a PC lives or dies in a fight, or has his/her pocket picked by a street urchin. And these questions will be determined mechanically - by rolling attack and damage rolls in combat, by rolling a Pick Pockets check for the urchin."

Generalising that thought - part of the point of action resolution mechanics, in an RPG, is to structure or guide or help settle the question of "what happens next", "does this attempted action succeed or fail". And the answers to those questions give us the plot (either directly, or as a sort of substrate on which richer stuff supervenes).

So when you talk about the mechanics driving the story, rather than vice versa, I feel that there must be something more you have in mind some _manner_ in which the mechanics drive the story. The topic of this thread naturally makes metagame mechanics come to mind, but (without going back upthread to check) I think you said earlier that you use some metagame mechanics (hero or action points of some sort?).

The point of this post isn't to trap or trick or twist words. But I do want to try to convey that there is some experience which is important to you in RPGing which I'm not quite able to discern from your post, although I can hazard some general guesses about the significance to you of immersion, and therefore probably Actor Stance (although if that's right, I'd find it interesting for you to say how hero/action points work within Actor Stance, because my default assumption is that they are a metagame thing - do you envisage them as the PC making an extra, heroic effort?) and also simulationist priorities along the lines I quoted upthread from Ron Edwards.



BryonD said:


> An easy relaxing fun experience is commendable.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if you want to compare fan bases as a whole, then 4E would take a serious hit if it lost the "save me from the hard" portion.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As I said, no novelist anywhere would preconceive that a character has a set of capabilities that work once a day and never more regardless of circumstances, much less have all major characters, regardless of their individual nature, have this same encounter/daily metric on their behavior.
> 
> So, if you want to produce a game experience that exactly feels like being inside a natural story then the encounter/daily system is "wrong". Explaining to me how you can take individual events out of context and justify them is both completely accepted and also fully futile in changing the point.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> They may play 4E and feel exactly like they are in a novel.  I accept that.  But, if they are then they are either ignoring or unaware of the differences.  And since they are having fun that is all that matters.  But they are not achieving the same feeling I am talking about.  There is a different standard for that.



I think the "easy" part may be a red herring, because it may be that, at least for some, the problem with 3E isn't that it is hard, but that it is _needlessly_ complex. Many people make that criticism of Rolemaster, for example. (And as someone who GMed Rolemaster for many many years, I can see why someone might think that. On the other hand, my pretty entrenched lack of interest in 3E isn't because I see it as needlessly complext. It's because I don't see it as offering me anything in a fantasy game that I can't get from Rolemaster or HARP.)

Equally, it may not be a red herring - at least as far as marketing 4e is concerned. It's not personally how I would market the game, but then I don't have any experience in trying to market commercial cultural products. Even if it's important to marketing, though, it's not necessarily at the centre of analysing how the game plays.

Anyway, moving on, I think the bit about being inside a novel is probably central. But complicated. I sketched the character sheet for a dwarf fighter PC in my game upthread. There is no salient ability that that PC can perform only once per encounter or once per day, even though the player's mechanical access to those abilities is mediated via the power mechanics. So, at least in relation to that PC, I feel that your comments about the power system are themselves decontextualised and therefore missing the point.

But when playing that PC I think the player probably has some sense of himself as author as well as protagonist. To that extent, then, maybe he doesn't feel like he's in a novel - presumably the protagonists of novels don't experince themselves as authors also.

But even if this is right - and as I've said upthread, "immersion" isn't a category that I use very much - I'm certainly not prepared to concede the language of "standards" or (not used by you, but by innerdude) of "levels". I don't concede that merely being a protagonist is "higher" roleplaying, in some sense, than authoring one's PC's protagonism. (What are the relevant qualities that would determine this? Purity of experience? Sophistication? Actor stance perhaps, in a formal sense at least, is more pure. But strikes me, again at least in a formal sense, as less sophisticated. And I use the qualifier "formal" because when we look at the substance it's going to be very variable. For example, I personally don't feel that the "pure" experience of being a flying thief tied to a rope grind-scouting the Tomb of Horrors has much aesthetic value at all. It strikes me as rather tedious.)


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> If I built a widget that is purposefully bigger than the box, it was to illustrate that the box was not designed with a little extra space to fit some unaccounted-for widgets.



But it doesn't serve that purpose.  It's just showing me you can construct a hypothetical from your conclusion.  I don't mean this to be insulting, but most analogies aren't actually illustrative.  They are most often emotional arguments.  Someone feels "X" about something.  Someone else doesn't feel "X".  So they makke an analogy of "X" to "Y" because they feel the same way about "Y" as "X".  But if the other person doesn't feel the same way about "X" and "Y", the analogy will resonate even less.  And then you end up debating about the accuracy of the analogy, and you're not even discussing "X" anymore.

It's most helpful to simply state what you mean.



> you refuse to allow me to discuss that one widget *on its own terms*.



Then this analogy isn't serving the purpose for which it is intended.  Because now we're discussing widgets and not the game.  Soon we won't be able to trace back what the widget was originally intended to represent.

I am sorry about the "half-assed" and "absurd" comment.  It was born of a frustration that when I try to explain things politely I find you don't respond to it, but you will respond to something that is tinged with sarcasm.  That was wrong and I will try not to do that in the future.


----------



## pemerton

wrecan said:


> Those people who were put off by the disassociation required in prior editions have already left the hobby.



Or switched to other systems, like RQ, C&S, Rolemaster etc.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> I may be missing a key point here, but what if the fencer (above) was facing an opponent with full plate and shield and a reach weapon that is longer then the fencing blade. In reality, is it equally easy for that fencer to make that opponent move? If not, and if D&D is full of opponents in full plate and shield and reach weapons, then would the fencer find any 4E combat-related mechanics to now be disassociated (compared to your analogy in which all other opponents are also fencers like him/her). If yes, then doesn't go to prove that the fictional context is important? I believe you are illustrating that the players' expectations and preferences are an important part of the equation, and I don't disagree, but it seems to me that the other (perhaps equally) important part of the equation is the context.




Yep, context is going to be immensely important.  For example:

The fencer (with rapier and dagger) meets the knight with full plate, shield, and long sword--or knight with full plate and halberd (much scarier).  Not sure how you get shield and reach weapon, but the full plate and halberd is bad enough.

If the meeting is on a featureless, level, non-slick plain (make up any fantasy environment that has those qualities), and the fencer is not of greater skill than the knight--then any sane fencer is getting the hell out of there--to some environment where things are more to his liking.  This is the rational, realistic course of action.  However, assuming our fencer is a hero, and doesn't want to abandon some friends, he engages.

So now, am I, as a person who understands fencing, feeling that things are a little "disassociated"?  Well, I might.  But if I do, it still won't be movement powers or the like.  You know, the things that people have labeled as inherently disassociated.  No, I'm feeling that perhaps the unlikelihood of a rapier wielder meeting a fully armoned knight is bad enough, but the system that says that given roughly equal skill, that rapier is going to be removing hit points reasonably fast is the biggie.  Fortunatley, I've long ago gotten over my issues with Armor as AC and how hit points broadly work.  So I manage to associate this with actions.  But I'm still cheesed at the DM for setting up such a boring location! 

Now, if that same fight happens in a more interesting spot, then we are back to the fencer using trees, chairs, beams, windmills  -- to take advantage of his superior mobility.  And thus movement--which remember is about how you move and how you make the opponent want to move--is back in play in the fiction.

If you want to claim that boring locations will lead to more disassociation, as edge cases in the mechanics are shown to be there--then not only will you get no argument from me, I'll even remind of the earlier mentioned, proverbial "fighter in an empty room, chained to the floor, making a Reflex save to avoid a fireball that fills the room" situation.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> It means that when the player activates the meta ability attached to the PC, the PC then goes on to use the power -sliding a creature one square, or the like. While the daily power is narrative in use, the character "uses" it not by activating the ability (that's what the player does), but by actually sliding the creature one square.



OK. But this is the point where, as I said, the inhabitants of the fiction can't tell the difference between that sliding (which in the typical case is an abstraction, let's say, of some sort of fancy footwork and swordplay by the rogue) and any other sliding (whether from another rogue power, or permitted by a leader power - The rogue's fencing really shines when his comrade's need him! - etc).

Which takes me to this:



JamesonCourage said:


> Testing would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers. Testing in a vacuum would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers without outside aid (from a leader, for example). If the rogue can consistently pull off one type of move a set number of times per encounter (or per day), no matter how long the encounter is, and this can be repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that would be the testing I mentioned.



At this stage, I can't help but feel that wrecan's point upthread is apposite - this testing can't take place, because after fewer than 300 encounters the rogue has reached 30th level and has achieved immortality.

Not to mention that I find the notion of a fictional character trying to explore the boundaries of the genre conceits that an author has imposed on him/her - which is something like what is being described here - fairly odd.

But _actual_ testing probably isn't the issue, as (it seems to me) you bring out here:



JamesonCourage said:


> The problem in my mind is that a pattern can certainly still manifest itself, even though the rogue should have no grasp on the narrative mechanic whatsoever. That would mean that the mechanic could potentially be observed in-game, but the reasoning could not be learned, explored, or observed in-game. That would make the mechanic dissociated to anyone that it caused to lose focus on their role (lose immersion).
> 
> While rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way _can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players_. I accept that it doesn't happen to you, your group, others in this thread, others on this board, maybe even others at large.



And once we get to the problem not being the actualy testing, but the possibility, in principle (if we disregard wrecan's point) of the testing, then what I see is those with simulationist priorities (as per my quote from Ron Edwards upthread) disliking mechanics that impede simulationist play. (Because they are not mechanics that model ingame causal processes.)

I'm not seeing anything else. (And you've been very clear in your post! So I don't think that there's something else there that I might have missed.)

Which is part of why I don't feel the need for a new "theory" (of "dissociation") to describe a playstyle preference that's already fairly well known.



Yesway Jose said:


> Did your player explore the 'Raven Queen is my guide and savior' philosophy throughout the campaign?



Yes. As I indicated in the post, the PC is a paladin of the Raven Queen. His paragon path is Questing Knight.

I posted the anecdote partially to illustrate, from actual experience rather than imagined hypotheticals, how 4e's metagame mechanics actually get used in play - including in ways that I as GM (and perhaps the designers? who knows?) didn't anticipate.

But I posted the anecdote also to contest the claim that so-called dissociated mechanics, of necessity or even by some generalisation of tendency, drive a wedge between players and their engagement with their PCs or with the fiction. It is an actual play example of a player using a metagame mechanic - without any pause or hesitation in terms of the actual back-and-forth of dialogue and description between player and GM - to reinforce his PC's pesona, and spiritual/metaphysical/moral place within the fiction, and relationship to a revered patron god.

I'm not seeing the dissociation of player from PC role.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway, I'm trying to use the fencing perspective to explain how things work for me.  But probably a better source of information, that ties more directly to the genre and 4E in particular, is to go read some Lieber: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Especially, read the first two books in the series.  Lieber was a fencer, and educated about life and death fighting styles, but he let that inform his fantasy fights, not dictate them.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION], although I personally know almost nothing about fencing (either theoretically or practically) I like your example because of its clarity. I see it as complementing my example of the player of the paladin.

My example tries to show that the metagame mechanics do not drive a wedge between a player, and that player's "inhabitation" of his/her PC - but can in fact reinforce that "inhabitation".

Your example, as I read it, tries to show that the metagame mechanics do not drive a wedge between a player, and that player's engagement with the "causal" details of the fictional situation. It is like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s football example upthread, although (for me at least) it is easier to feel the force of your fencing example, because it relates to the actual 4e mechanics.

Which, relating it back to the title of the thread, means: What is left of the theory of "dissociated" mechanics? The actual experience of 4e play reveals that the impugned mechanics do not, in general or of necessity, drive a wedge between the game participants and the fiction.

All that's left, it seems to me, is a pejorative label for simulationist preferences. I've got no objection to the preferences - I can handle a bit of purist-for-system from time-to-time, although personally wouldn't use D&D for it  - but don't see why they can't be articulated without misdescribing and ridiculing the experiences and preferences of others.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> My example tries to show that the metagame mechanics do not drive a wedge between a player, and that player's "inhabitation" of his/her PC - but can in fact reinforce that "inhabitation".



Why is there no wedge from your perspective?

The less you know about fencing, then ignorance is bliss. So no wedge.

The more you know about fencing= possible wedge. If the context feels good = no wedge. Or, depending on the context, the fencer may lose immersion = possible wedge. If he doesn't care about immersion = no wedge. If he does care = wedge.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> Your example, as I read it, tries to show that the metagame mechanics do not drive a wedge between a player, and that player's engagement with the "causal" details of the fictional situation. It is like @Hussar 's football example upthread, although (for me at least) it is easier to feel the force of your fencing example, because it relates to the actual 4e mechanics.




Not that metagame mechanics do not drive a wedge, but that they need not--and, more important, any such wedge driven is likely to be because of what the player brings to the table, and thus any objection founded on such ground is going to be just as pertinent to a whole host of mechanics, many of them long accepted and which no one is currently calling "disassociated."  

It is complicated, because "brings to the table" is not only real world experiences that are often only partially applicable, but also genre and other such expectations, as well as the way people *want* it to be.  Here, I agree with both you and Wrecan.  If the system chosen is such an ill-fit for all of that put together, then it says more about the clash of an ill-fitting tool for the job than anything inherent in the tool itself.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> The more you know about fencing= possible wedge. If the context feels good = no wedge. Or, depending on the context, the fencer may lose immersion = possible wedge. If he doesn't care about immersion = no wedge. If he does care = wedge.




Assume a character with a rapier and buckler, wearing light armor, well-trained in its use, must hold a short, 10 foot wide corridor against a few heavily armored, spear-wielding opponents who--according to the system--are collectively an equal match for the character, roughly. (If he doesn't hold it, then the other foes crowding behind his current opponents will fan out into a larger room and overwhelm his wizard and thief buddy before than can finish whatever they are doing that will let them get away.)

In any version of D&D, for a person reasonably understanding of weapons, this is likely to lead to "disassociation"--assuming the theory is to have any meaning. Even using Jameson's version, which is shedding all the bad baggage of the original, every version of D&D will have elements in this scenario that lead to "disassociation". Pin this guy in place, and he can't win the scenario as listed. No version of D&D has provided movement mechanics (not even 4E) that gets around this objection.

So same as when this kind of thing came up in Basic, some 30 years ago, we either arrange to have a longer corridor or something better to work with, or we shorten the time needed on the wizard and thief end, to make it work out, or if we are playing a killer game--maybe leave it up to luck in a bad situation, possibly leading to a TPK. 

Thing is, you can always contrive a situation where the fiction seems a little out of joint with the mechanics. If you don't want this, one of the best ways to avoid it is to complicate the situation enough so that it doesn't come down to fighter chained to a floor in an empty room dodging a fireball.

But yes, people have blissfully played out exactly that scenario and suffered no such feeling of disassociation. That's because they don't know what spears in competent hands are going to do the poor fencer, stuck in a relatively narrow place. That is, what they brought to the table was more important. Only in this case, it let them ignore a potential simulation hole in the mechanics. If it bothered them enough 30 years ago, they probably did go to RuneQuest.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> But yes, people have blissfully played out exactly that scenario and suffered no such feeling of disassociation. That's because they don't know what spears in competent hands are going to do the poor fencer, stuck in a relatively narrow place. That is, what they brought to the table was more important. Only in this case, it let them ignore a potential simulation hole in the mechanics. If it bothered them enough 30 years ago, they probably did go to RuneQuest.



Sure, but let's be careful, from recent experience, to discuss an example on its own terms. There aren't many fencers in D&D relative to average gameplay. It only serves to illustrate the quality but not the quantity of 'disassocation'. Pemerton asked how there could be a wedge, so that's extrapolating the analogy beyond its intention. There CAN be a wedge as per your example. We simply haven't defined the number and size of wedges in a larger sense.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> The catch 22 seems to be:
> -if you are worried about immersion and associated mechanics, use page 42 to create new shared fictional constructs
> -BUT you may not extrapolate that new fictional construct to meaningful combat, even if it disrupts immersion
> -and if you complain about this dilema, that's your problem as a player
> -and none of the above is a problem of mechanics disassociated from the story you want to tell
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The second bullet point is where you lose me. I think applying your new fictional construct to combat is fine, if you follow the same basic guidelines/responsibilities as you should with any ruling. That is, tinker with it at your own risk. That's not to say don't tinker with it, it's to say that you should be aware that you might break something, so you should be careful and also be prepared to fix something if you break it.
Click to expand...


I agree with that last part, so is it fair to assume that most people are afraid of tinkering with combat rules, and so *in practice* most people don't change the combat rules, even those that are concerned about 'disassociation', or is that a bad assumption?

People who are concerned about 'disassociation' and immersion can possibly choose to:
1) tolerate the game mechanics as is
2) change the 4E combat rules
3) change only the 4E non-combat rules as a kind of compensation (at least in the 1/day mechanic example)
4) play a different game

As per above, the 2nd might be the least common, and the 4th could be the most common. For anyone who picks the 2nd option, I would rephrase the Catch 22 to:

-if you are worried about immersion and associated mechanics, use page 42 to create new shared fictional constructs
-BUT moving from non-combat to combat paradigm can disrupt immersion (assuming changing the combat rules is too risky for the group; otherwise you would have taken #2)
-and if you complain about this dilema, that's your problem as a player
-and none of the above is a problem of mechanics disassociated from the story you want to tell

So it seems to me that the Catch 22 may effectively nullify option 2 for some people, at least those that worry about immersion when shifting in and out of combat, and if so, all you're likely to be left with options 1 and 4.

I can't even remember anymore, but I think this only came up in the 1st place because of my perception of people suggesting that using Page 42 outside of combat could resolve "disassociation" issues.

That's ALL that I'm saying at this point, that I think options 1 and 4 are the most likely solutions to anyone bothered by this perceived "disassociation" stuff.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> People who are concerned about 'disassociation' and immersion can possibly choose to:
> 1) tolerate the game mechanics as is
> 2) change the 4E combat rules
> 3) change only the 4E non-combat rules as a kind of compensation (at least in the 1/day mechanic example)
> 4) play a different game




You could also make narration established thus far have greater weight than a purist reading of 4E might indicate. That is, the purist reading is that the power does exactly what it says it does, period, end of story, and this never moves, no matter what. And people can change the narration to work around that, but they can't rule on the mechanical result being less than perfectly relevant to the situation. We've had some nasty little 3-5 way "discussions" on that very topic. See pushing giant zombies. 

But since immersion is the concern here, there is nothing wrong with making any established narrative relevant going forward. If you rule that your version of Come and Get It works by causing people with weapons nearby to get fooled into thinking you an easy mark--then it doesn't work on mindless foes, archers, or wizards holding an orb and wanting to stay as far away from you as possible. There is room for all kinds of dickery here, which is probably a big part of the purists' objection to it, but for a group of like-minded folks that value their immersion enough, it would be an easy way to go. 

Note that you can enshrine some of this in house rules if you want, but contra the essay, it is not necessary for spot fictional ruling to invoke rules. They can simply be ad hoc determinations. My experience is that like-minded groups doing that come to an understanding about fictional expectations fairly rapidly, and the whole thing fades into the background. If you think like that, then once you've established how your power works, it would never cross your mind to use it any other way, and thus need to be called on it. And of course, sometimes the power reasoning in the fiction would be such that the power gains options instead of losing them. I'm fairly certain that is also a desired trait for people who care enough about immersion to want to do this.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> You could also make narration established thus far have greater weight than a purist reading of 4E might indicate. That is, the purist reading is that the power does exactly what it says it does, period, end of story, and this never moves, no matter what.



I thought of that. I thought that with effects like Hypnotism and Baleful Polymorph, the lesser evil is to just go with the effect puritanically in and out of combat if applicable. But then I'm stuck with fictional constructs that don't make sense to me.



> But since immersion is the concern here, there is nothing wrong with making any established narrative relevant going forward. If you rule that your version of Come and Get It works by causing people with weapons nearby to get fooled into thinking you an easy mark--then it doesn't work on mindless foes, archers, or wizards holding an orb and wanting to stay as far away from you as possible. There is room for all kinds of dickery here, which is probably a big part of the purists' objection to it, but for a group of like-minded folks that value their immersion enough, it would be an easy way to go.



If a player purposefully doesn't use a power or restricts the effect of a power because of immersive concerns, then that's nice... does that work out in practice? I'm not sure... maybe in some cases, I don't know that it resolves enough of them. I read Wiks' and Mallus' rediscovering 3e and 2e respectivelly, and that seems like a better option IMO YMMV.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> If a player purposefully doesn't use a power or restricts the effect of a power because of immersive concerns, then that's nice... does that work out in practice? I'm not sure... maybe in some cases, I don't know that it resolves enough of them. I read Wiks' and Mallus' rediscovering 3e and 2e respectivelly, and that seems like a better option IMO YMMV.




No, I agree that using another system is probably better for the immersionist.  But what I was getting at here is not exactly voluntary pre-established limits by the player.  Rather, the first time something gets used, the player narrates how it works.  That explanation is then binding going forward (for that character, for the campaign).  Thus as time passes in the campaign, the mechanic/fictional relationship is allowed to grow stronger.


----------



## LostSoul

Yesway Jose said:


> People who are concerned about 'disassociation' and immersion can possibly choose to:




This is only for certain values of "immersion".  Immersion to me means that I can picture the game's fiction in my mind's eye.  Dissociated mechanics don't play a part in that.

I think that's why I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dissociated mechanics.  I think there's some fundamental element other people are getting out of the game that I've never cared much for.  I've probably always played the game at a more "metagame" level.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

LostSoul said:


> This is only for certain values of "immersion". Immersion to me means that I can picture the game's fiction in my mind's eye. Dissociated mechanics don't play a part in that.
> 
> I think that's why I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dissociated mechanics. I think there's some fundamental element other people are getting out of the game that I've never cared much for. I've probably always played the game at a more "metagame" level.




This is why I've gradually adopted the view that there is a difference between shallow and deep immersion. "Picture the game's fiction in my mind's eye," is an excellent pegging of the heart of shallow immersion. 

Deep immersion is something that I can only glimpse. It is rather ironic to me that for a long time, deep immersion is something that people got really incensed about, because people on message boards kept telling the deep immersionists that they didn't.  And that what they thought there were doing wasn't so much roleplaying as an expression of mental problems. The world turns, but there is nothing new under the sun.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> This is why I've gradually adopted the view that there is a difference between shallow and deep immersion. "Picture the game's fiction in my mind's eye," is an excellent pegging of the heart of shallow immersion.



Maybe I'm even misusing the term "immersion" then. I never thought of myself as a "deep immersionist". And I can picture anything in my mind's eye. I can picture the Trick Strike feints, and I can picture characters falling off 200" cliffs and getting up, and I can even picture fighters throwing purple teddy bears at their opponents and hurtling them back. Does "immersion" mean picturing in mind's eye and thinking it seems plausible?

Edit: I didn't meant to lump Trick Strike feints with jumping off 200' cliffs or purple teddy bears... sigh, one sure does have to watch out for these things.


----------



## Mallus

LostSoul said:


> This is only for certain values of "immersion".  Immersion to me means that I can picture the game's fiction in my mind's eye.  Dissociated mechanics don't play a part in that.
> 
> I think that's why I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dissociated mechanics.



Same here. My sense of immersion into my character, and into the game's fiction, isn't closely tied to the specifics of the task resolution mechanics. 

Whether a warrior PC of mine makes series of abstractly-handled strikes over the course of a minute (using AD&D), one mighty blow in six seconds which sacrifices accuracy for injury potential (using 3e), or some showy maneuver they can only pull off daily called Momma Said Knock You Out! (obviously 4e, unless it's Tunnels and Trolls...) has no bearing on my ability to observe, understand, interact with, and immerse myself into the in-game fictional world. 

They're just different levers a player, through their character, can affect the game environment with. 



> I've probably always played the game at a more "metagame" level.



My experience is people shift between in-game and metagame perspectives from minute to minute during play.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> I may be missing a key point here, but what if the fencer (above) was facing an opponent with full plate and shield and a reach weapon that is longer then the fencing blade. In reality, is it equally easy for that fencer to make that opponent move? If not, and if D&D is full of opponents in full plate and shield and reach weapons, then would the fencer find any 4E combat-related mechanics to now be disassociated (compared to your analogy in which all other opponents are also fencers like him/her).




That depends if they are dealing with a real world reality or a cinematic reality.  I have stated quite openly that 4e runs on Holywood Physics - and in a world using Holywood Physics, that isn't so much of a problem.  Rule of Cool.  On the other hand, in a world that uses the physics of the real world the problem isn't the rapier wielder moving the person in plate with a shield (although that's a pretty redundant combination).  Moving them is about the one thing they can do.  The problem is that even if the rapier can push, short of going through the eyeholes in the armour it can't do any actual _damage_.  Under Holywood Physics it can - but under real world physics it turns off the armour.  It's eyeslits or nothing.

So either you can accept Holywood Physics, or you can have the rapier only hit on a natural 20 - and that's pretty much an instant kill most of the time.  4e works although it isn't in the real world.  Given that in 3e rapier hits on plate don't often confirm (due to the critical confirmation roll), clearly they aren't going in through the eyeslit, 3e fails at having anything like realism here.  If 3e is intended to be a mythic reality or under holywood physics, then that works.  But it doesn't embrace it in the way 4e does.

GURPS and Rolemaster get this one right-ish for gritty games.  In GURPS, Plate Armour has IIRC DR 6.  And being a thrusting weapon, a finely made rapier does about 1d6+1 damage in the hands of an above averagely strong wielder.  For 1d6+1-6 damage unless you went through the eyeslits at -10 to hit on 3d6.  Rolemaster uses a separate table for rapier vs plate - and you don't damage much unless you are _really_ good.



> If yes, then doesn't go to prove that the fictional context is important?




Fictional context _is_ important.  As is fictional flavour.  4e is pretty clear on its fictional flavour - it's Holywood Physics or the physics of the Illiad, the Oddessy, and of Norse and Celtic Myth.  This isn't the physics of the real world (there are some real howlers in Virgil for anyone who knows what they are talking about).  It's also the physics of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser where people can go rocket propelled ski-ing.  Or ride the shockwave from an explosion without ending up as a pile of jelly.

I have no problem with this physics model being criticised by fans of the gritter Rolemaster or GURPS.  They are based on a more realistic physics model, and that is a perfectly valid choice.  And if I wanted one I'd play those games.  Where I do have a problem is if _3E_ fans start criticising 4e on those grounds.  4E has a consistent physics model (well, as consistent as large action movies get).  In 3e a heavy pick does only fractionally more damage to plate armour than a rapier - and that only when you need more than a natural 18 to hit.  That a weapon designed to be the first thing to poke holes into unarmoured targets does the same average damage against plate armour as a weapon designed specifically to penetrate plate armour is absurd.  In 3e a rapier and a heavy pick hit with the same timing.  This is equally absurd.  One is what the heavy pick is designed for, one is what the rapier is designed for.  But the two are more or less indistinguishable at both.  Under Holywood Physics, that's fine.  Both are going to be useful and it's a character choice which you wield.  But under any sort of realistic game, this is risible.

You are in a glass house and throwing stones.



BryonD said:


> As I have said, if you take every event in 4E and look at in in isolation, you can always come up with a perfectly valid explanation.    But if you look at the patterns that surface due to the mechanics, then the validity falls away.  And because we are playing a game and know the mechanics are there, that pattern surfaces on the very first use.




Once more I have to say you are in a glass house and trying to throw stones.  The patterns are IME _not_ as bad as you claim.  But the first thing any game _must_ get right is character psychology.  And here 3e fails and fails badly.  Man is an economic animal.  Humans in a world where (a) high level wizards exist and (b) high level wizards haven't completely upended the economy to me just do not make sense.  Unless there are detentes enforced by the game world they just aren't behaving like humans.  (Eberron manages this to be fair by (a) removing high level wizards and (b) having magic users forming cartels).  Even if 4e physics breaks slightly, the people are all recognisable as people.  If mid-high level arcanists are common in 3e, they are not recognisable.  This to me is a far more serious problem.

And for the record, _hit points_ are obvious on the very first playthrough in 3e.  And those are as disassociated as anything in 4e.  4e embraces them with healing surges and says "You are John McLane or Indiana Jones and you _can_ take a ridiculous pounding and come back."  Which means they cease to be disassociated and become a part of the underlying game world.  In older editions they are swept under the rug and make ungainly lumps in the carpet that you need to be careful to walk round until you are used to.

Oh, and I disagree with you about the patterns.  The patterns are consistent - and one of Holywood Physics.  If that's a deal breaker, fine.  But it's consistent and valid.



> Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is as fundamental to 4E as putting shapes in squares is to tic tac toe.




Oh, possibly.  4e is a high action game.  It does what it does superbly.  But doesn't do other things very well.  But for a counter-argument, I'm once more going to point out that you need to adjust your gameworld to fit the 3e magic system.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Does "immersion" mean picturing in mind's eye and thinking it seems plausible?




We need a deep immersionist, capable of explaining what happens in actual play at their table, to answer that fully. But I'll answer what I can from my limited understanding ...



Mallus said:


> Same here. My sense of immersion into my character, and into the game's fiction, isn't closely tied to the specifics of the task resolution mechanics...
> 
> My experience is people shift between in-game and metagame perspectives from minute to minute during play.




This also mirrors my experience. Except, with us, the switch is often measured in seconds, sometimes turning into a flicker. When I'm GMing, I'm often speaking in character with an NPC, while in the back of my mind I'm metagaming. Part of this, is that if you stay immersed, you can't take advantage of the metagame perspective. So that rather begs the question of whether we stay shallow to metagame, or metagame and it keeps us shallow? With our group, I think it is a self-reinforcing cycle.

Note, that I also think it is possible for people to simply reject the metagaming layer, play primarily or entirely shallow immersed, and have a lot of fun with it. This might even be the default style for much of D&D play. I'm not sure if a person can easily deep immerse with lots of mechanics/spells/items/stuff to fiddle around with, and D&D has typically been that game.

Near as I can tell, deep immersion will be partly characterized by things like nearly always talking in character, from a first person perspective; thinking about the character as an entity in a living world, and doing what the character would do; and ultimately trying to get into a state where all reactions in character bubble up out of some unconcious, method-actor, style of thinking. I'm even less clear how the game master runs this kind of thing, as I can't possibly imagine deep immersing in each NPC in turn. 

Not those things are entirely off limits to shallow immersion, but this is hardly some acid test, anyway.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> I have stated quite openly that 4e runs on Holywood Physics - and in a world using Holywood Physics, that isn't so much of a problem. Rule of Cool. On the other hand, in a world that uses the physics of the real world the problem isn't the rapier wielder moving the person in plate with a shield (although that's a pretty redundant combination).



Whoa there. I really tried to be careful with my wording. If you followed that sub-thread, you'd notice that I wrote:


Yesway Jose said:


> Sure, but let's be careful, from recent experience, to discuss an example on its own terms. There aren't many fencers in D&D relative to average gameplay...



I never cared about the fencing example in terms of applying reality to gritty D&D. I was only following the logic of James' analogy.

So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you used my quote not to address me directly but to talk to some hypothetical bogeyman.


> You are in a glass house and throwing stones.



--Oh no, I was wrong. You did get it all wrong.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> Whoa there. I really tried to be careful with my wording. If you followed that sub-thread, you'd notice that I wrote:
> 
> I never cared about the fencing example in terms of applying reality to gritty D&D. I was only following the logic of James' analogy.
> 
> So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you used my quote not to address me directly but to talk to some hypothetical bogeyman.
> --Oh no, I was wrong. You did get it all wrong.




I am confused.  Could you outline clearly what you believe and find to be true, rather than speaking in second-hand and complexified metaphors that start with other people.  From my perspective you appear to be trying to add some fairly classic digs at 4e to the thread, disguised behind using other peoples' metaphors.  If not, I do not understand where you are coming from.

And for the record the overlap between D&D players, SCA+Reenactors+LARPers+fencers, and historical nerds is pretty high in my experience.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> I am confused. Could you outline clearly what you believe and find to be true, rather than speaking in second-hand and complexified metaphors that start with other people. From my perspective you appear to be trying to add some fairly classic digs at 4e to the thread, disguised behind using other peoples' metaphors. If not, I do not understand where you are coming from.



If I understood correctly, James used the fencing example to illustrate the expectations that a person brings to the table, and I only rolled with his example because I was trying to understand his conclusions. Perhaps you should ask him, not me, because I didn't bring up the fencing scenario. I don't know what you mean by disguising attacks on 4E by using other people's metaphors.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> Really?




Yep 



> How can I learn to make critical hits?  What skill am I using to score a critical?  At what point can my character choose to make a critical hit?
> 
> Or are critical hits entirely guided by the dice mechanic and actually have zero linkage to the in game fiction?




A critical hit is a hit that is extra good, basically, right? The in-game reasoning can definitely be learned, explored, or observed; the creature has a weak spot that you attacked. You do not have to be able to learn, explore, or observe _how_ to do something in order for it to be associated. You must be able to learn, explore, or observe the reasoning of a mechanic in-game.

To that end, critical hits are definitely associated, as far as I can tell. And definitely abstract.



> A critical hit in D&D only occurs when the dice say they do.  They could happen at any time regardless of the actions of the character.
> 
> I would argue that criticals are most certainly disassociated by your definition.  They can neither be learned, nor taught, nor can they be initiated by the character at any point in time.




Hopefully, now you actually know my definition.

As always, play what you like 



wrecan said:


> But it can't be tested in that way.  A campaign as, at most, 300 encounters.  Those encounters are not in the player's control.  Many of those encounters won't involve combat.  Many of those encounters won't involve situations where the rogue's player would want to use any given encounter power.  That rogue may have other ways to slide people, using terrain powers, improvised actions, and other powers in the players arsenal.
> 
> The game understands that play is sufficiently limited and not susceptible to controlled testing conditions to have to deal with this.  A character is simply highly unlikely to have sufficient numbers of encounters that are so similar that the limited resource mechanic would become apparent.
> 
> We only discuss it because we can peer behind the curtain and see the game rules.  But the character in-game should not have occasion to suspect such a thing exists.




Even if that's the case, as I mentioned, "rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way _can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players._" 



> I think that's only because you are not considering the context of the game and the duration of a given campaign.




Trust me, that's probably not the case 



> No doubt.  But that's true of every abstract mechanic, not just the disassociated ones.  It's just that the people alienated by abstract mechanics have already been alienated form the hobby.  So we've got the anthropic principle at work here too.
> 
> Those of us still playing weren't sufficiently alienated by initiative, hit points, falling damage to stop playing.  But every rule change has the potential to alienate someone still playing and those people will search for patterns, because humans have an intrinsic need to find patterns.
> 
> But the pattern isn't there.  It's just people have an aesthetic disprefrence for a given change.  It's taste and emotion, and there's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing objective about it either.




It is taste. The fact that the pattern is obviously present (even if the characters will probably never experience it in-game) can be very dissociating to some people.

Again, I'd posit that abstraction and dissociation or metagame mechanics are all different things, but metagame mechanics and dissociated mechanics are much more similar to one another than to associated abstract mechanics. I know you use abstract and dissociated interchangeably (or, at least, I thought you posted that in this thread), but I really, strongly disagree.

As always, play what you like


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> OK. But this is the point where, as I said, the inhabitants of the fiction can't tell the difference between that sliding (which in the typical case is an abstraction, let's say, of some sort of fancy footwork and swordplay by the rogue) and any other sliding (whether from another rogue power, or permitted by a leader power - The rogue's fencing really shines when his comrade's need him! - etc).
> 
> Which takes me to this:




That could very well be true. I agree.



> At this stage, I can't help but feel that wrecan's point upthread is apposite - this testing can't take place, because after fewer than 300 encounters the rogue has reached 30th level and has achieved immortality.
> 
> Not to mention that I find the notion of a fictional character trying to explore the boundaries of the genre conceits that an author has imposed on him/her - which is something like what is being described here - fairly odd.
> 
> But _actual_ testing probably isn't the issue, as (it seems to me) you bring out here:




Correct (as in, that's what I meant) again! I feel like we're on the same wavelength.



> And once we get to the problem not being the actualy testing, but the possibility, in principle (if we disregard wrecan's point) of the testing, then what I see is those with simulationist priorities (as per my quote from Ron Edwards upthread) disliking mechanics that impede simulationist play. (Because they are not mechanics that model ingame causal processes.)
> 
> I'm not seeing anything else. (And you've been very clear in your post! So I don't think that there's something else there that I might have missed.)
> 
> Which is part of why I don't feel the need for a new "theory" (of "dissociation") to describe a playstyle preference that's already fairly well known.




Again, meta mechanics are already described. However, sometimes meta mechanics help me fulfill my role, or stay immersed, as odd as that may seem. That's how I feel about "Luck Points" in my game (modeled after Hero Points). Even though they're definitely a meta mechanic, it tends not to pull me out of immersion (and I don't think it does to my players).

However, there are some meta mechanics that do that (subjectively) to certain players. This would be dissociated. With this term, I could theoretically say, "Luck Points are meta mechanics to me, but a barbarian's rage and a rogue's evasion are dissociated to me" and we have a nice, succinct term for separating the two.

Is it something new? No, it's basically "meta mechanics that draw me out of immersion." That's not a new concept. But I find the word is useful, in that sense, in the same way that something like the word "beautiful" is useful subjectively, yet allows you to communicate feeling or perception.

I've really liked where this discussion has led, though. It's clarified a few things for me. Thanks for the talk thus far.

And, as always, play what you like


----------



## Doug McCrae

I think 3e should have made hit points 100% physical, rather than a combination of physical and non-physical much like the account in the 1e DMG. Gary didn't like the idea of a high level fighter being superhuman, supernaturally tough. Writing in the 1e PHB (page 34), he says it is 'ridiculous' to think that a high level fighter with 85 hit points is as physically durable as four huge warhorses, and so he needs to explain the excess hit points as representing skill, luck, etc.

But 3e accepts that a non-magical PC can possess superhuman powers. A high level raging barbarian can leap far further than the world long jump record. There are all the extraordinary abilities mentioned upthread such as the druid's immunity to poison and unaging body, the ranger's hide in plain sight, the paladin's immunity to disease and the barbarian's DR 5/-. If this is all permitted then it seems no stretch at all to regard hit points as another extraordinary ability, representing superhuman toughness.

Perhaps there is a particular problem with the fighter though. He is the most mundane of all the classes, even more than the rogue. More grounded in reality than the paladin and monk, who are highly magical, even more down to Earth than the barbarian, who at high level resembles Cuchulainn, and the ranger, aka Aragorn.

More and more, I think my personal preference is for the 'naïve interpretation' of hit points, ie that they are purely physical. This results in fewer contradictions, and less dissociation – both the player and character know that a fall is survivable, for example. I have no problem with the idea of the fighter being superhuman. In fact it's rather weird that there should be this one mundane class in the game, while the other ten classes whoop it up.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Gantros said:


> Since martial daily powers have been a recurring point of contention and are pretty central to the 4e rules, let's use them as an example and try replacing the existing description:
> 
> ... you’re reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.​
> with this one:
> 
> Characters with martial powers have a limited ability to see and subtly shape future events through their dreams.  During each extended rest, they are able to visualize themselves performing one or more amazing combat exploits that will inevitably come to pass within the next day. These are no more than vague glimpses and are impossible to remember clearly upon waking, but the character will know instantly whenever the right moment to pull off an exploit arrives.​Now some questions for each side...
> 
> For those who have issues with dissociated mechanics - do you agree that a description like this would help make the daily power mechanic easier to accept without changing it mechanically?  It attempts to associate the ability to use multiple challenging yet non-magical maneuvers once each per day with something the character could perceive directly (i.e. dreams), without relying on notions like "reserves of energy" that overlap with other mechanics like HP or Con.



Imo the latter explanation is more dissociated than the former because the player knows he can use the power at any time but from the character's perspective he can only use the power when 'the moment is right'.

It should be noted also that 3e has multiple mechanics representing the loss of reserves of energy - hit points, the fatigued and exhausted conditions, nonlethal damage (which can be received as a result of a forced march), and negative levels (from the spells Enervation and Energy Drain). And, ofc the limited uses per day of the barbarian's rage.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Doug McCrae said:


> I think 3e should have made hit points 100% physical, rather than a combination of physical and non-physical much like the account in the 1e DMG. Gary didn't like the idea of a high level fighter being superhuman, supernaturally tough. Writing in the 1e PHB (page 34), he says it is 'ridiculous' to think that a high level fighter with 85 hit points is as physically durable as four huge warhorses, and so he needs to explain the excess hit points as representing skill, luck, etc.
> 
> But 3e accepts that a non-magical PC can possess superhuman powers. A high level raging barbarian can leap far further than the world long jump record. There are all the extraordinary abilities mentioned upthread such as the druid's immunity to poison and unaging body, the ranger's hide in plain sight, the paladin's immunity to disease and the barbarian's DR 5/-. If this is all permitted then it seems no stretch at all to regard hit points as another extraordinary ability, representing superhuman toughness.
> 
> Perhaps there is a particular problem with the fighter though. He is the most mundane of all the classes, even more than the rogue. More grounded in reality than the paladin and monk, who are highly magical, even more down to Earth than the barbarian, who at high level resembles Cuchulainn, and the ranger, aka Aragorn.
> 
> More and more, I think my personal preference is for the 'naïve interpretation' of hit points, ie that they are purely physical. This results in fewer contradictions, and less dissociation – both the player and character know that a fall is survivable, for example. I have no problem with the idea of the fighter being superhuman. In fact it's rather weird that there should be this one mundane class in the game, while the other ten classes whoop it up.



IMO I wouldn't make 100% but maybe assume a ratio of 1:4 or 2:4 or 3:4 for physical hit points for a fighter depending on the build. I can imagine a barbarian who keeps soaking up hits instead of cowardly dodging all the time, a knight who keeps soaking up hits to his armor, etc. Let the player decide based on character concept and class. Then for a wizard, his physical hit points are merely like 1:8, but he has some sort of magic aura or shielding (helps with jumping off cliffs too!). I don't know how this applies if a PC is hit with moral or psychic damage and he's already "used up" all his non-physical hit points, or a wizard who is cured by a cleric to recharge his magic shielding. Interest musings anyway IMO.


----------



## innerdude

At long last, I think I've finally come to understand what wrecan and pemerton are saying when they don't believe dissociative mechanics exist, or that even if they are "dissociative," there's no harm in it because it serves a narrative function. 

The premise is based on the idea of situational narrative. In other words, any particular application/resolution of a 4e power should only be described, or "narrated," within the specific context in which it is invoked--i.e., the short-term situation surrounding the encounter in which it is used. 

In this case, there is no need to "associate" the mechanic with any one particular flavor or end result, because the situation in which the mechanic is used may be completely different from encounter-to-encounter, allowing totally different narrative "flavor." 

In one encounter, Trick Strike may mean the rogue found it "Fitting to use the rocky terrain" to get an opponent to move. In another encounter, Trick Strike may mean they used a piece of rope to feint the opponent and get in a strike. In another encounter, they may use the distraction of a wizard casting a spell to get in the right position. 

I can see from a "narrativist" point of view how this could, in fact, feel freeing to a player or GM. It's no longer necessary to try and concoct encounters that plays to a party's strengths; you can simply assume there's always a narratively acceptable way for a given character "power" to work within the scene, and everyone gets to participate. 

However, I see several problems that go with this idea. 

One, it can have the tendency to keep player focus more on the individual scenes, and less on the world as a whole (your mileage may vary, of course). Anyone who's ever complained that 4e doesn't provide as much "world building" opportunities isn't stating an objective truth, they're actually commenting on the mechanical elements that naturally push for scene-based resolution narrative. It's not that you CAN'T do world building in 4e, it's that the entire rules system is designed purely from a scene-based narrative resolution, rather than a holistic, "simulative" point of view. 

Second, making acceptable scene-based, "narrative" resolutions using these powers puts a significant onus on the players to _create_ the narrative. If you're the type of player that naturally resists this tendency to begin with, it's certainly not going to aid your cause. I can see for groups that naturally "create" narrative, it's not an issue, and in some ways is even creatively fun, trying to make the associated connections. But if your group doesn't enjoy this, it creates big, big problems, likely leading to the widely recognized phenomenon of the 4e "battle slogfest." No descriptive narrative, just a play-out of the mechanics, in one encounter after another. 

Finally, somewhere along the way, no matter how good the GM, no matter how engaged the player, there's going to be instances that crop up where a narratively acceptable reason for some powers to work is simply not there--or at best, stretches the boundaries of credulity. No matter how hard one tries, there's going to be situations that dissociate the character from the construct. As many others have stated, it's not that ANY ONE instance of a power can't be "associated"--it's the fact that around every single turn, with every single character type, built into the core baseline of 4e, potential dissociations are there, just waiting to crop up. 

I'm guessing that pemerton and wrecan might respond, "Yes, this happens, but in our groups it happens so rarely that it doesn't pull us out of 'immersion,' and we simply play out the mechanical happening and keep moving, enjoying the other benefits of narrative resolution within the scene." 

But if you're not the type of group/player/GM that enjoys this style of play, and doesn't want to have to engage with individual scene-based narrative at that level EVERY TIME YOU PLAY, then 4e is far and away NOT the right game. In fact, it's soooooooo far outside the line as to be untenable. In this case, every stinkin' little thing is going to be dissociative. You're really going to have a hard time feeling like you really are playing a _character _with any sense of rationality. 

I think there's more to explore on the effects this has on long-term creation of "rational," "organic" world-building (namely that it makes it much, much harder), but at least on the scene/narrative level, I do think it makes sense. Don't think the effects/trade-offs are worth it, but it makes sense.


----------



## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> people have blissfully played out exactly that scenario and suffered no such feeling of disassociation. That's because they don't know what spears in competent hands are going to do the poor fencer, stuck in a relatively narrow place. That is, what they brought to the table was more important. Only in this case, it let them ignore a potential simulation hole in the mechanics.



In my case, add a degree of ignorance about combat to a fondness for Jacki Chan and Jet Li martial arts films. (Those films certainly inform my sense of what is happening, in game, when our dwarf uses his polearm. And I'm pretty sure that that is the case for the player too, given that he is the one who introduced me to those films back in the day.)

Which is just to reinforce your point that genre expectations also matter.



Yesway Jose said:


> Pemerton asked how there could be a wedge



Not quite. I denied that there was any wedge - any dissociation - in the actual play example that I gave (of the player of the paladin narrating the end of an enemy's effect on his PC as his PC's god turning back from a toad to a person).

It's no part of my agenda to tell other people when they may or may not be being wedged, or become "dissociated" from the fiction. My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some _inherent tendency_ to produce that result. And I am showing that by instancing counterexamples to any such alleged tendency.

And my view is that, with the notion of such a tendency refuted, the theory of "dissociated mechanics", as stated by The Alexandrian and defended in the title of this thread, is dead. All that's left is some stuff that was already well-known before Justin Alexander put finger to keyboard - namely, that some players have simulationist priorities in RPGing, and that some metagame mechanics can disrupt those priorities.



Yesway Jose said:


> Why is there no wedge from your perspective?
> 
> The less you know about fencing, then ignorance is bliss. So no wedge.
> 
> The more you know about fencing= possible wedge. If the context feels good = no wedge. Or, depending on the context, the fencer may lose immersion = possible wedge. If he doesn't care about immersion = no wedge. If he does care = wedge.



Well I was more defending the paladin example than the fencing example - which I see as a complement to my example - mine is about _character_, the fencing example is about _situation_.

And why is there no wedge in the actual play example that I gave? Well, I was there, and I'm faithfully reporting it (obviously you have to trust me on that, if the example is to have any force for you). And it happened as I said. To recount, with just a little more mechanical detail:

The paladin was subject to an effect from a human transmuter (MV, I believe) - turned into a frog and therefore unable to attack or use powers until the end of the transmuter's next turn. The player of the paladin therefore missed a turn in the combat - he didn't want his frog-paladin to move - and muttered about not liking it very much while the rest of the table made jokes about not stepping on the frog as the other PCs moved in to confront the transmuter and her flunkies.

The transmuter's next turn duly ended, and the paladin was the next character in the turn sequence. I told the player of the paladin that his PC turned from a frog back to himself. The player then declared his action, which was to move into melee range with the transmuter. And he said, in character, something to the effect that the transmuter was now going to get it (while laying down a Divine Challenge as a minor action). The transmuter replied something along the lines of "I don't think so - after all, I turned you into a frog!". And without pausing, the player of the paladin responded (in character), "Ah - but the Raven Queen turned me back." And the paladin then proceeded to beat up the transmuter.​
This is, to my mind, a clear example of a player "inhabiting" his/her PC. There is in character dialogue. The player is thinking in terms of his PC - "I move here, I challenge her, I say this and that and the other, I attack her". The conviction in the power of the Raven Queen is stated by the PC and reflects the experience that the PC is undergoing in having transformed out of frog form back to tiefling form.

This example has marking - which we've been told by The Alexandrian, and by innderdude upthread, is dissociated. It's got a player treating an "end of next turn" duration as an opportunity to narrate his PC's god's miraculous intervention on the PC's behalf - as analysed by The Alexandrian, not only is this a dissociated mechanic, but it's pernicious _houseruling_ being required to try and "reassociate" the mechanic. And innerdude, upthread, has described this sort of thing as overturning rationality and antecedent/consequence causation.

The example has all these allegededly roleplaying destroying, immersion destroying, wedge-driving mechanics and practices going on. And yet roleplaying has not been destroyed. The player has inhabited his PC the whole time. He is as immersed as I've even seen a player be immersed - the player in question, of all my players, is the one most inclined to what might be described as an immersive style of play - really trying to inhabit his PC and feel, and express via his play, his PC's emotional responses. And the anecdote I've recounted is an example of just this.

Again, to try and be crystal clear: I'm not saying that what I saw happen, at my table, with my player, is a universal template for how playing 4e will work out for others. But to refute the theory of dissociated mechanics I don't need to do that. All I need to do is show that the mechanics that are said, by that theory, to induce "dissociation" either of necessity, or by generalisation of tendency, in fact need not.

The other example I've referred to a bit upthread is of the dwarven polearm fighter. I've even pointed out how sometimes Come and Get It, for that player, is Actor stance - "My clever polearm work wrongfoots them" - and sometimes is Director stance - "They all charge me". The Director stance occasions are at odds with immersion, in so far as they require the player to engage with the fiction beyond the confines of his PC's own experiences and emotions, but (in my experience) they still don't dissociated the player from the fictional situation. Which is to say, the state of affairs resembles more closely the one that Crazy Jerome is describing via his fencing example.



Yesway Jose said:


> I can't even remember anymore, but I think this only came up in the 1st place because of my perception of people suggesting that using Page 42 outside of combat could resolve "disassociation" issues.



If I recall correctly, I'm the one who introduced page 42 into the thread.

The point I was trying to make is that, if players are interested in using page 42 - and mine certainly are - then they will be engaging with the fiction - both passively (ie trying to understand what it contains) and actively (ie trying to shape it, through the descriptions that they give when they deploy the action resolution mechanics).

I think this "resolves 'dissociation' issues" to the extent that it is another reason to think (i) that using metagame action resolution mechanics won't of necessity tend to drive a wedge between participants and the fiction, and (ii) that participants in the game can be expected to add narrative interpretation to metagame mechanics during the course of play not as some extra burdensome chore of the sort that innerdude and The Alexandrian imply,  but as just another ordinary element of play.

As with what I've said above about Come and Get It in Director's stance, this goes more to "dissociation" from the fictional situation than to "dissociation" from the fictional character, although in some cases thinking about page 42 possibilities might also help (rather than hinder) the player's "inhabitation" and expression of his/her PC. An actual play example I have in mind here is when the same player of the same paladin PC used Religion skill to speak a curse from the Raven Queen against a wight he was fighting. Mechanically, this was resolved as a Religion check against a moderate DC staking one turn of combat advantage against a modest amount of damage (either psychic or necrotic, but I can't remember). It reinforced the player's "inhabitation" of his PC by letting him engage the fictional situation in a way that fitted with his conception of how his PC would act in it - that is, at all times to rely upon the might of the Raven Queen, particularly when confronted with something as blasphemous as a wight.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> sometimes meta mechanics help me fulfill my role, or stay immersed, as odd as that may seem. That's how I feel about "Luck Points" in my game (modeled after Hero Points). Even though they're definitely a meta mechanic, it tends not to pull me out of immersion (and I don't think it does to my players).
> 
> However, there are some meta mechanics that do that (subjectively) to certain players. This would be dissociated. With this term, I could theoretically say, "Luck Points are meta mechanics to me, but a barbarian's rage and a rogue's evasion are dissociated to me" and we have a nice, succinct term for separating the two.
> 
> Is it something new? No, it's basically "meta mechanics that draw me out of immersion." That's not a new concept. But I find the word is useful, in that sense, in the same way that something like the word "beautiful" is useful subjectively, yet allows you to communicate feeling or perception.



As best I can tell I follow all this.

I'm not sure I agree on the utility of the term because, as you have characterised it, it has an essentially relational component (ie "dissociated mechanic" means something ilke "metagame mechanic that tends to drive a wedge between me, the one using the label on this occasion, and the fiction") - but, as I think innerdude and Justin Alexander's deployment of the phrase shows, this relational element can very easily get obscured or forgotten about in discussion.

Obviously, your mileage has varied on this question of utility!

And at least as far as our subomponent of this thread goes, it seems that our work here is done (as in, unless I've mangled your post in this reply, and/or replied to it in a completely obscure way, we've worked out what each is doing with, or making, of this "dissociated" label)! Good stuff.

I want to start a new subcomponent, though. Can you say anything about why you don't find Luck/Fate/Hero points dissociative in your use of them? (Which would also require explaining what they can be used for, I guess.)


----------



## pemerton

Doug McCrae said:


> I think 3e should have made hit points 100% physical
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 3e accepts that a non-magical PC can possess superhuman powers.
> 
> <snip examples of EX abilities for PCs>
> 
> If this is all permitted then it seems no stretch at all to regard hit points as another extraordinary ability, representing superhuman toughness.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> More and more, I think my personal preference is for the 'naïve interpretation' of hit points, ie that they are purely physical. This results in fewer contradictions, and less dissociation



My first response to this is that it would make the game more coherent, as you say. I also think, although maybe more tentatively, that it would reinforce my existing disinclination to play 3E. For a reason that is hard to explain, I prefer 4e's somewhat baroque version of gonzo - set out in terms of tiers, and approrpiate powers and foes and other setting elements of tiers - to the more "prosaic" gonzo (if that makes sense) of naive-hit-points-3E.

To try to cash that out just a little bit - as a 4e PC grows in level, part of their superhuman-ness is expressed in terms of ever-improving abilities to access their healing surges or to heal without having to spend surges. Which makes it feel like more than just packing on extra meat. Whereas naive hit points seem very meaty!

(And I also get a bit confused as between hit points as superhuman toughness, armour and natural armour bonuses to AC as superhuman toughness, and DR as superhuman toughness - under a simulationist reading, what different modes of being superhumanly tough does each of these represent?)


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> As best I can tell I follow all this.
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
> And at least as far as our subomponent of this thread goes, it seems that our work here is done (as in, unless I've mangled your post in this reply, and/or replied to it in a completely obscure way, we've worked out what each is doing with, or making, of this "dissociated" label)! Good stuff.




No, you got all of what I was trying to communicate correct. Discussion accomplished 



> I want to start a new subcomponent, though. Can you say anything about why you don't find Luck/Fate/Hero points dissociative in your use of them? (Which would also require explaining what they can be used for, I guess.)




Within the game I'm running (the game I created), you can earn Luck Points by taking risks above and beyond normal (fortune favors the bold and all that), as well as playing up optional Complications.

Complications are optional characteristics about your PC that have no mechanical dealings (other than garnering your Luck Points), though they help to describe your character. Whenever a complication either saves you or the party from great misfortune, you gain a Luck Point. Or, whenever it brings great misfortune to you or the party, you gain a Luck Point.

One of my players has the Complications "alcohol" and "protect the defenseless". Whenever his interest with alcohol significantly helps or hurts the party, his gains a Luck Point. The same goes for him going out of his way to protect the defenseless.

Luck Points can then be spent in sets of 1, 2, or 3. The more Luck Points you spend, the  better the result. For example, you can get a +1 bonus to a roll for 1 Luck Point. You could, alternatively, lower the DC by 3 of a check for 3 Luck Points. You can also reroll dice before hearing the result (or force enemy rerolls if they're directly opposing you). A single point is just a reroll; 2 points guarantees you the better result; 3 points guarantees at least the top or bottom half of the die roll naturally (your choice).

These Luck Points can definitely be expressed from a narrative point of view. Lowering the DC of the Strength check to break open the door might mean the hinges were rusty (though they weren't so until you spend the Luck Point).

While it's true that it is a meta mechanic, I don't find it dissociating because of a few reasons:
1) They're used quickly, so the focus on them is brief. They don't last long enough to pull you out of your role.
2) They have no discernible pattern. They are unlike dailies in this regard. You could go 10 days, 10 months, or 10 years without even gaining a Luck Point.
3) They help capture part of the essence of the fantasy genre while only enhancing already existing simulation-based mechanics.

I assume you'll have more questions, so I've stopped myself from trying to pre-answer them. If you don't have more, than I guess I'm mistaken, but trying to pre-answer them would seem to be pointless then, too.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Yesway Jose

> It's no part of my agenda to tell other people when they may or may not be being wedged, or become "dissociated" from the fiction. My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some _inherent tendency_ to produce that result.



Likewise, it's not my agenda to impose my POV on anyone else's game, but I believe that certain mechanics do have some tendency to produce that result and for some reason I feel compelled to justify that. I don't know that it has been turning out well for either of us, as I'm not aware of anybody seriously changing positions on this thread  Maybe another thread...

I'm not one that enjoys rigorous semantics, and I don't know that mechanics can have "inherent" tendency, and the game theory of the essay never interested me personally. I tend to put "disassociated" in quotes now as a label that everyone seems to be using, because nobody has come up with anything else that short. I wouldn't necessarily use that label outside of this thread, only because it's not widely recognized, but not because I care if it's a valid theory.



> Well I was more defending the paladin example than the fencing example - which I see as a complement to my example - mine is about _character_, the fencing example is about _situation_.
> <snip>
> And the anecdote I've recounted is an example of just this.



I've tried very hard to follow and I apologize that I can't. Perhaps the paladin and fencing examples went on too many tangents. Even with your new clarification, I don't see the disassociation of narrating the end of the enemy's effect on his PC, because the spell was going to end anyway and the Paladin can perceive that however he wants.



> But to refute the theory of dissociated mechanics I don't need to do that. All I need to do is show that the mechanics that are said, by that theory, to induce "dissociation" either of necessity, or by generalisation of tendency, in fact need not.



Again don't follow, probably because I'm not your target. But generally speaking, if you want to prove that all/most swans are white, you need to show a whole lot of swans. Whereas, to prove that not all swans are white, you only need to show one black one.


----------



## Hussar

Crazy Jerome said:


> Paradoxically, using the logic of disassociation, criticals would be least disassociated coming from the inexperienced and most disassociated for high level, highly trained characters. A lucky shot that you can't control or explain is fairly common for beginners--and not infrequently the result of the beginner fighting someone who also doesn't much know what they are doing. Give two untrained, stupid 14 year-old boys broadswords, and let them go at it, and I can almost guarantee that you'll see a real-life critical before the police haul you away.




LOL.  Sorry, no xp for you.  Just that this one made me giggle.


----------



## Hussar

JamesonCourage said:


> Yep
> 
> 
> 
> A critical hit is a hit that is extra good, basically, right? The in-game reasoning can definitely be learned, explored, or observed; the creature has a weak spot that you attacked. You do not have to be able to learn, explore, or observe _how_ to do something in order for it to be associated. You must be able to learn, explore, or observe the reasoning of a mechanic in-game.
> 
> To that end, critical hits are definitely associated, as far as I can tell. And definitely abstract.
> 
> 
> 
> Hopefully, now you actually know my definition.
> /snip




Hang on a second then.  So, we don't need to actually be able to learn anything, so your whole tangent on the difference between EX and SU powers was what?  A red herring?  Since the ONLY distinction between EX and SU was that you could be TAUGHT EX powers and that was the only thing making EX powers not disassociated, doesn't most of your point fall apart?

Now, if the point of disassociation is whether or not we can explain how X happened in the game, then 99% of 4e powers are no longer disassociated.  How does Come and Get It work?  Well, the baddies decided to mob my fighter and I laid about me left and right.

Now, by this definition of disassociation, CAGI is totally associated.  We can explore how it works in the game with virtually no problems.

Why didn't I use that Rogues Feinting power in this fight when I did last fight?  Sorry, I tried, but the baddie just wasn't going for it.

There, no more disassociation.

So, which is it JamesonCourage?  Is disassociation defined by the ability to learn how to perform a specific effect or simply whether or not we can justify how the effect worked?


----------



## innerdude

pemerton said:


> It's no part of my agenda to tell other people when they may or may not be being wedged, or become "dissociated" from the fiction. My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some _inherent tendency_ to produce that result. And I am showing that by instancing counterexamples to any such alleged tendency.
> 
> And my view is that, with the notion of such a tendency refuted, the theory of "dissociated mechanics", as stated by The Alexandrian and defended in the title of this thread, is dead. All that's left is some stuff that was already well-known before Justin Alexander put finger to keyboard - namely, that some players have simulationist priorities in RPGing, and that some metagame mechanics can disrupt those priorities.
> 
> And why is there no wedge in the actual play example that I gave? Well, I was there, and I'm faithfully reporting it (obviously you have to trust me on that, if the example is to have any force for you). And it happened as I said. To recount, with just a little more mechanical detail:
> The paladin was subject to an effect from a human transmuter (MV, I believe) - turned into a frog and therefore unable to attack or use powers until the end of the transmuter's next turn. The player of the paladin therefore missed a turn in the combat - he didn't want his frog-paladin to move - and muttered about not liking it very much while the rest of the table made jokes about not stepping on the frog as the other PCs moved in to confront the transmuter and her flunkies.
> 
> The transmuter's next turn duly ended, and the paladin was the next character in the turn sequence. I told the player of the paladin that his PC turned from a frog back to himself. The player then declared his action, which was to move into melee range with the transmuter. And he said, in character, something to the effect that the transmuter was now going to get it (while laying down a Divine Challenge as a minor action). The transmuter replied something along the lines of "I don't think so - after all, I turned you into a frog!". And without pausing, the player of the paladin responded (in character), "Ah - but the Raven Queen turned me back." And the paladin then proceeded to beat up the transmuter.​This is, to my mind, a clear example of a player "inhabiting" his/her PC. There is in character dialogue. The player is thinking in terms of his PC - "I move here, I challenge her, I say this and that and the other, I attack her". The conviction in the power of the Raven Queen is stated by the PC and reflects the experience that the PC is undergoing in having transformed out of frog form back to tiefling form.
> 
> This example has marking - which we've been told by The Alexandrian, and by innderdude upthread, is dissociated. It's got a player treating an "end of next turn" duration as an opportunity to narrate his PC's god's miraculous intervention on the PC's behalf - as analysed by The Alexandrian, not only is this a dissociated mechanic, but it's pernicious _houseruling_ being required to try and "reassociate" the mechanic. And innerdude, upthread, has described this sort of thing as overturning rationality and antecedent/consequence causation.
> 
> The example has all these allegededly roleplaying destroying, immersion destroying, wedge-driving mechanics and practices going on. And yet roleplaying has not been destroyed. The player has inhabited his PC the whole time. He is as immersed as I've even seen a player be immersed - the player in question, of all my players, is the one most inclined to what might be described as an immersive style of play - really trying to inhabit his PC and feel, and express via his play, his PC's emotional responses. And the anecdote I've recounted is an example of just this.
> 
> Again, to try and be crystal clear: I'm not saying that what I saw happen, at my table, with my player, is a universal template for how playing 4e will work out for others. But to refute the theory of dissociated mechanics I don't need to do that. All I need to do is show that the mechanics that are said, by that theory, to induce "dissociation" either of necessity, or by generalisation of tendency, in fact need not.




Whoah, whoah, whoah, there. I offered an olive branch upthread, when I finally came to realize the point of view you expressed. I don't particularly like the implications, nor would I want to ever play a 4e game with your group, but I at least understand it. 

In spite of your declarations to the contrary, I think you are doing exactly what you say you aren't--equating your player's singular experience "where a Paladin became a frog and back" to some universal application that dissociation doesn't exist, that it's all in our heads. 

This one experience doesn't nullify other wholly valid criticisms presented in the concept of dissociation (I know, I know, you say there aren't any, because it doesn't exist). 

Do you not believe that there are mechanics that promote "immersiveness," and those that don't? Are all mechanics equally good or bad for promoting immersion, it's only a question of creating the right "narrative scene" and somehow getting the player and GM to find the right "association" to make it work? 

The fact that the particular scenario you shared, that particular scene, allowed the player to create a valid, prescient association (in character, even) doesn't change the fact that in OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, with OTHER CHARACTERS, with OTHER situational factors, a dissociated mechanic can create circumstances that are implausible at best, and untenable at worst. 

If you don't want to call it "dissociation," because you feel it has negative connotations, or because you think the Alexandrian's theory arose more out of spite than honest analysis, that's your prerogative. But it doesn't change the fact that those of us who WANT more "immersion" and less "dissociation" from our RPGs find value in the concept. In spite of your objections to the "attitude" or "tone" in which the original essay was presented, it provides value to some of us as a way to evaluate RPG mechanical structure. 

You believe it doesn't exist. Fine. But telling us, "It doesn't exist, because I watched my player completely sidestep it _IN ONE PARTICULAR INSTANCE_" is just as much a fallacy as claiming that dissociative mechanics affect everyone equally. I have never, not once, in this thread claimed that the effects of dissociation are universal across groups or experience, but just because it isn't universal in all circumstances doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that no one finds value in the concept.


----------



## Hussar

innerdude said:


> At long last, I think I've finally come to understand what wrecan and pemerton are saying when they don't believe dissociative mechanics exist, or that even if they are "dissociative," there's no harm in it because it serves a narrative function.
> 
> The premise is based on the idea of situational narrative. In other words, any particular application/resolution of a 4e power should only be described, or "narrated," within the specific context in which it is invoked--i.e., the short-term situation surrounding the encounter in which it is used.
> 
> In this case, there is no need to "associate" the mechanic with any one particular flavor or end result, because the situation in which the mechanic is used may be completely different from encounter-to-encounter, allowing totally different narrative "flavor."
> 
> In one encounter, Trick Strike may mean the rogue found it "Fitting to use the rocky terrain" to get an opponent to move. In another encounter, Trick Strike may mean they used a piece of rope to feint the opponent and get in a strike. In another encounter, they may use the distraction of a wizard casting a spell to get in the right position.
> 
> I can see from a "narrativist" point of view how this could, in fact, feel freeing to a player or GM. It's no longer necessary to try and concoct encounters that plays to a party's strengths; you can simply assume there's always a narratively acceptable way for a given character "power" to work within the scene, and everyone gets to participate.




Fair enough and I'd say you've nailed it pretty much spot on.



> However, I see several problems that go with this idea.
> 
> One, it can have the tendency to keep player focus more on the individual scenes, and less on the world as a whole (your mileage may vary, of course). Anyone who's ever complained that 4e doesn't provide as much "world building" opportunities isn't stating an objective truth, they're actually commenting on the mechanical elements that naturally push for scene-based resolution narrative. It's not that you CAN'T do world building in 4e, it's that the entire rules system is designed purely from a scene-based narrative resolution, rather than a holistic, "simulative" point of view.




Players don't world build.  DM's world build.  So, as far as the players are concerned, they don't really care.

And, wouldn't the fact that given effects are no longer tied to a single pre-defined explanation not actually give you MORE freedom to worldbuild?  I mean, if all effects work in only one way, the mechanically defined one, then your worldbuilding must be informed by those mechanics.  You cannot break out of those pre-definitions without rewriting the mechanics.



> Second, making acceptable scene-based, "narrative" resolutions using these powers puts a significant onus on the players to _create_ the narrative. If you're the type of player that naturally resists this tendency to begin with, it's certainly not going to aid your cause. I can see for groups that naturally "create" narrative, it's not an issue, and in some ways is even creatively fun, trying to make the associated connections. But if your group doesn't enjoy this, it creates big, big problems, likely leading to the widely recognized phenomenon of the 4e "battle slogfest." No descriptive narrative, just a play-out of the mechanics, in one encounter after another.




I would argue that forcing players to be more engaged at the table and to take be active participants, rather than passive consumers, is a feature, not a bug.  If the players refuse to engage in narrative building, isn't that a failing of the players, not the system?

Or, perhaps a less charitable way of phrasing it might be - 3e players need to be spoonfed their narrative because they're incapable of creating their own?

I certainly wouldn't say that.  I'd say that 3e players are every bit as creative as any other RPG players.  Why not give them the opportunity to express that creativity?



> Finally, somewhere along the way, no matter how good the GM, no matter how engaged the player, there's going to be instances that crop up where a narratively acceptable reason for some powers to work is simply not there--or at best, stretches the boundaries of credulity. No matter how hard one tries, there's going to be situations that dissociate the character from the construct. As many others have stated, it's not that ANY ONE instance of a power can't be "associated"--it's the fact that around every single turn, with every single character type, built into the core baseline of 4e, potential dissociations are there, just waiting to crop up.




There's a danger here of going a bit overboard though.  Most powers and effects really aren't disassociated in any real meaningful way.  Most are pretty easily visualized within the context of the scenario.  Tide of Iron - hit the target and push it back one square so long as it's only one size larger than you or smaller - isn't likely to break anyone's immersion too easily.

And, even a cursory reading of the PHB shows that there are far more powers like Tide of Iron than like Come and Get It.  It would be trivially easy for a group to have virtually no disassociated powers at any given level.



> I'm guessing that pemerton and wrecan might respond, "Yes, this happens, but in our groups it happens so rarely that it doesn't pull us out of 'immersion,' and we simply play out the mechanical happening and keep moving, enjoying the other benefits of narrative resolution within the scene."
> 
> But if you're not the type of group/player/GM that enjoys this style of play, and doesn't want to have to engage with individual scene-based narrative at that level EVERY TIME YOU PLAY, then 4e is far and away NOT the right game. In fact, it's soooooooo far outside the line as to be untenable. In this case, every stinkin' little thing is going to be dissociative. You're really going to have a hard time feeling like you really are playing a _character _with any sense of rationality.




Play what you want to play, of course.  But, again, don't make mountains out of mole hills.  The number of truly problematic powers isn't anywhere near as great as all that.  Most are perfectly easily justifiable.  It might be beneficial to go back and actually look at the powers and think about which ones you would find problematic and see if they do, indeed constitute even a large minority of the available powers.

By the same token, I have to admit, Bards bug the crap out of me.  



> I think there's more to explore on the effects this has on long-term creation of "rational," "organic" world-building (namely that it makes it much, much harder), but at least on the scene/narrative level, I do think it makes sense. Don't think the effects/trade-offs are worth it, but it makes sense.




This only has an effect on world building if you insist on the idea that mechanics = the physics of the world.  If, instead, you see mechanics as a tool for task resolution, then this problem vanishes.

Funnily enough, I've never seen anyone complain about having a difficult time world building in games like Spirit of the Century or HERO.


----------



## Hussar

JamesonCourage said:
			
		

> Originally Posted by JamesonCourage View Post
> sometimes meta mechanics help me fulfill my role, or stay immersed, as odd as that may seem. That's how I feel about "Luck Points" in my game (modeled after Hero Points). Even though they're definitely a meta mechanic, it tends not to pull me out of immersion (and I don't think it does to my players).
> 
> However, there are some meta mechanics that do that (subjectively) to certain players. This would be dissociated. With this term, I could theoretically say, "Luck Points are meta mechanics to me, but a barbarian's rage and a rogue's evasion are dissociated to me" and we have a nice, succinct term for separating the two.
> 
> Is it something new? No, it's basically "meta mechanics that draw me out of immersion." That's not a new concept. But I find the word is useful, in that sense, in the same way that something like the word "beautiful" is useful subjectively, yet allows you to communicate feeling or perception.




So, essentially, the diffence between meta-mechanics and disassociated mechanics is that you happen to like meta-mechanics but don't like disassociated ones.  And the disassociated ones are disassociated simply because you don't like them.

Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier just to say, "I don't like this particular mechanic"?


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> Hang on a second then.  So, we don't need to actually be able to learn anything, so your whole tangent on the difference between EX and SU powers was what?  A red herring?  Since the ONLY distinction between EX and SU was that you could be TAUGHT EX powers and that was the only thing making EX powers not disassociated, doesn't most of your point fall apart?




No, no, no. You can be taught some SU powers as well, I assume. The difference I noted was how it functions in an anti-magic field.

I should also note that I didn't bring them up. I think pemerton did, if I recall correctly, in a way that seemed to imply that EX abilities break the laws of nature, and are thus dissociated. I went into detail from there explaining why I didn't that was the case, as far as I can tell.

I didn't bring them up, nor did I make the distinction you're saying I did. My point is fine. Ask pemerton.

EDIT: I went back and grabbed the quote I think started it:


			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> My point is that it's not enough for the game rules to stipulate that there is a method that can be learned, if the notion of such a method is contradictory or incoherent.
> 
> I would suggest that the notion, in D&D, of phasing my body as an EX rather than a SU ability, is an example of that sort of incoherence.




I then went on to explain that EX abilities are mainly divergent from SU abilities in the area of an anti-magic field, and that they aren't magic. I didn't make the claim you've said I made ("the ONLY distinction between EX and SU was that you could be TAUGHT EX powers").



> Now, if the point of disassociation is whether or not we can explain how X happened in the game, then 99% of 4e powers are no longer disassociated.  How does Come and Get It work?  Well, the baddies decided to mob my fighter and I laid about me left and right.




Can the reasoning of the power be learned, explored, or observed in-game? Can we observe that the fighter caused the mobs to rush him, and how that happened? If not, than it fits the bill of dissociation that I've been discussing at length (which it seems you've been missing).

I think if you go back pages and reread my posts, and pemerton's replies to my posts, than it might be clear to you where I stand on things. As of now, you are not grasping (or are misrepresenting) what my point is.



> Now, by this definition of disassociation, CAGI is totally associated.  We can explore how it works in the game with virtually no problems.




Nope.



> Why didn't I use that Rogues Feinting power in this fight when I did last fight?  Sorry, I tried, but the baddie just wasn't going for it.




Again, nope.



> There, no more disassociation.




Again, nope.



> So, which is it JamesonCourage?  Is disassociation defined by the ability to learn how to perform a specific effect or simply whether or not we can justify how the effect worked?




Neither. Go reread my posts again.



Hussar said:


> So, essentially, the diffence between meta-mechanics and disassociated mechanics is that you happen to like meta-mechanics but don't like disassociated ones.




It's not a matter of like or dislike. It's a matter of whether or not it pulls you out of immersion. If it does, it's dissociated. It can pull you out of immersion and you can still like it (as I believe pemerton does).



> And the disassociated ones are disassociated simply because you don't like them.




Nope, you're not grasping it yet.



> Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier just to say, "I don't like this particular mechanic"?




Not if I wanted to convey what I'm trying to say accurately.

As always, play what you like


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose, thanks for the reply.



Yesway Jose said:


> if you want to prove that all/most swans are white, you need to show a whole lot of swans. Whereas, to prove that not all swans are white, you only need to show one black one.



Quite. I believe I've provided a couple of black swans upthread.



Yesway Jose said:


> Perhaps the paladin and fencing examples went on too many tangents. Even with your new clarification, I don't see the disassociation of narrating the end of the enemy's effect on his PC, because the spell was going to end anyway and the Paladin can perceive that however he wants.



Well, at the level of mechanics, the spell was going to end anyway because that's what the rules say. But in the fiction, it doesn't follow that the spell would have ended but for the Raven Queen's intervention. The point of the player's narration is that (given that no one at the table contested it) it establishes that, in the fiction, it was the Raven Queen who turned the paladin from a frog back to a person.

So according to Justin Alexander, this is an example of a "dissociated" mechanic - because there is no reason for the mechanically dictated event to occur in the fiction other than that supplied ad hoc by the player (Alexander calls this _houseruling_).

And according to Alexander, a "dissociated" mechanic of this sort is bad because

it disengages the player from the role they're playing​.

But in the example I gave, the so-called dissociated mechanic didn't disengage the player from the role he was playing at all. In fact, it gave him an opportunity to reinforce his engagement with the role he was playing.

That's one of my black swans.



Yesway Jose said:


> I don't know that mechanics can have "inherent" tendency, and the game theory of the essay never interested me personally.



OK. Once you take the theory out of the essay, though, I'm not sure what's left other than that Justin Alexander doesn't like 4e.



Yesway Jose said:


> I believe that certain mechanics do have some tendency to produce that result and for some reason I feel compelled to justify that. I don't know that it has been turning out well for either of us, as I'm not aware of anybody seriously changing positions on this thread



Well, as you've seen, my compulsion is the opposite of yours - ie I'm compelled to present the black swans that I've witnessed with my own eyes.

I've got no doubt that, when you play an RPG, certain mechanics have a tendency to make you disenage from the role you're playing. So you don't need to justify that to me.

But I'm not sure how far you're wanting to generalise your experience. Sometimes it seems you don't. But then sometimes it seems that you do, which is what triggers my compulsion to respond!



Yesway Jose said:


> Maybe another thread



Well, the issue of 4e and roleplaying crops up pretty often on these boards, so this'll probably come true . . .


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> While it's true that it is a meta mechanic, I don't find it dissociating because of a few reasons:
> 1) They're used quickly, so the focus on them is brief. They don't last long enough to pull you out of your role.
> 2) They have no discernible pattern. They are unlike dailies in this regard. You could go 10 days, 10 months, or 10 years without even gaining a Luck Point.
> 3) They help capture part of the essence of the fantasy genre while only enhancing already existing simulation-based mechanics.



Predictably enough, I'm going to compare this to my experiences with 4e.

I'm not sure "agree" is quite the right word - maybe I should say I have similar experiences - but anyway, I tend to agree with (1), partially agree with (3), and have the greatest difference from you, I think, in relation to (2).

(1) is generally true for 4e daily powers etc. Sometimes, though - like Come and Get It when the situation isn't obviously just deft polarm work - it's not always the case that they're quick. This can pull the participants out of their roles and into a discussion of what exactly is happening in the narrative. If this looks like it could be a problem, I as GM try to come up with a narration quickly - and if the players accept it then things keep moving along.

The first part of (3) I believe to be true of 4e powers. The second part is not true. But the powers, in my experience, do enhance or express the established ingame fictional reality. So they work to reinforce the shared fiction, although by a different means from that of reinforcing simulationist mechanics.

(2) is one of the obvious points of difference that's emerged in this thread. My play experience with 4e is that the pattern of daily use is not discernible in any meaningful way. Maybe it's the fact that our sessions are normally two to three weeks apart. Maybe it's the fact that we _don't_ use the convention of one session = one day, which means that it's not just a case of each daily once per session.

The fact that there is an in-principle discernible pattern, which defies simulationist causation, is true, but not a problem for me. As in my partial overlap with (3), as long as the shared fiction is expressed and reinforced, it doesn't both me that this is happening via metagame mechanics that aren't just piggybacking on simulationist ones.

By the way, I take it from (3) that you _don't_ allow Luck Points to be spent to produce narrative elements that aren't linked to a pre-existing action resolution event (so eg no spending a Luck Point to bring it about that your faithful servant smuggles a dagger to you in prison). If I'm right, this would make your Luck Points similar to HARP Fate Points and more constrained than OGL Conan Fate Points. (I can't remember whether Arcana Unearthed Hero Points can be used for "fiction tweaking" outside the context of enhancing a die roll.)


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> It's not a matter of like or dislike. It's a matter of whether or not it pulls you out of immersion. If it does, it's dissociated. It can pull you out of immersion and you can still like it (as I believe pemerton does).



On this particular point I'm actually closer to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION].

I think that whether or not a given mechanic pulls a given player out of immersion will be relative to that player. So "dissociated" always carries with it an (implied or express) relativisation.

With at least a good number of the 4e mechanics which (I think) you find dissociated, I'm saying that they don't pull me (or my players) out of immersion. The paladin anecdote is one example, and I talk a bit about Come and Get It in my immediately prior post.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> Predictably enough, I'm going to compare this to my experiences with 4e.




Go for it, I'm interested.



> I'm not sure "agree" is quite the right word - maybe I should say I have similar experiences - but anyway, I tend to agree with (1), partially agree with (3), and have the greatest difference from you, I think, in relation to (2).




It's okay to "agree" with me sometimes  (kidding, of course)



> (1) is generally true for 4e daily powers etc. Sometimes, though - like Come and Get It when the situation isn't obviously just deft polarm work - it's not always the case that they're quick. This can pull the participants out of their roles and into a discussion of what exactly is happening in the narrative. If this looks like it could be a problem, I as GM try to come up with a narration quickly - and if the players accept it then things keep moving along.




The fact that you do this would make the game much more tolerable in my eyes. I think I could probably play in a game you ran and participate in the spirit of the social contract.



> The first part of (3) I believe to be true of 4e powers. The second part is not true. But the powers, in my experience, do enhance or express the established ingame fictional reality. So they work to reinforce the shared fiction, although by a different means from that of reinforcing simulationist mechanics.




Right, I agree from what I've heard from those who play 4e (such as the reliable pemerton). This is just a matter of preference.



> (2) is one of the obvious points of difference that's emerged in this thread. My play experience with 4e is that the pattern of daily use is not discernible in any meaningful way. Maybe it's the fact that our sessions are normally two to three weeks apart. Maybe it's the fact that we _don't_ use the convention of one session = one day, which means that it's not just a case of each daily once per session.




Last session about 60 days past in-game, so I think I can relate there. I think it's a matter of "could the ability be observed theoretically" that throws me off. Knowing that it can be is somewhat discouraging to me, for whatever reason. It draws me out of immersion. It might go away after a few session, with regular use, or it might not.



> The fact that there is an in-principle discernible pattern, which defies simulationist causation, is true, but not a problem for me. As in my partial overlap with (3), as long as the shared fiction is expressed and reinforced, it doesn't both me that this is happening via metagame mechanics that aren't just piggybacking on simulationist ones.




Right, and it's just an immersion issue for me. Again, just preference difference.



> By the way, I take it from (3) that you _don't_ allow Luck Points to be spent to produce narrative elements that aren't linked to a pre-existing action resolution event (so eg no spending a Luck Point to bring it about that your faithful servant smuggles a dagger to you in prison). If I'm right, this would make your Luck Points similar to HARP Fate Points and more constrained than OGL Conan Fate Points. (I can't remember whether Arcana Unearthed Hero Points can be used for "fiction tweaking" outside the context of enhancing a die roll.)




You are correct in how they're not used . They are merely used to modify the results of rolls. They do not allow new rolls, or allows you to say "this happens" in any way.

I do like and allow that type of mechanic with Hero Points in my Mutants and Masterminds 2e games, but those happen months apart, and are always one-shots. We don't play them to immerse, really. It's a different type of enjoyment, but it's now what my group is looking for in the long term.

As always, play what you like 



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> On this particular point I'm actually closer to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] .
> 
> I think that whether or not a given mechanic pulls a given player out of immersion will be relative to that player. So "dissociated" always carries with it an (implied or express) relativisation.
> 
> With at least a good number of the 4e mechanics which (I think) you find dissociated, I'm saying that they don't pull me (or my players) out of immersion. The paladin anecdote is one example, and I talk a bit about Come and Get It in my immediately prior post.




I've said several times that it's subjective. I compared it to another subjective word ("beautiful) that is meant to communicate subjective perception of something. I said you can say "hit points are meta to me, but barbarians rages are dissociated" and someone can agree or disagree, just like I could say "that music is beautiful to me" and you can agree or disagree. It's the communication of a feeling or perception, not an absolute statement about how others feel or perceive it.

I thought this was clear from my earlier posts. As always, play what you like


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> It's okay to "agree" with me sometimes



Sorry, I didn't mean to be combative, I just wasn't sure that (1) to (3) were assertions that I might agree to, or more expressions of preference/experience that I might share.

Anyway, your reply makes sense to me. I find your contrast between the M&M one-shots and your more "serious" game interesting.

The only one-shots I've really been into were years ago now, when I was student and had more time, and tended to be either CoC (very immersive high concept simulationism, when GMed well), other basic RP games (Stormbringer, RQ  - equally immersive when GMed well) and light-hearted AD&D romps (generally not immersive at all - I find aspects of AD&D, both mechanics and some of the dungeon crawl tropes, really get in the way of me taking it very seriously).

The most recent one-shot(ish) game I GMed was probably 10 years ago, when our group tried out 3E with 5th level PCs. I used a nice tower-buried-in-desert-sand vignette from an old White Dwarf scenario collection to lead the PCs into Castle Amber. My main memories of the game are the barbarian boxing with the magen, and the wizard catching the sorcerer in his web spell, causing the player of the sorcerer to complain, and the player of the wizard to retort "What? It's only D&D." (That's Rolemaster snobs for you!)

If I was going to try and infer anything from this, it would be that, for me, immersion turns more on the seriousness of the play than the details of the mechanics - but that different sorts of mechanics can help produce serious play in different ways. Basic Roleplaying puts a _lot_ of the burden on the GM - if your setting and situations suck, the players don't have a whole lot of capacity to turn that around within the rules of the game. I like the wider distribution of capacity to contribute that 4e style mechanics establish.

I also find, for whatever reason, that 4e's default setting, its Monster Manuals, etc, establish a more serious tone for play than more traditional D&D. I'm not sure that I can easily explain why that is, but I'll try. The fictional elements - the gods, monsters etc - are presented in a very coherent fashion, that strongly emphasises various sorts of relationships and conflicts with implied value content (RQ vs Orcus, Erathis vs Bane/Asmodeus, Ioun vs Vecna vs Dagon, etc). I find that these support thematic play out of the box in a way that the traditional D&D gameworlds (Greyhawk, FR) don't, because those traditional gameworlds don't build in those same axes of conflict (Yes, the Scarlet Brotherhood are sinister monks, but what value is at stake in their conflict with Keoland or the Iron League?).

The recent spate of Tomb of Horrors threads, including defences of it by serious simulationist posters as a great module, makes me infer that there are some RPGers who would find it easier to immerse playing ToH in AD&D than playing a thematically rich 4e game, because the mechanical issue is so central to them. But that's not me.


----------



## JamesonCourage

pemerton said:


> Sorry, I didn't mean to be combative, I just wasn't sure that (1) to (3) were assertions that I might agree to, or more expressions of preference/experience that I might share.
> 
> Anyway, your reply makes sense to me. I find your contrast between the M&M one-shots and your more "serious" game interesting.
> 
> [SNIP]




Don't worry, I didn't think you were coming off as combative. I was trying to be a little playful. I actually think we're very much on similar wavelengths (at least in terms of where the other is coming from on the topics thus far).

As for the modules, I have never used any, so I can't relate to it too much. I'm 25 years old, so I'm a relative "newbie" to the hobby. I can agree that seriousness of play does indeed make a simulationist game much better than without it, in my subjective opinion.

Anyways, I found your reply interesting. I don't know how much I'd like 1e style play, but I do know my dad used to play it 30 years ago, and said he was definitely engrossed and immersed in the game. I think he was the kind of player that said "I want to do _this_" and the DM would say, "roll _this_" and that was the extent of his knowledge of mechanics to some degree. He knew that certain classes got certain abilities, but not really how combat worked, as far as I know. And, I think in months of play, the highest level he ever achieved was 3rd.

Anyways, good conversation. Thanks for the multi-day discussion. As always, play what you like


----------



## Pentius

JamesonCourage said:


> I've said several times that it's subjective. I compared it to another subjective word ("beautiful) that is meant to communicate subjective perception of something. I said you can say "hit points are meta to me, but barbarians rages are dissociated" and someone can agree or disagree, just like I could say "that music is beautiful to me" and you can agree or disagree. It's the communication of a feeling or perception, not an absolute statement about how others feel or perceive it.
> 
> I thought this was clear from my earlier posts. As always, play what you like




I think there's a certain practical difficulty in using 'disassociated' as a relative, subjective term.  Namely, the essay that lays it out doesn't regard it or acknowledge it as such.  When new people are exposed to the term, they're more likely to hear it from Alexander's essay than from this thread(I think, anyway) and thus accepting it and using it as a relative term results in a good bit of clearly stating you mean it subjectively, or a good bit of people assuming you mean it objectively, since if they don't know what it means, and look it up, they get Alexander's version.

I mean, I recognize the idea of using it subjectively as an olive branch, and I like me some olive branches, being a "Let's all be friends" sort of guy, but I think this bears thinking on.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> At long last, I think I've finally come to understand what wrecan and pemerton are saying when they don't believe dissociative mechanics exist, or that even if they are "dissociative," there's no harm in it because it serves a narrative function.
> 
> The premise is based on the idea of situational narrative. In other words, any particular application/resolution of a 4e power should only be described, or "narrated," within the specific context in which it is invoked--i.e., the short-term situation surrounding the encounter in which it is used.



Yes. Sorry, I thought that we were all on the same page about this - in fact, I though this was what The Alexandrian had in mind in saying that these mechanics require frequent and pervasive house ruling, because he's calling each of these bits of narration an episode of houseruling.



innerdude said:


> It's no longer necessary to try and concoct encounters that plays to a party's strengths; you can simply assume there's always a narratively acceptable way for a given character "power" to work within the scene, and everyone gets to participate.



You could be right about this. When I build encounters I'm generally looking at thematic content first, relying on the 4e designers to give me monsters that will (i) work well at the table, and (ii) help express or reinforce the desired themes. So the issue of worrying about the party's tactical abilities isn't normally in the front of my mind.



innerdude said:


> it can have the tendency to keep player focus more on the individual scenes, and less on the world as a whole (your mileage may vary, of course).



I see the gameworld as built up out of individual scenes. I don't play in a strictly No Myth fashion - first, because I use the implied setting of the 4e core books, which provides some backstory straight up; second, because I have further worked up some of the core relationships betweens gods, NPCs etc in advance of play (these notes for the campaign, which is now reaching 12th level, are about 4 A4 pages); and third, because 4e rewards at least a bit of GM prep of encounters. 

But I am a big fan of the approach that Paul Czege sets forth here, although my D&D game is nowhere near is hardcore as I think Czege's games would be:

when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . . I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. . . the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​
So what you descibe here is not a problem for me.



innerdude said:


> somewhere along the way, no matter how good the GM, no matter how engaged the player, there's going to be instances that crop up where a narratively acceptable reason for some powers to work is simply not there--or at best, stretches the boundaries of credulity. No matter how hard one tries, there's going to be situations that dissociate the character from the construct.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm guessing that pemerton and wrecan might respond, "Yes, this happens, but in our groups it happens so rarely that it doesn't pull us out of 'immersion,' and we simply play out the mechanical happening and keep moving, enjoying the other benefits of narrative resolution within the scene."



It hasn't happened yet in the context of tactical combat resolution. That said, my party has two martial PCs, and no warlord (though it would be fun to have one!).

We've had fights in which the fighter marked oozes and Footwork Lured them over pits. It didn't cause any trouble - it was just more manifestation of the PC's mastery of the halberd.

These two skill challenges caused a bit of a furore online after I posted the actual play report, but didn't cause any trouble at the table as far as the fiction was concerned, and (as best I can recall) the play of them was overwhelmingly in first person narrative (ie player speaking as PC). But not completely, as the actual play report indicates (ie there were some meta-discussions between me and some of the players to help clarify what exactly it was that they envisaged their PCs doing.)



innerdude said:


> As many others have stated, it's not that ANY ONE instance of a power can't be "associated"--it's the fact that around every single turn, with every single character type, built into the core baseline of 4e, potential dissociations are there, just waiting to crop up.



I still think that this is the core issue. For those with simulatinist priorities, the potential for "dissociation" is the problem - as Jameson Courage noted upthread.

Whereas unrealised potential don't bother me here, any more than (for example) BryonD seems to be worried by the _potential_, in 3E, for mid-to-high level PCs to reliably survive ridiculously high falls.



innerdude said:


> In spite of your declarations to the contrary, I think you are doing exactly what you say you aren't--equating your player's singular experience "where a Paladin became a frog and back" to some universal application that dissociation doesn't exist, that it's all in our heads.



Well "dissociation" is, by definition, in someone's head! It is the state of having your immersion disrupted - a mental state.



innerdude said:


> This one experience doesn't nullify other wholly valid criticisms presented in the concept of dissociation



It's true that it doesn't show that you don't have your immersion disrupted by certain mechanics. But it's equally true, in my view, that it shows that the mechanics that disrupt your immersion don't have that property in any inherent way - they affect some players some ways, and other players other ways.



innerdude said:


> Do you not believe that there are mechanics that promote "immersiveness," and those that don't? Are all mechanics equally good or bad for promoting immersion, it's only a question of creating the right "narrative scene" and somehow getting the player and GM to find the right "association" to make it work?



Well, what exactly "immersion" is when you talk about it I'm not sure. As I said upthread, it's not an analytic category I use very much, but (now that I am starting to) I see it in terms of the player "inhabiting" the PC - speaking in first person, expressing the PC's feelings, acting on the basis of the PC's felt emotions.

And I don't think that there are mechanics that tend, in general, to facilitate this or impede it. I mean, maybe we can think of some mechanics that probably would - cook 5 flapjacks for the other players to earn a reroll, for example - but I don't know of any RPG that has mechanics that make you get up from the table like this, and spend a fairly serious effort doing something completely unrelated to the game or to the progress of the fiction.

I think it is going to depend on particular participants' prior experiences, their expectations, heck, even their moods on the day. The HeroQuest rules, for example, have this example (I can't remember which edition, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, or maybe even mashing a couple of examples together):

Suppose your cowboy PC has Fast Runner 18, and your horse has Gallop 16. That does mean that, in a contest where speed matters, you have a better ability to apply your speed than does the horse, and are more likely to win such a contest. But it _doesn't_ mean that you're faster than your horse. If you try and frame a contest in which you and your horse compete in a race, you just lose (assuming a standard western game, rather than eg superheroic cowboys). So suppose, for example, your horse is running away. You can't catch it. In that situation, look for something else - eg use your Loyal Steed 16, matched against its Fiery Temperament 12, to call it back .​
Now suppose that a given table is playing a western scenario where this very event crops up. The player knows that his/her PC can't outrun his/her horse, _not_ because the action resolution mechanics says so (the characters in HeroQuest don't have a movement rate) but because genre-based credibility constraints preclude it. Will this produce "dissociation" from the fiction - because the constraint arises from the metagame rather than the mechanics - or reinforce the fiction - because the constraint is inherent within the shared conception of the fiction being created? In the abstract, how can we know?

So anyway, the player decides to use Loyal Steed instead, as per the rulebook's suggestion. Does this produce "dissociation"? Well, what is actually happening in the fiction? Is the PC whistling to his/her horse? Or does the horse just have a change of heart, like Snowy sometimes does in Tintin? Is narrating the scene one way or another more or less likely to produce immersion? Some players might find that narrating the horse's change of heart divorces them from inhabiting their PC. Others might feel that it reinforces the inhabitation of their PC, given that the loyalty of his/her horse is such a central feature of the character (a bit like the player of the paladin in my game narrating something the Raven Queen did as part of reinforcing his inhabitation of his religiously devoted PC).



innerdude said:


> The fact that the particular scenario you shared, that particular scene, allowed the player to create a valid, prescient association (in character, even) doesn't change the fact that in OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, with OTHER CHARACTERS, with OTHER situational factors, a dissociated mechanic can create circumstances that are implausible at best, and untenable at worst.



Implausibility and untenability are relative, I think.

And part of what is causing me to disagree with you is that you haven't produced any actual play examples, or even hypotheticals that treat the participants in the game, and their engagement in the narrative task, in a sympathetic light. (Cetainly, your marking hypothetical does not do this.)

So from my point of view, you seem to be jumping at shadows. And as I've said, _those shadows matter if you have simulationist priorities, but otherwise don't._



innerdude said:


> those of us who WANT more "immersion" and less "dissociation" from our RPGs find value in the concept. In spite of your objections to the "attitude" or "tone" in which the original essay was presented, it provides value to some of us as a way to evaluate RPG mechanical structure.
> 
> You believe it doesn't exist. Fine. But telling us, "It doesn't exist, because I watched my player completely sidestep it _IN ONE PARTICULAR INSTANCE_" is just as much a fallacy as claiming that dissociative mechanics affect everyone equally. I have never, not once, in this thread claimed that the effects of dissociation are universal across groups or experience, but just because it isn't universal in all circumstances doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that no one finds value in the concept.



As I've said in my exchanges with Jameson Courage, I think that "dissociation" is inherenlty relative - ie "these mechanics get in the way of _my_ immersion". To the extent that you think the notion has non-relative content - ie that there is a genuine class of mechanics that has, for all or even most RPGers, a tendency to disrupt immersion/engagement with the fiction - then I don't agree and still contend that it is a pseudo-concept.

As I've said in several posts, what I see in the original essay (where perhaps it is malicious) and also in your posts (where it doesn't seem malicious, but seems to me to demonstrate a lack of familiarity with non-simulationist play), is a complaint against non-simulatonist mechanics. Which is fine - as I said way upthread, a potentially interesting biographical fact about The Alexandrian. But there is nothing objectively meritorious or special about simulationist play.

And at least as I'm trying to make sense of immersion, I'm not sure that simulationist play has an especially tight connection to immersion. Ron Edwards has this to say about immersion and stance:

*Immersion* is another difficult issue that often arises in Stance discussions. Like "realism" and "completeness" and several other terms, it has many different definitions in role-playing culture. The most substantive definition that I have seen is that immersion is the sense of being "possessed" by the character. This phenomenon is not a stance, but a feeling. What kind of role-playing goes with that feeling? The feeling is associated with decision-making that is incompatible with Director or Author stance. Therefore, I suggest that immersion (an internal sensation) is at least highly associated with Actor Stance. Whether some people get into Actor stance and then "immerse," or others "immerse" and thus willy-nilly are in Actor stance, I don't know.​
And in the same essay he says this about stance and simulationist vs other priorities:

Stance is very labile during play, with people shifting among the stances frequently and even without deliberation or reflection. 

Stances do not correspond in any 1:1 way to the GNS modes. Stance is much more ephemeral, for one thing, such that a person enjoying the Gamist elements and decisions of a role-playing experience might shift all about the stances during a session of play. He or she might be Authoring most of the time and Directing occasionally, and then at a key moment slam into Actor stance for a scene. The goal hasn't changed; stance has. 

However, I think it's very reasonable to say that specific stances are more common in some modes/goals of play. Historically, Author stance seems the most common or at least decidedly present at certain points for Gamist and Narrativist play, and Director stance seems to be a rarer add-on in those modes. Actor stance seems the most common for Simulationist play, although a case could be made for Author and Director stance being present during character creation in this mode. These relative proportions of Stance positions during play do apparently correspond well with issues of Premise and GNS. I suggest, however, that it is a given subset of a mode that Stance is facilitating, rather than the whole mode itself. Some forms of Simulationism, for instance, may be best served by Director Stance, as opposed to other forms which are best served by Actor Stance. Similarly, some forms of Narrativism rely on Actor Stance at key moments.​
I think Edwards is right that Actor stance, while the predominant stance for mainstream simulationist play, is by no means confined to that sort of play. Which suggests that immersion is not going to be confined to simulationist play.

I also think he is right about the frequency of shifts in stance. Furthermore, as per my imagined example of playing G2 upthread, some rules - like AD&D's hit point rules - seem able to straddle Actor and Author stance simultaneously. This is probably a feature rather than a bug, at least for those who value immersion. And I think that 4e's metagame mechanics can fairly easily be played in this same sort of straddling way, where the adoption of Author stance does not require abandoning first-person narration or inhabitation of the PC, and therefore need not disrupt immersion.



innerdude said:


> Anyone who's ever complained that 4e doesn't provide as much "world building" opportunities isn't stating an objective truth, they're actually commenting on the mechanical elements that naturally push for scene-based resolution narrative. It's not that you CAN'T do world building in 4e, it's that the entire rules system is designed purely from a scene-based narrative resolution, rather than a holistic, "simulative" point of view.



Well, yes. I posted to that effect on a thread about six months ago:



pemerton said:


> 4e resembles a game like The Dying Earth. I've never read the Vance stories, but feel that I could run a game of Dying Earth from the rulebook. It gives me the "vibe" and "meta-setting", plus tips on how to set up situations/scenarios that will exploit that vibe to produce a fun session.
> 
> My feeling is that 4e was written with the intention to be GMed in this sort of way. I say this because (i) it fits with the game's emphasis on the encounter - combat or non-combat as the basic unit of play; (ii) it fits with the obvious effort to create that default atmosphere, with the gods, race backgrounds and so on in the PHB and the little sidebars in the Power books; (iii) when you look at the original MM (with most of the campaign info located in skill check results), plus think about how skill challenges should play out (with the GM having to make calls about NPC responses, and other elements of the gameworld, on the fly in response to unpredictable player actions), and even look at the whole emphasis on "situations" rather than "world exploration" as the focus of play, the game seems intended to support "just in time" creation of world details, using "points of light" and the default atmosphere as a framework for doing this in; (iv) it fits with the absence of a developed setting.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think that the lack of a setting _isn't a coincidence_ relative to the mechanical and flavour changes, but rather fits with them as part of a coherent (but, as it turns out, perhaps not so popular) overall design.





pemerton said:


> I think it's actually a bit of a challenge to come up with action resolution mechanics that suit both "just in time" GMing of a situation-driven game, and that suit "world/story" GMing of the sort that a developed setting supports.
> 
> I'm not saying it's impossible - HeroWars, for example, is a game that tries to combine both approaches using Glorantha as the gameworld.
> 
> But just one example as to why it might be tricky - in a "world/story" game, the GM is likely to know the obstacles in advance, and to present them in some detail to the players, and the players will then be looking for action resolution mechanics that really let them enage with the detail of those challenges. And those action resolution mecanics have to produce results that put the players on the same page as the GM - otherwise the game won't run smoothly.
> 
> On the other hand, in a "just in time" game the GM is more likely to be adding details to a situation in response to ideas and interest expressed by the players as play is going on. So the action resolution mechanics have to be ones that encourage the players to produce those sorts of ideas, and that let them pursue their interests - otherwise the GM will be left with nothing to build on.
> 
> Skill challenges are, in my view, a good attempt at a mechanic for the second sort of play - and that is how the _rules_ for skill challenges are presented in the DMG and PHB (I can provide quotes if desired). But skill challenges are a fairly poor mechanic for the first sort of play - they tend to produce the "exercise in dice rolling" experience, as the GM describes the situation to the players, and tells them their options, and the players roll the dice. And this is how the _examples_ of skill challenges both in the DMG and in the WotC adventures have tended to be experienced (not by everyone, but I think at least by a majority of the posts I've read on these forums).





innerdude said:


> making acceptable scene-based, "narrative" resolutions using these powers puts a significant onus on the players to _create_ the narrative.



Yes. Upthread, I indicated that, contrary to The Alexandrian, I call this _playing the game_ rather than houseruling.



innerdude said:


> If you're the type of player that naturally resists this tendency to begin with, it's certainly not going to aid your cause.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But if your group doesn't enjoy this, it creates big, big problems, likely leading to the widely recognized phenomenon of the 4e "battle slogfest." No descriptive narrative, just a play-out of the mechanics, in one encounter after another.



Yes. I've posted about this many times in the past (see eg the second of my above self-quotes).



innerdude said:


> if you're not the type of group/player/GM that enjoys this style of play, and doesn't want to have to engage with individual scene-based narrative at that level EVERY TIME YOU PLAY, then 4e is far and away NOT the right game. In fact, it's soooooooo far outside the line as to be untenable.



Yes. It baffles me that anyone with purist-for-system simulationist priorities would try and make 4e work for them.


----------



## pemerton

JamesonCourage said:


> As for the modules, I have never used any, so I can't relate to it too much. I'm 25 years old, so I'm a relative "newbie" to the hobby.



OK. I'll be 40 this year, and the old debates about how AD&D should be played which played out in White Dwarf and Dragon in the early-to-mid 80s were my induction into the game.

(And for the sake of trivia: the four main options canvassed in those debates - although not using this Forgist terminology - were purist-for-system simulationism, high concept simulationism (to be achieved by quite a bit of GM force), Gygaxian gamism (therefore resting on a very heavy simulationist chassis), and a seeming minority interested in light hearted gamism of a Tunnels & Trolls variety.)


----------



## JamesonCourage

Pentius said:


> I mean, I recognize the idea of using it subjectively as an olive branch, and I like me some olive branches, being a "Let's all be friends" sort of guy, but I think this bears thinking on.




It definitely does have merit in my opinion. Also, I'm not adverse to thinking. Check my status.

As always, play what you like 



pemerton said:


> OK. I'll be 40 this year, and the old debates about how AD&D should be played which played out in White Dwarf and Dragon in the early-to-mid 80s were my induction into the game.
> 
> (And for the sake of trivia: the four main options canvassed in those debates - although not using this Forgist terminology - were purist-for-system simulationism, high concept simulationism (to be achieved by quite a bit of GM force), Gygaxian gamism (therefore resting on a very heavy simulationist chassis), and a seeming minority interested in light hearted gamism of a Tunnels & Trolls variety.)




Interesting. I actually haven't looked much into the history of the hobby. My game mechanics should be finalized by next months (about time!), and I'll have a lot more free time. Maybe I'll look into it then.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Well, at the level of mechanics, the spell was going to end anyway because that's what the rules say. But in the fiction, it doesn't follow that the spell would have ended but for the Raven Queen's intervention. The point of the player's narration is that (given that no one at the table contested it) it establishes that, in the fiction, it was the Raven Queen who turned the paladin from a frog back to a person.



This doesn't follow for me.

Imagine that after a long drought there is rain. The village says "Hallelujah, it's a miracle". It's just people trying to deduce a cause-and-effect for the phenomenon. Nobody would accuse the end of the drought itself to be a disassociation, because presumably there is some meteorological reason for it, and the village just had a different explanation.

I think we've covered this before, that the character's explanation of the result of a mechanic may run parallel but not conform to the "real" reason.



> So according to Justin Alexander, this is an example of a "dissociated" mechanic - because there is no reason for the mechanically dictated event to occur in the fiction other than that supplied ad hoc by the player (Alexander calls this _houseruling_).



The "reason for the mechanically dictated event to occur in the fiction" is because the spell ends like all other Baleful Polymorph spells and most spell effects for that matter.

Are you saying that Alexander would claim that the entire D&D magic system is disassociated because spells have a limited duration and there is no reason for this limited duration other than supplied ad hoc by the player?



> And according to Alexander, a "dissociated" mechanic of this sort is bad because
> it disengages the player from the role they're playing​.
> 
> But in the example I gave, the so-called dissociated mechanic didn't disengage the player from the role he was playing at all. In fact, it gave him an opportunity to reinforce his engagement with the role he was playing.
> 
> That's one of my black swans.



So A is defined as B and B is disadvantageous because of C

So you go look for a Y and show that C is not true, therefore Y is not B and A is not B?

That's your black swan????


----------



## wrecan

JamesonCourage said:


> Even if that's the case, as I mentioned, "rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way _can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players._"



Of course.  And as I said, by that standard, any mechanic is potentially diassociating, because we're now defining a disassociating mechanic based on whether it actually disassociates someone.

But that's where theAlexandrian's argument runs afoul of the anthropic principle.  He presumes that other abstract mechanics like hit points and armor class are not diassociating because he isn't disassociated by them and known nobody who is.  But that's because those mechanics have been in the game for 30 years.  Anybody who felt disassociated by them either left the hobby or went to a more simulationist game.  So of course he doesn't preceive people being disassociated by them.

Because of this, perforce, we will only observe disassociation caused by new mechanics.  And 4e's power frequency is the new one.  All that's been shown is that any mechanical change can cause diassociation in some people.

I am not denying that disassociation exists.  People clearly feel disassociated by some aspects fo 4e.  All I am saying is that there's nothing unique about 4e that causes disassociation except that it isn't pleasing to some individuals.  

As you say, "It is taste."  



> I know you use abstract and dissociated interchangeably (or, at least, I thought you posted that in this thread), but I really, strongly disagree.



Yeah, but I can't pin anybody down on a consistent and relevant definition of dissociation.  And that's because disassociation is being defined backwards.  TheAlexandrian used it as a label for "the reasons people don't like some of 4e's abstract mechanics" (not a direct quote).  And then everybody substitutes their own personal theory for why that is and calls it "disociated".  For me, it's quite simple: a dissociated mechanic is any mechanic that causes that individual to feel disassociated from a game; and that feeling is going to be personal to that person.



innerdude said:


> At long last, I think I've finally come to understand what wrecan and pemerton are saying when they don't believe dissociative mechanics exist, or that even if they are "dissociative," there's no harm in it because it serves a narrative function.



I think all mechanics are potentially disassociative.  I think the word "dissociate" is inherently subjective.



> One, it can have the tendency to keep player focus more on the individual scenes, and less on the world as a whole (your mileage may vary, of course). Anyone who's ever complained that 4e doesn't provide as much "world building" opportunities isn't stating an objective truth



I disagree.  I've built worlds to be used in 4e.  in fact, I find 4e better for world building because, unlike prior systems, I don't have to write in systems to correct for problems with objective mechanics.  For example, Dragonlance and Dark Sun went to great lengths to eliminate priests in order to reduce problems caused by healing mechanics.  Greyhawk was essentially built around the mechanical implications of alignment.

In 4e, I just write a world I like, knowing that the mechanics will serve the world, and not vice versa.

I've now designed five campaign worlds for 4e.  Each of them took much less time than any prior system, because I didn't have to worry about things like how to explain why wizards haven't wrecked the economy, and why the heck does anybody engage in backbreaking farmwork when a handful of priests and acolytes can feed a village every day.  I just concentrated on the stories.



> It's not that you CAN'T do world building in 4e, it's that the entire rules system is designed purely from a scene-based narrative resolution, rather than a holistic, "simulative" point of view.



I also disagree.  4e is based around cinematic heroic fantasy.  That's a worldview.  As long as the world can accommodate heroic fantasy 



> Second, making acceptable scene-based, "narrative" resolutions using these powers puts a significant onus on the players to _create_ the narrative. If you're the type of player that naturally resists this tendency to begin with, it's certainly not going to aid your cause.



Sure, but in contrast, if you're a player who relishes the ability to contribute to the narrative, you were not being as well-served by other editions.



> there's going to be instances that crop up where a narratively acceptable reason for some powers to work is simply not there--or at best, stretches the boundaries of credulity.



I have yet to come upon one.  I guess it's theoretically possible, but once again, your statement assumes a campaign of infinite duration and infinite encounters, when a campaign is of limited duration and no more than 300 encounters.



> if you're not the type of group/player/GM that enjoys this style of play, and doesn't want to have to engage with individual scene-based narrative at that level EVERY TIME YOU PLAY, then 4e is far and away NOT the right game.



But that's a tautology.  If you're not the type of group that enjoys X then X is far and away not the right game for you.

Nobody is arguing that 4e appeals to everyone.  Nobody is arguing that any game appeals to anyone.



> I think there's more to explore on the effects this has on long-term creation of "rational," "organic" world-building (namely that it makes it much, much harder)



I don't see how 4e's mechanics make world-building difficult.  Please elaborate.  An example might be useful.


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> This doesn't follow for me.
> 
> Imagine that after a long drought there is rain. The village says "Hallelujah, it's a miracle". It's just people trying to deduce a cause-and-effect for the phenomenon. Nobody would accuse the end of the drought itself to be a disassociation, because presumably there is some meteorological reason for it, and the village just had a different explanation.




The meteorologists I knew at University would say that it started raining because it started raining. At least, if you got them drunk enough to admit it. Meteorology, like earthquake prediction, is not an exact science until you get close enough to the event happening for it to be an exact science. It may be bad for cause-and-effect, but that's because there's not just one cause active at any given time in any but the simplest situation or crudest simulation.


----------



## Neonchameleon

PHP:
	

[PHP]

[/PHP]







Yesway Jose said:


> If I understood correctly, James used the fencing example to illustrate the expectations that a person brings to the table, and I only rolled with his example because I was trying to understand his conclusions. Perhaps you should ask him, not me, because I didn't bring up the fencing scenario. I don't know what you mean by disguising attacks on 4E by using other people's metaphors.




OK.  I should have been taking the initial metaphor apart rather than what I saw as an extension of it into even more indefensible terms.

But the case remains.  4e throws realism out of the window.  Someone who knows about fencing (either sport or historical swordsmanship) is going to just shrug or stop right there and say they don't want to play a high powered game with something they know something about.  If you accept it that's fine.  If you don't, it's good to get that out of the way.

3e is no more realistic than 4e - it's just a lot quieter about it.  However it manages to get most of the points about weapons wrong - rapier vs plate is a very good example of how in this case 3e rapier rules are quite spectacularly wrong for the real world.  Wrong enough that using them is going to be a tooth-grinding experience and you can either say that it's holywood physics at play or get annoyed every time you try to do something.



innerdude said:


> At long last, I think I've finally come to understand what wrecan and pemerton are saying when they don't believe dissociative mechanics exist, or that even if they are "dissociative," there's no harm in it because it serves a narrative function.




Absolutely.  But thanks.  That people are finding this a problem is something I didn't really get.



> However, I see several problems that go with this idea.
> 
> One, it can have the tendency to keep player focus more on the individual scenes, and less on the world as a whole (your mileage may vary, of course).




This is a _problem_?  It makes the game more focussed and immersive IMO.



> Anyone who's ever complained that 4e doesn't provide as much "world building" opportunities isn't stating an objective truth, they're actually commenting on the mechanical elements that naturally push for scene-based resolution narrative. It's not that you CAN'T do world building in 4e, it's that the entire rules system is designed purely from a scene-based narrative resolution, rather than a holistic, "simulative" point of view.




And this I don't understand.  4e does not get in the way of world building at all other than in that the PCs can gain exorbitant amounts of wealth (like Bill Gates).  3e's so called holistic world building in a game that dominated by magic forces me to answer weird questions.  Questions like "Why is not every NPC with Wis 11 or higher trained as an Adept?  (And every remaining NPC with Int 11 or higher not trained as a Wizard?)"  Seriously, a town in which half the people can cast "Purify Food and Drink", "Create Water", "Cure Light Wounds", "Mending", and "Sleep" is going to get prosperous fast.  And laugh at goblin attacks.  And "Why don't wizards and clerics rule the world?"

These are not questions that help me build the world I want to.  These are questions that get in the way of my building anything except a 3.X D&D world.  The magic is too strong to do anything other than warp anything.  4e on the other hand simply gets out of the way for world building.



> Finally, somewhere along the way, no matter how good the GM, no matter how engaged the player, there's going to be instances that crop up where a narratively acceptable reason for some powers to work is simply not there--or at best, stretches the boundaries of credulity.




I've never seen this happen any more than credulity is strained by a flying dragon.  The world itself already has break points - these don't stand at all against the background.



> But if you're not the type of group/player/GM that enjoys this style of play, and doesn't want to have to engage with individual scene-based narrative at that level EVERY TIME YOU PLAY, then 4e is far and away NOT the right game. In fact, it's soooooooo far outside the line as to be untenable. In this case, every stinkin' little thing is going to be dissociative. You're really going to have a hard time feeling like you really are playing a _character _with any sense of rationality.




In which case, the problem here isn't the dissassociation.  It's the narrativism.  It's also one of not having picked the right character or not playing him by what you consider plausible conditions.  Some powers are harder to fluff than others, and if you can't fluff a power _don't use it at that time_.  We're in Amnesiac Vancian Mage territory.  But what we're really in is a simulationist/narrativist clash.  Calling it disassociation is just adding a term that obscures the roots of the problem.


----------



## JamesonCourage

wrecan said:


> Of course.  And as I said, by that standard, any mechanic is potentially diassociating, because we're now defining a disassociating mechanic based on whether it actually disassociates someone.




As that seems the most reasonable to me.



> But that's where theAlexandrian's argument runs afoul of the anthropic principle.  He presumes that other abstract mechanics like hit points and armor class are not diassociating because he isn't disassociated by them and known nobody who is.  But that's because those mechanics have been in the game for 30 years.  Anybody who felt disassociated by them either left the hobby or went to a more simulationist game.  So of course he doesn't preceive people being disassociated by them.
> 
> Because of this, perforce, we will only observe disassociation caused by new mechanics.  And 4e's power frequency is the new one.  All that's been shown is that any mechanical change can cause diassociation in some people.
> 
> I am not denying that disassociation exists.  People clearly feel disassociated by some aspects fo 4e.  All I am saying is that there's nothing unique about 4e that causes disassociation except that it isn't pleasing to some individuals.
> 
> As you say, "It is taste."




I don't think we're in much disagreement then (if any!) 



> Yeah, but I can't pin anybody down on a consistent and relevant definition of dissociation.  And that's because disassociation is being defined backwards.  TheAlexandrian used it as a label for "the reasons people don't like some of 4e's abstract mechanics" (not a direct quote).  And then everybody substitutes their own personal theory for why that is and calls it "disociated".  For me, it's quite simple: a dissociated mechanic is any mechanic that causes that individual to feel disassociated from a game; and that feeling is going to be personal to that person.




I basically agree, though my definition would limit it to meta mechanics in particular. Either way, it is entirely personal and subjective. Words that describe inherently subjective perceptions or feelings -like the word "beautiful"- I find useful to communication.

Others, who find it offensive, probably don't. And I understand that. I don't think that the bias of the article should completely invalidate the idea of having a term for "meta mechanics that draw players out of immersion" or, as I think you prefer, an even looser definition of "mechanics that draw players out of immersion." Personally, if the definition worked either way, I think it'd be useful as long as nobody was offended by it.

As far as whether or not the article is saying it's unique to 4e, I really don't care. I'm not attacking 4e, like I've said a number of times in this thread. There's no reason to talk to me about it when I have little to nothing to contribute here.

As always, play what you like


----------



## Yesway Jose

Bluenose said:


> The meteorologists I knew at University would say that it started raining because it started raining. At least, if you got them drunk enough to admit it. Meteorology, like earthquake prediction, is not an exact science until you get close enough to the event happening for it to be an exact science. It may be bad for cause-and-effect, but that's because there's not just one cause active at any given time in any but the simplest situation or crudest simulation.



That's fine. It doesn't matter what the reason is, or whether the reason is objectively true. It was my mistake to use the word "meteorological" instead of "atmospherical" or something like that.


----------



## wrecan

JamesonCourage said:


> I understand that. I don't think that the bias of the article should completely invalidate the idea of having a term for "meta mechanics that draw players out of immersion" or, as I think you prefer, an even looser definition of "mechanics that draw players out of immersion." Personally, if the definition worked either way, I think it'd be useful as long as nobody was offended by it.



Well, I think, since we agree that any "meta-mechanics" is potentially dissociative, it might be better to talk about dissociation as a state for individuals rather than mechanics.  

Applying it to any given mechanic makes it sound as if that mechanic is inherently different from other mechanics (even though we acknowledge they too may cause dissociation).



> As far as whether or not the article is saying it's unique to 4e, I really don't care. I'm not attacking 4e, like I've said a number of times in this thread.



Yeah, sorry.  Didn't mean to ascribe to you a position on the matter.


----------



## JamesonCourage

wrecan said:


> Well, I think, since we agree that any "meta-mechanics" is potentially dissociative, it might be better to talk about dissociation as a state for individuals rather than mechanics.
> 
> Applying it to any given mechanic makes it sound as if that mechanic is inherently different from other mechanics (even though we acknowledge they too may cause dissociation).




I wouldn't be against that definition at all. You could say, "dissociated mechanic" for any mechanic, or "dissociated meta mechanic" if you wanted to single it out as meta.



> Yeah, sorry.  Didn't mean to ascribe to you a position on the matter.




No worries. As always, play what you like


----------



## wrecan

JamesonCourage said:


> You could say, "dissociated mechanic" for any mechanic, or "dissociated meta mechanic" if you wanted to single it out as meta.



I think I'd prefer "dissociated player".


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> Furthermore, as per my imagined example of playing G2 upthread, some rules - like AD&D's hit point rules - seem able to straddle Actor and Author stance simultaneously. This is probably a feature rather than a bug, at least for those who value immersion.



Good point.



> And I think that 4e's metagame mechanics can fairly easily be played in this same sort of straddling way, where the adoption of Author stance does not require abandoning first-person narration or inhabitation of the PC, and therefore need not disrupt immersion.



Disclaimer: I am not sure if/what I am trying to prove, just musing...

Hit points is one often cited as an example of "disassociated mechanics". Ironically, the only people claiming that hp could be considered "disassociated" are AFAIK the ones that are defending 4E from "disassociation".

It's not until your statement above that anybody defending 4E actually speculated *why* hit points might be deemed to be less "disassociative" for the immersionists.

Before this, I believe the general argument was that hit points have been around long enough that people have learned to tolerate it. That's a theory, but not a proof. To prove it, you'd have to take a 4E mechanic, travel back in time, retroactively insert it into D&D, and then come back to the present and see which mechanic is still being argued as more "disassociated" than the other. Correct me if I'm wrong.


----------



## Bluenose

Yesway Jose said:


> That's fine. It doesn't matter what the _reason_ is, or whether the _reason_ is objectively true. It was my mistake to use the word "meteorological" instead of "atmospherical" or something like that.




*Reasons*. Plural. This is important. Doing X leads to Y happening. Doing X while someone else is doing Z may lead to Y not happening after all. There is more than one possible result for doing X because there is Z... and a whole alphabet of other things going on at the same time.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> This doesn't follow for me.
> 
> Imagine that after a long drought there is rain. The village says "Hallelujah, it's a miracle". It's just people trying to deduce a cause-and-effect for the phenomenon. Nobody would accuse the end of the drought itself to be a disassociation, because presumably there is some meteorological reason for it, and the village just had a different explanation.
> 
> I think we've covered this before, that the character's explanation of the result of a mechanic may run parallel but not conform to the "real" reason.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So A is defined as B and B is disadvantageous because of C
> 
> So you go look for a Y and show that C is not true, therefore Y is not B and A is not B?
> 
> That's your black swan????



You' seem to be making an assumption about the actual play I reported which is not true.

You seem to be assuming that when the player of the paladin says (in character) "But the Raven Queen turned me back", this is an expression of that paladin's hope, but not an accurate report of what actually happened in the fiction.

That assumption is false. Which is why I said, when I introduced the anecdote, that the player treated the duration mechanic as a metagame mechanic.

In saying (in character) what he said, the player of the paladin has _both_ expressed the paladin's religious conviction, _and_ established a fact about the gameworld, namely, that the Raven Queen turned the paladin back. _Within the fiction, there is no other explanation for why the spell ended_. It's not at all like your meteorological analogy.

To put it in terms of your placeholder variables: I haven't shown you a Y. I've shown you a B that is not a C. That is, I've shown you an instance of the sort of play that the Alexandrian condemns as dissociative - namely, taking a mechanic and more-or-less ad hocly attributing an ingame significance to it - that in fact did not dissociate but reinforced the fiction and helped the player inhabit his character within that fiction. (In terms of stances, the player seems to have simultaneously occupied Director and Actor stances.)



Yesway Jose said:


> It's not until your statement above that anybody defending 4E actually speculated *why* hit points might be deemed to be less "disassociative" for the immersionists.



Well, I posted my G2 example quite a way upthread, but it didn't get much traction.



Yesway Jose said:


> Before this, I believe the general argument was that hit points have been around long enough that people have learned to tolerate it. That's a theory, but not a proof.



On this issue I tend to agree with Wrecan. It's about players as much as mechanics.

The fact that some players can straddle Author and Actor stance in relation to hit points tells us something about hit points as a mechanic - they can permit such straddling - but it also tells us something about those people - they're prepared to straddle in that way. It's a historical fact, after all, that lots of players have not been prepared to do this, and therefore migrated to RQ, RM etc. I was one of them. And I still find pre-4e hit points wonky.

I mean, I could just as easily point to my player straddling Director and Actor stance while playing his paladin, as point to hit points, to show the possibility of straddling. That doesn't show that all, or most, or even many, players are actually interested in straddling those stances while playing 4e. But it does show that the link between 4e and immersion-disruption is contingent and highly relative to the interests, experiences, preferences etc of the players in question.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> I think I'd prefer "dissociated player".



Reminds me of a couple squabbling "It's your fault... No, it's your fault". Or in this case, "The mechanics are disassociated.... no you're disassociated". But unlike the couple, which is allocating blame between two human beings, this is about allocating blame to a person or a "dumb" rule ("dumb" as incognizant, not stupid). It seems to me that whoever's right, it's less personal to blame the mechanics and give the player the benefit of the doubt. After, like my parents used to say, you're not a bad boy, you just had bad behavior.


----------



## pemerton

wrecan said:


> Well, I think, since we agree that any "meta-mechanics" is potentially dissociative, it might be better to talk about dissociation as a state for individuals rather than mechanics.



Agreed.



wrecan said:


> I find 4e better for world building because, unlike prior systems, I don't have to write in systems to correct for problems with objective mechanics.



Interesting. Like I posted upthread, I feel that 4e isn't a world building setting, because (a bit like The Dying Earth) it seems to focus more on situation.

Could you say a bit more about your worlds, and how you've used them in game?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

wrecan said:


> I think I'd prefer "dissociated player".




Given the unfortunate relation of that term with psychological disorder*, I looked here:  Disassociate Synonyms, Disassociate Antonyms | Thesaurus.com

Of the synonyms, I prefer "detached player".  It conveys the same meaning, in a roughly neutral manner.  (There are some niche positive and negative connotations to "detachment", but these more or less cancel out.)  It is, near as I can tell, rarely used as a popular alternative to "disassociate" in psychological texts, such as "split" and "sever" and other such words.  It's long enough and rare enough that it can be used in this kind of conversation without blurring into the text (also a danger of words like "split").  But I'm open to other, non-psychological disorder terms. 

* And if you think this is not the first reaction many people will have, say the people that don't know anyone getting psychological help well enough to have encountered the term, then I suggest you google "disassociate" and see what dominates the first few entries.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> ...if you stay immersed, you can't take advantage of the metagame perspective. So that rather begs the question of whether we stay shallow to metagame, or metagame and it keeps us shallow? With our group, I think it is a self-reinforcing cycle.





wrecan said:


> I am not denying that disassociation exists. People clearly feel disassociated by some aspects fo 4e. All I am saying is that there's nothing unique about 4e that causes disassociation except that it isn't pleasing to some individuals.



I read the Arcanist playtest where they want to modify powers to stop players from sliding opponents back and forth thru walls of fire.

Now mechanics are generally "dumb" things that aren't cognizant of fiction unfolding around them. Depending on your playstyle, it's up to the designers, players and/or DM to fill in the fluff.

So the wall of fire power may not be "disassociated", and any one use of slide/push/pull power may not be "disassociated", but how about the interactions between those mechanics as wielded by the players?

Do I want to tell a story where wizards are putting up walls of fire, and the fighters are knocking/chasing/scaring/taunting opponents back and forth thru it?

I get that a metagame/tactical/board-game-y level, that kind of tactic is loads of fun. I play all sorts of games where I love that stuff.

However, in an RPG, narratively or, better yet, cinematically, can I picture it as plausible? Sure, if it happens rarely, depending on the context. Otherwise, is it a plausible movie where creatures are repeatedly taunted/scared/knocked back and forth like a ping-pong ball thru a net of flames? Not to me, that seems like a comedy/parody movie.

Let's say my assumption is wrong, and the above is purely hypothetical and the comedic "ping-pong scenario" was NOT being played out repeatedly in game sessions... then why did the designers feel compelled to modify all those powers in a playtest? That is, did those playtest modifications come about because players *could* do that, instead of *are* doing that? If so, isn't that trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist?

Then going back to the Crazy Jerome's question of shallow vs deeper immersion and do "we stay shallow to metagame, or metagame and it keeps us shallow?" Do we stay shallow to play out the (hypothetical or not) ping-pong scenario, or play out the ping-pong scenario and stay shallow, and is it a self-reinforcing cycle?

Now take a scenario where a wizard sets up a wall of fire, and then uses telekinesis to slide an opponent back and through the wall of fire. Do I can picture that as a plausible movie scene? Is that the kind of story I want to tell? Yes, and yes! Except then the wizard dominates the battle, and the other characters have less to do. Yet that's a separate issue -- it's not "disassociation", that's fun and game balance.

The above didn't seem to be an issue in 3E though. Partially, because there wasn't a plethora of push/pull/slide powers, and partially because there was less focus on game balance between magic vs mundane. So, yes, I do think that 4E paradigms are unique for inducing a certain *quality* of "disassociation" and shallow immersion that is not present in prior editions -- IMO YMMV and correct me if I'm wrong. BTW, that's not a judgement value, but merely positing that it's the result of a unique combination of factors.


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Before this, I believe the general argument was that hit points have been around long enough that people have learned to tolerate it. That's a theory, but not a proof. To prove it, you'd have to take a 4E mechanic, travel back in time, retroactively insert it into D&D, and then come back to the present and see which mechanic is still being argued as more "disassociated" than the other. Correct me if I'm wrong.




Well, we've already had one discussion about the problems of conducting a rigorous experiment of that nature. 

But as much evidence (not proof) as we can or could get--given the nature of the problem and the motivations people have to dedicate how much resources to study it--is the testimony of people who were there, and how people reacted to those early mechanics.  And to be fair, we really ought to look at what people said at the time, so as not to push any agenda.  

I think if you go back and look at what was written at the time, you'll find it pretty clear that some people complained rather forcefully that hit points and similar things had the tendency to pull them out of an immersive state; that metagaming mechanics were partially to blame; that abstraction (pushed "too far") was partially to blame; and so forth.


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## wrecan

Well, I don't want to make it personal, and I had not thought of the  fact that disassociation was a mental disorder.  On the other hand, I do  think the issue boils down to a subset of aesthetic preference, and  that's dependent on the interaction of any given player and any given  mechanic.

Maybe it's a "dissociation phenomenon", and not link it specifically to a problem of a specific mechanic or individual.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> But as much evidence (not proof) as we can or could get--given the nature of the problem and the motivations people have to dedicate how much resources to study it--is the testimony of people who were there, and how people reacted to those early mechanics. And to be fair, we really ought to look at what people said at the time, so as not to push any agenda.
> 
> I think if you go back and look at what was written at the time, you'll find it pretty clear that some people complained rather forcefully that hit points and similar things had the tendency to pull them out of an immersive state; that metagaming mechanics were partially to blame; that abstraction (pushed "too far") was partially to blame; and so forth.



I agree that the state of the arguments at the time was surely like that. But if this was a scientific experiment, that would fail for not factoring out the variable -- which is that people thought different at that time, different genre expectations. The 2 control groups should be identical.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> how about the interactions between those mechanics as wielded by the players?



Yes, that is where dissociation comes in.



> The above didn't seem to be an issue in 3E though.



I believe it is because 3e didn't introduce any new mechanics.  The dissociation had already culled players in AD&D.  (And I did meet new potential players during 3e who didn't like hit points and armor class and either went elsewhere or tried more simulationist games.  The whole market for hyper-simulationist games is to cater to people who were feeling dissociated by the abstract mechanics of AD&D.



> So, yes, I do think that 4E paradigms are unique for inducing a certain *quality* of "disassociation" and shallow immersion that is not present in prior editions



I don't.  I think that's the anthropic principle.  Only people who accepted the abstract mechanics of AD&D and 3e could be dissociated by the new mechanics of 4e.  Everyone else had already been dissociated by AD&D and 3e had already moved on.  And since the abstract mechanics already present in AD&D and 3e are also present in 4e, those people wouldn't be joining 4e.


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Then going back to the Crazy Jerome's question of shallow vs deeper immersion and do "we stay shallow to metagame, or metagame and it keeps us shallow?" Do we stay shallow to play out the (hypothetical or not) ping-pong scenario, or play out the ping-pong scenario and stay shallow, and is it a self-reinforcing cycle?
> 
> Now take a scenario where a wizard sets up a wall of fire, and then uses telekinesis to slide an opponent back and through the wall of fire. Do I can picture that as a plausible movie scene? Is that the kind of story I want to tell? Yes, and yes! Except then the wizard dominates the battle, and the other characters have less to do. Yet that's a separate issue -- it's not "disassociation", that's fun and game balance.
> 
> The above didn't seem to be an issue in 3E though. Partially, because there wasn't a plethora of push/pull/slide powers, and partially because there was less focus on game balance between magic vs mundane. So, yes, I do think that 4E paradigms are unique for inducing a certain *quality* of "disassociation" and shallow immersion that is not present in prior editions -- IMO YMMV and correct me if I'm wrong. BTW, that's not a judgement value, but merely positing that it's the result of a unique combination of factors.




The wall of fire ping pong scenario probably is a self-reinforcing cycle, though not necessarily one where immersion is a primary factor.  Immersion would, of course, be damaged for a lot of people if such a scenario recurs, but even the shallow immersionist will push back against that, rather than be reinforced by it.

*For shallow immersion and metagaming to be self-reinforcing, the metagaming has to contribute positvely to the shallow immersion*.  I believe this is at least part of what pemerton has aluded to in his actual play examples. 

The ping pong scenario strikes me more as a case of:  1) Playing the roleplaying for laughs, or 2) Playing the game as a tactical skirmish game.  As I've said many times, play any version of D&D (or most RPGs) as a board game, and you will get a board game.  In fairness, too, it might be something besides those two.  I'm just guessing from a limited report.

I can say that when our high school group played Tomb of the Lizard King, using AD&D 1E, that most of it was roleplaying, but the whole 5th level was a combination of both of those things--farce as skimish game--when the druid player realized that his wall of fire could be maintained indefinitely, with concentration.  All the rest of the group had to do was protect them while they slowly walked through the rest of that level, and burned everything they found, combustible treasure included. 

Depending on the game, it might be a different kind of board game, and some might be more enjoyable than others, but I hardly think it an indictment of AD&D 1E that my high school buddy and I, when limited to just us instead of the whole group, like to roll up random dungeons gradually and explore them with characters, to see how far we could get.  It was, in effect, a pre-computer version of Net Hack or Rogue, with a mere patina of rolepalying.

As for any inherent quality of 4E compared to previous versions, it is relatively speaking, very anti-simulationist, considerably more pro-narrative (though, selectively), more unabashed in its use of metagaming options, and prone to stripping the pretense out of its abstractions (in favor of clarity).  All of this is probably going to make it not a good fit for people who value lots of immersion (whether depth or duration), particularly those for whom previous versions of D&D's gamist tendencies had not already driven off into other systems.  For those with some (but not exclusive) narrative and selective shallow immersion tendencies, the opposite is true.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> The ping pong scenario strikes me more as a case of: 1) Playing the roleplaying for laughs, or 2) Playing the game as a tactical skirmish game. As I've said many times, play any version of D&D (or most RPGs) as a board game, and you will get a board game. In fairness, too, it might be something besides those two. I'm just guessing from a limited report.



As per my post, though, if NO significant percentage of people were playing 4E in that way, there wouldn't be a playtest mod, unless WoTC was trying to solve a problem doesn't exist. Either way, the paradigm of playing 4E as a case of 1 or 2 (above) for some select group of people is informing the mechanics for the official system. So either way, 4E (or parts of 4E) are ultimately being shaped by those playing a tactical skirmish game.

*



			For shallow immersion and metagaming to be self-reinforcing, the metagaming has to contribute positvely to the shallow immersion
		
Click to expand...


*If the 1st point above is true, the metagaming is contributing positively to the shallow immersion.



> As for any inherent quality of 4E compared to previous versions, it is relatively speaking, very anti-simulationist, considerably more pro-narrative (though, selectively), more unabashed in its use of metagaming options, and prone to stripping the pretense out of its abstractions (in favor of clarity). All of this is probably going to make it not a good fit for people who value lots of immersion (whether depth or duration), particularly those for whom previous versions of D&D's gamist tendencies had not already driven off into other systems. For those with some (but not exclusive) narrative and selective shallow immersion tendencies, the opposite is true.



Thank you, that was my point. Those qualities you discuss above is what makes 4E uniquely "disassociative" to me. I don't know what the anthropic principle has to do with it.


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## wrecan

pemerton said:


> Could you say a bit more about your worlds, and how you've used them in game?



Sure.  My first world is called *Kishar*.  It is based very loosely on Babylonian mythoi.  The set-up in a nutshell is as follows:
100 years ago, the world awoke.  Literally.  People found themselves lying amidst ruins of an ancient civilization, with no memory of how they arrived, who they had been or what they were.  Shortly thereafter, some individuals (the first "priests") were contacted by the Anunnaki (the gods) and told that the world prior had been destroyed by Flood because the prior inhabitants had angered the gods.  They had been created as the New Races to serve the gods.  The gods, however, did no agree and the New Races first fell to fighting, and later, organized into tyrannical city-states.  Then, one man, a former gladiator and ogre named "Ochus" led a popular revolt against the local tyrant.  He renamed his city Nascence and he declared himself dedicated to a hitherto unknown god: Marduk a god of "goodness" and of "kings".  He sent out a call to heroes who would defend this new experiment.  ​My second campaign world is the *Wondrous Wood* and I created it for my pre-teen daughters.  It's much limited in scope and tailored ot hem specifically.  The summary is:
The Wondrous Wood was for decades watched over by the druid and her faithful unicorn companion.  It is a special wood, a place where the world is thin and fairies come to frolic and do mischief.  The druid of the wood protected the faeries from the Village of Humans that lives on the other side of the river, and protected the humans from the mischief of the faeries.  But recently, the druid of the Wood has disappeared.  Humans complain that faeries are causing the milk to spoil, their children to become sick, their livestock to go missing.  Bold humans have begun to cross the river, harvesting the wood for lumber.  Worse, goblins have appeared along the river, and there are rumors of giants and worse monsters appearing in those woods.  You are a newly anointed druidess (my oldest daughter), but you and your faithful friend, the dragon Rainbow (my younger daughter), and your elven companion Mistreal (my wife) must journey and find out what happened to the druid.  If you cannot find her, you must protect the Wondrous Wood as well as you are able.​My third campaign is a "duet" campaign I am running for just my wife.  I called it *Alandalusia* and it is based loosely on Moorish Spain, with humand and dwarves as the Moors, elves as Christians and eladrin as Jews.  The plains are populated with other creatures, like halflings, goblins, orcs, dragonborn, and monsters.  The general plot is that the wise Caliph of Alandalusia has died, and his ten year-old son is crowned.  His mother, who did not get long well with the prior Caliph managed to oust her political rivals and install a new Vizier who is intent on ending the prior Caliph's tolerance of elves and eladrin.  He is burning books and persecuting fey.  Meanwhile, news of this is filtering to the Fey Realm.  While the Fey Courts look down upon the "outcast elves" they do feel a sort of kinship to them and may soon take action against the Caliphate.  However, the Faerie Realm is prone to overreaction and devastating curses.  (It's one of the reasons the elves and eladrin fled to the Caliphate.)  My wife's character is an eladrin bard who seeks to set things right.

My fourth campaign world is *Jahan* and will be a sequel to *Kishar* once that campaign ends (shoudl be in the next few months).  It takes place 2,500 years in Kishar's future, and we move from Babylonian Bronze Age to a Zoroastrian/Arabian nights Iron Age.  The premise is that a nomadic tribe on the outskirts of a fading Kingdom discovers that a gleaming city has magically arisen in the desert.  It appears on no maps and has no name.  The shiekh, as a nomad, will not settle in any city, no matter how magical, but he can control all trade and travel form the city.  He makes a call for brave adventurers to explore this new seemingly empty city.  He will levy taxes on any treasure found within, but the potential for treasure is great.  numerous adventuring companies have already answered the call, but there is room for one more...

My fifth campaign world is *Patronage*.  It is wholly theoretical world, in that I'm not planning to run a campaign there.  I just came up with the idea and am developing it for fun.  the idea is that some 4,000 years ago nine Patron races either created or arrived in a continent and sealed it from anything beyond.  They then created lesser races to serve them.  Only 200 years after the world was created, a new race appeared: humans.  And the mysterious appearance of this Patronless Race sent ripples across the world.  Eventually, one Patron Race (Dragons) was said to be utterly destroyed.  Others retreated from the world, leaving their subjects ungoverned.  Others became cruel and paranoid.  Wars were waged.  For thousands of years, humans were persecuted.  But then one remarkable human -- Rickard -- managed to negotiate a peace between five warring kingdoms.  The price of peace -- they would cede a patch of disputed territory to him, so he could found a realm where humans could live free.  But this fledgling realm is surrounded by enemies who are biding their time as they recover from their devastating war.  Who will protect the human settlement of Dragonseye when their enemies turn their greedy eyes in their direction?


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## prosfilaes

Crazy Jerome said:


> when the druid player realized that his wall of fire could be maintained  indefinitely, with concentration.  All the rest of the group had to do  was protect them while they slowly walked through the rest of that  level, and burned everything they found, combustible treasure included.




What's farcical about that? If the characters decide that's a trade-off  they're willing to make, then why shouldn't they do that? 



> The ping pong scenario strikes me more as a case of:  1) Playing the roleplaying for laughs, or 2) Playing the game as a tactical skirmish game.  As I've said many times, play any version of D&D (or most RPGs) as a board game, and you will get a board game.  In fairness, too, it might be something besides those two.  I'm just guessing from a limited report.




I don't get it. If my character has the capacity to send his opponents reeling through a wall of fire, he's going to do that. If the mechanics say I can do that and you think I shouldn't, then there's something wrong with the mechanics, not the players.


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some _inherent tendency_ to produce that result. And I am showing that by instancing counterexamples to any such alleged tendency.



Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.

If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from.

If you're playing a pure abstract game, there is 100% disassociation because there is no fiction. However, you could also say that there is zero disassociation, because there's no story to be disassociated from.

I think it may be impossible to prove that a mechanic has any inherent property for disassociation, because your definition is entirely dependant on which position you're looking from.


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## TwoSix

Yesway Jose said:


> Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.
> 
> If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from.
> 
> If you're playing a pure abstract game, there is 100% disassociation because there is no fiction. However, you could also say that there is zero disassociation, because there's no story to be disassociated from.
> 
> I think it may be impossible to prove that a mechanic has any inherent property for disassociation, because your definition is entirely dependant on which position you're looking from.




Seems to me like you made Pemerton's point for him.


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## Yesway Jose

TwoSix said:


> Seems to me like you made Pemerton's point for him.



If so, I did a better job of it


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## Crazy Jerome

prosfilaes said:


> What's farcical about that? If the characters decide that's a trade-off they're willing to make, then why shouldn't they do that?
> 
> I don't get it. If my character has the capacity to send his opponents reeling through a wall of fire, he's going to do that. If the mechanics say I can do that and you think I shouldn't, then there's something wrong with the mechanics, not the players.




That's why I said for the ping pong example, I'm only guessing.  I wasn't there.  We don't have a lot of information.  Whereas, with the druid example, I was there.  I know it was farce and tactical skirmish gaming because the players were very overt about it.  They discussed it in metagaming terms before they did it.  And it was about 2:00 A.M., which for us was the usual time for the silly stuff to come out.  Plus, the play was noticable different before that level, and noticabley different the next morning when we picked up again.  That is, the players wanted to play it as farce and skirmish--so they did.  I just went along for the ride, because, hey, it was 2:00 A.M.   I don't know that the ping pong example was like that.  I'm guessing that it might be.

As for whether there is anything wrong with that or not, as far as I'm concerned, it is all social contract.  The social contract at *our* table is you can do things like that at times.  It might be interesting or funny or a change of pace or any number of things.  However, if you start repeating it as a standard tactic, then it is the worst of all possible gaming instances--supremely boring for a story point of view.  We don't expect any system to fully protect us from ourselves on that count.  YMMV.  If someone wants to play a game as a tactical skirmish game, then story boring is often a positive aspect--or at least a necessary evil to avoid disputes.


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## Yesway Jose

I assume "disassociation" must be a relative measure. Thus "disassociated mechanics" is staking your claim from the fiction, and, say, "disassociated narrative" is staking your claim from the rules. The 1st cannot be objectively true because the fiction is as true as you think it should be. The 2nd cannot be objectively true because rules change (official playtests, official updates, houserules and new editions). We can argue about what could be subjectively true = a rule removed from a fiction, or a fiction removed from a rule, and I think that's what we have been doing (ping pong wall of flames, falling 200', hit points, hypnotism, 1/day trick strike, and soooo much more) and that's OK. I don't know exactly how this relates to the essay, and I don't care... subjectively, of course


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.
> 
> If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from...




I'm enough of a logician to answer that.  The Alexandrian claim is mechanic X is disassociative *inherently*. (He doesn't say it that plainly, but unless you back away to something more tenable, as Jameson has, then that's what the essay demands.) He then goes on to set some parameters for that. 

Pemerton, following the parameters thus established, has claimed that at his table, mechanic X was used with no disassociation. Therefore, the mechanic is not *inherently* disassociative. He has not claimed, in this part of his argument, that no one using the mechanic could ever honestly report disassociation. 

That is, because the Alexandrian has made a strong claim, all that is necessary to dispute parts of it is to provide counter examples. Since that is manifestly true, a great deal of the sturm and drang surrounding counter examples is teasing out exactly what happens. 

There is thus the side issue of how much reported evidence from participants to take at face value. This is highly embedded into the dispute from the get go, because it is fairly clear that the Alexandrian and some of his "evangelists" could not permit counter evidence to be presented without disputing the reports. This distinguishes them from some of the more thoughtful discussion that has often occurred in this topic. But since our discussion comes after a lot of sturm and drang, good faith has to be repeatedly affirmed.

Given all that, then, there is separate but more difficult argument about whether there is any meaningful concept occurring to attach the label "disassociated" to, outside of other related terms, such as metagaming and abstraction. And if so, what is its nature and scope? Pemerton, Wrecan, I, and others have intuited that there is not--because no one advocating that there is has yet shown us a scope or nature for the term that we agree falls outside of those other related terms. 

But it is granted up front that the latter claim is mainly negative. We intuit that there is no such scope, because all such evidence presented for it thus far--by people presumably trying their best--fails to persuade us. As such, it is a much weaker claim than Pemerton's first claim. I don't think Big Foot exists. If you produce him tomorrow, my thinking is shot. If I don't think something like Kevlar can be produced--a few years ago, I got a nasty surprise. Such are all negative claims.

The first claim is a lot more threatening to the "theory", in part because once it is established, people start talking more reasonably around the second one. There is a sense in which we can't even talk seriously with the OP or Jameson or you until all that underbrush is cleared out. You'll note that BotE works really hard to make sure that the underbrush keeps growing.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I'm enough of a logician to answer that.  The Alexandrian claim is mechanic X is disassociative *inherently*. (He doesn't say it that plainly, but unless you back away to something more tenable, as Jameson has, then that's what the essay demands.)



Mechanic x is disassociated inherently from *what?*

I googled "disassociated inherently" and "dissociated inherently" and "inherently disassociated" and "inherently dissociated" and few/nobody seems to be using this term.

EDIT: and googling "inherently associated" seems to always appears as "inherently associated *with*..." or "inherently associated *to.*.."

LOL, I feel like a poster boy for arguing about game theory essay that I wasn't really here for


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## Patryn of Elvenshae

Yesway Jose said:


> Mechanic x is disassociated inherently from *what?*




You've misread the definition.

The Alexandrian claim is that "Mechanic X inherently produces dissociation in [all] players; it is thus a dissociative mechanic; this is bad."


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## Yesway Jose

Patryn of Elvenshae said:


> You've misread the definition.
> 
> The Alexandrian claim is that "Mechanic X inherently produces dissociation in [all] players; it is thus a dissociative mechanic; this is bad."



The essay states: "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world". Which definition of dissociation are you using?


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## Yesway Jose

IMO, with all due respect, I think some of you are being a little silly.

Does anybody know if
- the essay is a formal logical theorem
- you're applying rigorous logic to something that isn't
- the definition of disassociation or dissociation
- what mechanic x is (dis)associated to or with
- what is meant by an inherent property of a mechanic

The essay states "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world". 

The only thing that is defined is the mechanic, as written in a D&D book.

Everything else is undefinable.

Is "game world" your game world, his game world, Bob's game world?

And he didn't say "encounter" or "adventure" or "campaign", he said "game world" which is imaginary and hypothetical and potential.

But he didn't say "your game world". He said "the game world" which is undefinable because it doesn't exist.

Even if "the" is subjective, your own perception of "the game world" is variable and dynamic and can change at any time.

And what is meant by "no" association? Is that a binary, all or nothing, 0% or 100%. How do you measure the distance between a defined thing (the mechanic) to an undefined or variable point ("the game world').

And what is meant by "association". One definition of "associate" is "connect in the mind or imagination". What is the formal definition then for mentally connecting a mechanic to a fiction?

So what you have is: "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have [undefinable] association [definition?] with the [undefinable]".

Is this really why we're here?


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> The essay states: "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world". Which definition of dissociation are you using?




I'm talking about the definition which emerges if you take the essay at face value, and then to the logical conclusions from there.  

That the author of the essay doesn't want to make this definition plain--and in fact, goes to a great deal of trouble to obscure it--is his problem not mine.  Or rather, a reflection on him, not the rest of us that have to deal with the confusion.  

And as far as definitions go, "mechanics which have no association with the game world" is barely a tautology, much less a useful definition.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I'm talking about the definition which emerges if you take the essay at face value, and then to the logical conclusions from there.
> 
> That the author of the essay doesn't want to make this definition plain--and in fact, goes to a great deal of trouble to obscure it--is his problem not mine. Or rather, a reflection on him, not the rest of us that have to deal with the confusion.



I don't think he purposefully obscured defintions. He just didn't articulate it properly. And if he did obscure it, how can anyone claim to draw a rigorously logical conclusion. The essay isn't a formal theorem. It's an opinion piece. It's not his problem if people read it otherwise.


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## Crazy Jerome

Thus we come full circle. At the risk of quoting the first thing I had to say in this topic (emphasis added just now):



Crazy Jerome said:


> So for me this is a *marker*. It isn't personal. It is a matter of *practical time.* Trot out the term in support of your point, and I know it is a waste of my time to continue the discussion. I'd rather it not be that way, as with Forge theory, if you can get beyond the "brain damage" parts, *there is some useful discussion to be had*. You can't, however, have that useful discussion with a Forge follower that hangs too tightly to that "brain damage" section.
> 
> Instead of *defending* the theory, it needs *rescusing* from its originator and its more rabid supporters.






Yesway Jose said:


> IMO, with all due respect, I think some of you are being a little silly.
> 
> Does anybody know if
> - the essay is a formal logical theorem
> - you're applying rigorous logic to something that isn't
> - the definition of disassociation or dissociation
> - what mechanic x is (dis)associated to or with
> - what is meant by an inherent property of a mechanic
> 
> ...
> 
> Is this really why we're here?




Calling something a "theory" as explained in an "essay" implies a certain amount of premise, argument, conclusion. 

If the author had said up front that what he was writing was a rant--which might contain a useful direction or hint--I'd feel a lot more charitable to it. If its early supporters had not immediately seen in this "theory" a giant club with which to beat 4E and anyone that liked it, I might be more inclined to doubt that reading. Since they did so see, and since TA has written nothing since to discourage them, my doubt remains unchallenged. It loses most of its use as a club if it loses any claim to an intellectual argument.

Why we're here? I've been around this merry go round several times. My experience is that most people are worth discussing things with. And because of this, we can have good discussions about this topic. But they are in spite of the "theory", not because of it. 

Are you familiar with the idea of a "scourge" as a literary characterization of a character who tries to mess things up, but the attempt ends up driving others to work together to do something beneficial? (In LotR, Sauron is practically pure villain. It is practically essential to his schitck that he divide people. But Saruman has some elements of the scourge.) 

You'll note that "rants" are perfectly compatible with all those points you listed.


----------



## TwoSix

Yesway Jose said:


> I don't think he purposefully obscured defintions. He just didn't articulate it properly. And if he did obscure it, how can anyone claim to draw a rigorously logical conclusion. The essay isn't a formal theorem. It's an opinion piece. It's not his problem if people read it otherwise.




Obviously it's some sort of problem, because we're still here discussing it. 

Besides, the thread is named "In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics".  It's had enough impact to get name-checked a few years after he wrote it.  And if it's that impactful, it's going to get run through the wringer, especially at a RPG site that likes these kind of intellectual exercises.

It's an intellectual theory, not a cute puppy.  We're allowed to kick it around.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Thus we come full circle. At the risk of quoting the first thing I had to say in this topic (emphasis added just now):



Ya, that happens.. a lot, I think.



> Why we're here? I've been around this merry go round several times. My experience is that most people are worth discussing things with. And because of this, we can have good discussions about this topic. But they are in spite of the "theory", not because of it.



Oh, I agree, it's been interesting. Addictive, actually, is a better word.

Like I told pemertron, I never paid much attention to posts that addressed the essay directly; rather much of the thread was just extrapolating from there.

I don't even remember how it started, but I somehow got dragged into it and I'm surprised that after 40-something pages, there are any direct references to the essay. It was a launching pad, that's all. I never thought the goal was to dissect the essay itself.

I guess I just feel for the guy. I know what it's like to be misinterpreted, having posts not taken at face value, forget to articulate something in just the right way that invited critique, and analogies/metaphors/hypotheticals that are not discussed on their own terms. I think give the guy a rest. He wrote an opinion piece. Nobody has to agree with it. He doesn't impinge on anybody's game. Let's move forward, no?


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> It's true that it doesn't show that you don't have your immersion disrupted by certain mechanics. But it's equally true, in my view, that it shows that the mechanics that disrupt your immersion don't have that property in any inherent way - they affect some players some ways, and other players other ways.



Thread has moved quite a ways along in between my checking in.  (At least in page count...)

I'd hope it is clear that, from my own POV, I completely agree with this statement.

I did say, and still do, that 4E doesn't feel like you are in the novel.  So I guess that would reasonably imply that immersion is lost.  But as I have also mentioned several time now, it is easier to come to understandings when things are considered from reasonable relative positions rather than as absolute black vs white.

No game is perfect.  3E is far from an exception.  I ignore things all the time in 3E that point out that the game is not a novel.  And just as I can in 3E, I can in 4E.  

But the things in 3E are sacrifices to practicality.  Certainly if someone shows me a better mousetrap, I'll move on to that game.  But the goal of 3E (at least one of the goals) was to provide the kind of game experience I desire and the places where it doesn't are due to necessity.  

The designers of 4E made direct comments on multiple occasions to the effect that their design goals were different.  And I accept that.  4E fans have praised many of these changes in focus as being some of the best things to every happen in gaming.  (mild hyperbole, but only very mild)  The point is, these justifications are not not remotely wrong, but they simply are a distinction.  

The list of things in 3E that don't feel right does not include things like "so that the math works", "so that it is easier to DM", "so that it takes less prep time".  The list goes on.

But I can ignore these things in 4E just as I can in 3E.  

But, the bottom line is: Why should I?  There is a better game that at least tries to prioritize the things I prefer.  And, no doubt about it, 4E is better at the things that are its priority.

But rather than fight back and forth over black and whites of is and is not immersive, just look at the whole package and where the priorities lie.

I can ignore the patterns.  But there is no good reason why I should.


----------



## innerdude

The more I look at it seems that the Alexandrian's essay approaches dissociation from two angles: 

1. Forcing a player to "construct narrative" can be dissociative, if it is not an assumed responsibility for the player to do so. If you're playing from an "Actor"/simulative point of view, it is not generally expected that the player should have to provide the narrative details. Having to stop mid-turn, and create a narrative that "makes sense" for a particular mechanical resolution could be considered "dissociative," because the player is no longer engaged in Actor stance, but Author stance. The mechanic imposes the switch in the moment of resolution, and that switch can feel jarring, depending on preferred playstyle. 

That said, this POV obviously assumes a very particular style of play/group, and can hardly be considered universal--but within these parameters, it can be dissociative. Groups who assume narrative resolution have no sense of this at all, and rightfully so. 

2. Mechanics that require external narrative resolution create a much higher potential for inconsistency in future rule adjudication. Obviously, pemerton, wrecan, and others have demonstrated that in some cases this is a feature, not a bug. However, I think the Alexandrian's discussion of the War Devil is most salient here--



> But             if you're talking about this _besieged foe_ ability, what would             the DM describe? What is the war devil actually _doing_ when it             marks an opponent?
> 
> What happens that causes the war devil's allies             to gain the +2 bonus to attack rolls? Is it affecting the target or             is it affecting the allies?
> 
> .....
> 
> Of course the argument can be made             that such explanations can be trivially made up: A ruby beam of             light shoots out of the war devil's head and strikes their target,             afflicting them with a black blight. The war devil shouts horrific             commands in demonic tongues to his allies, unnaturally spurring them             into a frenzied bloodlust. The war devil utters a primeval curse.
> 
> These             all sound pretty awesome, so what's the problem? The problem is that             every single one of these is a house rule. If it's a ruby beam of             light, can it be blocked by a pane of glass or a transparent _wall             of force_? If it's a shouted command, shouldn't it be prevented             by a _silence_ spell? If it's a curse, can it be affected by a _remove             curse_ spell?
> 
> And even if you manage to craft an             explanation which doesn't run afoul of mechanical questions like             these, there are still logical questions to be answered in the game             world. For example, is it an ability that the war devil can use             without the target becoming aware of them? If the target does become             aware of them, can they pinpoint the war devil's location based on             its use of the ability? Do the war devil's allies need to be aware             of the war devil in order to gain the bonus?
> 
> If the             mechanic wasn't fundamentally dissociated -- if there was an             explanation of what the mechanic was actually modeling in the game             world -- the answers to these questions would be immediately             apparent. And if you're slapping on fluff text in order to answer             these questions, the answers will be different depending on the             fluff text you apply -- and that makes the fluff text a house rule.
> 
> (Why             would you want to answer these types of questions? Well, some             trivial possibilities would include: The war devil has used magic to             disguise himself as an ally of the PCs. The war devil is invisible.             The war devil is hiding in the supernatural shadows behind the             Throne of Doom and doesn't want to reveal himself... yet.)​



In this case, the choice of "narrative" for the War Devil does, and I might argue _should,_ have an effect on future player/character choices. If a group knows that Besieged Foe has one set of causes, and how to lessen/circumvent them, it could change the entire dynamic of an encounter with a future War Devil (I'm assuming for simplicity that the Alexandrian expects us to extend this line of reasoning to many other powers/abilities, both for monsters and PCs).  

At least to me, this is a type of situation that narrative resolution style is less effective at encompassing. Yes, we can situationally create a non-dissociated, agreed-upon reason of how the War Devil's power works in one circumstance. But to arbitrarily change it from encounter-to-encounter feels problematic, _because now it's affecting the actual available choices of the players. 

_In this case, the lack of association is _stunting_ potential player/character creativity, because they have no way of evaluating the effectiveness of the results. 

This is more along the lines of what I was referring to about "rationality." In some instances, a player/character can no longer to expect to use rational cause/effect reasoning for a particular encounter approach--"Just because it worked one way last time, doesn't mean it's going to this time, even though it's the same beast." 

Again, there are ways to make that association--"Well, it works differently for different War Devils." Well, how many kinds of War Devils are there in this world, anyway? (As many as the number of encounters requires, apparently). 

But then it's no longer a factor of "Actor stance immersion," and more about adherence to the observed natural world--species are species because of _consistency of traits_. 

Is a War Devil a War Devil, or is it something else? 

You could still say it's just subjective preference. The level of acceptable dissociation before I throw up my hands and say, "This is just STUPID!" may be totally different than someone else's. But if there is such a thing as "inherent dissociation," it's somewhere in this concept. The refusal to apply specific narrative fluff to the War Devil negates a player's ability to creatively, rationally respond in unique ways to one in the future. Since there is no narrative, there are, by extension, no appropriate responses that can be planned, and characters are losing _meaningful choices_ to make as a result.


----------



## wrecan

BryonD said:


> But I can ignore these things in 4E just as I can in 3E.  But, the bottom line is: Why should I?  There is a better game that at least tries to prioritize the things I prefer.



Who's that jerk telling you to play something you don't want to play?!  Let's get him!!!!


----------



## wrecan

innerdude said:


> I think the Alexandrian's discussion of the War Devil is most salient here



theAlexandrian's interpretation of War Devil suffers from a fatal flaw: characters know any effects placed on tham and the source of those effects.  TheAlexandrian's "problems" with "besieged foe" involve the creature being hidden, disguised, or undercover.  All of that goes out the window when the War Devil uses Besieged Foe to mark the PC.  Doing that reveals that the War Devil is an enemy of the PC.  

Once that's been eliminated, the war devil's marking feature is no different from the fighter's (except the war devil doesn't have to hit the target first).  He's directing his menace at that PC, forcing him to split his attention.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

innerdude said:


> 2. Mechanics that require external narrative resolution create a much higher potential for inconsistency in future rule adjudication. Obviously, pemerton, wrecan, and others have demonstrated that in some cases this is a feature, not a bug. However, I think the Alexandrian's discussion of the War Devil is most salient here ...




Not only is it a feature, for some playstyles, the negatives aren't felt very much. For example, if your game is already slanted towards story that "develops in play" versus story that arises out of other elements (background, setting elements established early, etc.), then by definition you've put some work into maintaining consistency for ad hoc narrative elements. You already have tools in place to handle the things that arise.

If you already own a good shop vac, your kid doing a project that gets sawdust and nails all over your garage floor is not nearly as big an issue as your kid doing the same thing without the vac, and then running off to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break without sweeping it up.


----------



## Victim

I think it's pretty easy for even clearly associated mechanics to break immersion simply because even though every step along the way makes sense, the overall result isn't what was expected.

For example, consider the anti-mob focused fighter without something like Come and Get It or marking.  Enemies smartly stay away and dispersed from him, which makes sense.  OTOH, all the mechanics related to beating up groups of enemies then basically don't exist (or matter only rarely) in the actual narrative.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> theAlexandrian's interpretation of War Devil suffers from a fatal flaw: characters know any effects placed on tham and the source of those effects.  TheAlexandrian's "problems" with "besieged foe" involve the creature being hidden, disguised, or undercover.  All of that goes out the window when the War Devil uses Besieged Foe to mark the PC.  Doing that reveals that the War Devil is an enemy of the PC.
> 
> Once that's been eliminated, the war devil's marking feature is no different from the fighter's (except the war devil doesn't have to hit the target first).  He's directing his menace at that PC, forcing him to split his attention.




How is this a problem? I would wholeheartedly EXPECT my players to root out the cause of any effects placed on them, and try to avoid them in the future, _even if they didn't know how or why they happened in the original narrative. _

That particular motivation doesn't "go out the window" when the power gets used, and suddenly, "Yup, guess that War Devil's an enemy." 

Thus, a player/character would absolutely be reasonably expected to want to understand the source of the War Devil's power, and mitigate it, both meta- and in-game. 

This, as I stated, is where "inherent" dissociation gets fuzzy--if my players/characters can't reasonably divine ways to maximize their ability to defeat a War Devil in the future, then it doesn't matter how narratively associated any one instance of Besieged Foe is. They're still getting meaningful choices taken away from them for the next time they face a War Devil. 

For a choice to be meaningful, the player/character has to have some baseline in which to evaluate the ramifications of that choice. Lack of ramifications = the negation of meaningful choice.


----------



## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> theAlexandrian's interpretation of War Devil  suffers from a fatal flaw: characters know any effects placed on tham  and the source of those effects.




How? Does a character who's blind and deaf know that? If it's not magical or psionic, then how?



Victim said:


> I think it's pretty easy for even clearly associated mechanics to break immersion simply because even though every step along the way makes sense, the overall result isn't what was expected.
> 
> For example, consider the anti-mob focused fighter without something like Come and Get It or marking.  Enemies smartly stay away and dispersed from him, which makes sense.  OTOH, all the mechanics related to beating up groups of enemies then basically don't exist (or matter only rarely) in the actual narrative.




How does that break immersion? Something not working the way the player wants to is not breaking immersion, it's things not going the way players want it to.


----------



## JamesonCourage

wrecan said:


> I think I'd prefer "dissociated player".




That'd be a lot less accurate, in my opinion.


----------



## Hussar

prosfilaes said:


> What's farcical about that? If the characters decide that's a trade-off  they're willing to make, then why shouldn't they do that?
> 
> 
> 
> I don't get it. If my character has the capacity to send his opponents reeling through a wall of fire, he's going to do that. If the mechanics say I can do that and you think I shouldn't, then there's something wrong with the mechanics, not the players.




I have to admit, I'm not really seeing a problem here, at least based on the example given.

1 character puts up some sort of wall of fire and the other characters keep pushing the baddies back through this wall, forcing it back and forth.

Isn't this just smart play?  

I know in our last session, we fought a creature near a large fire.  Every chance we got, we shoved that thing back in the fire and made it stay there (or at least tried).  Nothing about the situation seemed contrived or dissociative at all.  Fire=Hurt=Good!

Where's the problem?


----------



## Hussar

innerdude said:


> The more I look at it seems that the Alexandrian's essay approaches dissociation from two angles:
> 
> 1. Forcing a player to "construct narrative" can be dissociative, if it is not an assumed responsibility for the player to do so. If you're playing from an "Actor"/simulative point of view, it is not generally expected that the player should have to provide the narrative details. Having to stop mid-turn, and create a narrative that "makes sense" for a particular mechanical resolution could be considered "dissociative," because the player is no longer engaged in Actor stance, but Author stance. The mechanic imposes the switch in the moment of resolution, and that switch can feel jarring, depending on preferred playstyle.
> 
> That said, this POV obviously assumes a very particular style of play/group, and can hardly be considered universal--but within these parameters, it can be dissociative. Groups who assume narrative resolution have no sense of this at all, and rightfully so.




I would argue that we do this all the time.  It would be a very boring game where the players never provided any narrative for their mechanical resolutions.  In fact, we'd be back to combat sounding like a game of Bingo.  Instead, I would argue that most players are perfectly comfortable providing a fair level of narrative for their actions and, in fact, the game generally rewards players who do so.

After all, how many threads on boards are there along the lines of "How can I get my players to be more engaged in the game world" are there?  I would say that most DM's want their players to provide at least a basic level of narration.



> 2. Mechanics that require external narrative resolution create a much higher potential for inconsistency in future rule adjudication. Obviously, pemerton, wrecan, and others have demonstrated that in some cases this is a feature, not a bug. However, I think the Alexandrian's discussion of the War Devil is most salient here--
> 
> In this case, the choice of "narrative" for the War Devil does, and I might argue _should,_ have an effect on future player/character choices. If a group knows that Besieged Foe has one set of causes, and how to lessen/circumvent them, it could change the entire dynamic of an encounter with a future War Devil (I'm assuming for simplicity that the Alexandrian expects us to extend this line of reasoning to many other powers/abilities, both for monsters and PCs).




Again, and this point keeps getting ignored, this presumes a single cause for the power to work.  That the power must work one way and ONLY one way forevermore.  3e generally worked like that.  An effect had one and only one cause and only one method of resolution.  

4e does not enforce that.  The Besieged Foe power could have ALL of the above causes within the same encounter.  The devil shoots a ruby ray and causes the effect, he exhorts his followers and gets the same _mechanical_ effect but a different narrative one.  This is a feature, not a bug.



> At least to me, this is a type of situation that narrative resolution style is less effective at encompassing. Yes, we can situationally create a non-dissociated, agreed-upon reason of how the War Devil's power works in one circumstance. But to arbitrarily change it from encounter-to-encounter feels problematic, _because now it's affecting the actual available choices of the players.
> _



_

Or, conversely, it makes magic interesting and, well, magical as in unknown and unknowable.  Again, isn't this something that has been missing from D&D for a long time? 

_


> In this case, the lack of association is _stunting_ potential player/character creativity, because they have no way of evaluating the effectiveness of the results.
> 
> This is more along the lines of what I was referring to about "rationality." In some instances, a player/character can no longer to expect to use rational cause/effect reasoning for a particular encounter approach--"Just because it worked one way last time, doesn't mean it's going to this time, even though it's the same beast."




Again, this is a mistaken interpretation.  It is categorically not the same beast.



> Again, there are ways to make that association--"Well, it works differently for different War Devils." Well, how many kinds of War Devils are there in this world, anyway? (As many as the number of encounters requires, apparently).
> 
> But then it's no longer a factor of "Actor stance immersion," and more about adherence to the observed natural world--species are species because of _consistency of traits_.
> 
> Is a War Devil a War Devil, or is it something else?




Again, your presumptions are showing.



> You could still say it's just subjective preference. The level of acceptable dissociation before I throw up my hands and say, "This is just STUPID!" may be totally different than someone else's. But if there is such a thing as "inherent dissociation," it's somewhere in this concept. The refusal to apply specific narrative fluff to the War Devil negates a player's ability to creatively, rationally respond in unique ways to one in the future. Since there is no narrative, there are, by extension, no appropriate responses that can be planned, and characters are losing _meaningful choices_ to make as a result.




Ballocks.  I'm sorry, but this is just wrong.  Since there is no specific narrative linked to a specific effect, the players are free to add in their own narrative in any means they like.  I could just as easily argue for my PC to make a Religion check to be able to come up with a bit of scripture that negates his use of his power.

Why can I do this?  Because the mechanics are not tied to any specific narrative.  Thus, the player is free to do anything he likes, so long as the table accepts it, rather than being forced to conform to the single interpretation that the game designer provides.


----------



## Hussar

Later thought:



			
				From The Essay said:
			
		

> But if you're talking about this besieged foe ability, what would the DM describe? What is the war devil actually doing when it marks an opponent?
> 
> What happens that causes the war devil's allies to gain the +2 bonus to attack rolls? Is it affecting the target or is it affecting the allies?
> 
> .....
> 
> Of course the argument can be made that such explanations can be trivially made up: A ruby beam of light shoots out of the war devil's head and strikes their target, afflicting them with a black blight. The war devil shouts horrific commands in demonic tongues to his allies, unnaturally spurring them into a frenzied bloodlust. The war devil utters a primeval curse.
> 
> These all sound pretty awesome, so what's the problem? The problem is that every single one of these is a house rule. If it's a ruby beam of light, can it be blocked by a pane of glass or a transparent wall of force? If it's a shouted command, shouldn't it be prevented by a silence spell? If it's a curse, can it be affected by a remove curse spell?
> 
> And even if you manage to craft an explanation which doesn't run afoul of mechanical questions like these, there are still logical questions to be answered in the game world. For example, is it an ability that the war devil can use without the target becoming aware of them? If the target does become aware of them, can they pinpoint the war devil's location based on its use of the ability? Do the war devil's allies need to be aware of the war devil in order to gain the bonus?
> 
> If the mechanic wasn't fundamentally dissociated -- if there was an explanation of what the mechanic was actually modeling in the game world -- the answers to these questions would be immediately apparent. And if you're slapping on fluff text in order to answer these questions, the answers will be different depending on the fluff text you apply -- and that makes the fluff text a house rule.
> 
> (Why would you want to answer these types of questions? Well, some trivial possibilities would include: The war devil has used magic to disguise himself as an ally of the PCs. The war devil is invisible. The war devil is hiding in the supernatural shadows behind the Throne of Doom and doesn't want to reveal himself... yet.)




Something I've noticed with TheAlexandrian's critiques is that he plays rather fast and loose with mechanics when arguing.  For one, his counters to the Besieged Foe ability all require effects that don't appear in 4e.  There is no Wall of Force spell and Silence and Remove Curse are both rituals and can't be used in combat (well, unless that combat is REALLY long).

Which rolls it back to a basic 4e design principle - don't overthink things.  In 3e, the "marking" effect would have to be spelled out exactly and would have to work exactly the same for all things that can mark, for exactly the reasons he outlines - how does this effect interact with all these other effects?

But, since the "other effects" are no longer in the game or are now silo'd away from combat, you don't have to worry about it.  The blanket counters that many magic spells were in 3e and earlier - Silence, Remove Curse, etc, simply aren't an issue anymore.

But now, since you don't have Spell Resistance, and a host of other blanket effects that interact with all other effects, these issues aren't a problem in this system.

The bad part of powers is that they are limited in scope.  The good part about powers is that they are limited in scope.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Hussar said:


> I have to admit, I'm not really seeing a problem here, at least based on the example given.
> 
> 1 character puts up some sort of wall of fire and the other characters keep pushing the baddies back through this wall, forcing it back and forth.
> 
> Isn't this just smart play?




Could be.  I was replying to the situation, as supposedly presented in another topic (which I haven't read), and which people were trying to prevent.  That fact that they were trying to prevent it was considered evidence that it was a problem in some peoples' games.  As I said when I first replied, there could be more to it than my guess.


----------



## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> I'm talking about the definition which emerges if you take the essay at face value, and then to the logical conclusions from there.
> 
> That the author of the essay doesn't want to make this definition plain--and in fact, goes to a great deal of trouble to obscure it--is his problem not mine.  Or rather, a reflection on him, not the rest of us that have to deal with the confusion.





Crazy Jerome said:


> I'm enough of a logician to answer that.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Pemerton, following the parameters thus established, has claimed that at his table, mechanic X was used with no disassociation. Therefore, the mechanic is not *inherently* disassociative. He has not claimed, in this part of his argument, that no one using the mechanic could ever honestly report disassociation.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There is thus the side issue of how much reported evidence from participants to take at face value. This is highly embedded into the dispute from the get go, because it is fairly clear that the Alexandrian and some of his "evangelists" could not permit counter evidence to be presented without disputing the reports.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Given all that, then, there is separate but more difficult argument about whether there is any meaningful concept occurring to attach the label "disassociated" to, outside of other related terms, such as metagaming and abstraction. And if so, what is its nature and scope? Pemerton, Wrecan, I, and others have intuited that there is not--because no one advocating that there is has yet shown us a scope or nature for the term that we agree falls outside of those other related terms.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The first claim is a lot more threatening to the "theory", in part because once it is established, people start talking more reasonably around the second one. There is a sense in which we can't even talk seriously with the OP or Jameson or you until all that underbrush is cleared out. You'll note that BotE works really hard to make sure that the underbrush keeps growing.





Crazy Jerome said:


> As for any inherent quality of 4E compared to previous versions, it is relatively speaking, very anti-simulationist, considerably more pro-narrative (though, selectively), more unabashed in its use of metagaming options, and prone to stripping the pretense out of its abstractions (in favor of clarity).





Crazy Jerome said:


> if your game is already slanted towards story that "develops in play" versus story that arises out of other elements (background, setting elements established early, etc.), then by definition you've put some work into maintaining consistency for ad hoc narrative elements. You already have tools in place to handle the things that arise.



You're on fire today! (But I can't XP you yet.)



Crazy Jerome said:


> play any version of D&D (or most RPGs) as a board game, and you will get a board game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Depending on the game, it might be a different kind of board game



This is how I personally feel about ToH played with a flying thief on a rope. Admittedly it's a rather flexible and open-ended boardgame (because eg the GM adjudicates what happens when you try to hammer pitons into walls, and then stand on them, to avoid falling into pits when you open levers) - but I don't see any roleplaying of the sort I'm interested in.


----------



## tomBitonti

innerdude said:


> In this case, the choice of "narrative" for the War Devil does, and I might argue _should,_ have an effect on future player/character choices. If a group knows that Besieged Foe has one set of causes, and how to lessen/circumvent them, it could change the entire dynamic of an encounter with a future War Devil (I'm assuming for simplicity that the Alexandrian expects us to extend this line of reasoning to many other powers/abilities, both for monsters and PCs).




I left out a lot of text.

There is a disconnect here ... however the Besieged Foe is fluffed, none of that has _any mechanical effect whatsoever_.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it _next_ time, the effect remains exactly the same.  There is _no_ practical in game meaning to the fluff, that's just there because you added it to add color to the scene.

My read of what is disassociated here is that some players want to "open the box" to discover more details of how the ability (in this case, Besieged Foe) works, and other players just aren't interested.

In 3E, Bull Rush works by one actor pushing another.  Strength helps it work better.  Size does, too, as does having extra training (the Bull Rush feat).  Strength and size both also work to oppose it.

I am thinking (although, I'm not 100% sure if this works, and I can't say how it would work, in detail.  I'd probably provide some constant bonus plus strength), a player could ready to assist someone if they were Bull Rushed.  Are there rules for pushing someone on icy ground?  I would expect a bull rush to work better against someone on icy ground, up until the pusher was also there.

In 4E, my read of many powers is that they are atomic, with fixed results, with much if not most of the  model is wrapped in the attack vs defense mechanic, with several different bonuses wrapped in the attack modifier, and several other bonuses wrapped in the defense modifier.

Edit: That sounds like a criticism of 4E relative to 3E, but in this regards I think 3E is already "terminally ill", in that it had already taken many steps to introduce rules that are not explainable (in any real sense).  Power attack works for me.  Some variations of Cleave don't.  (Witness the old "bag of critters" exploit.)  AOO's have a lot that is artificial (if I have combat reflexes and an 18 Dex, and I sneak into a room with four sleeping guards, can I AOO all four?  How is that being helpless does not draw an AOO?  As well, since you could easily draw two AOOs, one for moving, the other for, say, casting a spell, shouldn't I get two AOO's against each of the speeping guards?  Or is provoking more active, in the sense of actually prostrating myself to my enemies attack?

TomBitonti


----------



## innerdude

Okay, I just looked up something in the D&D 4e Monster Manual I, the Deathlock Wight's "Horrific Visage" power. 

Horrific Visage (standard; recharge 4, 5, 6) *  Fear
Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 
squares.

That's all you have in the description of the power. 

As I understand it, if you're playing according to 4e's assumed scene-based narrative sensibilities, the DM can describe this any way he or she sees fit--

"The Deathlock Wight opens its mouth wide, wider than any creature of flesh, and screams." 

"The Deathlock Wight conjures a vision of abyssal horror that envelops you." 

"The Deathlock Wight catches and holds your sight, and an indescribable horror overcomes you, your muscles clenching like a vice." 

Great! Fun, evocative, narrative flavor. 

But.....

Does the wight have to be looking at you to invoke the power, or can it do it to you even if you're directly behind it and it isn't looking? 

Is the power magic? Does an anti-magic barrier stop it? 

It says it's a fear based power, and it attacks Will--does that mean it can be used against one of us if we're using a scrying ritual? The scrying ritual doesn't mention if powers can be used against me while scrying. 

If it does use it on me while scrying, does it still push me back 3 squares? 

If we've chosen the scream narrative, does a silence spell counter it? 

If we've chosen the abyssal horror narrative, can a player close their eyes to ignore it? 

What if I'm playing a Paladin, and narratively I see my character as being immune to undead fear effects. Does that mean the power is causing physical damage to me, because narratively that's what makes sense to me, even though the power says it's a Fear-based Will attack? Does that mean it's actually targeting AC for me, and not Will?

Any one narrative description is perfectly acceptable for an individual scene. But to then not carry that narrative forward, so that a player/character can benefit from their first hand experience and knowledge seems brutally disingenuous.

What about another power with the same monster: 

Grave Bolt (standard; at-will) * Necrotic
Ranged 20; +6 vs. Reﬂ ex; 1d6 + 4 necrotic damage, and the 
target is immobilized (save ends)

What is a "Grave Bolt"? What if I narratively describe it as a ball of unholy light that bursts from the wight's hands, hurtling towards its foe? 

Fighter PC: "Damn, we just fought one of these things, I'm going to chop off its hands, so it can't cast that bolt thingy." 

GM: "You can't do that." 

Fighter: "Why not?"

GM: "Because I'm ruling you can't cut off the wight's hands." 

Fighter: "Wait just a minute. I'm a BIG DAMN HERO, with a BIG DAMN MAGICAL SWORD, with massive feats in sword fighting. But you're telling me that even though my magical sword can HURT a wight, it can't sever a limb?" 

GM: "Fine, you can cut off its hands, but it doesn't matter. The whole hand thing was just for that one wight." 

Fighter: "Well frak me then, how does the bolt work for this one?" 

GM: "It conjures a piece of ethereal finger bone, and shoots it at you." 

Fighter: "Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot, mate." 

In essence, the GM is punishing the player for coming up with a creative  idea, when the Fighter PC did nothing more than make the natural,  logical leap that one wight is like another. 

(And as an aside, isn't one of 4e's big tenets to "Say yes to the player"? How can you "Say yes to the player," when no two scenes have any possible overlap of "narrative consistency"?)

Call me crazy, but not only is a scenario like this "dissociative," it  carries the even bigger penalty of discouraging player creativity.

Of course one answer to our dilemma is, "Come up with better narrative for the Bolt power, or don't bother with narrative at all." 

But do proponents of scene based narrative resolution not see the inherent problems with that answer? 

To my knowledge, the premise in favor of dissociative mechanics is, "Narrative based resolution mechanics provide more freedom for controlling individual scenes and character actions within the scenes." 

Unfortunately, we've also stumbled on to an unexpected antecedent: "Since no one scene-based narrative device can be assumed to be carried into another scene, future player inferences about any given mechanic are impossible, other than the actual mechanical results." This is the catch. Right here. This is the thing that can't be explained away. 

It's very similar to the firestorm created by the Robot Chicken episode where Perkins said a player couldn't attack a door with a power. There's lots of reasons that judgement got made, but having looked at the concept of dissociation a bit more, it's my sense that one of the reasons is that the GM is essentially conceding that he can't allow certain things, because he can't carry the inference created by a particular "narrative" beyond a single encounter without, you guessed it, treating the "narrative" as a house rule. 

Again, I realize that in a SINGLE INSTANCE, for a single scene, for a single circumstance, any one narrative resolution can be satisfying. But carried outside the individual scene, there's a landmine awaiting. 

Of course, this can all be avoided if the GM simply avoids using narrative elements at all, and merely describes the mechanical effects.....but oh wait, I thought the entire point of dissociated mechanics was to LET the players and GMs create narrative, because it's "immersive" and "engaging."


----------



## Griego

I find any dissociation that at-will/encounter/daily powers create to be very easy to hand-wave, because that structure makes book-keeping so easy. XD In a 3.x campaign, certain Batmen/Women or CoDzillas need to be tracked closely lest they mysteriously develop 'infinite spells/day syndrome'.


----------



## Hussar

Whoo boy, this one is long.    Let's take it point by point.



innerdude said:


> Okay, I just looked up something in the D&D 4e Monster Manual I, the Deathlock Wight's "Horrific Visage" power.
> 
> Horrific Visage (standard; recharge 4, 5, 6) *  Fear
> Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3
> squares.
> 
> That's all you have in the description of the power.
> 
> As I understand it, if you're playing according to 4e's assumed scene-based narrative sensibilities, the DM can describe this any way he or she sees fit--
> 
> "The Deathlock Wight opens its mouth wide, wider than any creature of flesh, and screams."
> 
> "The Deathlock Wight conjures a vision of abyssal horror that envelops you."
> 
> "The Deathlock Wight catches and holds your sight, and an indescribable horror overcomes you, your muscles clenching like a vice."
> 
> Great! Fun, evocative, narrative flavor.




Stop right there.  Something to remember, and I'm now wondering if you have me on ignore, because I've repeated this a couple of times and it hasn't stuck yet, it's entirely possible to narrate this exact same effect all three ways in the SAME encounter.



> But.....
> 
> Does the wight have to be looking at you to invoke the power, or can it do it to you even if you're directly behind it and it isn't looking?




No different than 3e - facing does not apply.  Note, that it's not a gaze attack, which does have specific mechanics applied, so, applying gaze mechanics to this power is beyond the scope of the power itself.



> Is the power magic? Does an anti-magic barrier stop it?




AFAIK, Anti-magic barriers are a 3e construct and generally don't exist in 4e.



> It says it's a fear based power, and it attacks Will--does that mean it can be used against one of us if we're using a scrying ritual? The scrying ritual doesn't mention if powers can be used against me while scrying.




Well, I'm not sure which scrying type ritual you want to use, so I picked Observe Creature.  Since I am outside of its range, I don't know why it would be capable of affecting me through any ritual I can think of.  It's no different than trying to use any other power.



> If it does use it on me while scrying, does it still push me back 3 squares?




See above.



> If we've chosen the scream narrative, does a silence spell counter it?




Again, there is no silence spell in 4e.  There is a ritual that makes things quieter while inside the area, but, since this is a close blast, it would be extremely difficult to use the ritual in combat.



> If we've chosen the abyssal horror narrative, can a player close their eyes to ignore it?




How do they know to close their eyes in the first place?  And, since this is a magical, mind effecting fear effect, isn't it basically planting the image in your brain?



> What if I'm playing a Paladin, and narratively I see my character as being immune to undead fear effects. Does that mean the power is causing physical damage to me, because narratively that's what makes sense to me, even though the power says it's a Fear-based Will attack? Does that mean it's actually targeting AC for me, and not Will?




Having narrative control and changing the rules are two different things.  This would be a house rule and any problems that arise from house rules are not the fault of the mechanics.



> Any one narrative description is perfectly acceptable for an individual scene. But to then not carry that narrative forward, so that a player/character can benefit from their first hand experience and knowledge seems brutally disingenuous.




Just how many times are they going to encounter this particular type of creature over the course of 30 levels?  Being able to exploit meta-game knowledge gained because you've memorized the Monster Manual is not behavior I want to reward.



> What about another power with the same monster:
> 
> Grave Bolt (standard; at-will) * Necrotic
> Ranged 20; +6 vs. Reﬂ ex; 1d6 + 4 necrotic damage, and the
> target is immobilized (save ends)
> 
> What is a "Grave Bolt"? What if I narratively describe it as a ball of unholy light that bursts from the wight's hands, hurtling towards its foe?
> 
> Fighter PC: "Damn, we just fought one of these things, I'm going to chop off its hands, so it can't cast that bolt thingy."
> 
> GM: "You can't do that."
> 
> Fighter: "Why not?"
> 
> GM: "Because I'm ruling you can't cut off the wight's hands."
> 
> Fighter: "Wait just a minute. I'm a BIG DAMN HERO, with a BIG DAMN MAGICAL SWORD, with massive feats in sword fighting. But you're telling me that even though my magical sword can HURT a wight, it can't sever a limb?"
> 
> GM: "Fine, you can cut off its hands, but it doesn't matter. The whole hand thing was just for that one wight."
> 
> Fighter: "Well frak me then, how does the bolt work for this one?"
> 
> GM: "It conjures a piece of ethereal finger bone, and shoots it at you."
> 
> Fighter: "Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot, mate."
> 
> In essence, the GM is punishing the player for coming up with a creative  idea, when the Fighter PC did nothing more than make the natural,  logical leap that one wight is like another.
> 
> (And as an aside, isn't one of 4e's big tenets to "Say yes to the player"? How can you "Say yes to the player," when no two scenes have any possible overlap of "narrative consistency"?)
> 
> Call me crazy, but not only is a scenario like this "dissociative," it  carries the even bigger penalty of discouraging player creativity.




Oh come on.  Please.  First off, "chop off its hands" isn't something ANY version of D&D does.  Secondly, who says it actually needs those hands to shoot those bolts.  You chop off the hands and the bolts come from the stumps.  Problem solved.



> Of course one answer to our dilemma is, "Come up with better narrative for the Bolt power, or don't bother with narrative at all."
> 
> But do proponents of scene based narrative resolution not see the inherent problems with that answer?




No, one answer to our dilemma is don't play with dicks.  If the player is going to be such a prat that he's trying this sort of thing to exploit, rules lawyer fashion, every single thing that comes out of the DM's mouth, I'd much rather get a new player.



> To my knowledge, the premise in favor of dissociative mechanics is, "Narrative based resolution mechanics provide more freedom for controlling individual scenes and character actions within the scenes."
> 
> Unfortunately, we've also stumbled on to an unexpected antecedent: "Since no one scene-based narrative device can be assumed to be carried into another scene, future player inferences about any given mechanic are impossible, other than the actual mechanical results." This is the catch. Right here. This is the thing that can't be explained away.
> 
> It's very similar to the firestorm created by the Robot Chicken episode where Perkins said a player couldn't attack a door with a power. There's lots of reasons that judgement got made, but having looked at the concept of dissociation a bit more, it's my sense that one of the reasons is that the GM is essentially conceding that he can't allow certain things, because he can't carry the inference created by a particular "narrative" beyond a single encounter without, you guessed it, treating the "narrative" as a house rule.




Umm, you realize that in the Robot Chicken episode, the power he was trying to use was the 4e version of Faerie Fire and actually dealt no damage?  While his explaination was maybe problematic, the ruling certainly wasn't.



> Again, I realize that in a SINGLE INSTANCE, for a single scene, for a single circumstance, any one narrative resolution can be satisfying. But carried outside the individual scene, there's a landmine awaiting.
> 
> Of course, this can all be avoided if the GM simply avoids using narrative elements at all, and merely describes the mechanical effects.....but oh wait, I thought the entire point of dissociated mechanics was to LET the players and GMs create narrative, because it's "immersive" and "engaging."




It's only a landmine if the player is actively trying to exploit loopholes.  It's no different than the player trying to exploit loopholes in the written rules as well.  

When the players are actively engaged in the game and not busy trying to twist every situation that comes from their DM's mouth, the game runs a lot better.


----------



## Hussar

TL&DR version of above:

It seems to me that Innerdude, you have confused the idea of players having narrative control with having complete narrative control.  4e grants some narrative control to the players, but only in very specific ways.  

If you go beyond those specific ways and have problems, that's not the fault of the mechanics.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> If my character has the capacity to send his opponents reeling through a wall of fire, he's going to do that. If the mechanics say I can do that and you think I shouldn't, then there's something wrong with the mechanics, not the players.



Sometimes there are trade offs, in terms of clarity or efficiency or simplicity. Like BryonD upthread noting that his 3E players don't have their PCs jumping willy-nilly of cliffs just because they can.

Again, what trade offs are worth making, for what purposes, seems likely to vary from group to group.



Yesway Jose said:


> As per my post, though, if NO significant percentage of people were playing 4E in that way, there wouldn't be a playtest mod, unless WoTC was trying to solve a problem doesn't exist. Either way, the paradigm of playing 4E as a case of 1 or 2 (above) for some select group of people is informing the mechanics for the official system. So either way, 4E (or parts of 4E) are ultimately being shaped by those playing a tactical skirmish game.



That may well be so. I would expect WotC to take Encounters pretty seriously, and I would find it easy to believe that Encounters has a lot of tactical skirmish play - from my point of view, this would seem to be the 4e equivalent of beating ToH with a flying thief on a rope.


----------



## pemerton

wrecan said:


> 3e didn't introduce any new mechanics.



I _still_ can't XP you, for you campaign writeups (thanks, good stuff, I like your Babylonian world and its successor especially), for your WotC article on conditions, or for the quoted insightful observation.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Just in passing, there is a subset of "bad wrong fun" simulation where the players are "clever" by exploiting the fluff as mechanics, in ways that many tables would not accept. See getting all physics major on lightning bolt or fireball in 1E AD&D to gain some extra advantage. 

This is similar to crossing a boundary in gamist play from tactical smart play to abusing rules exploits. Naturally, it is a social contract thing that different groups will draw boundaries for in different places. 

3E made some effort to reduce this via standardization, though obviously it had niche cases where it still happened. (See _fabricate_ and gold exploits via craft rules.) 4E built on what 3E had done, though not so much deliberately but as a side effect of removing sim elements in flavor of genre fidelity via narration. 

Some of the early, extremely hostile 4E criticism (and not a small amount of the early 3E criticism) seemed to me to be primarily motivated by, "Hey, you took away my opportunity to manipulate the letter of the fluff to get a win--spirit of the genre go hang." Naturally, what some people saw as dick moves others saw as clever moves, and vice versa. Having seen some exceptionally clever play that did not involve abusing fluff, I can't say that I bemoan the loss. YMMV.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> Forcing a player to "construct narrative" can be dissociative, if it is not an assumed responsibility for the player to do so.



Yes. Forcing a player to conceive of injury in terms of hit points can be "dissociative", too. It's one reason I dropped AD&D for Rolemaster as my preferred mainstream fantasy RPG a little over 20 years ago.

But that doesn't tell us much about the hit point mechanic, except that I didn't like its relationship to the fiction. There's been quite a bit of discussion of the details of hit points upthread, and on the recent "dying, unhealable NPC thread". And at least as I see it, the analyses of hit points that identify why I didn't like them don't appeal to the notion of "dissociation". They talk about Actor vs Author stance, simulationist vs metagame mechanics, fortune-in-the-middle, etc.



innerdude said:


> Having to stop mid-turn, and create a narrative that "makes sense" for a particular mechanical resolution could be considered "dissociative," because the player is no longer engaged in Actor stance, but Author stance.



One point I've been trying to make, using the G2 discussion as an imaginary example (although something pretty close to it did happen when I GMed G2 many years ago) and my paladin case as an actual example, is that the sense in which a player has to "stop mid-turn" is purely logical or formal. That is, the player has to do something which falls under the "Author stance" description rather than the "Actor stance" description.

But there is no temporal or psychological sense in which the player has to stop mid-turn. The player just plays the game: "I'm pretty confident I can't die from falling that distance: I jump!", or "Ah - but the Raven Queen turned me back". Here we have the player exhibiting both Actor Stance (first person narration, emotionally expressing his/her PC, etc) _and_ Author Stance (in the jumping case - because the player's conception of his/her PC's desires is shaped by his/her knowledge, which is metagame knowledge, that the fall can't do more than 60 hp damage) or Director Stance (in the polymorph case - because the player is also determining a fictional truth about an NPC, namely, the paladin's god).



innerdude said:


> The mechanic imposes the switch in the moment of resolution, and that switch can feel jarring, depending on preferred playstyle.



As I've just tried to show, it is not necessary that there be a switch. Not all _logical_ switches have to be temporally located, psychologically actualised events.

For some, they may be. And those players might experience "dissociation". But I don't believe that there are many useful generalisations here.



innerdude said:


> Mechanics that require external narrative resolution create a much higher potential for inconsistency in future rule adjudication.



As far as I can tell you are stating this as a matter of conjecture, rather than on the basis of any widespread investigation of the evidence of actual play.

My own actual play experience doesn't bear this out.

Of course there can be _differences_ in rules adjudication. For example, if another encounter with a Transmuter occurred in my game, and a different PC was turned into a frog until the end of the Transmuter's next turn, the ingame explanation for the ending of the polymorph effect might be quite different.

But difference is not, per se, inconsistency.



innerdude said:


> I think the Alexandrian's discussion of the War Devil is most salient here--
> 
> In this case, the choice of "narrative" for the War Devil does, and I might argue _should,_ have an effect on future player/character choices. If a group knows that Besieged Foe has one set of causes, and how to lessen/circumvent them, it could change the entire dynamic of an encounter with a future War Devil (I'm assuming for simplicity that the Alexandrian expects us to extend this line of reasoning to many other powers/abilities, both for monsters and PCs).
> 
> At least to me, this is a type of situation that narrative resolution style is less effective at encompassing. Yes, we can situationally create a non-dissociated, agreed-upon reason of how the War Devil's power works in one circumstance. But to arbitrarily change it from encounter-to-encounter feels problematic, _because now it's affecting the actual available choices of the players.
> 
> _In this case, the lack of association is _stunting_ potential player/character creativity, because they have no way of evaluating the effectiveness of the results.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The refusal to apply specific narrative fluff to the War Devil negates a player's ability to creatively, rationally respond in unique ways to one in the future. Since there is no narrative, there are, by extension, no appropriate responses that can be planned, and characters are losing _meaningful choices_ to make as a result.



Does anyone participating in this thread have actual play experience with war devils, that they want to share?

I don't myself, but I certainly don't see anything too problematic about the power.

First, in my game the main dimension of meaningful choice is thematic rather than operational. So if my players were worried that they were going to encounter more war devils, and wanted to ensure that they didn't become Beseiged Foes of those devils in those future encounters, they would likely take steps to get protections against devils and suchlike - which, mechanically, might be items or rituals that allow shedding conditions imposed by devils, or might be page 42 Religion or Arcana checks to the same end (much as a Heal check can permit a bonus saving throw).

The closest actual play example I can give to this hypothetical scenario is the following:

The PCs had gone to an island at the behest of some elves, on which stood an old temple that had become corrupted by the Shadowfell. The elves wanted the PCs to recover a statue of the Summer Queen. The PCs did so, but as they were leaving the temple to go back to their boat, so they could then row back to the elves, a black dragon flew towards them. The PCs decided to take a stand under the temple portico - which would prevent the dragon attacking them from the air - rather than risk a confrontation in the open or while rowing across the lake. The one disadvantage of this strategy, they discovered, was that it left a good chunk of the party inside the zone of darkness that the dragon created. But the PC wizard succeeded in dispelling the darkness by calling on the magic of the Summer Queen as embodied in the statue (mechanically, an Arcana check while holding the statue to dismiss the zone).​
This sort of response, whether preplanned or ad hoc, because it turns on the thematic source of the power, rather than the details of its mechanism, isn't going to be hurt by varying narrations.

The second reason I don't feel the force of the concern is that the game has been pretty well designed to avoid giving rise to it. Thus, for example, there are powers that allow PCs to shed marks. These will work against Besieged Foe however it is flavoured - although that might change the flavour of those mark-shedding powers on those occasions of use. And there are few abilities that turn on the sorts of concerns the Alexandrian states - so there are no silence spells that would stop the War Devil from shouting commands, and no Remove Curse spells that would lift a curse (where a curse is characterised by process rather than endstate - there are, as noted, condition-lifting powers, but they will work however Besieged Foe is narrated).

I can think of one possible corner case - the War Devil is being narrated as commanding his allies how to attack, and then a PC uses a power that imposes the deafened condition on those allies. Can the War Devil still confer on them the benefits of Besieged Foe? Or does the targeted PC get at least a temporary reprieve? How I personally would adjudicate that would depend very heavily on other features of the context that we don't have ready-to-hand in these purely hypothetical discussions.

I can see how all this might be rather unsatisfactory for those who like operational play, in which the main dimension of "meaningfulness" is "cleverness of contribution to overcoming the operational challenges". As I've been saying since 2008 or so, it's pretty clear that 4e is not the game for such people.

4e, in my view, does not support operational/Gygaxian gamism very well. Nor does it support purist-for-system simulationism very well. 3E clearly supports both better (1st ed AD&D perhaps better still).

But that doesn't leave 4e without a viable niche, becaues these approaches aren't the only viable ones. So diagnosing problems for 4e _relative to these modes of play_ is not diagnosing problems for 4e per se. (Which is not to say that it has none - it does, for example with skill challenges as per my recent post here.)



Yesway Jose said:


> If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics.



Is this meant to relate to any actual reported instance of play, or just a remark in the abstract?

I'm not playing a game without mechanics. I'm playing 4e, which is a pretty mechanics-heavy game.

But the mechanics are, on the whole, not purist-for-system simulationist ones. That is, they don't model or express ingame causal logic.

One mechanic is this: when a Transmuter Balefully Polymorphs a target, that target turns back at the end of the Transmuter's next turn.

This gives rise to a question within the fiction: Why? Why does the polymorph effect end?

Here is one possible answer, that I had thought of when I placed a Transmuter into the scenario: the polymorhp magic wears out pretty quickly. This would be treating the mechanic in a more-or-less simulationist fashion.

Here is another possible answer, that the player of my paladin worked out after his PC got turned into a frog and then shortly turned back to normal: the Raven Queen turned me back! This is treating the mechanic in more of a metagame fashion - that is, while it recognises that the mechanic obliges the participants at the table to agree that, within the fiction, the polymorph effect on the target has ended, it leaves it open on any given occasion that the mechanic is applied what exactly the explanation for that outcome, within the fiction, might be. And my player has put forward an explanation by uttering something in character, which explanation no one else at the table queried.

The rulebooks don't themselves stipulate which of these answers should be adopted. Nor do they stipulate whether the rule should be understood in a simulationist or in a metagame fashion. They leave these as open questions. As it happens, and as I've explained, when the situation arose at my table, the answer that was actually put forward, and was not contested by anyone (not by me, not by another player) was the second of the two possibilities I've canvassed.

So we have an instance of a _mechanic_ - ie we're not in the realm of mechanicless narrative - which is ambiguous as to how metagamey it is, if at all, but which was applied at my table in a metagame fashion. And the application of the mechanic in that way was initiated by a player, not the GM. And was initiated by the player _in the course of_ playing his PC, and as part of the process of "inhabiting" that PC.

_That_ is my black swan. Because, if the "theory" of "dissociated" mechanics was right, then treating the mechanic in a metagame fashion rather than a simulationist fashion would tend to _disrupt_ the player's inhabitation of his PC. Whereas at my table, it was a method for _reinforcing_ that inhabitation.



Yesway Jose said:


> Those qualities you discuss above is what makes 4E uniquely "disassociative" to me.



But this is like someone explaining how a meal has been served on a polenta base, and corn meal has been used in the pastry component of the meal, and the meat inside the pastry is corned beef. I mean, yes, I now know why I didn't like the meal - I don't particularly care for either the texture or the flavour of polenta or corned beef - but to infer from that "Ah, now we've worked out why the meal was disgusting", when I'm at a table with a dozen other diners who loved it, would look a bit like I was projecting my preferences somewhat.

I've been saying for many, many pages - and so have wrecan, Crazy Jerome and Hussar (and maybe others I've left off the list) - that 4e has metagame-y, non-simulationist mechanics, and that this explains why some people don't like it. But going on to describe those mechanics as "dissociated" mechanics is just to project those quirks of taste onto the system itself.

Now I'm not a thoroughgoing relativist about questions of aesthetic value. If you explain to me that the base of the meal is mud, the pastry full of grit, and the filling is some form of excrement, I might be more ready to project my disgust onto the food itself. Apart from anything else, there are likely to be fewer connoisseurs around who would reject my judgement.

But metagame-y, non-simulationist mechanics aren't the mud and turds of the roleplaying world. They're at the centre of a good chunk of modern RPG design. In this sense, 4e is innovative only for mainstream fantasy gaming. It's certainly not the avant-garde.

Just as I'm not a thoroughgoing relativist, I'm not per se hostile to conservatism in aesthetics either. Like many who aren't well-schooled in the arts, and even some who are, I find looking at the works of the great masters, or classical statuary, more uniformly rewarding than a visit to a modern art museum. But even when I personally don't enjoy, or really see the point of, some cutting edge installation, I'm prepared to take seriously that others - including others who have thought hard about the issues - see something serious there, something of value.

RPGs are the same. I'm not sure that I want to _play_ Nicotine Girls. There are political/moral reasons for that, and also more personal ones - eg do I want to spend my leisure time roleplaying lifecrushing despair? But I have no trouble acknowledging that there's something there, alright. And it was reading the rules to Nicotine Girls that first gave me a clear sense of how I might use the idea of an endgame in my much more mainstream Rolemaster campaign. And the same ideas strike me as equally relevant to 4e's Epic Destinies.

TL;DR - projecting personal aesthetic responses can lead to unnecessary coflict. (Of course, some people _want _unnecessary conflict. This goes back to [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION]'s point about clearing away, or cultivating, the undergrowth.)


----------



## Pentius

innerdude said:


> -snipped for brevity-




You know, I had a point by point response going, but then I realized it all boiled to this:

Yes, if you are going to approach every interaction with a combative, dare I say, exceptionally jerk-esque agenda, narrative control will be a useful tool for you to bludgeon your players with.  

If you want to aggressively stifle creativity, you can use these mechanics to help you do that.

If someone at your table is not mature and respectful enough to use this control in good faith, they probably shouldn't be allowed to use it.

But then, as the saying goes, "Jerks find a way."  What system exists that a jerk cannot corrupt?  I can think of none.


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> Something I've noticed with TheAlexandrian's critiques is that he plays rather fast and loose with mechanics when arguing.  For one, his counters to the Besieged Foe ability all require effects that don't appear in 4e.





Hussar said:


> Since there is no specific narrative linked to a specific effect, the players are free to add in their own narrative in any means they like.  I could just as easily argue for my PC to make a Religion check to be able to come up with a bit of scripture that negates his use of his power.



Apparently I should read your posts before posting! These points are spot-on, and illustrate how in 4e the whole idea of "interpreting" or "countering" a foe's abilities is less about operational planning and more about pursuing the central thematic ideas that the game puts forward.



Hussar said:


> Just how many times are they going to encounter this particular type of creature over the course of 30 levels?  Being able to exploit meta-game knowledge gained because you've memorized the Monster Manual is not behavior I want to reward.



More good stuff.



tomBitonti said:


> IThere is a disconnect here ... however the Besieged Foe is fluffed, none of that has _any mechanical effect whatsoever_.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it _next_ time, the effect remains exactly the same.  There is _no_ practical in game meaning to the fluff, that's just there because you added it to add color to the scene.



I want to point out, here, that you move from "mechanical effect" to "effect" to "practical in game meaning".

The claim of "no mechanical effect whatsoever" is, in my view, itself not true. As I posted a few times upthread, the way that a power or ability is narrated may often be significant for how the players hook onto it using page 42.

But even if you take the view that use of page 42 is a corner case (I don't, personally) it doesn't follow that it has no effect, or no practical in game meaning. In a game where the main focus is not on operational play of the "flying theif on a rope" variety, but rather (for example) on doing something dramatic or interesting starting with the notion that this is a WAR DEVIL - a being of pure martial domination whom my god has charged me to defeat! - than the fact that I succumbed to a curse placed by that creature might be quite significant. It might affect NPC reactions. Other players' conceptions of, or the player's own conception of, the PC. The structure and resolution of subsequent skill challenges. The structure and resolution of subsequent combats! (Am I the only GM who has recurring monsters and NPCs act on the basis of fictional happenings in previous encounters? I assume not.)


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> Just how many times are they going to encounter this particular type of creature over the course of 30 levels?  Being able to exploit meta-game knowledge gained because you've memorized the Monster Manual is not behavior I want to reward.




Well, it's entirely possible to run into one creature a dozen times in one adventure. Personally, more then any tactical concerns, the question in my mind is what does this creature do from the character's perspective? Is the intent really to destroy any sort of consistency in behavior from the character's perspective?


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> a player/character would absolutely be reasonably expected to want to understand the source of the War Devil's power, and mitigate it, both meta- and in-game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For a choice to be meaningful, the player/character has to have some baseline in which to evaluate the ramifications of that choice. Lack of ramifications = the negation of meaningful choice.





innerdude said:


> Any one narrative description is perfectly acceptable for an individual scene. But to then not carry that narrative forward, so that a player/character can benefit from their first hand experience and knowledge seems brutally disingenuous.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> To my knowledge, the premise in favor of dissociative mechanics is, "Narrative based resolution mechanics provide more freedom for controlling individual scenes and character actions within the scenes."
> 
> Unfortunately, we've also stumbled on to an unexpected antecedent: "Since no one scene-based narrative device can be assumed to be carried into another scene, future player inferences about any given mechanic are impossible, other than the actual mechanical results." This is the catch. Right here. This is the thing that can't be explained away.



You seem to be focused mainly on the sorts of inferences and ramifications that matter in sim-heavy operational play (ie planning now to be more efficient in combat, and at exploration, tomorrow). I don't think 4e's design is oriented towards _these_ sorts of ramifications.

One way in which 4e is not oriented towards these sorts of inferences and ramifications, in my view, is that it is very obviously and expressly focused on the encounter/challenge/scene/situation (for current purposes, these can be treated as synonyms) as the focus of play. It does not prioritise exploration.

So the game is not particularly interested in the players wondering how to deal with a war devil, going off to do a whole lot of exploration and hunting for clues, items etc, and then bringing those tools into the combat in order to make short work of their enemy.

I'm not saying you can't do a little bit of this, some of the time. But too much of it and the system won't really deliver - for example, easy combats in 4e can tend to be boring ones.

If you want to build situations that play to the _strengths_ of 4e, then you do things like: locate the clues in the context of a skill challenge or an earlier combat encounter; build the counters to the war devil's power _into the encounter with the war devil_ - whether as a skill challenge, or some particular widget that the PCs have to get hold of and deploy in the course of the combat, or whatever. 

My black dragon example upthread shows this at work - the player of the wizard, who is the only one able to evoke the magical power of the statue of the Summer Queen, has to decide whether to gamble his standard action on a chance to dispel the darkness, or whether to leave the darkness in place and try to contribute to the battle in some other way. _This_ is the sort of play that 4e is designed to support.

I'll give some more examples - actual and imagined - below in this post.



innerdude said:


> Okay, I just looked up something in the D&D 4e Monster Manual I, the Deathlock Wight's "Horrific Visage" power.
> 
> Horrific Visage (standard; recharge 4, 5, 6) *  Fear
> Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3
> squares.
> 
> That's all you have in the description of the power.



This is one of the first monster descriptions I remember reading in the MM. And I remember thinking what a great power it was - I wanted to use this wight whose horrific visage made creatures recoil in fear.

When I did get a chance to use it, the ranger (I think it was) recoiled in fear and fell down a pit! But the party had somehow worked out that there would be pits, and so had roped together - and the dwarf was able to pull the ranger back up while the sorcerer destroyed the wight with a crit on a Blazing Starfall (AOE radiant damage, for those who don't know it).



innerdude said:


> Does the wight have to be looking at you to invoke the power, or can it do it to you even if you're directly behind it and it isn't looking?
> 
> Is the power magic? Does an anti-magic barrier stop it?
> 
> It says it's a fear based power, and it attacks Will--does that mean it can be used against one of us if we're using a scrying ritual? The scrying ritual doesn't mention if powers can be used against me while scrying.
> 
> If it does use it on me while scrying, does it still push me back 3 squares?
> 
> If we've chosen the scream narrative, does a silence spell counter it?
> 
> If we've chosen the abyssal horror narrative, can a player close their eyes to ignore it?



Hussar responed to most of these, but I'll add a few thoughts.

There are no facing rules in 4e (as I believe is also the case in 3E) but the power is a blast, which means that it generates an implication of facing (ie a blast occurs on only one side of an attacker, and the most likely explanation for why those on the other side of the wight are not affected by the power would be that they're not looking at the wight but rather behind it.)

Silence, anti-magic etc don't exist. The scrying thing is a bit of a corner case - does a 3E dragon's frightful presence work through scrying magic? - but I'd be happy to apply a penalty to the scryer's skill check, or even deliver an attack, if the wight looked into the scrying sensor with its horrific visage.

And if a PC closed his/her eyes in response I'd be happy to give a +2 bonus to Will in exchange for being blinded until the start of that PC's next turn.



innerdude said:


> What if I'm playing a Paladin, and narratively I see my character as being immune to undead fear effects. Does that mean the power is causing physical damage to me, because narratively that's what makes sense to me, even though the power says it's a Fear-based Will attack? Does that mean it's actually targeting AC for me, and not Will?



Well fear is a keyword, and so in the absence of a class ability or power that looks up that keyword, there is a limit on what you can narrate here. (I've actually posted quite extensively in the past on the importance, in 4e's action resolution mechanics, of keywords as an anchor to the fiction - for example, the reason a fireball spell sets things alight but a sword blow doesn't is because the former has the fire keyword and deals fire damage; the reason the push of a Thunderwave can blow people through timber-framed windows, whereas the push of horrific visage cannot, is that the former has the Thunder keyword; and the reason the wizard PC in my game was able to use the Twist of Space encounter power to free someone who had been trapped inside a mirror - via p 42 - is because that power has the teleport keyword.)

The more general answer to your question, though, is that the player of the paladin should be using page 42. The first time the player of a paladin in my game confronted a wight (not a deathlock one) he cursed it in the name of the Raven Queen - mechanically, this was a Religion check as a minor action staking combat advantage for one attack (on a successful check) against some damage as the wight resisted the prayer (on a failed check - I can't remember whether I called it necrotic or psychic damage, but it didn't matter because the player succeeded at the check).

Resisting undead fear through faith could be easily adjudicated in a similar fashion.



innerdude said:


> What is a "Grave Bolt"? What if I narratively describe it as a ball of unholy light that bursts from the wight's hands, hurtling towards its foe?
> 
> <snip confected dialogue that is not representative of any actual play I've experienced>
> 
> Call me crazy, but not only is a scenario like this "dissociative," it  carries the even bigger penalty of discouraging player creativity.



I believe that, in AD&D, there is talk of the fireball pellet emanating from the mage's hand, or being thrown by the mage. How do AD&D GMs adjudicate fireballs by maimed mages? For me it's never come up, but however it's done, do the same with the wight!

But anyway, what do you see as the point of your dialogue? Do you think that there are actually 4e tables around the world having experiences like that, even as we post and try to save them from themselves?

I'm posting actual play examples. And explaining how they arise within the context of, and are supported by, 4e's mechanics. And showing not only the sort of consistency that is being used to drive the game forward by my creative players - consistency of theme, personae, etc - but also how the so-called "dissociated" mechanics in fact _are central_ to allowing this sort of consistency to occur.

LostSoul has whole threads of actual play examples of his first 4e campaign, and then his current 4e variant. You'll see plenty of consistency, and player creativity there, too. (Not that LostSouls' games are a cipher of mine, or vice versa. Each of us is doing our own thing with 4e.)

Where is the _actual_ discouragement of player creativity, at _actual_ 4e tables? Of course, if your dialogues were representative of how you GMed games then I'm sure that creativity at your tables would be discouraged. But in fact I assume that you don't GM in that way. I'm not sure, then, why you are assuming that this is how anyone would run 4e.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> what does this creature do from the character's perspective?



It's over a year since I ran my scenario with a deathlock wight, so I'm a little hazy on the precise details, but the resolution went something like this:

*I described the wight confronting the PCs with its horrific visage (I can't remember exactly how I described it, but probably someting about it's features disapearing and its true, decaying form become briefly visible).

*I then rolled a d20 for each PC in the blast area, added the wight's attack bonus, and asked each player, in turn, "Does a total of X hit your Will defence"?

*Once it was established that at least one PC was hit, I rolled a damage die.

*And to those who answered, "Yes" to my question about Will defences, I then said something like "You recoil in fear from the horrific wight. Take Z damage."

*I then moved the tokens on the map that reprsented those PCs who had been hit by the attack, thereby represented where their recoiling moved them too.

*As I've already posted, one of the PCs (I think the ranger), stepped back over the lip of an open pit and fell, but was saved by the fact that the PCs had roped themselves together.​
I don't think there is anything in the above that is dramatically different from action resolution in AD&D, Rolemaster or any other maintream game - dice are rolled, compared to target numbers (or look up tables, or whatever), and then consequences applied with a corresponding change in the fictional state of affairs.

And I don't think there was any doubt about what was changing in the fictional state of affairs. The affected PCs had recoiled in fear. That was why they had moved (mechanically, this was dictated by the push effect; as far as keeping track of the fiction, it was represented by moving tokens on a map). That was why they were now more worn down, and somewhat closer to the possibility of defeat (mechanically, this was dictated by the hit point loss inflicted).

EDIT: On further reflection, I don't think the ranger actually fell down the pit. I think that he would have, but for the rope. As best I can recall, I think that the ranger was at the end of the rope, and the dwarf fighter was next. We decided - after looking at the position of the PCs relative to the pit and the length of rope between them - that the player of the dwarf should make a STR check: on a failure the ranger would fall down the pit and pull the fighter with him, but on a success the dwarf would be able to stand his ground, meaning that the rope would prevent the ranger from falling. And I think that the check was a success. (I'm becoming more confident that the ranger didn't fall, because I remember the encounter ending up being a fairly easy one for the party because they roped themselves together and it worked - and if the ranger, one of their two strikers, had fallen down the pit then I don't think the encounter could have gone easily for them.)

Anyway, I do clearly remember the players being pleased that roping together had paid off.


----------



## LostSoul

innerdude said:


> Okay, I just looked up something in the D&D 4e Monster Manual I, the Deathlock Wight's "Horrific Visage" power.
> 
> Horrific Visage (standard; recharge 4, 5, 6) *  Fear
> Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3
> squares.
> 
> That's all you have in the description of the power.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "The Deathlock Wight catches and holds your sight, and an indescribable horror overcomes you, your muscles clenching like a vice."
> 
> Great! Fun, evocative, narrative flavor.




Yeah, I agree!  I decided to go with the above description of the wight's power, more or less, the first time I ran one back in Keep on the Shadowfell.

The last time I ran a deathlock wight was in a different campaign (with only one player from the previous one) in a modified KotS.  The room was covered with mirrors.

The wight used a mirror to catch a PC's gaze - and thus cause him to reel back in unnatural fear - while remaining "hidden"!  A neat trick.



innerdude said:


> Unfortunately, we've also stumbled on to an unexpected antecedent: "Since no one scene-based narrative device can be assumed to be carried into another scene, future player inferences about any given mechanic are impossible, other than the actual mechanical results." This is the catch. Right here. This is the thing that can't be explained away.




I don't think this has anything to do with dissociated mechanics as I understand them.  It has everything to do with DMs making judgement calls.

I decided, early on, that magic is cast by speaking words of power.  That's all you need.  When a PC decided to jam an Immovable Rod into the mouth of a MM1 Human Lich, he could no longer cast spells or maintain the ones he had going.  That's a judgement call.

Not all 4E groups enjoy this sort of play.  That's cool.  I do, and I wrote my hack in order to get more of it.  Some people might call my hack more "associated", but I wouldn't: I use Daily Martial Exploits, explicit instructions to players to metagame, and I never once thought about associating the player's point-of-view with that of the PC's.


----------



## pemerton

LostSoul said:


> I decided, early on, that magic is cast by speaking words of power.  That's all you need.  When a PC decided to jam an Immovable Rod into the mouth of a MM1 Human Lich, he could no longer cast spells or maintain the ones he had going.  That's a judgement call.
> 
> Not all 4E groups enjoy this sort of play.  That's cool.  I do, and I wrote my hack in order to get more of it.



I don't think I've seen you mention the Words of Power idea before.

It's an interesting idea.

I've never had my players try to disarm a weapon user or "disarm" (whatever that might involve) a spell caster, so haven't had to make the call.

Mechanically, the upshot has some resemblence to the Helpless condition or the Stunned condition, so I would probably tend towards strictness rather than generosity in adjudicating it under page 42.


----------



## Neonchameleon

innerdude said:


> Does the wight have to be looking at you to invoke the power, or can it do it to you even if you're directly behind it and it isn't looking?




It's not a gaze attack and just like in 3.5 monsters don't have facing.  On the other hand it's a close blast and so it's directional.  (Close bursts wouldn't be).



> Is the power magic? Does an anti-magic barrier stop it?




What and where is your "anti-magic barrier" coming from?  Can something that you'd have to house-rule into 4e stop it.  I have no idea - the anti-magic barrier is house rules.  If you want a better question, "Why doesn't an anti-magic field tear the wings off a dragon if he's flying?"

Oh wait.  That would be applying the standards to 3.X you want to apply to 4e, but are failing to because you are inventing things that aren't there like anti-magic barriers.  Except there are anti-magic fields in 3.X.  And apparently they don't do this to dragons or beholders.



> It says it's a fear based power, and it attacks Will--does that mean it can be used against one of us if we're using a scrying ritual? The scrying ritual doesn't mention if powers can be used against me while scrying.




Close blast 3.  Unless DM says otherwise.



> If we've chosen the scream narrative, does a silence spell counter it?




Silence is an anti-eavesdropping spell in 4e.  And takes a while to cast.



> If we've chosen the abyssal horror narrative, can a player close their eyes to ignore it?




If your eyes were specified to be tightly shut (and you had no other means of sight like a Robe of Eyes or Blindsight) _before_ it launched the attack, possibly.  I've never seen this happen because keeping your eyes closed in combat in preparation for a possible attack is such a monumentally stupid idea.  (No, you can't close your eyes at the end of your turn and open them at the start of your next one).



> What if I'm playing a Paladin, and narratively I see my character as being immune to undead fear effects.




Is your character immune to undead fear effects or not?  If he is he is.  If it's a narrative ass-pull to make your character more powerful, too bad.



> Does that mean it's actually targeting AC for me, and not Will?




No.



> Any one narrative description is perfectly acceptable for an individual scene. But to then not carry that narrative forward, so that a player/character can benefit from their first hand experience and knowledge seems brutally disingenuous.




It depends.  Will similar precautions help?  Probably.  But do monsters appear from cloning tanks?  No.



> Fighter PC: "Damn, we just fought one of these things, I'm going to chop off its hands, so it can't cast that bolt thingy."




Would you have allowed a fighter to do the same thing in 3e to a random spellcaster?  My guess is no - at least not until you'd rendered them helpless.



> In essence, the GM is punishing the player for coming up with a creative idea, when the Fighter PC did nothing more than make the natural, logical leap that one wight is like another.




When what the fighter did was tried something that no DM I am familiar with would allow in 3e.  Sunder only cuts off weapons in 3e, not wrists.  If it cut off wrists, it would be done to _every_ enemy spellcaster.  And sword wielder.

In order to get the monster into a position where its wrists could be sundered, it would need to be reduced to 0hp.   

Quick question: In 3.X, how many times did you allow the PCs to cut the hands off a spellcaster in combat?  It's really not in the rules.  

Quick question 2: How many times did the PCs reduce an enemy spellcaster to 0hp, let him live, and then cut his hands off so he couldn't use somatic components?

If the answer to both these questions is "never", arguing that this isn't covered in 4e is simply special pleading. 



> Call me crazy, but not only is a scenario like this "dissociative," it carries the even bigger penalty of discouraging player creativity.




Call me crazy, but I don't think that not allowing PCs to amputate limbs of active and aware monsters is anything abnormal in _any_ edition of D&D.



> Of course one answer to our dilemma is, "Come up with better narrative for the Bolt power, or don't bother with narrative at all."




Another answer is to tell the player to stop being a munchkin and arbitrarily claiming that he can mutilate still standing enemies and is immune to certain powers when he has no mechanical justification for this immunity.  Your examples are made of straw.  And worse than that they are made of straw but in most cases show disconnects in _3.X_ where they don't in 4e.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> _If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is this meant to relate to any actual reported instance of play, or just a remark in the abstract?
> <snip>
> I'm not playing a game without mechanics. I'm playing 4e, which is a pretty mechanics-heavy game.
Click to expand...


You excised the rest of the original post, and I think you cherry-picked a sentence out of context, and I think you missed my point. I would clarify, except....



> But this is like someone explaining how a meal has been served on a polenta base, and corn meal has been used in the pastry component of the meal, and the meat inside the pastry is corned beef. I mean, yes, I now know why I didn't like the meal - I don't particularly care for either the texture or the flavour of polenta or corned beef - but to infer from that "Ah, now we've worked out why the meal was disgusting", when I'm at a table with a dozen other diners who loved it, would look a bit like I was projecting my preferences somewhat.



I wrote "that's what makes 4E uniquely "disassociative" *to me*" not "now we've worked out why 4E is disassociative". You inferred wrong. Just like you and others have made a wrong inference from the essay. And I think your analogy is flawed or limited in its usefulness to the point.

You know, the partisanship can get a bit too much. Too much "huzzah" and fist bumps when your side of the table makes a point, and then making the wrong kind of arguments when the other side makes a point no matter how valid. I apologize if I ever acted hypocritically, but I'm not interested in seeing back and forth of one-way bon mots with no feedback loops. The only winner is the last one standing with enough patience to see everyone else give up. I was interested in a discussion about disassociation, not see disassociation in our discussion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Cant believe this thread is still going


----------



## tomBitonti

tomBitonti said:
			
		

> There is a disconnect here ... however the Besieged Foe is fluffed, none of that has any mechanical effect whatsoever. No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it next time, the effect remains exactly the same. There is no practical in game meaning to the fluff, that's just there because you added it to add color to the scene.






pemerton said:


> I want to point out, here, that you move from "mechanical effect" to "effect" to "practical in game meaning".
> 
> The claim of "no mechanical effect whatsoever" is, in my view, itself not true. As I posted a few times upthread, the way that a power or ability is narrated may often be significant for how the players hook onto it using page 42.
> 
> But even if you take the view that use of page 42 is a corner case (I don't, personally) it doesn't follow that it has no effect, or no practical in game meaning. In a game where the main focus is not on operational play of the "flying theif on a rope" variety, but rather (for example) on doing something dramatic or interesting starting with the notion that this is a WAR DEVIL - a being of pure martial domination whom my god has charged me to defeat! - than the fact that I succumbed to a curse placed by that creature might be quite significant. It might affect NPC reactions. Other players' conceptions of, or the player's own conception of, the PC. The structure and resolution of subsequent skill challenges. The structure and resolution of subsequent combats! (Am I the only GM who has recurring monsters and NPCs act on the basis of fictional happenings in previous encounters? I assume not.)




If I may rephrase:

However the Besieged Foe is described, none of that description alters the application of the power.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it next time, the power and its effect remain exactly as specified by the power block.

To me that is what the Alexandrian means by "house ruling" the power.  If the description alters the power's effect in a way that maps to game mechanics, that is a house rule.

In my limited experience with 4E, which is in short tries at the local game store, the players don't go beyond applying the power block.  They aren't thinking very much in terms of "what does this power mean", just "what happens when I use this power".

Looking back to Besieged Foe:



> Besieged Foe (minor; at-will)
> Ranged sight; automatic hit; the target is marked, and allies of the war devil gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls made against the target until the encounter ends or the war devil marks a new target.




I can imagine that as a Curse (say, a one target super Bane in 3E parlance), or as the Marshall _Motivate Attack_ major aura.

The difference between the 4E effect: Automatic hit, target is marked, and these two 3E examples: Bane is a spell, with a duration and a save, and is subject to detailed spell mechanics, while a marshall aura requires:



> Unless otherwise noted, a marshal's aura affects all allies within 60 feet (including himself) who can hear the marshal. An ally must have an Intelligence score of 3 or higher and be able to understand the marshal's language to gain the bonus. A marshal's aura is dismissed if he is dazed, unconscious, stunned, paralyzed, or otherwise unable to be heard or understood by his allies.




(From D&D Miniatures Handbook excerpt
I rather imagine that is not the current exact power description, I don't think that matters for the current discussion.)

If you model the 4E ability off of the Marshall major aura, and the battlefield has a side room, and a player (temporarily) shifts the devil into the side room while another closes a door, would you then rule that the mark ends?  (Do marks require continuous line-of-sight?)  Do you require that allies understand the language that the Devil uses?

TomBitonti


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> You excised the rest of the original post, and I think you cherry-picked a sentence out of context, and I think you missed my point.



Not on purpose.

Here are the two relevant quotes, in full:



Yesway Jose said:


> If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from.
> 
> If you're playing a pure abstract game, there is 100% disassociation because there is no fiction. However, you could also say that there is zero disassociation, because there's no story to be disassociated from.
> 
> I think it may be impossible to prove that a mechanic has any inherent property for disassociation, because your definition is entirely dependant on which position you're looking from.





Yesway Jose said:


> Thank you, that was my point. Those qualities you discuss above is what makes 4E uniquely "disassociative" to me. I don't know what the anthropic principle has to do with it.



What I see here is a discussion of "pure narrative" with "no mechanics" (what The Alexandrian calls "improv drama", which he then suggests links the tactical skirmishes of 4e).

I also see a discussion of 100% dissociation in purely abstract games - these would be The Alexandrian boardgames.

I don't know if you're meaning to press all the same buttons as Justin Alexaner et al in your post, but you've succeeded in doing so. Despite my many posts describing ACTUAL PLAY EXAMPLES of 4e's mechanics in action, being used to roleplay, you _seem_ to me to be discussing pure theorycraft about improv drama and boardgames.

You also refer to "your definition" of "dissociation". I'm not sure who the "your" is meant to denote - presumably not me, given that I have no definition of dissociation, as I regard it as a pseudo-notion.

You then seem to agree with Crazy Jerome's description of 4e, which has been well-known since some time in 2008, and much discussed by both 4e enthusiasts and those who don't like 4e. Given that Crazy Jerome's description of 4e does not need, nor use, the notion of "dissociation", I think it is consistent with my view that "dissociation" is a pseudo-notion.



Yesway Jose said:


> I wrote "that's what makes 4E uniquely "disassociative" *to me*" not "now we've worked out why 4E is disassociative". You inferred wrong. Just like you and others have made a wrong inference from the essay.



If I've misundestood you, I apologise. I haven't misunderstood the essay. The only factual information that it contains is that Justin Alexander dislikes 4e because of the particular character of its metagame mechanics, but it dresses up this rather pedestrian fact in a pseudo-theory of "dissociative mechanics".

The relevance of the anthropic principle - mentioned by wrecan - is this: that the only reason Justin Alexaner's pseudo-theory gets any traction is because there is an audience for it who have not, before 4e, experienced dislike of D&D because of its metagame mechanics. That is, his primary audience is those who can cope with, or even enjoy, D&D's existing, pre-4e metagame mechanics. Other _potential_ readers of his essay, who don't like classic D&D's metagame mechanics, already stopped playing D&D between 20 and 30 years ago, and so they are generally not _actual_ readers of his D&D blog.

Hence the analogy to the anthropic principle - that the only investigators into the existence of a universe will discover that it is a universe capable of housing and sustaining those investigators, however improbable that may seem a priori.

So, mutatis mutandis, with the essay - his primary audience are apt to discover that he accurately captures their experience of 4e, however non-universal this experience might be, just because they are an audience who is having their first taste of an edition of D&D with metagame mechanics that they are not accustomed to.

For those who are genuinely unfamiliar with the range of RPGs that predate 4e and have very obviously influenced its design, and/or with the history of simulationist alternatives to D&D that flourished particularly in the 80s (like RQ, RM and C&S), I can certainly see that they might not notice how the essay trades on projecting a rather particular experience as a universal property of certain mechanics (namely, their tendency to induce "dissociation").

If you in fact are agreeing with a range of other posters on this thread that the occurence of "dissociation" - ie the effect of a particular mechanic driving a wedge between player and PC (or perhaps the fiction more generally) - depends primarily on the experiences and expectations that a player brings to the table, rather than being inherent to particular mechanics, than I certainly did misunderstand you. For which I again apologise.

But this is clearly _not_ what the Alexandrian is saying. Upthread, Beginning of the End said that 4e's power mechanics, as metagame mechanics, are comparable to making moves in a board game. That is continuing the line that a tendency to cause "dissociation" is an inherent property of 4e's mechanics.



Yesway Jose said:


> You know, the partisanship can get a bit too much.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I was interested in a discussion about disassociation, not see disassociation in our discussion.



OK.

From my position, what I see in the Alexandrian's essay and in BoTE's posts is the same old stuff about 4e being a board game in which the pieces are given funky names, and being a series of tactical skirmishes linked by improv drama.

Innerdude's posts are a bit more sympathetic than that, but several of his posts still have the same sort of lame imagined examples of play which are intended, apparently, to show that "This is the catch. Right here. This is the thing that can't be explained away." 

These posts frustrate me for two reasons. First, the imagined examples of play are not, as far as I can tell, drawn from any actual play experience by innerdude, nor even any serious attempt to think about how those who play 4e might go about doing it in a coherent fashion. Nor do they bear any resemblance to the actual play examples I've set out upthread.

Second, this notion of "this is the catch, right here" is in its fundamentals no different from The Alexandrian's assumption that his aesthetic response isn't just a matter of taste, but is evidence of some objectively existing problem, to which players of 4e (to quote another poster upthread) have a "blind spot". The language of "trade-offs" tends to carry similar connotations. The overall vibe is as if those who play 4e are unable to comprehend what is going on in their own games, but once the light has been shone by those who APPEAR TO BE ENGAGING PURELY IN THEORYCRAFT then 4e players come under some sort of onus to concede that 4e really does have these problems, these inherent flaws, that those who play it have just been ignoring and working around.

I'll finish by venturing another analogy: suppose I tried to prove that hit points are a "dissociated" mechanic by putting forward the following imagined example of play:

Cleric: That dragon really took it out of you. It bit off both your arms, and a leg. 

Fighter: Yeah, luckily I was able to finish it off by holding my sword in my teeth and swinging it by twisting my neck! By the way, have you got any healing that can help me?

Cleric: Yep, a couple of Cure Light Wound spells should grow that leg back. And I can memorise some more tomorrow. And even if I don't, your arms will regrow in a month or so anyway.

Fighter: OK. Gee, imagine what it would be like to live in a world in which humans didn't regenerate like slow-motion trolls, and had no more strength in their necks and jaws than a monkey. We'd never be able to beat dragons in combat!​
No player of classic D&D, or 3E, should regard that tripe as saying anything relevant to the hit point issue, other than perhaps making it clear that loss of hit points - at least for PCs who are likely to recover those hit points in short order - should not be narrated as the severing of limbs.

Whatever the issues with hit points - and in my view their are complexities - the problem is not primarily that they produce a stupid game. Rather, it's that in order to avoid a stupid game you have to (at least occasionally, perhaps often) think about how you're going to narrate them before you do so. Of course, that will have consequences - for example, no matter how many combats the typical PC fights it's pretty unlikely she'll be maimed unless a foe has a sword of sharpness. If one doesn't like this consequence - as I don't, in a game that otherwise tends towards simulationism - then one can play something else! But it would be foolish to think that this conclusion shows hit points to be, per se, an untenable mechanic, or even one which _must_ tend towards introducing incoherence, or "dissociation", into the play of the game. For some, the plot protection element presumably helps them get into an otherwise simulationist game. And for yet others, like Doug McCrae upthread, they might just assimilate hit points to the simulation, treating them as supernatural toughness and using that to explain why no surviving PC ever gets maimed. (And it would obviously be absurd to say that those who like hit points as plot protection, or who like simulationist toughness hit points, have a "blind spot" towards realism. They just prefer something else.)

In short, I think it's possible to explore the features of a game that one does or does not like without making claims about "the catch, right here" that those who play the game only cope with because they have a blind spot. This is what the "theory of dissociated mechanics" fails to do.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Thank you, pemerton, for the response...

You wrote a long post which I have yet to fully absorb, but one thing that pops out initially to me is that part of the misunderstanding(s) seems to be a result of conflating different tangents such that I'm not sure who is discussing what.

I would like to take one baby step at a time, by reviewing the problem of the Alexandrian essay:


Crazy Jerome said:


> The Alexandrian claim is mechanic X is disassociative inherently. (He doesn't say it that plainly, but unless you back away to something more tenable, as Jameson has, then that's what the essay demands.) He then goes on to set some parameters for that.



AFAIK nobody has defined the parameters.



Crazy Jerome said:


> That the author of the essay doesn't want to make this definition plain--and in fact, goes to a great deal of trouble to obscure it--is his problem not mine.



It seems to me that one cannot simultaneously accuse the Alexandrian of purposefully obscuring the parameters (AFAICT with no proof whatsoever) and assume a correct inference of those supposedly obscured parameters.



Crazy Jerome said:


> Calling something a "theory" as explained in an "essay" implies a certain amount of premise, argument, conclusion.



AFAICT it was Innerdude who labelled it a theory. One would might set the mob on innerdude for that, not the Alexandrian. If that's true, and should poor innerdude be ripped apart for the crime of inarticulation, one might remember (too late by then) that putting the label "theory" on an opinion piece does not automatically make it a theory to be analyzed as such.

But yes, I agree it's a pseudo-theory or opinion piece (take your pick).



Crazy Jerome said:


> Pemerton, following the parameters thus established...



Again, how so?



Crazy Jerome said:


> ...has claimed that at his table, mechanic X was used with no disassociation. Therefore, the mechanic is not inherently disassociative.



I think, pemerton, that you're trying to produce a 'black swan' to answer a question that nobody is asking.

That is, I think you've inferred a non-existent question which, if it did exist, would be a losing proposition, as I tried to explain above and over the last few pages.

Please let me know if you need any additional clarification on my part would be helpful.

Otherwise, I propose from hereon, that we avoid making unsupportable inferences from the essay or, better yet IMO, avoid referencing the essay altogether, and would you agree with that?

If yes, I will review the rest of the above post and go from there.


----------



## LostSoul

tomBitonti said:


> If I may rephrase:
> 
> However the Besieged Foe is described, none of that description alters the application of the power.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it next time, the power and its effect remain exactly as specified by the power block.
> 
> To me that is what the Alexandrian means by "house ruling" the power.  If the description alters the power's effect in a way that maps to game mechanics, that is a house rule.




Yeah, but how is this not just a symptom of abstract mechanics?

Power Attack has the exact same problem.  However Power Attack is described, none of that description alters the application of the Feat.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it next time, the Feat and its effect remain exactly as specified by the Feat benefit.

In my limited experience with 3E, the players don't go beyond applying the Feat benefit. They aren't thinking very much in terms of "what does this Feat mean", just "what happens when I use this Feat".

Overhand swing or lunge?  How about a quick jab?  Do I need to wind up or can I do it with a quick flick of the wrist?  Can I use it with a bite?  What if I target a vulnerable spot?  Can I then use it on objects and constructs?


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> The relevance of the anthropic principle - mentioned by wrecan - is this: that the only reason Justin Alexaner's pseudo-theory gets any traction is because there is an audience for it who have not, before 4e, experienced dislike of D&D because of its metagame mechanics. That is, his primary audience is those who can cope with, or even enjoy, D&D's existing, pre-4e metagame mechanics. Other _potential_ readers of his essay, who don't like classic D&D's metagame mechanics, already stopped playing D&D between 20 and 30 years ago, and so they are generally not _actual_ readers of his D&D blog.




(Lots of text omitted.)

There are also those of us who moved to 3E and 3.5E because of a number of improvements (a tighter set of conditions and keywords, a linear advancement scheme, rich multiclassing, feats, skills), while at the same time, had to stomach new gamist elements (circular initiative, the action system, AOOs).  I'm an example of a person who has always been at least a little uneasy with some elements of 3E, but have managed to live with it because the rest of the system works very nicely, and lets me play a fun game.

For me, the unease never really went away, it just retreated to the background.

In stray moments, I've looked at games like WFRP (the latest edition), which is at the same time more concrete (re: spells, wounds, and armor, careers and advancement) while also more narrative (shared initiative, no grid use, fate points).  Or say Alternaty (with two levels of damage), or at rule sets that change Armor into DR.

The discussion seems to be asking two related questions: "Is the concept of dissassociated mechanics a meaningful and useful concept?"  As well as "How well can we use the concept of disassociated mechanics to explore features of D&D, specifically, 3E and 4E.").

I've taken a lot of ideas from the discussion.  I do find the concept useful, and I do think it applies moreso to 4E than 3E.  But I also find that a lot of the application to 4E are a bit unfair, as they too easily avoid examining 3E with the same sharp view.

(Probably more to follow ...)

TomBitonti


----------



## Victim

prosfilaes said:


> How does that break immersion? Something not working the way the player wants to is not breaking immersion, it's things not going the way players want it to.




If I say "This character is super good at X" but X never really matters, then the mechanics are still disassociated from the narrative.  Just in the opposite direction.

Moreover, when talking about immersion in a story, aren't narrative structures and conventions more important than having a fully detailed process?  If your "guns" (like characters being good at one thing) aren't being fired later on in the story, that can be jarring.


----------



## Dedekind

Oh, dang, I thought this thread was about Click and Clack from Cartalk. I love those guys and anybody who disagrees is having badwrongfun.*







Anyways, to contribute _something_ to this conversation. I've probably only played D&D with one person that really wanted a very realistic/immersive game and they didn't stick with our beer-and-peanuts game very long. Not everybody values immersion to the same degree. Maybe this would be a good idea for a poll? 







* For the non-Americans/non-Cartalk listeners, Click and Clack are goofy car mechanics with a nationwide show.


----------



## tomBitonti

LostSoul said:


> Yeah, but how is this not just a symptom of abstract mechanics?
> 
> Power Attack has the exact same problem.  However Power Attack is described, none of that description alters the application of the Feat.  No matter how you describe it this time, no matter how different you describe it next time, the Feat and its effect remain exactly as specified by the Feat benefit.
> 
> In my limited experience with 3E, the players don't go beyond applying the Feat benefit. They aren't thinking very much in terms of "what does this Feat mean", just "what happens when I use this Feat".
> 
> Overhand swing or lunge?  How about a quick jab?  Do I need to wind up or can I do it with a quick flick of the wrist?  Can I use it with a bite?  What if I target a vulnerable spot?  Can I then use it on objects and constructs?




That is a good example, and I'm having to pause to figure out the difference.  I can say that power attack doesn't nag at me to the same degree as does Besieged Foe.

For power attack, the description is "trading precision for power", and that is provided as more than just flavor.  For Besieged Foe, I only see the effect.  I don't see a description other than simple flavor.

Some stuff that I don't like is that use of Power Attack requires a feat.  I would imagine that anyone could use it, although, with a lesser result.  Also, winding up to take a mighty swing would seem to be less defensive, meaning, it should provoke an AOO.  Maybe, it should be limited by Strength bonus, or by weapon damage.

But, Power Attack has additional detail: It is limited by BAB (so a more skillful fighter is better able to use the ability).  It is limited by weapon type (it cannot be used with light weapons).

The biggest problem that I have with Power Attack is that it breaks the basic attack mechanic.  Weapons already have a range of damage result.  Why doesn't an 8 for a 1-8 spread represent a moment when the attacker is able to apply just a bit more strength this time, or a x2 critical for the same reason?  I'm OK with adjusting the attack and result, but to add 10 points of damage to a weapon that has a damage range of 1-10 (great club?) seems to obliterate the fineness of the basic mechanic.

TomBitonti


----------



## Crazy Jerome

A few clairifications:



Yesway Jose said:


> AFAIK nobody has defined the parameters...
> 
> It seems to me that one cannot simultaneously accuse the Alexandrian of purposefully obscuring the parameters (AFAICT with no proof whatsoever) and assume a correct inference of those supposedly obscured parameters...
> 
> AFAICT it was Innerdude who labelled it a theory. One would might set the mob on innerdude for that, not the Alexandrian. If that's true, and should poor innerdude be ripped apart for the crime of inarticulation, one might remember (too late by then) that putting the label "theory" on an opinion piece does not automatically make it a theory to be analyzed as such.
> 
> But yes, I agree it's a pseudo-theory or opinion piece (take your pick)...




Pemerton expressed those parameters as he understood in them in the essay, when he first produced his examples. No one has yet disputed his characterization of the parameters, as well as I remember. (I didn't go back and reread the entire thread. So I might have missed something.)

In any case, I was not accusing TA of obscuring the parameters, but the definition. It is precisely the premise that he wants obscured, and that BotE wants obscured. Really, it is nothing more than the magicians misdirection trick so often applied to argument. Quick, let's get over this tautology of a definition, which we'll express several different ways so that you don't notice when we assume it as true and then start deriving from that assumption. If you grant me that "hit points are a stupid mechanic," I can logically show all kinds of negative things about any version of D&D. That very "argument" has been tried many times, using the same misdirection tactic. 

You'll note, by way of supporting evidence, that Jameson's version of the definition doesn't have this problem. Now, I think that's because Jameson just wants a useful definition to use in the discussion for something he sees, and importantly, doesn't feel any pressing need to preserve some preselected insulting conclusions. But whether you agree with that hunch or not, there is no doubt that Jameson's definition is far more concrete *and* is provoking less insult among some of us. We still don't agree with it, but we aren't insulted by it. It's an important distinction.

As for Innerdude, I'm not speaking for anyone else when I say that I've been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the "No True Roleplayer" slant of some of his remarks, because he is, as near as I can tell, simply responding to the essay from his own perspective. I give you the same courtesy. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to demand that my experiences be respected as my experiences and not extend the same to those who appeared to be otherwise arguing in good faith, even if I don't credit their experiences as being appropriately generalized to mine.

That is, I don't expect people to agree with me. I don't even expect people to understand me. I know as well as anyone that my expression can often be dense and tangential. (A very bad combination. Pity my poor wife and kids!) I do expect people that don't understand what I'm saying to *engage* with it *fairly*, or if doing so isn't worth it, to leave it alone. 

To the degree that I have animosity for TA and some of his adherents, it is because I see them as having worked hard to prevent this kind of discussion.  And they started before 4E was even launched, and have never let up.  If some of us on the receiving end of this barrage have sometimes high-fived when we survived or got off a good shot back--well, being in a fox hole with someone long enough will produce that kind of reaction.  And if the "backslapping" itself is the annoyance, then I encourage you to *fully* review the kind of comments made early in this topic, and any time it arises. Some people just like what they hear as it applies to them, but some are actively cheering the guy pulling the trigger, for pulling the trigger.

"Opinion piece" works for me as a neutral description.


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> The relevance of the anthropic principle - mentioned by wrecan - is this: that the only reason Justin Alexaner's pseudo-theory gets any traction is because there is an audience for it who have not, before 4e, experienced dislike of D&D because of its metagame mechanics. That is, his primary audience is those who can cope with, or even enjoy, D&D's existing, pre-4e metagame mechanics.




No. I've experienced dislike of D&D for various things, including  hit points. I'm back only because D&D is where it's going on. 



> In short, I think it's possible to explore the features of a game that one does or does not like without making claims about "the catch, right here" that those who play the game only cope with because they have a blind spot. This is what the "theory of dissociated mechanics" fails to do.




It's also possible to explore the features of a game you like without claiming that the features other people dislike are just like features in other games they've accepted, and they only didn't notice that because they had a blind spot.



Victim said:


> If I say "This character is super good at X" but X  never really matters, then the mechanics are still disassociated from  the narrative.  Just in the opposite direction.




No; there's lots of things I'm good in real life that never really matter.



> Moreover, when talking about immersion in a story, aren't narrative  structures and conventions more important than having a fully detailed  process?  If your "guns" (like characters being good at one thing)  aren't being fired later on in the story, that can be jarring.




I'm not being immersed in a story; I'm being immersed in a character. He has no reason to expect that the world will change to conform to his needs. Furthermore, Chekov's Gun only applies to a narrow set of stories; more expansive stories can have guns that aren't just there to further the story, that expand the world.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Pemerton expressed those parameters as he understood in them in the essay, when he first produced his examples. No one has yet disputed his characterization of the parameters, as well as I remember. (I didn't go back and reread the entire thread. So I might have missed something.)
> <snip>
> I encourage you to *fully* review the kind of comments made early in this topic, and any time it arises.



Thanks, and I believe you but I haven't been able to find these parameters yet, nor was it re-defined in the last few pages. I could have easily missed it initially for a lack of interest.

In my defense, I have frankly, honestly and strongly admitted at least a few times that I didn't care about referencing the essay. Unfortunately, my impression was this pseudo-theory kept haunting me again and again, so that's when I finally said 'ok, let's see what's going on here and if we can move past this' ... without having the benefit of the original comments.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Thanks, and I believe you but I haven't been able to find these parameters yet, nor was it re-defined in the last few pages. I could have easily missed it initially for a lack of interest.
> 
> In my defense, I have frankly, honestly and strongly admitted at least a few times that I didn't care about referencing the essay...




Well, there is nothing wrong with skipping the sturm and drang and going right to the useful stuff.  Might even be healthy.


----------



## innerdude

First, I apologize if my earlier samples came across as insulting, or insinuated that anyone actually _played _4e in the manner described. They were extreme cases, but extreme to demonstrate the point--that when carried to a certain logical extension, there are "fissures," or "cracks between the lines," inherent in narrative resolution playstyle. 

The choice to carry forward, or not carry forward, any particular scene-based narrative resolution has ancillary consequences. Those consequences may run counter 4e's inherent paradigms, and they may have relatively little applicability to actual in-game play. 

But for me, the principle involved alters my opinion just as much as the potential for any particular effect to occur--or not occur--in actual use. 

That said, as long as you're willing to accept the basic tenets of narrative resolution, for the first time since it was released 3 years ago, I can actually cognitively understand and recognize how some players enjoy 4e, and find that it provides a satisfying play experience. 

For that, I'm actually grateful to wrecan, pemerton, and the others for being willing to engage in dialogue. 

I'm not totally willing to concede, at this point, that the concept of dissociation is not "inherent," or "objective"--but I'm pretty close. 

More appropriately, if it any mechanic can be proven to be "inherently dissociated," its actual applicability in any objective case would likely be so far removed from being useful, that it's pointless. I'm sure any of us could come up with something objectively dissociative--

"Mars Attacks"
At-Will, melee, Magic
1W + special 

"Every time you hit something with your sword, aliens from Mars appear overhead in a UFO, and add 2d6 of damage with a laser beam." 



But at that point the distinction between "dissociation," "crappy mechanics," and "general idiocy" becomes nigh indistinguishable.  

(And even then, the dissociation of "Mars Attacks" is still subjectively based in the genre expectations of heroic fantasy....)

However, I want to reiterate something I said in a previous post, which is that even if something is subjective/not universal, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or provides zero utility. 

I think the quote by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 about obscenity applies here: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I  understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ['dissociative mechanics']; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing  so. But I know it when I see it."

I also think we should be careful in criticizing Justin Alexander too much. 



pemerton said:


> The only factual information that it [the original essay] contains is that Justin Alexander dislikes 4e because of the particular character of its metagame mechanics, but it dresses up this rather pedestrian fact in a pseudo-theory of "dissociative mechanics".




To be fair, it's a little bit more than that. The stated the premise might be, "4e contains a number of mechanics of a general meta-game nature, caliber, tone and timbre, that when applied through a shared association of inherent property or 'state of being,' rather than narratively, will tend to deviate or break from that shared association. This I have termed dissociative." 

It's a question of the form of association--is it through shared  fiction, or  through inherent property or "state of  being"? 

There's really two reasons I'm not 100% willing to concede the objectivity point--one, I'm still not completely sold on the idea that narrative resolution can always be left behind scene to scene. At some level, in some fashion, there's going to be a point where a narrative resolution is going to have to be adjudicated and "mapped," as tomBitonti stated.

The other reason I'm not willing to totally write off objective dissociation is because there's lots of assumptions being bandied about here about the nature of "narrative" that is undefined as well. That, however, is most certainly a subject for another thread.


----------



## Victim

prosfilaes said:


> I'm not being immersed in a story; I'm being immersed in a character. He has no reason to expect that the world will change to conform to his needs. Furthermore, Chekov's Gun only applies to a narrow set of stories; more expansive stories can have guns that aren't just there to further the story, that expand the world.




And yet that's not the only kind of immersion that can exist.  With multiple kinds of immersion, mechanics that harm one can help others (and vice versa).

Unless you want to argue that the kind of immersion you like is universally superior, there's no reason that mechanics shouldn't be implemented in some games that favor other kinds.


----------



## LostSoul

innerdude said:


> I'm not totally willing to concede, at this point, that the concept of dissociation is not "inherent," or "objective"--but I'm pretty close.
> 
> More appropriately, if it any mechanic can be proven to be "inherently dissociated," its actual applicability in any objective case would likely be so far removed from being useful, that it's pointless. I'm sure any of us could come up with something objectively dissociative--
> 
> "Mars Attacks"
> At-Will, melee, Magic
> 1W + special
> 
> "Every time you hit something with your sword, aliens from Mars appear overhead in a UFO, and add 2d6 of damage with a laser beam."




I know it's a joke, but...

As I understand it, I don't think that power is dissociated.  The PC has a magical power to call Martians when you hit someone with your sword.  The player wants to defeat their foe in battle; so does the PC.  That's associated.  (Even if it wasn't magical it would still be associated.)

If it was...

Mars Attacks
Daily
Requirement: The character expresses their true desire not to kill the target.
Target: Anyone the character does not wish to kill.
Attack: Cha vs. Will
Hit: UFOs from Mars kill the target.​
The player uses the power when he wants to kill a target, but in order to use the power the character cannot want to kill the target.  The player's desire and the PC's are dissociated.

Maybe I still don't understand what "dissociated" means.  If this is not the case - if "dissociated" means that what's happening in the game world doesn't matter - then I don't see how that's not the case for Power Attack and other abstracted mechanics.


----------



## Yesway Jose

LostSoul said:


> Mars Attacks
> Daily
> Requirement: The character expresses their true desire not to kill the target.
> Target: Anyone the character does not wish to kill.
> Attack: Cha vs. Will
> Hit: UFOs from Mars kill the target.​The player uses the power when he wants to kill a target, but in order to use the power the character cannot want to kill the target. The player's desire and the PC's are dissociated.



The going definition is that a mechanic is not disassociated if the reasoning of the power be learned, explored, or observed in-game. So if a UFO was scanning for speech patterns like "I don't want you to die" and always following the PC or able to triangulate the coordinates and instantly teleport to the vicinity, observe or mind-read the PC to confirm the intended recipient of the expression not to die, and unerringly laser and kill the target, then it's not disassociated. Also, in order not to be disassociated, there must be an in-game reason for why it only happens once per day.


----------



## Hussar

In game reason for once a day - the alien's sensors are not that good and don't always pick up every example of the trigger.  

By and large, it's usually not that hard to come up with plausible reasons.

Something I do want to tangent on for a second is the idea that dissociative mechanics make world building more difficult.  I really cannot agree with this.

In earlier editions, the fact that many mechanics were indelibly linked to the world meant that the world was almost always defined in some way by the mechancs.  You could break that link by changing the rules, but, that had to be a conscious decision.

Take Dragonlance for a second.  In DL, you don't have gold pieces, you have steel pieces.  Now, why?  Why change the basic monetary unit, while preserving the exchange rates?

The answer is fairly simple.  This is a campaign where you're going to kill dragons.  Lots of dragons.  And dragons have tons and tons of gold and treasure for which you gain XP every time you collect it.  If you actually used a GP standard in DL, your characters would be fantastically wealthy in only a couple of levels and would gain those levels very, very quickly.

So, they change to a Steel standard.  Dragons still have mountains of gold, but, now, that gold is simply window dressing and without value.  We preserve the base mechanics - XP for treasure, advancement rates, etc - without having to reinvent the wheel.

Or, ask yourself this.  Why is one of the very first encounters in the DL saga meeting the one person in the WHOLE world that can cast cleric spells?  Is it to drive the story forward or is it a recognition that without a cleric and clerical healing, the game becomes extremely difficult to play?  

I'd argue the latter.  The justification is added later, but, the reason Goldmoon is the first NPC that joins your merry band is no accident.

Now, turn this over to a 4e system.  Wealth isn't particularly tied to anything.  Because treasure gained is meant to be parcelled out by level, rather than by whatever critter you happen to kill, there's no need to change gp standards.  You can if you like and it makes no difference.  The choice isn't mandated by the mechanics.

Goldmoon can still be the only cleric in the world.  But, now you can move her to any point in the adventure and not have game play go kerblooie because the characters have no healing.  Her placement is solely dependent on the needs of the narrative and not the mechanics.

IMO and this is just my opinion, the fact that the mechanics are by and large not tied to any specific in game reason, means that you gain so much freedom when designing settings and campaigns.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> In game reason for once a day - the alien's sensors are not that good and don't always pick up every example of the trigger.
> 
> By and large, it's usually not that hard to come up with plausible reasons.



Sure, but some are more plausible than others for any one person.

The sensors not always picking up every speech pattern is extremely plausible to me. However, thinking of the bigger pattern, it's more plausible when 1/day is hardwired into the fiction, like it takes a day to power up the laser again. In that way, there can never be a "disassociation" when the sensors could probably work more than once per day but didn't. (But yes, you'd need a new mechanic if the fiction dictated that the martians upgraded the power core).

Interestingly, if the DM said "No way in hell are there UFO and martian aliens in my game!" then the power IS 'disassociated" because the reasoning used the explain the mechanic in-game cannot be true. With the game world defined as alien-free, that mechanic is *inherently* disassociated to the game world (whatever "inherently" means?)

Interestingly, the more fiction implied by the mechanic, I guess the more room for disassociation. Which makes sense for simulationist mechanics. Unlike picking a rule and adapting the fiction, in simulationist roleplaying the player thinks from the fiction and grabs the best rule -- the one that already feels the most associated.



> Something I do want to tangent on for a second is the idea that dissociative mechanics make world building more difficult. I really cannot agree with this.




I guess that's all related to world-building - 3E would offload much of the responsiblity to the designers to decide the fluff that is *default*, 4E would offload more (but not all) of the responsiblity to the DM/players to narrate the fluff ad hoc or not. The cohesiveness of the game world is then dependant on the effort and imagination of the designer or DM/players. (I hope I'm not re-stating something obvious that someone else stated a little earlier, I think I probably am).



> IMO and this is just my opinion, the fact that the mechanics are by and large not tied to any specific in game reason, means that you gain so much freedom when designing settings and campaigns.



Oh, I agree. Following from above, though, I think it's fair to say that: with more freedom, comes great responsibility. The burden of that responsibility is entirely up to whether the players perceive it as such. Tactical skirmish, for example, don't perceive it. An immersionist would.


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## Uller

Okay...I read the original "theory" and random smatterings of this thread...so maybe I missed it...

What is the difference between "dissociated" rules and abstractions?

Every game mechanic is an abstraction.  Not every mechanic can possibly be tied back to some sort of rule about how the world works...in fact, I would postualate that NO mechanic can be satisfactorily associated to the game world.

Take the most fundamental:  Using a dice to resolve random chance.  

Imagine, a wizard decides to experiment with how well he can use a spell to knock squirrels out of trees.  He observes that when he hits a squirrel with a particular spell that has a forced move effect it has exactly a 45% chance to cause the squirrel to fall from the tree.  Why?

He does this with other spells and other circumstance, repeating the spell 10s of thousands of times...always 45%.  WTH?

Then he observes that every random event has a probability of occurring in increments of 5%.  I suppose he could do one of two things:  He could postulate the theory that (in the universe in which he lives) randomness is discreet and divided into some sort of "particle" of discreet size...or he could realize that there is no explanation...it is dissociated from reality and then watch as his world turns into a backgammon board in a puff of logic (to borrow from Douglas Adams's babble fish).


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## Yesway Jose

Uller said:


> Every game mechanic is an abstraction. Not every mechanic can possibly be tied back to some sort of rule about how the world works...in fact, I would postualate that NO mechanic can be satisfactorily associated to the game world.



Well, nobody has defined "associated", but since it must be a relative measure, then "satisfactorily associated" must be whatever the person qualifies to be plausible or plausible enough. I posited many pages back that the most associated mechanic is like playing a match of rock-paper-scissors to simulate an in-game match of rock-paper-scissors.



> Imagine, a wizard decides to experiment with how well he can use a spell to knock squirrels out of trees. He observes that when he hits a squirrel with a particular spell that has a forced move effect it has exactly a 45% chance to cause the squirrel to fall from the tree. Why?
> 
> He does this with other spells and other circumstance, repeating the spell 10s of thousands of times...always 45%. WTH?



Sounds like a numerology conspiracy theory 

The going definition (nobody has come up with anything else AFAIK) is that a mechanic is not disassociated if the reasoning of the power can be learned, explored, or observed in-game.

The wizard might deduce that the success of his spells are not dependant on the target or circumstance, but is based on his own internal mastery of magic.



> Then he observes that every random event has a probability of occurring in increments of 5%



How does he observe this?



> or he could realize that there is no explanation...it is dissociated from reality and then watch as his world turns into a backgammon board in a puff of logic (to borrow from Douglas Adams's babble fish).



I assume the character doesn't have to explore the reasoning, the stipulation is only that can/could do so.

I don't think anybody has pinned down all the parameters, as there are many factors and interactions going on.


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## Uller

Yesway Jose said:


> The wizard might deduce that the success of his spells are not dependant on the target or circumstance, but is based on his own internal mastery of magic.




But then he asks a much more powerful wizard use a much more powerful spell and finds he also has a 45% chance of knocking squirrels from trees...(save on a 10+ game mechanic)



Yesway Jose said:


> How does he observe this?




Duh! The same way anyone observes the probability of anything.  Repeat it unreasonably large numbers of times and observe the results.   (probably by first securing a research grant from the local academy of wizardry)...

I did find in an earlier post what I think about all of this...the rules are a tool that the player uses to interact with the world through his character.  They are not how the world actually works.  I've been playing since the late 70s and that's how I've always understood any RPG...I never bothered to ask (for instance) why a sleep spell only affects monsters with up to 4 + 1 HD...if it's got 4 + 2 HD, it is immune...why, in game world terms, would that be so?  Who cares!  It's the rules...

If the world is constrained to behave only as the rules describe, then either the world is going to be overly simple, the rules overly complex or some combination of the two.


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## Yesway Jose

Uller said:


> But then he asks a much more powerful wizard use a much more powerful spell and finds he also has a 45% chance of knocking squirrels from trees...(save on a 10+ game mechanic)



Then 45 is *literally* the *magic* number.



> Duh! The same way anyone observes the probability of anything. Repeat it unreasonably large numbers of times and observe the results. (probably by first securing a research grant from the local academy of wizardry)...



There's an old saying that everything happens in threes. Your wizard has amazingly discovered that randomness is based on fives. Combined with the discovery of 45 being the magic number, he wins a Nobel Prize.

I think that hypothetical examples are enlightening in illustrating a point, but I'm not sure what it is here, and I'm not invalidating your examples, as I enjoyed the thought experiment, but maybe someone else can help in way that I can't.



Uller said:


> I never bothered to ask (for instance) why a sleep spell only affects monsters with up to 4 + 1 HD...if it's got 4 + 2 HD, it is immune...why, in game world terms, would that be so? Who cares! It's the rules...



The PCs cannot observe the mechanics of HD, but they can observe that some creatures, noticeably the tougher ones, are immune to sleep spells. That's why PC and NPC wizards didn't try to cast sleep on dragons, because they knew it doesn't work. (Part of the fun was not knowing if the sleep was going to work on all monsters.) There's a predence for elite monsters in fantasy literature shaking off the effects of puny weapons and lesser magic, and it always seemed intuitive to me.

At the end of the day, I guess it's not something that can measured and quantified. We look at the abstraction and decide for ourselves if the fiction is plausible/associated or implausible/peripheral to the mechanic. For me, some mechanics seem to feel more simulationist than others.


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## prosfilaes

Uller said:


> What is the difference between "dissociated" rules and abstractions?




An abstraction abstracts features of the world, whereas a dissociated rule introduces features that aren't part of the world. 



> Take the most fundamental:  Using a dice to resolve random chance.




That's an abstraction. We can assume that probabilities are fuzzed out in the real game world but in playing we round them off into 5% increments.  



> Then he observes that every random event has a probability of occurring in increments of 5%.  I suppose he could do one of two things:  He could postulate the theory that (in the universe in which he lives) randomness is discreet and divided into some sort of "particle" of discreet size...or he could realize that there is no explanation...it is dissociated from reality and then watch as his world turns into a backgammon board in a puff of logic (to borrow from Douglas Adams's babble fish).




You live in a world where a single electron fired at two slots goes through both of them and interferes with itself on the other side in a wave pattern. You live in a world that is quantized, as per Planck's constant. You've seemed to handle it well enough.


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## Uller

I think that hypothetical examples are enlightening in illustrating a point, but I'm not sure what it is here, and I'm not invalidating your examples, as I enjoyed the thought experiment, but maybe someone else can help in way that I can't.

[/QUOTE]

The point is that any mechanic, sufficiently explored, cannot be explained by in game world terms except (like you said...with the magic number) "It's magic".  This is because all game mechanics are abstractions used to model the character's interactions with the world.  The character is unaware of the rules, what his powers are, what feats he has, etc.  The player knows his rogue can only sneak attack once per turn....the rogue doesn't know what sneak attack, HP, level or damage are...he just knows that if he can get his opponent to drop his guard a bit, he can hurt him more than most others can.  A fighter doesn't know his daily power is a daily...he just knows sometimes, when the opportunity is just right, he can do some spectacular thing.  But it rarely happens.  4e could have modeled this in lots of ways (maybe a recharge or a % chance of it being available each round...) but they chose this one.


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## Yesway Jose

Uller said:


> The point is that any mechanic, sufficiently explored



Stopping you right there, and with a helpful reminder about the subjectively of all this, there is no such thing as "sufficiently" explored. The explanation only needs to be as good as is accepted at the gaming table. You might as well tell me that there's no point in hoping to see a good plausibe fantasy/sci-fi movie, because no movie is realistic once "sufficiently explored". Yet that kind of absolute thinking completely ignores the fact that movies like X-Men First Class, The Matrix, LoTR and so forth are frequently enjoyed as being more convincing than some other fantasy/sci-fi movies.

Or to put it another way, I've never heard of anyone getting mad at D&D rules for abstracting fictional random events in 5% increments. But I have seen discussions of more useful scenarios and why this should be more like so-and-so or that could be better and so forth -- that is, the real stuff that makes some people prefer one edition or game system over another. It's the latter that IMO is the more useful discussion.


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## Uller

prosfilaes said:


> An abstraction abstracts features of the world, whereas a dissociated rule introduces features that aren't part of the world.




The examples given in the original article (dailies for fighters and marks not stacking) can easily be seen as abstractions. A fighter power is a daily because it is something that he rarely gets a chance to do.  This could have been modeled in other  ways (a percentage chance it could happen, for example) but that would add a level of complexity that I don't think would be desirable.

Some other examples in this thread contradict the originals...(see Mars Attacks above)...I can understand those as being "dissociated" but no 4e rules fit that paradigm really...they all have some flavor text, but the rules themselves never give a game world reason for something happening.  It seemed the original author's intent was to say that trying to explain a mechanic with game world information is what leads to dissociation...I guess my answer is either don't do that (just let the player imagine why his rogue did 3X+DEX+CHA damage and dazed his target), or understand that the explanation is always just fluff and never has any bearing on the way the rules will be applied now or in the future.




> You live in a world where a single electron fired at two slots goes through both of them and interferes with itself on the other side in a wave pattern. You live in a world that is quantized, as per Planck's constant. You've seemed to handle it well enough.




My point her was that the original author claimed dissociated mechanics turn RPGs into nothing more than games of chess.  I disagree...the game mechanics are tools used for resolving very specific functions in the game...mostly combat.  I look at it this way...the mechanical rules positively show what character CAN do in combat.  They do not state what he CANNOT do or how to resolve things outside that scope.


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## prosfilaes

Uller said:


> This is because all game mechanics are abstractions used to model the character's interactions with the world.




Wrong. Games that offer players a chance to spend a character point to have the game world turn out the way they want are not abstractions modelling the character's interactions with the world.



> the rogue doesn't know what sneak attack






> he just knows that if he can get his opponent to drop his guard a bit, he can hurt him more than most others can.




Then he does know what a sneak attack is.



> A fighter doesn't know his daily power is a daily...he just knows sometimes, when the opportunity is just right, he can do some spectacular thing.  But it rarely happens.  4e could have modeled this in lots of ways (maybe a recharge or a % chance of it being available each round...) but they chose this one.




But the player gets to choose when he can use his daily power, and the fighter uses it "when the opportunity is just right" so that isn't modelling the character's interactions with the world.


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## Yesway Jose

(this is in open beta, please contribute)


A PROPOSAL FOR A TEST FOR "DISASSOCIATION"

1) Choose a Rule
A Rule can be a single mechanic, or interaction of rules as implemented by the player(s), or paradigm of rules

2) Imagine the Fiction
The Fiction is a mish-mash of real-life, historical, fantasy, and genre laws, and its scope can be an instance, encounter, adventure, campaign, or the complete game world, all subjective to your expections.

3) Is there any Fiction?
If no, you are playing chess or other abstract game. Skip to #10

4) Are there any Rules?
If no, you are doing pure storytelling. Skip to #10

5) Is there Fiction, but you're not observing it?
If yes, you may be playing a tactical skirmish. Skip to #10

6) Are there Rules, but you're not observing them?
If yes, you are roleplaying a pure narrative with no use of mechanics. Skip to #10

7) Can you (or a character) learn, explore or observe an in-game reason for the Rule? You may ask others for their input
If no, skip to #11

8) Do you want this explanation to be officially added to the Fiction? (for reasons of plausibility, etc.)
If no, go back to #7

9) Does your gaming group want this explanation to be officially added to the Fiction? (for reasons of plausibility, etc.)
If no, go back to #7

10) There is no disassociation here, good for you.
Stop here, do not continue. If you wish, ask another person to take this test to compare viewpoints.

11) There may be disassociation here. Does anyone in your gaming group care?
If no, go to #10

12) Are you willing to forgo using the Rule?
If yes, go back to #1

13) Is your gaming group willing to change the Rule (houserule), or permanently introduce a new element to the Fiction to reconcile the Rule?
If yes, do so and go back to #1

14) You have a case of disassociation. Would you like to join a new gaming group?
If yes, go back to #1

15) Would you like to play a different game system?
If yes, go back to #1

16) Go to Enworld
Go back to #7

17) The new edition is here, and it's everything you dreamed of.
Wait, how did you get here?



EDIT: Updated to version 0.2


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## prosfilaes

Uller said:


> The examples given in the original article (dailies for fighters and marks not stacking) can easily be seen as abstractions. A fighter power is a daily because it is something that he rarely gets a chance to do.




If a power that a player gets to use at their discretion is something that a character gets to use when the chance is there, then it's not an abstraction of the character's interactions with the world.

Marks are not easily seen as abstractions by many of us. My experience playing D&D 4 left me with no impression that they were modelling anything in the game world, and the fact they can be used on anything didn't help. The fact that people can come up with ad hoc interpretations doesn't help me with that. 



> the mechanical rules positively show what character CAN do in combat.




But that's outside the point. The question is how do the rules map up to the world. Personally, I find that the D&D 4 rules don't make me feel like I'm simulating my character's actions; instead that we're doing stuff that has not translation into the game world.


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## Uller

Yesway Jose said:


> Stopping you right there, and with a helpful reminder about the subjectively of all this...





Oh I agree with all that...That's what got my attention...those that wrote as if this notion of dissociativity is not at all subjective and rules they felt are dissociated break the game. That's fine if someone feels a rule (or category of rules) breaks the game for them (obviously WotC got the message with Dailies and Marks for non-magic using classes since they introduced something different with essentials).  

But to say it is because it can't be explained in the game world doesn't do it for me when in reality no mechanic can really be explained in the game world...all mechanics are attempts to abstract some very complex interactions.


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## LostSoul

Yesway Jose said:


> 7) Can you (or a character) learn, explore or observe an in-game reason for the Rule? You may ask others for their input




Since the players get to decide what the in-game reasons are and whether characters can learn, explore, or observe them, no mechanic will be dissociated by this criteria unless the players choose to make it so.



prosfilaes said:


> If a power that a player gets to use at their discretion is something that a character gets to use when the chance is there, then it's not an abstraction of the character's interactions with the world.




This is something different.  The player is making a choice that the character can't.  The player can control when he can use a Daily Power, but the character - for the most part - doesn't have that ability.


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## Uller

prosfilaes said:


> Marks are not easily seen as abstractions by many of us.




Two real world examples:  I play and coach hockey.  When a player is carrying the puck across the blue line into the offensive zone, the defenseman "gaps up"...that is, he establishes himself so that he is moving the same speed as and is proper distance in front of the puck carrier to allow him the best chance to stop the puck carrier from making a play that can result in a goal...this is marking.  A second defenseman gapping up with the puck carrier would likely get in the way at worst...at best he would only provide marginally more protection...it is better from him to gap up on the next most threatening player, slightly toward the puck carrier.  In melee combat, I can imagine a character focusing on a foe to disrupt him a bit in exactly the same manner.  Multiple characters doing so would just interfere with each other or would have at best marginally higher impact, hence the no stacking...

I also served as a soldier for 12 years in combat arms jobs (tanker and infantry).  Soldiers are trained to "take the initiative"...that is to change the terms of the engagement to be more favorable to themselves to allow for maneuvering on and destroying the enemy while preventing the enemy from effectively firing on you...the most basic way to do this is for one soldier (or tank or fire team or whatever) to fire at an enemy position in order to suppress the enemy so that friendly soldiers (or tanks or fire teams or what have you) can move without being killed.  This, again to me...is marking.

If you can't imagine marking working like that, that's fine...but I can. 

...in previous versions of D&D the fighter could...swing his sword.  Next round he could....swing his sword again...Don't get me wrong...I've loved every version so far and there is much I like about previous versions better than 4e.  If you like another better than 4e, that's fine.  I think it is great the enworld still have places for the older versions.  And there is no reason you can't say you don't like this or that...but I'm not buying the dissociated stuff...


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## prosfilaes

Uller said:


> But to say it is because it can't be explained in the game world doesn't do it for me when in reality no mechanic can really be explained in the game world




Again, bull. There are a lot of rules that are reasonable abstractions of the game world. Rolling a D6, 1-3 heads, 4-6 tails, for a coin flip maps directly to the game world. It doesn't model the aerodynamics (or lack thereof) of the coin--most coins are at least a percent off 50-50, the odds it will land on the edge, the odds that it will come apart in mid-air, etc. But it does provide a playable, close, abstraction of the game world. 

Then there are rules that aren't reasonable abstractions of the game world. A solo, illiterate (and non-book carrying) barbarian who has spent his recent time (last few levels) alone in the wilderness can gain skills in Knowledge (Religion). There's a difference between the two, one which matches the game world to a certain granularity and one of which doesn't. 



> all mechanics are attempts to abstract some very complex interactions.




Now you've got non-specific on the type of interactions. Still, many rules were not written as attempts to abstract some type of interactions. The skill rules in 3E are at best a vague handwave at simulating the learning process; they're there to be gameable. 

My favorite artificial example of a disassociated mechanic would be something like:

Feat: Kill Distant Opponent 
Requirements: BAB +12

A fighter without any ranged weapons may attack creatures up to 60' away with their melee weapons. Note: The fighter does not lose the weapons with this attack.

It's not trying to model anything; it's trying to give a specific power to a class without concern about how it works in the game world.



> he establishes himself so that he is moving the same speed as and is proper distance in front of the puck carrier




So he moves into a position. Marking in D&D 4 doesn't force the character to move into a particular strategic position.


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## Bluenose

prosfilaes said:


> So he moves into a position. Marking in D&D 4 doesn't force the character to move into a particular strategic position.




Well, the magically enforced ones don't require that you do anything but activate them. But then magic does seem to have a lot going for it in terms of disregarding physical laws. The Fighters' mark requires that they make an attack on someone. If it's a missile attack of the 'suppressive fire' variety, then the mechanism is obvious. If it's a melee one, then they're having to get into the correct position to do it.


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## Yesway Jose

LostSoul said:


> Since the players get to decide what the in-game reasons are and whether characters can learn, explore, or observe them, no mechanic will be dissociated by this criteria unless the players choose to make it so.



True, except the entire gaming group, including the DM, gets to agree or not if they want the explanation to be added "officially" to the Fiction (like the extreme Mars Attack example). This is like a 'Credibility Test' for the explanation.

I clarifed in #11 that disassociation can be ignored only if nobody in the entire gaming group cares.

I also added #12


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## Hussar

prosfilaes said:


> If a power that a player gets to use at their discretion is something that a character gets to use when the chance is there, then it's not an abstraction of the character's interactions with the world./snip




This is not exactly true.  What is the difference between the player choosing to have an effect occur at this point, or rolling a critical hit that does exactly the same thing?

After all, the roll of a critical actually has nothing to do with the ongoing narrative in the game world.  I could be advancing carefully, making a half hearted attack, and suddenly, with a lucky die roll, I've done maximum damage beyond anything I could normally do with my strongest attack.

How is a completely random die roll any more in keeping with the in game fiction than the player (obviously not the character) deciding that a critical hit will happen _right now_?

There is no real difference, from an in game perspective, between an event that occurs very rarely and another event that has the same effect that can only occur very rarely.


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## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> After all, the roll of a critical actually has nothing to do with the ongoing narrative in the game world. I could be advancing carefully, making a half hearted attack, and suddenly, with a lucky die roll, I've done maximum damage beyond anything I could normally do with my strongest attack.
> 
> How is a completely random die roll any more in keeping with the in game fiction than the player (obviously not the character) deciding that a critical hit will happen _right now_?



I just experienced Déjà vu

This must mean that there has been a glitch in the Matrix, forcing this thread to wrap around itself into a Möbius strip


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## MrGrenadine

Hussar said:


> TThere is no real difference, from an in game perspective, between an event that occurs very rarely and another event that has the same effect that can only occur very rarely.




But there _is_ a huge difference between an event that occurs by chance throughout a character's life, and one that occurs exactly once per day when the player decides to use it.

Even if the player pretends that in the fictional game world/story, the Daily occurred by chance.


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## MrGrenadine

Uller said:


> Two real world examples:...




Your examples of real-world marking are terrific.  One question--are there any real-world analogs for the penalties a marked target takes if it ignores the marker?



Uller said:


> ...in previous versions of D&D the fighter could...swing his sword.  Next round he could....swing his sword again...




However, this is so far off base from my experience that I can't believe folks ever even type it.  I could list every single thing my fighter could do in a round in previous editions, but I don't have that kind of time.  Can we just say that if this was your experience, (and I'm sorry if it was), its not a universal experience of previous editions?


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## innerdude

prosfilaes said:


> My favorite artificial example of a disassociated mechanic would be something like:
> 
> Feat: Kill Distant Opponent
> Requirements: BAB +12
> 
> A fighter without any ranged weapons may attack creatures up to 60' away with their melee weapons. Note: The fighter does not lose the weapons with this attack.
> 
> It's not trying to model anything; it's trying to give a specific power to a class without concern about how it works in the game world.




If your group agrees that a fighter has zero access to any otherworldly, supernatural, or magical abilities, then yes, this power would be dissociative. 

However--the key point there is, "If your group agrees." 

That's what pemerton, hussar, and wrecan were trying to hammer home to me all that time, is that in 4e, there is no pre-agreed description for 4e powers. It's narrative being constructed in the moment. 

If your group has pre-determined specific mechanical restrictions before hand, then yes, dissociation is more than possible. 

My issue with potential dissociation now isn't about any one particular power, most of which can be flavored to be narratively consistent. 

Through the patient explanation of other posters, it seems pretty clear now that 99% of dissociations are purely subjective, based on some agreed-upon structures. 

That said, that doesn't mean that some powers don't "show the cracks" a little more than others. For some powers the narration can flow easily. Some take a little more thought. 

The ones that require more in-depth "thought" to reason out may not end up being dissociative in the end, but it's the process of reconciling the potential dissociation--the "looking behind the curtain"--that can have other side-effects on gameplay (i.e., break immersion).


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## pemerton

MrGrenadine said:


> But there _is_ a huge difference between an event that occurs by chance throughout a character's life, and one that occurs exactly once per day when the player decides to use it.
> 
> Even if the player pretends that in the fictional game world/story, the Daily occurred by chance.



I agree that there is a difference. But I think different postsers in this thread have different experiences of that difference and perhaps, therefore, different views on the nature of the difference.

Here is my go at it. I wonder how much it resembles your view of the difference!

A critical hit that is mechanically determined by chance can be interepreted, in game, in at least a couple of ways: (i) the PC struck wildly, or in the ordinary way, and got lucky; or, (ii) the PC got lucky in so far as their enemy presented a vulnerability or foolishly lowered their guard, enabling the PC to _deliberately_ get in a lucky shot. On (i), the lucky die roll models the PC's luck. On (ii), the lucky die roll models the enemy's misfortune, and the mechanics deem that the PC exploits that misfortune without need for the _player_ to do anything additional in terms of playing his/her PC.

Option (i) I would see as Tunnels & Trolls-y: it fits with a fairly lighthearted approach to play, and/or with playing novices or "farmboy"-type PCs, because it makes the experience of getting lucky a central part of "inhabiting" one's PC.

Option (ii) I would see as producing a somewhat more gritty and serious feel - this, I think is what Rolemaster and Runequest envisage in their critical and hit-location mechanics. As {url=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/]Ron Edwards points out[/url], though, it can lead to some wonkiness from the simulationist point-of-view:

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order . . . The few exceptions have always been accompanied by explanatory text, sometimes apologetic and sometimes blase. A good example is classic hit location, in which the characters first roll to-hit and to-parry, then hit location for anywhere on the body (RuneQuest, GURPS). Cognitively, to the Simulationist player, this requires a replay of the character's intent and action that is nearly intolerable. It often breaks down in play, either switching entirely to called shots and abandoning the location roll, or waiting on the parry roll until the hit location is known.​
If we go to the 4e daily power or "Fate Point" approach, under which "critical" (ie superior) hits are threatened and/or occur not at the whim of the dice, but when the player chooses, than the same ingame interpretations are available - the PC got lucky, or the NPC got unlucky - but there is no longer any attempt at the mechanical level to model this good or bad fortune. It occurs, instead, by rationed stipulation (ie the player spends a limited resource).

This is clearly not simulationist. Although logically it is moving into Author or Director stance, in play I think it may or may not force a break from Actor stance, depending on how sel-fconscious the player is of his/her use of the mechanic. I don't think that it _need_ be any more disruptive than the issue, for simulationism, that Edwards identifies in relation to RQ-style mechanics. Which is to say, disruptive for some but not others.

Whether or not it disrupts Actor stance, the rationed stipulation approach will have other consequences - for example, "criticals" will tend to occur when they're needed, rather than "at random". Again, whether or not this breaks or hinders immersion will probably be highly variable from player to player and group to group. 4e adopts a range of mechanicsm to reduce this "dramatic hit only when needed" effect: there are random criticals as well as rationed powers; and there are minions, against whom every hit is a severe critical. (I've long argued that the best way of conceiving of minions is as ordinary NPCs/monsters that carry "anti-Fate" or "Unluck" points that make every hit against them a serious critical.)

Of course, because minions introduce further metagame mechanics - here, the GM is using stipulation to help determine the distribution of good/bad fortune - whether or not they help deal with the immersion issue is still going to be highly variable from group to group!


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> In fact, as I stated above, having looked at the issue more carefully, and through some patient explanation of other posters, it seems pretty clear that 99% of dissociations are purely subjective, based on some agreed-upon structures.
> 
> That said, that doesn't mean that some powers don't "show the cracks" a little more than others. For some powers the narration can flow easily. Some take a little more thought.



I agree with this.

In the recent thread on kobold's Shifty power, I suggested that the pact hag rather than the kobold offered a better starting point for those who want to argue that 4e's powers can't be given meaning within the fiction. Here is the flavour-text-to-stat-block comparison for a pact hag (MM3 pp 108-9):

Many come in search of the power, knowledge, and rituals the [pact] hag possesses. However, such things come at a price, which is named in the pacts the hag forges. 

*Pact of Obedience (Aura 5): Any ally within the aura that misses with a melee attack can take 5 damage to gain a +2 power bonus to the attack roll.

*Compelling Staff (charm, weapon) . . . 1d6 + 5 damage, and the target makes a melee basic attack as a free action against a creature of the hag's choice.

*Pact of Choked Agression (charm, psychic) . . . The target is affected by a pact of choked aggression until the end of the encounter or until the hag or one of its allies attacks the target. While affected by the pact, the target takes 10 psychic damage the first time it hits a creature during each of its turns.

*Pact of Shared Agony (psychic) . . . Until the end of the encounter, while the target is within 10 squares of the hag, the target takes 10 psychic damage whenever the hag takes damage.​
Whereas I find Trick Strike pretty straightforward (at least until used with a shuriken against an ooze - but that's the sort of corner case that can generally be handled when it comes up - one reason not to worry too much in advance is you won't know what your narrative resources _are_ until the scene is actually being resolved), these are much more opaque.

When I used a pact hag in my game, I did have a bit of a think in advance about how I wanted to run it's pacts - I decided to run them as spoken words of compulsion. I foreshadowed this by having the pact hag speak such words during a skill challenge - mechanically, this was the consequence of a failed skill check by the player of the fighter, and fictionally it involved the hag telling the fighter PC to move to a different place in the room, which he did: I spoke the instruction in character (as the NPC hag) and then, out of character, told the player of the fighter where he moved to (and that he had no choice). (Of course, not long after this, the hag pulled the lever dropping the fighter down into the spider-filled caverns below . . .)

Of course, for a GM who isn't sure how to run a pact hag, there is a simple answer: don't use one. It would be tricker if a player chose to take a Mars Attacks (or similar) power but wasn't prepared to help with any heavy lifting that might be required. And a player who wants to play immersively is probably well advised to choose powers that, if they have metagame elements, don't require a lot of active metagaming to make them work (the paladin at-will Valiant strike would be one example, the fighter's daily Brute Strike another).

I personally would be a bit annoyed if a player both chose to build a fighter with Come and Get It, and then complained every time that s/he used the power that it was ruining her suspension of disbelief! There are plenty of other 7th level fighter powers, after all.


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## BryonD

pemerton,

You have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the narrative can always be resolved in such as way that the story is not interrupted by that narrative being a slave to the mechanics.

But showing that the narrative may always be resolved in a manner which complies with the mechanics is completely different than showing how that produces the same quality of experience as a system in which the narrative comes first.

If I want to sit at the table and come as close as possible to completely forgetting that the rules exist and just purely feel like a natural story is unfolding before and around me, and yet still have the rules there providing context and consistency, can you make a case for how 4E is the game for me?


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> This is clearly not simulationist. Although logically it is moving into Author or Director stance, in play I think it may or may not force a break from Actor stance, depending on how sel-fconscious the player is of his/her use of the mechanic.



The "self-consciousness" comment misses the point.

This point focuses on the one instant in plot and take it out of context.  

In a sense you are describing the "hang a lampshade on it" idea.  It is ok for unlikely or unexpected things to happen within a story.  And simply, rolling with that is fine.  And a director (or writer,really) could have this kind of event simply BE part of the plot.  It happens, and works, all the time.  And someone watching the show could get hung up on some unlikely event and lose enjoyment because of it.  Yet if the show in question was one that was highly popular, then you might conclude that this one person's inability to get past this one device was more a reflection of that person than of the writing quality.  And that is fair, and to each his own...

However, if the show featured unlikely events as key elements of every scene, and further not only dos it happen in every scene, but each character tended to have their own patterns repeating in every scene, then a big part of the audience is going to start going WTF.  And saying that all those people simply had self-consciousness issues would not be a valid assessment.

These kinds of things happen organically, not as the result of an imposed pattern.  And the pattern exists, not in the story, but in the underlying mechanics.  And, as you said, you can't know ahead of time how it will work out because you don't know what elements you have to work with.  But, unfortunately, you DO know that the mechanically obligatory patterns will be there.  

And a director, actor, or writer who rolls with events may be awesome, but one who imposes patterns on all events before every even thinking through them has done nothing but impose limitations on their work.


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## wrecan

BryonD said:


> But showing that the narrative may always be resolved in a manner which complies with the mechanics is completely different than showing how that produces the same quality of experience as a system in which the narrative comes first.



Of course it's a different quality.  They're different systems.



> If I want to sit at the table and come as close as possible to completely forgetting that the rules exist



This is going to be different fot every person.  There's no way to convince a person of this.

I was always painfully aware of the rules in 3e because there was a new subsystem for every new concept and tracking those subsystems was a chore to me that made me very aware of the game rules.  For you, it's 4e's more abstracted mechanics.  I can't convince you to change how you feel about 4e any more than I can convince you to change how you feel about chocolate ice cream.


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## Uller

MrGrenadine said:


> Your examples of real-world marking are terrific.  One question--are there any real-world analogs for the penalties a marked target takes if it ignores the marker?




Very few human beings can fire a weapon accurately while rounds are popping over their heads (even if there is no real threat of them hitting).  The sound is very disconcerting.   Throw in your buddy bleeding on the ground next to you and I think the effect is far worse than dropping your chance of hitting 10%...And if there is a real threat of the suppressive fire hitting you...well then ignoring it means you're joining your buddy.  I've only experienced this once in real battle...it was one round (POP!).   It got my attention.  

Ignore a 6'4" 250 defenseman who has decided his goal in life is to prevent you from reaching yours? Good luck...He is watching your eyes and chest.  You will tell him exactly what you are going to do before you are even aware of it yourself and in an instant he will be in your way to remove the puck from your stick and your skates from the ice.



> However, this is so far off base from my experience that I can't believe folks ever even type it.  I could list every single thing my fighter could do in a round in previous editions, but I don't have that kind of time.  Can we just say that if this was your experience, (and I'm sorry if it was), its not a universal experience of previous editions?




Talking rules as written.  I can play any version of D&D and have a great time.  People are saying they want "official" in game reasons for  the effects of powers...That's like saying they'd like HP Lovecraft to give a better description of the shadowy thing that darted down the ally rather than leaving it to YOUR imagination...


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## Uller

prosfilaes said:


> Again, bull. There are a lot of rules that are reasonable abstractions of the game world. Rolling a D6, 1-3 heads, 4-6 tails, for a coin flip maps directly to the game world.




Hahahaha...your "reasonable abstraction" has higher granularity than the event you are modeling...



> Then there are rules that aren't reasonable abstractions of the game world. A solo, illiterate (and non-book carrying) barbarian who has spent his recent time (last few levels) alone in the wilderness can gain skills in Knowledge (Religion). There's a difference between the two, one which matches the game world to a certain granularity and one of which doesn't.



I prefer it if the game designers leave RP 'rules' out.  The DM is free to say there is no way you can take that skill...the rules of every version make that clear.


> My favorite artificial example of a disassociated mechanic would be something like:
> 
> Feat: Kill Distant Opponent
> Requirements: BAB +12
> 
> A fighter without any ranged weapons may attack creatures up to 60' away with their melee weapons. Note: The fighter does not lose the weapons with this attack.




So for a 12th level 3e character this is simply a game imbalancer...but what about epic level characters?  One that has taken the Demigod path...maybe it could be a power called "Father is Angry"...

Seriously...I already understand that rules can be dissociated.  I think they all are if you did deep enough.  I just don't care.  Another example:  HP.  Does your fighter know that he only has 10 HP left?  Does he decide to not charge into the horde of monsters based on that knowledge?  If yes, it is metagaming.  So how is it not metagaming if the fighter knows that his high damaging attack that he can pull off sometimes is a daily?  I just look at it as something he can rarely do under fairly rare circumstances.  The game designers COULD have modeled this with recharges or some other mechanic that works out to it being used roughly once per day...instead they just make it a daily.  (for the record, I prefer the essentials fighter, rogue, ranger and paladin classes that don't have many dailies...but I don't get my knickers in a twist of the PHB versions)




> So he moves into a position. Marking in D&D 4 doesn't force the character to move into a particular strategic position.





Why should it? I don't need to know how a wizard casts Magic Missile.  I don't need to know how a rogue picks a lock.  I don't need to know how a fighter disrupts and enemy attack.

The game world is modeled with discreet temporal units of rounds and turns and discreet spatial units of 5' squares.  Just like with molecular models...the characters position on the map isn't where he is at specific point in time...it is where he probably is during the current round.  

My bottom line is this:  D&D is a heroic RPG.  Heroic RPGs rely heavily on combat to make them fun.  I really really really don't mind that combat in 4e (and 3e) has combat rules that "feel" like a skirmish war game.  If you mind, that's fine, but I see no reason to try to convince people that it is because it's rules are not connected to the game world.  It is because the rules are becoming more and more discreet (For instance, I like the spells in 3e and early much better than 4e...I like it when a DM must adjudicate spells intelligently and players can come up with strange combinations of spell effects that do unexpected things...but that is not 4e...in 4e,a spell has exactly the effect it says it does...nothing less,nothing more and no adjudication required).


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## Uller

BryonD said:


> pemerton,
> 
> 
> If I want to sit at the table and come as close as possible to completely forgetting that the rules exist and just purely feel like a natural story is unfolding before and around me, and yet still have the rules there providing context and consistency, can you make a case for how 4E is the game for me?




The rules in 4e explicitly say that 4e is not for you.  The various DM books make it very clear that the rules that apply to PCs and their interaction with the world do not apply to NPCs.

Even the introductory adventures make this clear.  In H1, Kalarel is opening a rift to the Shadowfell so he can raise an army of undead and create his own dominion in the Nentir Vale...there are no rules by which the PCs can do this.

Personally, I think if you want rules that are providing context and consistency you will NOT be able to forget them.  They will rule all you do.  You will not be able to do anything unless you have a power, feat, skill, racial trait or class feature that says you can and a rule to cover your odds of success or the effect you have.  

I look at it as the difference between an HP Lovecraft story where the action is often blurred and shadowy, leaving the details to the mind of the reader and a Tom Clancey novel where everything is described in painful detail.  I prefer the former...especially in a game where it is supposed to be my mind that is making the action...not the game designers.  I don't need them to tell me why my paladin can damage a foe in my aura or daze a foe with Holy Smite.  I can figure that one out, thanks.


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## Yesway Jose

Uller said:


> People are saying they want "official" in game reasons for the effects of powers...That's like saying they'd like HP Lovecraft to give a better description of the shadowy thing that darted down the ally rather than leaving it to YOUR imagination...



Not the analogy I would use  The analogy I would use is why, in Transformers, did they bring the All-Spark into the middle of a populated city and the climactic battle endangers the lives of its citizens and causes billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure. The "real" reason they brought the All-Spark into the city is because the writers wanted an explosive-y battle in the middle of a city (=non-Actor stance use of a metagame narrative control) and they couldn't think of a better plot device. The Author/Director then retroactively motivates the characters to follow the plot. However, in Actor stance, the decision to bring the All Spark to Mission City was utterly reckless and ridiculous, and probably indefensible.

When I spell that out, many people may say "Who cares?" but it doesn't change the fact that many people thought all 3 Transformers movies were a bit dumb.

I think the HP Lovecraft analogy is wrong, because it's about the character reacting to something completely extraneous.

But if you say "I don't have an 'official' reason for why my character did that and that's because I've decided that there are strange shadowy thing darting thru his mind...."


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## Greg K

prosfilaes said:


> A
> Then there are rules that aren't reasonable abstractions of the game world. A solo, illiterate (and non-book carrying) barbarian who has spent his recent time (last few levels) alone in the wilderness can gain skills in Knowledge (Religion).




A small point.
 The 3.0 DMG and PHB states that  if the DM feels it is inappropriate, they can decide that a character cannot take a skill.
"The DM is in charge of the world including about where one can learn certain skills and where one can't.  While Jozan is living in the desert, for example,  the DM can decide that Jozan has no way of learning to be a sailor" ( Sidebar: Access To Skills 3.0 PHB/p.60).  

While "by default, characters are assumed to learn non-exclusive skills "and have everything they need to advance in level- libraries where they can research, new spells, trainers to guide their efforts, and places to practice new skills and abilities", it is the DM that controls the background and he can decide how to handle access and training. (see Access and Training 3.0 DMG/p.41).  The DM "can require  that a character can't learn a new skill or feat that he hasn't been exposed to. For example, a character in the desert can't learn swimming unless he spends time at an oasis"  "One step farther, would be to require that a character have an instructor to teach him new skills and feats" (Variant: Learning Skills and Feats  3.0 DMG p.41)

So, while by default, the barbarian, in your example, could learn Knowledge(Religion), the game also states, in both the PHB and the DMG, that the DM  has the authority to disallow it for not making sense.


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## Uller

Greg K said:


> A small point.
> The 3.0 DMG and PHB states that  if the DM feels it is inappropriate, they can decide that a character cannot take a skill.
> "The DM is in charge of the world including about where one can learn certain skills and where one can't.  While Jozan is living in the desert, for example,  the DM can decide that Jozan has no way of learning to be a sailor" ( Sidebar: Access To Skills 3.0 PHB/p.60).




Exactly...which is why I've been pointing out that DMs don't need "official" rules on how the world "works". He just needs a framework for maintaining balance.  It is best left up to the DM and player to decide the why and how things happen because there is no way the designers can know all the various things about a group's game to dictate things like why and how new skills are acquired and if they tried it will invariably step on the toes of the DM.   

In my game...if a barbarian that has been living in the woods for years and years wants training Knowledge (Religion) and it isn't going to impact another player's fun...fine...an old  crone shows up and imparts wisdom to the barbarian...he has visions...whatever fits.


----------



## Pentius

BryonD said:


> pemerton,
> 
> You have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the narrative can always be resolved in such as way that the story is not interrupted by that narrative being a slave to the mechanics.
> 
> But showing that the narrative may always be resolved in a manner which complies with the mechanics is completely different than showing how that produces the same quality of experience as a system in which the narrative comes first.



That may be true, but there's an implication I think I'm seeing here that in 4e, the mechanics must come first, and then the narrative must fit.  That isn't necessarily true, either mechanics or narrative can come first, and furthermore, I think most systems work this way.

As an example, we've talked a bit about Trick Strike, and how it can be explained in the narrative as the Rogue being an awesome fencer.  But why is the Rogue's player using Trick Strike?  He could have it in mind that this encounter would be the best one of the day to use it in, which would be the closest I can come to thinking how the mechanics would be put first.  Alternately, the Rogue's player could be wanting to express, in the narrative, how awesome a fencer their Rogue is, and think Trick Strike is a good way to do that.  In that case, the narrative is the driving force, and the Trick Strike just a tool for the player to do it with.

A good bit of words have been had here on how the narrative may be made to fit the mechanics, without exploring why the mechanics might be brought up.  Now, as a player or DM, I usually consider it common courtesy to make the narrative fit the mechanics, *as soon as the specific mechanics are brought out.*  Because if you're going to bring the mechanic out, you should use it, not use half of it and then say "just kidding, guys."  But I also usually don't bring a specific mechanic into play until I have an idea of what narrative I want to get going. I assume this is fairly normal, I mean, you don't start talking about Power Attack if you want your character to make a careful, precise shot that trades damage for accuracy.



> If I want to sit at the table and come as close as possible to completely forgetting that the rules exist and just purely feel like a natural story is unfolding before and around me, and yet still have the rules there providing context and consistency, can you make a case for how 4E is the game for me?



Possibly.  "The rules providing context and consistency" would seem to imply that you could look on the rules as a model for world physics, and if that is what you mean, then I wouldn't try to make the case.  On the other hand, if you look at the rules not as pseudo-physics but just as rules for a game(per my long-ago made "tools for interacting, not physics for modeling" post), then I probably could.  They are fairly consistent, after all, just consistently modeling PCs' adventures in a fantasy world, as opposed to consistently modeling a world that adventures could take place in.

Whether I will make the case is another story.  I'm not actually here to sell 4e, and I don't really think you're buying, anyway.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> That may be true, but there's an implication I think I'm seeing here that in 4e, the mechanics must come first, and then the narrative must fit. That isn't necessarily true, either mechanics or narrative can come first, and furthermore, I think most systems work this way.



There seems to have been so much emphasis on this forum about 4E mechanics 1st, fiction 2nd, that it never occured to me that many game groups were doing otherwise. However, threads like "are forums representative of users?" imply that it could be wrong-headed to assume so. On the other hand, there seems to be little or no published advice about this on WoTC's website or print material, plus there seems to be a significant subset focused on tactical skirmish, leaving me to assume that most assume that player choice and optimal mechanical gameplay takes precedence. If the tone was shifted subtly from 'these rules represent the things your PCs do every day' to 'these rules represent a subset of the things your PC could do every day if it makes sense to you', then 4E might win over some of the disenchanted, or maybe not, I don't know.


----------



## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> There seems to have been so much emphasis on this forum about 4E mechanics 1st, fiction 2nd, that it never occured to me that many game groups were doing otherwise. However, threads like "are forums representative of users?" imply that it could be wrong-headed to assume so. On the other hand, there seems to be little or no published advice about this on WoTC's website or print material, plus there seems to be a significant subset focused on tactical skirmish, leaving me to assume that most assume that player choice and optimal mechanical gameplay takes precedence. If the tone was shifted subtly from 'these rules represent the things your PCs do every day' to 'these rules represent a subset of the things your PC could do every day if it makes sense to you', then 4E might win over some of the disenchanted, or maybe not, I don't know.




I think it's because most discussion of 4e I've seen on this forum is reactionary(barring the 4e section, which I would say has a whole different tone from general).  In other words, it isn't that the 4e fans always want to start conversations that put mechanics first and fiction second, but when someone asks you "How do you justify this mechanic in the narrative?" that is the way the answer comes.

I can't really speak as to the tone of WotC material at large.  I'll be honest, I don't read much outside the actual sourcebooks.  I don't read staff blogs, I don't read editorials in Dragon, or most of Dragon, really, unless a particular article catches my eye or I hear good things about it.  Sometimes I read a Rule of Three article, though usually that's when it's linked to me.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

There are 10 of us in our group, including me as the GM.  Of those, four are definitely mechanics first, then extrapolate to narrative.  Four others are the other way around.  The other two (a married couple) can shift back and forth, depending upon what people around them are doing.  Since not everyone shows every session, the dominant perspective shifts back and forth.

Many posts back, when I mentioned the lady in our group who seldom even learns the mechanics, that is the kind of spirit of play to which I was aluding.  I usually put her characters together for her, and I've learned over the years, in several systems, to always make a character that she can fully handle in fictional terms.  For example, if she had a fighter that was all about movement, I'd give her "Come and Get It," and it would be simply another option in her "move people where I want them" toolbox.  But if she had a fighter geared towards damage + conditions, I'd never give the character that power.  It would never get used, as it wouldn't occupy any of her characters' mental space.

The three others that are primarily narrative first are quite interested in figuring out the mechanics for their vision second, and very capable.  They are also, of course, the three that are most likely to invoke page 42 -- not directly, but likely to try something that needs it to be resolved.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> showing that the narrative may always be resolved in a manner which complies with the mechanics is completely different than showing how that produces the same quality of experience as a system in which the narrative comes first.



"Quality" is ambiguous as between "property" and "value". I assume that you're intending both.



BryonD said:


> If I want to sit at the table and come as close as possible to completely forgetting that the rules exist and just purely feel like a natural story is unfolding before and around me, and yet still have the rules there providing context and consistency, can you make a case for how 4E is the game for me?



I don't know, but I doubt it. Your psychology here is quite different from mine. For example, you apparently _are_ able to do this with 3E, which has a pretty serious search-and-handling time. I can't imagine playing 3E and forgetting that the rules exist. So not knowing how you achieve it with that system, I wouldn't know how to pitch it for 4e - even if it were, in principle, doable. (Which, for you, it might not be.)



BryonD said:


> This point focuses on the one instant in plot and take it out of context.
> 
> if the show featured unlikely events as key elements of every scene, and further not only dos it happen in every scene, but each character tended to have their own patterns repeating in every scene, then a big part of the audience is going to start going WTF.



What can I say? - I agree with wrecan on this. I don't think that there is a sufficient chance for the pattern to emerge in the course of actual play, especially when there is so much overlap of effects for a typically-built PC (because 4e, like 3E, favours specialised builds).

And if the powers are ones like Brute Strike, etc, which are just extra damage, than as Hussar has said upthread, this is just going to blend into the melange of crits, variable damage rolls, etc.

If what is an issue is not the actuality of pattern, but its _possibility_, in some in-principle sense, then that's a different matter. I've never refrained from saying that I don't think 4e serves simulationist sensibilities very well.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> I think it's because most discussion of 4e I've seen on this forum is reactionary(barring the 4e section, which I would say has a whole different tone from general). In other words, it isn't that the 4e fans always want to start conversations that put mechanics first and fiction second, but when someone asks you "How do you justify this mechanic in the narrative?" that is the way the answer comes.



I sympathize with the reactionary aspect, but it might arguable that the mechanics 1st side already has the upper hand...

Jack + Jill = tactical metagame players
Bob + Betty = storyteller immersionist players 

In combat, Jack and Jill abstain from narrative and focus on tactics, Bob and Betty focus on narrative in Actor|Author stance and translate Jack and Jill's tactics into their narrative

No problems. Everyone's happy...

Then the ping-pong wall of flames (or other metagame-y) scenario comes up. Jack and Jill exploit it to its utmost. But this is a shared narrative. Bob and Betty feel that it's become a tactical skirmish and no longer feel like its roleplaying for them.

Even worse for Bob and Betty, their recourse is complaining that the ping-pong wall of flames (or other metagame-y) is not plausible. Yet plausibility being a subjective thing, so Jack and Jill can counter with a) some half-hearted dubious explanation and/or b) insist that the rules are clear and take precedence and, really, who can blame them?

Since the rules are clear-cut and objective, and when houseruling is a distant second, anyone roleplaying mechanics 1st starts off as King of the Hill by default IMO.


----------



## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> I sympathize with the reactionary aspect, but it might arguable that the mechanics 1st side already has the upper hand...
> 
> Jack + Jill = tactical metagame players
> Bob + Betty = storyteller immersionist players
> 
> In combat, Jack and Jill abstain from narrative and focus on tactics, Bob and Betty focus on narrative in Actor|Author stance and translate Jack and Jill's tactics into their narrative
> 
> No problems. Everyone's happy...
> 
> Then the ping-pong wall of flames (or other metagame-y) scenario comes up. Jack and Jill exploit it to its utmost. But this is a shared narrative. Bob and Betty feel that it's become a tactical skirmish and no longer feel like its roleplaying for them.
> 
> Even worse for Bob and Betty, their recourse is complaining that the ping-pong wall of flames (or other metagame-y) is not plausible. Yet plausibility being a subjective thing, so Jack and Jill can counter with a) some half-hearted dubious explanation and/or b) insist that the rules are clear and take precedence and, really, who can blame them?
> 
> Since the rules are clear-cut and objective, and when houseruling is a distant second, anyone roleplaying mechanics 1st starts off as King of the Hill by default IMO.



But that's really an age old debate, just this time in 4e.  Every game system I've played has those odd cases where the rules or their particular application seem to suggest one thing as the best course of action, even though not all players find that course of action to be either plausible or narratively satisfying.  The Tomb of Horrors "Flying Thief on a Rope" example comes to mind, as does pretty much any use of Rope Trick, for things that I would find odd and unsatisfying.

You say houseruling it is a distant second, and in discussions on a forum, it generally is.  On the other hand, in my experience at actual tables, the Dm will do something about it when these situations arise, whether that's making a houserule, or just telling the players to knock it off.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> But that's really an age old debate, just this time in 4e. Every game system I've played has those odd cases where the rules or their particular application seem to suggest one thing as the best course of action, even though not all players find that course of action to be either plausible or narratively satisfying. The Tomb of Horrors "Flying Thief on a Rope" example comes to mind, as does pretty much any use of Rope Trick, for things that I would find odd and unsatisfying.



If you say so, it's never happened to me. That is, there were always power gamers who did the mechanically optimal thing but those were still sem-simulationist mechanics, and nobody jumped off 200' cliffs or anything that ruined the plausibility for anyone else.

Anyway, the point is not to argue 3e vs 4e, but to point out my opinion that fiction 1st is initially the underdog to mechanics 1st.


----------



## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> If you say so, it's never happened to me. That is, there were always power gamers who did the mechanically optimal thing but those were still sem-simulationist mechanics, and nobody jumped off 200' cliffs or anything that ruined the plausibility for anyone else.
> 
> Anyway, the point is not to argue 3e vs 4e, but to point out my opinion that fiction 1st is initially the underdog to mechanics 1st.




That's part of why I included "narratively unsatisfying".  I recognize that I'm fairly alone when it comes to not accepting "But it's magic" alone as something that hand-waves plausibility concerns.  But if I were Bob or Betty, playing 3e when Jack insisted on Rope Tricking between battles, so that he could use all his spells to become an invisible giant remorhaz again, I'd be just as upset as when he insists on using wall of flame+push tactics in 4e, and for most of the same reasons("This is dumb, Jack.  Dammit, you always do this.")

Anyway, my point is not to argue one system against another either, just to point out that uses of mechanics in ways which jar people out of roleplaying and people who argue that they should be able to do it because it's in the rules is by no means an issue confined to one system.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Since the rules are clear-cut and objective, and when houseruling is a distant second, anyone roleplaying mechanics 1st starts off as King of the Hill by default IMO.




Are you theorizing, or basing this analysis off of experience? My experience has found it to not be true. Sure, if there is a vastly dominant pressure from one side or another, then it can happen. If you are the only one at a table with a preference, you probably do lose out considerably. 

Moreover, the dichotomy of your analysis is a false one. It is not a given that anyone playing mechanics first/narrative second is unconcerned with the narrative. Quite the contrary, as I believe I have indicated previously. I'm "mechanics first" in general, because I am seeking a way for the mechanics to help advance the narrative.

There is a fundamental difference between "mechanics as means to a end" versus "mechanics as an end in themselves."


----------



## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> If what is an issue is not the actuality of pattern, but its _possibility_, in some in-principle sense, then that's a different matter. I've never refrained from saying that I don't think 4e serves simulationist sensibilities very well.




Heh.  One of my minor irritants with Mongoose Runequest II is that there are a couple of places* where a rules exists solely for simulationist purposes, but I see that the most likely outcome from the rule with our group is to defeat that purpose by focusing attention on gamist issues.  It's enough to chafe me even when thinking about running it, despite the fact that I *like* simulationist games run with sim goals, rather enjoy the ruleset otherwise, and think the rules mainly do a good job of what they intend.

OTOH, having identified the "problem" for what it is, I know there are two good avenues for resolution:

1. Try it as written.  It might not cause unintended behavior with the players, and thus be a null issue.

2. If it is an issue, simply drop it.  It isn't there for balance.  So if a rule intended to increase the relation to the world instead detracts from it, it is no big deal to ignore it.

* A good example is the "improvement rolls" based on Charisma, on the grounds that people with a high Charisma get more effective training from those around them.  It's a decent rationale, but the extremely coarse granularity of the bonus in relation to the number of "improvement rolls" granted base, is not well thought out, but simply math used from other parts of the system.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> there seems to be little or no published advice about this on WoTC's website or print material, plus there seems to be a significant subset focused on tactical skirmish, leaving me to assume that most assume that player choice and optimal mechanical gameplay takes precedence.



In my experience playing 4e, it's rarely the case that there is an optimal mechanical choice, in combat, which creates pressure to disregard theme and narrative. The combat mechanics are, in this sense, very forgiving. (And, as GM, I can influence this to an extent in the way that I build encounters and make choices for the NPCs/monsters in the course of resolving them.)

And even when there is an optimal choice, very often it doesn't detract from theme and narrative because the nature of 4e's PC build rules mean that playing your PC in a mechanicall optimal way tends to reinforce rather than "dissociate" from theme and narrative.

I think this feature of 4e's build is quite deliberate, and is part of what is hinted at when people talk about it being hard to build a sub-optimal PC in 4e. For me, it is a major attraction of the system.



Pentius said:


> I can't really speak as to the tone of WotC material at large.  I'll be honest, I don't read much outside the actual sourcebooks.



I think the sourcebooks don't do all that good a job of trying to explain how to put together a PC with a certain thematic feel - although they're not completely silent on the matter. The rulebooks do a worse job, in my view, of telling the GM how to put together an encounter and/or scenario with a certain thematic feel (Worlds and Monsters tackled this latter issue well, though).

I don't subscribe to DDI, but of other material I know, I can say that the adventures are on the whole not good at this (although P2 - the drow one - is better than some others), and of the free online stuff Chris Perkins commentary on his GMing can be good sometimes. At least he talks honestly about the metagame, thematic/narrative concerns that influence his scenario design, instead of just focusing on the ingame reasons that things happen as they do!



Crazy Jerome said:


> Are you theorizing, or basing this analysis off of experience? My experience has found it to not be true.





Pentius said:


> Every game system I've played has those odd cases where the rules or their particular application seem to suggest one thing as the best course of action, even though not all players find that course of action to be either plausible or narratively satisfying.  The Tomb of Horrors "Flying Thief on a Rope" example comes to mind





Yesway Jose said:


> If you say so, it's never happened to me. That is, there were always power gamers who did the mechanically optimal thing but those were still sem-simulationist mechanics, and nobody jumped off 200' cliffs or anything that ruined the plausibility for anyone else.



As far as the Wall of Fire issue goes, there is a Wall of Fire caster in my party, and a lot of forced movement, and it's never come up (in part because every square of movement through a Wall of Fire costs 3). Maybe it's a higher-level thing, when forced movement over longer distances becomes available?

On the jumping issue, I did have a PC jump over the cliff in G2 - I can't remember why or what he was escaping - because the player knew that with -2 damage per die (from UA magical full plate), damage from any fall was capped at 80 hp, and the PC had more than 80 hp remaining.

Did it ruin the game? Not at all. Do I want to see it every session? Probably not!



Pentius said:


> in my experience at actual tables, the Dm will do something about it when these situations arise, whether that's making a houserule, or just telling the players to knock it off.



When I used to GM Rolemaster, both these techniques were used, although often by conensus among the GM and the "lead" players rather than just by GM authority alone.

If my group like everything about 4e except Wall of Fire ping pong, and the latter reallly was an issue at our table, we'd deal with it pretty handily.


----------



## innerdude

Yesway Jose said:


> (this is in open beta, please contribute)
> 
> 
> A PROPOSAL FOR A TEST FOR "DISASSOCIATION"
> 
> 1) Choose a Rule
> A Rule can be a single mechanic, or interaction of rules as implemented by the player(s), or paradigm of rules
> 
> 2) Imagine the Fiction
> The Fiction is a mish-mash of real-life, historical, fantasy, and genre laws, and its scope can be an instance, encounter, adventure, campaign, or the complete game world, all subjective to your expections.
> 
> 3) Is there any Fiction?
> If no, you are playing chess or other abstract game. Skip to #10
> 
> 4) Are there any Rules?
> If no, you are doing pure storytelling. Skip to #10
> 
> 5) Is there Fiction, but you're not observing it?
> If yes, you may be playing a tactical skirmish. Skip to #10
> 
> 6) Are there Rules, but you're not observing them?
> If yes, you are roleplaying a pure narrative with no use of mechanics. Skip to #10
> 
> 7) Can you (or a character) learn, explore or observe an in-game reason for the Rule? You may ask others for their input
> If no, skip to #11
> 
> 8) Do you want this explanation to be officially added to the Fiction? (for reasons of plausibility, etc.)
> If no, go back to #7
> 
> 9) Does your gaming group want this explanation to be officially added to the Fiction? (for reasons of plausibility, etc.)
> If no, go back to #7
> 
> 10) There is no disassociation here, good for you.
> Stop here, do not continue. If you wish, ask another person to take this test to compare viewpoints.
> 
> 11) There may be disassociation here. Does anyone in your gaming group care?
> If no, go to #10
> 
> 12) Are you willing to forgo using the Rule?
> If yes, go back to #1
> 
> 13) Is your gaming group willing to change the Rule (houserule), or permanently introduce a new element to the Fiction to reconcile the Rule?
> If yes, do so and go back to #1
> 
> 14) You have a case of disassociation. Would you like to join a new gaming group?
> If yes, go back to #1
> 
> 15) Would you like to play a different game system?
> If yes, go back to #1
> 
> 16) Go to Enworld
> Go back to #7
> 
> 17) The new edition is here, and it's everything you dreamed of.
> Wait, how did you get here?
> 
> 
> 
> EDIT: Updated to version 0.2




Quite awesome. 

My addition isn't so much about evaluating whether you have dissociation or not, but how would a group go about solving it--



Has the GM ruled that the fiction of the world explicitly prevents any narratively acceptable resolution that the mechanic produces?
Does your group have an understanding related to the inherent physical/aesthetic properties of the fiction that prevents an acceptable mechanical resolution?
Does your group accept your narrative for the resolution?
Is the potential dissociation one of kind, degree, frequency, or core principle (i.e., the avoidance of potential dissociation is a key factor for GM/player/group enjoyment)? Is it a combination of factors?
Is the potential dissociation "dissociative" based on the material/subject matter/domain? Would it be dissociative if the effects were moved to another material domain of the mechanics?
If you have dissociation: what is the perceived degree of dissociation? Little/some/major? Is it worth creating a house rule or revising the fiction to contain the dissociation? Are the potential ancillary consequences worth it?
If you have dissociation: what is the frequency in which the dissociation will appear again in the future? Little/some/major? (same resolution as #2).
If you have dissociation: how much burden does it place on the player/GM to "keep in their head" any mechanical artifacts/anomalies that the dissociation produces? Is the player/GM willing to accept this?
Even if narratively satisfying explanations for a given mechanic can be produced, does having to produce such narrative have undesired side-effects? This is not dissociation _per se_, but one of its related adjuncts, _immersion_.
Even if immersive "side effects" are minimal or non-existent, does the need to regularly adjudicate potential dissociations/narrative create a barrier to your/your group's enjoyment of the system (i.e., the core principle of avoiding dissociation to begin with takes precedence)? Who is most/least effected by this? How much stake do you place in their input?
Oh, and could someone cover some XP back to Yesway Jose for me?


----------



## Yesway Jose

Yesway Jose said:


> There seems to have been so much emphasis on this forum about 4E mechanics 1st, fiction 2nd, that it never occured to me that many game groups were doing otherwise.





Pentius said:


> I think it's because most discussion of 4e I've seen on this forum is reactionary(barring the 4e section, which I would say has a whole different tone from general). In other words, it isn't that the 4e fans always want to start conversations that put mechanics first and fiction second, but when someone asks you "How do you justify this mechanic in the narrative?" that is the way the answer comes.





Yesway Jose said:


> I sympathize with the reactionary aspect, but it might arguable that the mechanics 1st side already has the upper hand...





Pentius said:


> But that's really an age old debate, just this time in 4e.





Crazy Jerome said:


> Moreover, the dichotomy of your analysis is a false one. It is not a given that anyone playing mechanics first/narrative second is unconcerned with the narrative. Quite the contrary, as I believe I have indicated previously. I'm "mechanics first" in general, because I am seeking a way for the mechanics to help advance the narrative.



It's interesting how this keeps turning into 3E > 4E or that mechanics 1st = no narrative. In the hypothetical example, Jack + Jill represent pure tactical skirmishers, and note that Bob + Betty were described as Actor|Author stance (where Author stance can be mechanics 1st).

The only point was that rules in any edition are clear and objective and give "mechanics 1st" an initial default advantage.

I take back my symbolic statement that I "sympathize with the reactionary aspect". Being reactionary is not a prerogative.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

My comments on mechanics first were system neutral.  They would apply equally to Fantasy Hero, any version of D&D, and even MRQ II (where for most people, "mechanics first" would be the last reaction they would have).  

I simply disagree with your implication that "mechanics first" will have the upper hand, in essentially a tie, and I gave a reason.  

In your hypothetical, a more interesting question is why Jack, Jill, Bob, and Betty would even play in the same game.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Thanks innerdude.



innerdude said:


> 3. Does your group accept your narrative for the resolution?



Just a friendly pointer that this was covered under #9. As for how to solve it, that's a minefield I've purposefully avoided for now


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> My comments on mechanics first were system neutral.



The 3E vs 4E was referencing the discussion with Pentius only.

EDIT: But I re-read Pentius' posts a couple times and realize that his comments are also system neutral-ish albeit tangential to my intent. My apologies to Pentius for putting any words in your mouth.



Crazy Jerome said:


> I simply disagree with your implication that "mechanics first" will have the upper hand, in essentially a tie, and I gave a reason.



Perhaps I missed something? And recall that this was "100% mechanics 1st" vs "fiction 1st" not "Author stance vs fiction 1st"



> In your hypothetical, a more interesting question is why Jack, Jill, Bob, and Betty would even play in the same game.



Or why Bob + Betty would be happy with Jack + Jill indirectly shaping the game for everyone via official rules updates and design paradigms that have to account for metagame balance in tactical skirmish because Jack + Jill were exploiting this or that mechanic.


----------



## Neonchameleon

pemerton said:


> And even when there is an optimal choice, very often it doesn't detract from theme and narrative because the nature of 4e's PC build rules mean that playing your PC in a mechanicall optimal way tends to reinforce rather than "dissociate" from theme and narrative.




Absolutely.  Nine times out of ten at a minumum the best combat choice is to use one of your standard attack patterns - a power.  And for the pre-essentials classes there is a vast range of powers, few of which are especially stronger than others (the balance is not, of course, perfect - but it's pretty close).  And if you pick powers that don't fit your character that's your own silly fault.  In practice the sort of player who has problems with so-called dissassociated mechanics simply should not pick the powers they find to be disassociated.

Once you've picked your powers to go with your character, you discover that how your character moves and behaves to best effect in combat reflects the personality you gave him or her in a way that simply isn't true in most other RPGs.  (3e feats don't even come close).  If you want someone who's big and bullies other people you start by powers such as Tide of Iron allowing them to force their targets back and advancing covered by their shield - whereas a fighter that's more agile and defensive is more likely to take Footwork Lure.  This is a part of your characters personality.  And means that where the rubber meets the road, their best option is to play like ... themselves.



Pentius said:


> But that's really an age old debate, just this time in 4e. Every game system I've played has those odd cases where the rules or their particular application seem to suggest one thing as the best course of action, even though not all players find that course of action to be either plausible or narratively satisfying.




Every game that isn't almost purely narrativist anyway...  (Wushu springs to mind).  4e has the good habit of errataing such cases when they come up - which has made a bit of a mess of Storm Pillar simply to prevent the "Toss them past the Tesla Coil" tactics.


----------



## Hussar

Yesway Jose said:


> If you say so, it's never happened to me. That is, there were always power gamers who did the mechanically optimal thing but those were still sem-simulationist mechanics, and nobody jumped off 200' cliffs or anything that ruined the plausibility for anyone else.
> 
> Anyway, the point is not to argue 3e vs 4e, but to point out my opinion that fiction 1st is initially the underdog to mechanics 1st.




I would point out though, that the fiction first design has held the reins by and large for a large amount of the history of the game.  Which has meant that those of us who want mechanics first are pretty much left out in the cold.

At least, until now when you have 4e where the mechanics are largely separated from any fixed in-game rationale.

Or, to put it another way, all those settings that TSR pumped out, where they had to fold, spindle and maul the mechanics of the day to make them fit into the new setting are examples of people taking a fiction first system and then having to do massive amounts of work to adapt it to a new fiction.

Now, there is a system which adapts much more easily to different fiction - a mechanics first one.  Look at EN World.  You have three adventure paths, all three in completely different genres - standard fantasy, steampunk and soon to come space opera, all using the same mechanics.

That's the advantage of a mechanics first system.  Now, there are all sorts of disadvantages too.  I'm NOT saying that one is better than the other.  I like one more than the other, that's fine, but, I'm not making any claims about which one is "better".

But, in any case, I'm not really sure you can point to the idea of "mechanics first" being the first one on the block.


----------



## Hussar

Yesway Jose said:


> Not the analogy I would use  The analogy I would use is why, in Transformers, did they bring the All-Spark into the middle of a populated city and the climactic battle endangers the lives of its citizens and causes billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure. The "real" reason they brought the All-Spark into the city is because the writers wanted an explosive-y battle in the middle of a city (=non-Actor stance use of a metagame narrative control) and they couldn't think of a better plot device. The Author/Director then retroactively motivates the characters to follow the plot. However, in Actor stance, the decision to bring the All Spark to Mission City was utterly reckless and ridiculous, and probably indefensible.
> 
> /snip




To be totally fair, I've seen more than my share of groups who would have made almost exactly the same decision without paying any attention to the consequences while still entirely maintaining Actor stance.  

Never underestimate the abilities of players to make stunningly, unbelievably silly decisions.


----------



## BryonD

Uller said:


> The rules in 4e explicitly say that 4e is not for you.  The various DM books make it very clear that the rules that apply to PCs and their interaction with the world do not apply to NPCs.



Thanks.  I admit that I've spent so many months in debates in which the terms of dispute were that 4E provided exactly the same experience as prior editions that I have become conditioned to presume that.  But, not breaking out of that conditioning is no one's fault but mine.  
It is gratifying to see that the conversation has settled this point.



> I look at it as the difference between an HP Lovecraft story where the action is often blurred and shadowy, leaving the details to the mind of the reader and a Tom Clancey novel where everything is described in painful detail.  I prefer the former...especially in a game where it is supposed to be my mind that is making the action...not the game designers.  I don't need them to tell me why my paladin can damage a foe in my aura or daze a foe with Holy Smite.  I can figure that one out, thanks.



Now, I don't agree with your characterization here.  My games work perfectly well under both your Clancey label and under your Lovecraft label.  And I can certainly make up rationalizations on the fly as needed.  These are not the issue.

Neither Clancey nor Lovecraft used externally imposed patterns on the plot elements of their narratives.  I don't want those (amongst other specific elements of 4E) in my preferred RPG experience.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> I can't imagine playing 3E and forgetting that the rules exist.



I'm not saying that I forget the rules exist.  I'm saying the systems I like I built with making the rules as low profile on the active play as possible.  In 4E the idea is that the rules specifically impose themselves.



> What can I say? - I agree with wrecan on this. I don't think that there is a sufficient chance for the pattern to emerge in the course of actual play, especially when there is so much overlap of effects for a typically-built PC (because 4e, like 3E, favours specialised builds).



I already spoke to this point.

If you are reading a book it could certainly take a very long time to discover the pattern.  But once you did you would know it was there every time it showed up.  If you later went back and reread the book, you would notice the pattern from the very first event.

In 4E, you already know the pattern is there.  The pattern has emerged before you sit down to the table the first time.


----------



## Hussar

But, BryonD, the games, any edition, are full of patterns.  Like, how random encounters only occur at specified intervals, or that surprisingly enough, you never (or at least almost never) meet elder dragons at first level or your characters generally have roughly the right amount of wealth for their level - you don't find Vorpal swords in a 1st level adventure forex.

These patterns exist because we're playing a game.  Why specifically call out this one pattern as being too much?  Particularly when the patterns are virtually indistinguishable from simply using random tables for critical effects or the like.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> In 4E, you already know the pattern is there.  The pattern has emerged before you sit down to the table the first time.



At this point I really want actual play examples, or at least actual build examples.

I posted a precis of the polearm fighter in my game upthread. That character has three encounter powers, plus one or two dailies, that are close bursts. He has a slide at-will power (Footwork Lure), a pull encounter power (Come and Get It) which can also be used as a close burst even if no targets are pulled, and a push daily power (something-or-other The Battlefield). Footwork Lure also permits him to shift, and he has an encounter power that allows him to attack two targets with a shift in-between (Passing Attack).

He has an Athletics bonus of +14 - so can climb and jump pretty well - and he has an encounter power that enhnaces this and also permits him to ignore difficult terrain (which may or may not be relevant on any given occasin that he uses the power).

There is no pattern! This is a character who can attack multiple foes, move them about on the battlefield, _stop_ them moving (whether via Come and Get It, Footwork Lure or a fighter's Combat Superiority on opportunity attacks), and move himself. In any given combat, it plays out differently, both fictionally and mechanically. For example, sometime Passing Attack is obviously different from a close burst - but not always (for example, if there are two foes adjacent, and he attacks both, and doesn't shift between the attacks).
Sometime Passing Attack is no different from Footwork Lure - attack one opponent, hit, shift, miss another opponent - to the observers in the fiction, this is no different from attack using Footwork Lure, hit, shift, choose (for whatever reason) not to slide, and then fail to hit another opponent (in this latter case the second miss is of course automatic, because no attack roll is permitted).

The ranger in the same game is similar. He uses Twin Strike, Biting Volley (which is an encounter Twin Strike that targets Reflex, adds stats to damage, and crits on an 18+) and Attacks on the Run (which is a daily Twin Strike for multiple damage dice and half damage on a miss, that also permits movement - but he doesn't always move when he uses this power). And he has an interrupt - Disruptive Shot - that is more bow fire.

Within the fiction, all this character is doing is shooting arrows - many of them, very quickly - and dealing more or less damage.

What is the pattern? What sorts of martial builds do you have in mind? (I assume that magic-using patterns are acceptable on roughly Vancian grounds.)


----------



## Crazy Jerome

BryonD said:


> In 4E, you already know the pattern is there. The pattern has emerged before you sit down to the table the first time.




I think I finally understand one of the areas in which we are not getting each other's point of view.  If I get the kind of pattern you mean, the reason it doesn't stick out for me in 4E is that those kinds of patterns are there in every game I have ever played--usually before I sit down to play.  AD&D 1E was probably the last time it wasn't immediately obvious, and that was as much because I was learning the system at 14, as any other reason.


----------



## Hussar

Just to add to Pemerton's point.  My fighter has now had 4 combats.  In those four combats, he used Come and Get It once, Sweeping Blow twice (both encounter powers) and, one use of a couple of dailies.  He did not use one of his dailies before the final rest.

In other words, every combat has been different and different powers have been used.

In a system where, by even fairly low levels - say 8th or 9th - you have about a dozen different effects, more than half of which are encounter or at-will powers, the odds that you will actually see any sort of pattern emerge is pretty small.

Never minding, of course, that by Paragon tier, you begin replacing encounter and daily powers with newer powers, so any pattern that was recognized before that would be broken simply by the fact that you don't actually use the same powers from 1st to 30th level.

Isn't it funny though.  3e gets a free pass despite the fact that many combats will run very, very similarly - move and single attack, shift and full attack until the baddy falls down - a pattern that is easily recognizable to anyone who's played any amount of 3e.  But 4e, despite having many, many more in combat options for every character, will have a noticeable pattern emerge.


----------



## Neonchameleon

BryonD said:


> Neither Clancey nor Lovecraft used externally imposed patterns on the plot elements of their narratives. I don't want those (amongst other specific elements of 4E) in my preferred RPG experience.




Honestly, in my experience, 4e has the _lowest_ weight of externally imposed patterns that are relevant to the plot in any version of D&D.  3e has the highest - the magic system warps worlds, and the crafting system is arguably even worse.  In 4e, most PC magic is combat magic - that's a direct alternative to swinging a sword.  And most of the parts that aren't (rituals) cost strategic resources for a tactical benefit.  The magic isn't as worldbreaking, and the items aren't (see the Decanter of Endless Water vs its 4e equivalent).

And just to take one illustration, 2e Dark Sun was an excellent world.  Evocative.  Fun.  And needed to perform absolute contortions in order to get it to run under the 2e rules.  In 4e it just drops in.  You ban the divine power source and add weapon breakage rules and defiling rules.  It's trivial.  (And the 4e defiling temptation mechanic is a much better match for the fluff than the 2e "Preservers have an xp track like this, Defilers have an xp track like that").


----------



## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> These patterns exist because we're playing a game. Why specifically call out this one pattern as being too much? Particularly when the patterns are virtually indistinguishable from simply using random tables for critical effects or the like.



Yes, there's something to be said for 3E patterns that are expected to crop up by the player, but there's something to be said for 4E patterns like the length and breadth of combat and the structure of a game day that self-regulates to resource management of healing surges and encounter/dailies. In-game and metagame cliches are rampant.

There's something to be said for the "feel" of patterns that emerge naturally from probablities to match the pleasant surprise of the character when it happens once or more vs those that are imposed by a God-like Author like a fate that you predicted in advance and waiting impatiently for it to happen only once.

Yes, there's something to be said for years of tolerance to old school patterns, but there's something to be said for a pattern that emerges in when you read it in the rulebook and you refuse to play the game and you go off to Pathfinder etc and annoy the heck out of 4E fans on forums.

There's something to be said for a rule that reads "the sun rises and sets 1/day" vs "your character can do this 1/day and each day you must figure out why and each day you must agree and self-conform to this outcome".

Yes, there's also something to be said for actual gameplay in which the noise of player choice and multiple options obscures the individual patterns.

There's also something to be said for a mechanic that reads 'your PC can do this 1/day' vs 'your PC can do this successfully 1/day' vs 'you can use this mechanic 1/day' and clarifying the differences in published books isn't give the time of the day.

I'm not trying to prove anything, and I'm purposefully leaving the "something to be said" unsaid. But there are many expectations and factors in play here. I don't think it's fair to say there's no difference and all things are equal. We can all look at the same picture and see a young lady or an old hag.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> At this point I really want actual play examples, or at least actual build examples.
> 
> I posted a precis of the polearm fighter in my game upthread. That character has three encounter powers, plus one or two dailies, that are close bursts. He has a slide at-will power (Footwork Lure), a pull encounter power (Come and Get It) which can also be used as a close burst even if no targets are pulled, and a push daily power (something-or-other The Battlefield). Footwork Lure also permits him to shift, and he has an encounter power that allows him to attack two targets with a shift in-between (Passing Attack).
> 
> He has an Athletics bonus of +14 - so can climb and jump pretty well - and he has an encounter power that enhnaces this and also permits him to ignore difficult terrain (which may or may not be relevant on any given occasin that he uses the power).
> 
> There is no pattern!



Yes there is.

He can do a lot of things that ignore the patterns.  At will and simple skill use CERTAINLY don't have this issue.  But the encounter powers and the daily powers have a pattern.  And those are very important parts of the character.

Your counter-argument is to simply point out that not everything is a slave to the pattern.  I agree with that, but it is not relevant.  

I won't try to put any number of the portion of time that daily and encounter powers come into play.  But it would be silly to claim they are not significant.

For a very charitable sake of argument, lets just call it 10%.  I'll strongly prefer 0%.


----------



## BryonD

Neonchameleon said:


> Honestly, in my experience, 4e has the _lowest_ weight of externally imposed patterns that are relevant to the plot in any version of D&D.  3e has the highest - the magic system warps worlds, and the crafting system is arguably even worse.  In 4e, most PC magic is combat magic - that's a direct alternative to swinging a sword.  And most of the parts that aren't (rituals) cost strategic resources for a tactical benefit.  The magic isn't as worldbreaking, and the items aren't (see the Decanter of Endless Water vs its 4e equivalent).



OK, so being constrained to doing something daily, with the only option being to choose to not use the power at all is not a pattern.  

I'd be perfectly happy to agree with you that there are problems with the 3E RAW crafting system.  And magic is very potent in 3E.  Agreed.

I will also agree that 3E takes more skill to run well.  If you are having troubles with 3E then absolutely a different game will be better for you.  I don't remotely claim that 3E is the game for everyone.

But, nothing you have said demonstrates a mechanically mandated pattern on the narrative built using the 3E system and nothing you have said challenges the idea that the 4E system dictates patterns into the narratives creating using it.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> Yes there is.
> 
> He can do a lot of things that ignore the patterns.  At will and simple skill use CERTAINLY don't have this issue.  But the encounter powers and the daily powers have a pattern.  And those are very important parts of the character.
> 
> Your counter-argument is to simply point out that not everything is a slave to the pattern.  I agree with that, but it is not relevant.
> 
> I won't try to put any number of the portion of time that daily and encounter powers come into play.  But it would be silly to claim they are not significant.
> 
> For a very charitable sake of argument, lets just call it 10%.  I'll strongly prefer 0%.



I think you may have misunderstood, but I'm not sure. So I'll have another go - if you haven't misunderstood, maybe you could be clearer in explaining what exactly you see the pattern as being. (Maybe I've misunderstood, or missed something!)

With the archer, in respect of which the encounters and dailies are just more bowfire - where is the pattern? Arrows are shot, some hit, some wound, some kill - within the fiction, what exactly is the pattern?

With the halberdeer, the encounters and dailies are more complex - but with the overlapping abilities to attack multiple foes, move them, stop them, etc, I again want to know - what is the pattern in the fiction that "breaks the fourth wall"?

Of course for the players of the game there is a pattern - I use this power once per encounter, this power once per X encounters (where X i= 3 to 5 or so, depending on the daily encounter rate). But I don't see the pattern _within_ the fiction - because these various mechancial techniques are different metagame routes to a coherent and cohesive fiction.

I can see how the metagame/ingame split might be disruptive to a certain sort of simulationist sensibility, and perhaps to a certain sort of immersive play. But I'm having trouble seeing how the split manifests itself in the form of an intolerable pattern _in the fiction_.

EDIT: _This_ is the particular claim that I am finding puzzling:



BryonD said:


> nothing you have said challenges the idea that the 4E system dictates patterns into the narratives creating using it.



I'm assuming here that "narratives created" refers to the fiction. And I'm just not seeing where these patterns _in the fiction_ (as opposed to at the game playing table) are occurring.


----------



## BryonD

Crazy Jerome said:


> I think I finally understand one of the areas in which we are not getting each other's point of view.  If I get the kind of pattern you mean, the reason it doesn't stick out for me in 4E is that those kinds of patterns are there in every game I have ever played--usually before I sit down to play.  AD&D 1E was probably the last time it wasn't immediately obvious, and that was as much because I was learning the system at 14, as any other reason.



I agree that this can be the case.

As was just referenced in this thread, there have been numerous debates about whether or not 4E is the same as prior editions of the game.  Clearly a large number of people feel that it is.  But also clearly a large number of people feel that it is not.  That is because the style of play that was supported by prior editions of the game was much more flexible.  If the style of play someone choose for prior editions was consistent with the style embraced by 4E, then not only will you not see a difference, but you will also probably find the experience improved because the design focus is right where you want it.

But there is nothing in the 3E mechanics which mandate these patterns.

I could design a lesser kind of dragon with a breath weapon only useable once per day.  I've just created a mechanically mandated pattern on what will happen with this 3E creature.  It has a daily.  But, this only happens because when I conceived of the idea of the monster this way, the concept of the creature controls the mechanics so that during play the mechanics will have the story work "right".  Before you ever decide the first element of a 4E character the fact that it will have dailies is known.  Your concept is then adapted to fit with these mechanical prerequisites.  

Can that be done satisfactorily?  Yes.  Absolutely.  At the end of the day it is about imagination and working with it.  I absolutely could get past this and have a blast playing 4E.  BUT, a system that doesn't have this requirement is even better.

The quasi-Vancian magic system could certainly be pointed out as an example of imposed pattern in 3E.  And it is.  But, again, this is a narrative first issue.  3E presumes a system of magic.  And the spells per day idea is intended to capture that concept and then tweaked to strive for balance.  The system is not designed for balance first and then tweaked to strive for narrative merit.  And, of you really hate Vancian magic but like D20 in general, the magic system can be completely replaced.  There are a lot of quality alternatives out there.  The power system is pretty fundamental to the 4E concept.

I'm sure you could also point at numerous other examples in 3E where the mechanics have patterns.  I know you can.  I know I can.  But those fall into two categories.  The first is places where the mechanic is an effort to model a narrative idea and the second is just bad design.  And in either case, if you don't like it you can completely replace it because the root of the game system is not in question.

Obviously this is all about powers.  Powers is just part of the big picture in design philosophy of 4E.  You could talk about minions, homogenous character capability, NPCs not like PCs, DCs based on level not concept, etc, etc...  These are all outgrowths of the root idea behind 4E.  

And I don't have any argument with loving 4E for exactly these reasons.  I'm just saying that the issues do exist.  For both good and for bad.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> there have been numerous debates about whether or not 4E is the same as prior editions of the game.  Clearly a large number of people feel that it is.



As a separate point, I'm not sure who you have in mind here. Of the various posters on this thread who are trying to explain 4e mechanics from their own play of the game - chaochou, Crazy Jerome, wrecan, Hussar, me - I can't think of one who has posted that they think 4e is the same as prior editions. (wrecan and I are perhaps the most vociferous in denying that it is, but Crazy Jerome also had a very unequivocal post to this effect upthread.)

The fact that Hussar or Crazy Jerome are noting that patterns emerged in earlier editions doesn't mean they think those earlier editions were the same as 4e.


----------



## BryonD

From the archer's point of view the daily can certainly look like at-will.  And the results of the daily will look like an at-will that went awesome.

But from the people sitting at the table's point of view, the ones who are there to have fun, the daily is a daily.  The difference in result is not the effect of fate on otherwise equivalent activities.  The difference in result is the effect of the mechanically established pattern.  

Again, if you read a book long enough and some archer character achieves a certain nature of result consistently once per day that will stick out.  Describing the actual process of firing an arrow in exactly the same manner for the regular shots and that daily awesome shot doesn't change anything.  

And, certainly, the character in the book would not perceive the difference.  And a new reader also would not.  But after a dozen times, maybe more, maybe less, the reader would learn.  And on going back to re-read the book, it would stick out like a sore thumb from the first instance.  Players already know.  

In a pure narrative an awesome event could happen four times in a row then not for three days of trying.  Or it could happen once a day for three days straight.  Or anything else.  The results are not driven any mechanical force outside the narrative.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> As a separate point, I'm not sure who you have in mind here. Of the various posters on this thread who are trying to explain 4e mechanics from their own play of the game - chaochou, Crazy Jerome, wrecan, Hussar, me - I can't think of one who has posted that they think 4e is the same as prior editions. (wrecan and I are perhaps the most vociferous in denying that it is, but Crazy Jerome also had a very unequivocal post to this effect upthread.)
> 
> The fact that Hussar or Crazy Jerome are noting that patterns emerged in earlier editions doesn't mean they think those earlier editions were the same as 4e.



In this specific case Crazy Jerome was specifically saying that he did not see the pattern in 4E because it was not different than the pattern he saw in other editions.  Certainly that is on a fine topic and not an edition wide statement.  But I was responding to that.

And the context of prior debates certainly comes through for me.

I do find it a bit gratifying but also frustrating that we can have 40 pages heated debates over 4E fans being outraged over the idea that someone would dare say "4E doesn't feel D&D" and then we turn around and everyone suddenly agrees with the points that constitute that claim and don't accept that it has ever been challenged.


----------



## Neonchameleon

BryonD said:


> OK, so being constrained to doing something daily, with the only option being to choose to not use the power at all is not a pattern.




Your man is made of straw.  There are patterns.  You need to sleep daily, wiht the only options being not doing it or a siesta.  But this is special pleading; if we're looking for what you can and can't do daily, 3e refreshes _all_ spells and a lot of powers (such as rages and bardic music) on a daily cycle.  That is a far more defining pattern than the 4e daily powers.

But you completely missed the point.  The point is that the very second you look at a 3e spell list you find spells that impact the world and need to be built around.  _Zone of Truth_ revolutionises the legal system.  _Charm Person_ is an excellent induce paranoia spell once it's known about.  _Cure Light Wounds_ daily has its own issues.  And yes, these are on a daily reset cycle.  Your worldbuilding needs to take these things into account.



pemerton said:


> As a separate point, I'm not sure who you have in mind here. Of the various posters on this thread who are trying to explain 4e mechanics from their own play of the game - chaochou, Crazy Jerome, wrecan, Hussar, me - I can't think of one who has posted that they think 4e is the same as prior editions.




Add me to the list who thinks it's a different game


----------



## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> But you completely missed the point. The point is that the very second you look at a 3e spell list you find spells that impact the world and need to be built around.



That's a good thing for me! That's what great sci-fi is all about -- imagining how technology transforms society. Most D&D did a bad job of it, but the potential was there and it could be fun to explore.



Neonchameleon said:


> _Zone of Truth_ revolutionises the legal system. _Charm Person_ is an excellent induce paranoia spell once it's known about. _Cure Light Wounds_ daily has its own issues. And yes, these are on a daily reset cycle. Your worldbuilding needs to take these things into account.



How does 4E handle this -- because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong -- that spells only work in a certain way in the heat of combat, and then are either undefined or don't work at all outside of combat, which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

BryonD said:


> In this specific case Crazy Jerome was specifically saying that he did not see the pattern in 4E because it was not different than the pattern he saw in other editions. Certainly that is on a fine topic and not an edition wide statement. But I was responding to that.




Not quite. What I said was that I see the pattern in 4E, and I see patterns in other versions. To the extent that you can argue that these patterns affect the narrative, I see the *effect* in all versions. That is not, and has never been, a claim that the patterns in 4E are identical to the patterns in prior versions. They are not. In fact, with the exception of certain 1E/2E more or less exact rules, I'd say the patterns are always different.

You seem to have assumed that I don't see the pattern, because not having seen it was necessary for some kind of enjoyment. My point was that, except for a brief ramp up period in 1981, I have always seem the patterns. Heck, I also saw them in Fantasy Hero, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc. What can I say? All people are prone to see patterns (it being an important survival trait for humans), but I'm somewhat more likely than most to see them in things that are models (as opposed to, say, spotting hidden things in real life, which uses different pattern recognition skills).

Having seen the patterns has not affected my enjoyment. The pattern is something that is absorbed--and then having been aborbed, is subsumed in the fiction. Most of the people I have gamed with do some form of this. It probably also isn't an accident that we have preferred more structured poetry. (A sonnet sings because you write it in a prescribed form. I particularly like the Italian scheme. Making it work requires, however, that you come to terms with the form.) 

Now, if you want to say that 4E being transparent makes it harder to obscure the patterns... Well, I can't argue with that. It was a specific design goal of the edition, and largely realized in the product. The insight that I gained from your post was not that the patterns were there. I'd always known that. The insight was that apparently some people value *opaqueness* in models as a means to enjoying the model. This had not occurred to me in the context of this discussion. It's an alien way of thinking from my perspective.


----------



## wrecan

BryonD said:


> I do find it a bit gratifying but also frustrating that we can have 40 pages heated debates over 4E fans being outraged over the idea that someone would dare say "4E doesn't feel D&D"



I don't think any "4e fans" (in this thread, anyway) are outraged over the notion that somebody thinks that 4e doesn't feel like "D&D" for them.  Please leave the inflammatory edition-war language at the door.

In fact most of us have been explicitly saying not that some people don't like 4e, but that the reasons for the dislike are inherently subjective, and not objective, as TheAlexandrian in the blog that started this thread has indicated.


----------



## Pour

I don't think anyone is disputing what Bry and Yesway think of 4e. chaochou, Crazy Jerome, wrecan, Hussar, pemerton and Neonchameleon full well accept the edition is challenged. What is being disputed is Bry's and Yesway's logical conclusions given certain information, so far as I can figure, and their insistence on their claims despite six people illustrating a supposed counter point. 

Now from an outside perspective, it doesn't seem as if Bry or Yesway wants to entertain any other stance than what they decided upon entering the thread, and I'm not certain anyone else really does either.

That's the bitch of debate, really. If a person is adamant enough to defend something and engage in discourse over it, that person is highly unlikely to ever actually change his or her mind or even flirt with the potential of changing. 

Why debate it at all, then? Is there something self-gratifying? According to Bry, I think there is, but at the same time frustrating. Frustrating because neither side will win the point, but discourse, debate, 'friendly' arguing by its very nature is not over until someone 'wins' or at least believes they've won. That's where gratifying comes in, the notion one party has made his point and it's irrefutable by his assessment of the resulting counters, never mind the number!

We aren't disputing there are 8 hotdogs in a pack. That's absolute (unless you buy those huge Costco packs that're like 16). This rules, no, this 'feels' debate is the real fallacy, that argument built on reasonable assessment of fun is indeed argument of a logical nature. There are clear results of using one rule set for this, or another for that, which can be compared and called different, but empirical evidence only gets someone to a place where he can say the rules look and are designed differently. It leaves that person out in the cold when it comes to proving a generated play experience, which is the heart of these roiling feelings churning in all D&D hobbyists.

And that's the bitch of reason, its flimsy nature compared to preference and emotions, in defining meaning or even worth. There is a gross blurring of the lines in all these game debates, I feel it myself, we all do, which at their foundations can only speak to play experiences- which are entirely preference and emotion. 

And of course when there is passion, things easily become skewed, even if there was some way to create a logical and irrefutable means of assessing a good or bad game, or a better or worse game, which I hold there isn't. 

You can tell the difference between a true argument and this false circling by the pattern. Bry and Yesway will defend their points and the others theirs, and then on ENWorld, the edition camps will defend their points and the others theirs, until... until... Well, there's a depressing notion. It'll never end.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong -- that spells only work in a certain way in the heat of combat, and then are either undefined or don't work at all outside of combat, which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding.



You are wrong.  Anything in combat can work out of combat.  Not all things that work out of combat can work in combat because combat is divided into discrete six-second rounds that presume a certain amount of adrenalin induced concentration on survival, and many things one does out of combat requires more than six seconds and/or a certain degree of self-composure unavailable to combatants in the heat of the moment.

So, to bring back the Hypnotism spell you so enjoy.  A wizard who knows this spell can cast a spell every few seconds that (assuming the wizard overcomes the victim's will) causes someone within 50 feet of the wizard (if the wizard knows the victim's approximate location and there are no large physical barriers like walls between them) to move up to 15 feet, or to try to hit someone with whatever the victim has at hand.  The wizard can do this in or out of combat (though if he chooses the "attack" option, we're probably entering combat).  

In contrast, physically escaping from restraints requires five minutes of effort, and thus cannot be accomplished in combat, as it would require 50 rounds.  (Using magic to escape, however, would be a different story.)  It can, of course, be accomplished out of combat.  Other actions that cannot be attempted in combat include foraging for food, treating a disease, gathering rumors, casting rituals, and engaging in a short or extended rest.  I doubt however, that the limitation on these activities causes any dissociation.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> That's a good thing for me! That's what great sci-fi is all about -- imagining how technology transforms society. Most D&D did a bad job of it, but the potential was there and it could be fun to explore.




It could be.  But that only gives you an extremely limited number of worlds.  In fact the only published one I can think of that did that was Eberron.  Many of the other D&D worlds (Dark Sun and Planescape being obvious cases) really had to fight hard against the ruleset.



> How does 4E handle this -- because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong -- that spells only work in a certain way in the heat of combat, and then are either undefined or don't work at all outside of combat, which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding.




Saying spells only work a certain way in the heat of combat to me says about as much as saying guns only work a certain way in the heat of combat.  Which is true - and most RPG stats cover guns for combat purposes.  The spells that aren't barely controlled displays of raw magical force, designed to be set off in only a few seconds and allowing the wizard to keep an eye on the people trying to stab him are mostly rituals.  Rituals take a minute or more to cast, some financial cost as well, and are open to anyone with the right feat (which certain classes like Wizards get for free).  It's normally the dribbly candles and incense approach and it's entirely possible for the party fighter to be as good at rituals as the party wizard (unlikely, but possible).

And rituals can be brought into world building without being as overwhelming as 3e magic.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Pour said:


> Now from an outside perspective, it doesn't seem as if Bry or Yesway wants to entertain any other stance than what they decided upon entering the thread, and I'm not certain anyone else really does either.



Speaking for myself only, just on the previous page, I stated that the same picture can look like a young lady or an old hag, not to mention a number of previous statements about the subjectivity of it all.

I'm not sure what more you expect of me, other than asking me give up altogether.

Note that other posters, like innerdude and timbitoni, also mentioned issues of "disassociation" and the only reason they're not being singled out in your post is because they're not as stubborn as me. Likewise, there is a handle of equally stubborn forum users like pemertron, etc.

This has been one of the most civil discussions of this nature that I can remember, and I thought we were doing just fine, even if the results are unsatisfyling circular.


----------



## Mallus

BryonD said:


> But from the people sitting at the table's point of view, the ones who are there to have fun, the daily is a daily.  The difference in result is not the effect of fate on otherwise equivalent activities.



Hypothetical question: what if the 4e martial Encounter/Daily power effects were made part of a critical hit system? They now occur as the result of a random die roll, instead of player choice. The chart is set up, given an average expected number of encounters, to produce an equivalent number (and intensity) of critical hits/effects per level as the 4e Encounter/Daily powers schedule. 

Would that work better for you? There's _still_ a pattern, in fact, on average, the _same_ pattern.  



> And a new reader also would not.  But after a dozen times, maybe more, maybe less, the reader would learn.  And on going back to re-read the book, it would stick out like a sore thumb from the first instance.  Players already know.



Always bet on Captain Kirk in a fistfight.



> In a pure narrative an awesome event could happen four times in a row then not for three days of trying.



Untrue. In all the pure narratives I'm familiar with, awesome events occur a) when the author decides they should, and 2) when they're dramatically (or perhaps comically) appropriate.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> You are wrong. Anything in combat can work out of combat. Not all things that work out of combat can work in combat because combat is divided into discrete six-second rounds that presume a certain amount of adrenalin induced concentration on survival, and many things one does out of combat requires more than six seconds and/or a certain degree of self-composure unavailable to combatants in the heat of the moment.



It did work like that in every previous edition of D&D and other fantasy RPGs. Your interpretation above is simply that, a subjective interpretation of fiction.

Now I don't disagree that adrenaline and time constraints would not change what a character could do in combat. But IMO 4E does so more starkly in a way I cannot agree with. For example, in older editions, there were spells with 1 full round casting time that would be disrupted with a hit, and 4E doesn't allow for that AFAIK.



> So, to bring back the Hypnotism spell you so enjoy. A wizard who knows this spell can cast a spell every few seconds that (assuming the wizard overcomes the victim's will) causes someone within 50 feet of the wizard (if the wizard knows the victim's approximate location and there are no large physical barriers like walls between them) to move up to 15 feet, or to try to hit someone with whatever the victim has at hand. The wizard can do this in or out of combat (though if he chooses the "attack" option, we're probably entering combat).



So a wizard has the time to say "attack" but not the time to say "fall down"?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Pour said:


> You can tell the difference between a true argument and this false circling by the pattern. Bry and Yesway will defend their points and the others theirs, and then on ENWorld, the edition camps will defend their points and the others theirs, until... until... Well, there's a depressing notion. It'll never end.




Sure it will.  It ends when all the people doing it are getting nothing out of it or get too tired to continue or both.  It seems to go revolving more than it is because people are dropping out for awhile and then getting back in.

And besides the civility that Yesway just noted (remarkable given the passion demonstrated in the arguments thus far), I'll repeat an earlier observation:  The value is not in the main argument or winning or convincing someone.  The value is in the peripheral stuff that gets touched on, understood, learned, appreciated, etc.  It would be nice to get all of the good stuff without the big central argument, but I don't think it works that way.  The big central argument has been allowed to hide that other stuff frequently, but you don't get to the other, useful stuff by totally ignoring the big elephant on the gaming table, especially when the elephant has been eating miniatures, pooping on character sheets, and generally making a complete nuisance of himself.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Crazy Jerome said:


> The value is not in the main argument or winning or convincing someone. The value is in the peripheral stuff that gets touched on, understood, learned, appreciated, etc. It would be nice to get all of the good stuff without the big central argument, but I don't think it works that way. The big central argument has been allowed to hide that other stuff frequently, but you don't get to the other, useful stuff by totally ignoring the big elephant on the gaming table, especially when the elephant has been eating miniatures, pooping on character sheets, and generally making a complete nuisance of himself.




You must spread XP around...


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> It did work like that in every previous edition of D&D and other fantasy RPGs.



Agreed.



> Your interpretation above is simply that, a subjective interpretation of fiction.



My explanation is an interpretation, but, as you said, it's the same interpretation that has applied to all the prior editions to explain why something that can be done out of combat can't be done in combat, so I think it's a pretty reasonable interpretation.  Feel free to substitute any interpretation that makes more sense to you.



> IMO 4E does so more starkly in a way I cannot agree with.



Okay.  As I said, the mechanics that cause someone to feel dissociated from a game are going to be personal to each.



> So a wizard has the time to say "attack" but not the time to say "fall down"?



A wizard can fall down in combat.  In fact, I'm pretty sure a wizard can attack and fall down all in the same turn.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> My explanation is an interpretation, but, as you said, it's the same interpretation that has applied to all the prior editions to explain why something that can be done out of combat can't be done in combat, so I think it's a pretty reasonable interpretation. Feel free to substitute any interpretation that makes more sense to you.



To rephrase, there were things you could do in previous editions (ie., full round casting) that are not permissible in 4E, even though the fictional interpretation is the same. I never said the interpretation was unreasonable, I questioned that your interpretation invalidates my comment to Neonchameleon about worldbuilding or distinguishes the 4E combat paradigm from 3E. 



> A wizard can fall down in combat. In fact, I'm pretty sure a wizard can attack and fall down all in the same turn.



I meant the wizard can[not] hypnotize the target to fall down. (Specifically, the wizard says [telepathically to the target] "fall down", not the player to the wizard).


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> To rephrase, there were things you could do in previous editions (ie., full round casting) that are not permissible in 4E



Yesway, you asked people to correct you if you were wrong about there being things you could do in 4e in combat that you cannot do in 4e out of combat.  I corrected you, as you requested.

Now you are raising a different point about whether there are things possible in combat in prior editions that are not possible in 4e.  And I'd be happy to answer you, but first I'd like to make sure you understand the correction I gave you on your prior point.




> I questioned that your interpretation invalidates my comment to Neonchameleon about worldbuilding or distinguishes the 4E combat paradigm from 3E.



My interpretation was only color to the actual answer: there is nothing you can do in 4e in combat that you can't do out of combat.  



> I meant the wizard can[not] hypnotize the target to fall down.



Not with the hypnotism power, no.  But that's true in and out of combat.  If you want a spell that makes a target become prone, then take Horrid Whispers, Phantom Chasm, or any of the many other powers with the psychic keyword that knocks people prone.

But please keep in mind that the point you now appear to be making is unrelated to the initial point of whether there are things you can do in combat in 4e that you can't do out of combat in 4e.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Now you are raising a different point about whether there are things possible in combat in prior editions that are not possible in 4e.



My point was "...which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding". Powers that are defined out-of-combat by their in-combat application (which only applies with adrenaline and time constraints) does not help me with worldbuilding. Thus not making 4E any easier than 3E in the original discussion with Neonchamelon about 3E powers like Zone of Truth, etc. which is the original point.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> My point was "...which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding".



Except that since you were wrong to assert there are things you can do in combat in 4e that you can't do out of combat in 4e (which is what precedes the ellipsis in your quote), there's nothing for DMs and players to figure out on that issue in 4e.



> Powers that are defined out-of-combat by their in-combat application (which only applies with adrenaline and time constraints) does not help me with worldbuilding.



Nor does it have to be "fit into" worldbuilding.  


> Thus not making 4E any easier than 3E in the original discussion with Neonchamelon about 3E powers like Zone of Truth, etc. which is the original point.



Except that the problem with Zone of Truth was not that it could used in or out of combat, but that it's actual existence forces the worldbuilder to deal with its existence.  In 4e, the equivalent ritual, Chorus of Truth, is prohibitively expensive for commonfolk, and merely imposes a penalty on Bluff checks, making it more difficult to lie.  In contrast, Zone of Truth can be cast by any third level priest (which according to the demographic charts in the DMG are quite common in any large population center), and is virtually foolproof.

That's why Zone of Truth creates worldbuilding issues where Chorus of Truth does not.  It has nothing to do with the fact that Zone of Truth can be cast using a standard action.

So let's try it again.  How is it that 4e has worldbuilding issues in a quantity equal or greater than 3e's issues?


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Except that the problem with Zone of Truth was not that it could used in or out of combat, but that it's actual existence forces the worldbuilder to deal with its existence.



I acknowledge that you see it as a problem, yet somehow people survived (and even had fun!) with this "problem" for years, and continue to do so in 3.5, Pathfinder, etc. Just saying...



wrecan said:


> So let's try it again. How is it that 4e has worldbuilding issues in a quantity equal or greater than 3e's issues?



The quality of the issue is different, not the quantity.

Hypnotism is defined as doing X + Y *in combat*. We know that a wizard can only cause X + Y to happen due to the stress and confused hectic nature of combat.

So, what can this fictionally undefined Hypnotism power do outside of combat, when the wizard can take it easy and relax? Can he do X2 + Y2 + Z now that he's not under stress?

The answer: Nope. He can do exactly the same thing as he could do in combat.

Before I continue... So far, am I right or wrong?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> I acknowledge that you see it as a problem, yet somehow people survived



I didn't say it was an insurmountable problem, simply one that had to be addressed.



> Hypnotism is defined as doing X + Y *in combat*.



No, it is defined as doing X + Y as a standard action.



> We know that a wizard can only cause X + Y to happen due to the stress and confused hectic nature of combat.



That is untrue.  A wizard can use hypnotism any tie he can use a standard action, whether or not he is stressed or hectic.

However, just because there are things he can do out of combat that he can do in combat does not mean that the things he can do in combat he must necessarily do more or (either in quality or quantity) out of combat.



> what can this fictionally undefined Hypnotism power do outside of combat



The same thing it does in combat.


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> That is untrue. A wizard can use hypnotism any tie he can use a standard action, whether or not he is stressed or hectic.



OK, we seem to be stuck here. You indicated that combat paradigm is unique because there are things you can out of combat that you can't do in combat, or that there are things you can't do in combat that you can do out of combat. Your interpretation was that this was because of adrenaline, stress, hecticness of combat limiting the character's options (including magic).

Thus A is all the magical things a wizard can do with X, and B is a subset of A representing the magical things that he can do in combat with X.

So if X = Hypnotism, is A > B, or A = B?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> OK, we seem to be stuck here. You indicated that combat paradigm is unique because there are things you can out of combat that you can't do in combat, or that there are things you can't do in combat that you can do out of combat.



No.  There's nothing you can do in combat you can't do out of combat (though doing it may cause you to be in combat!).  There are things you can do out of combat you can't do in combat, which I explained as the constraints of time and/or concentration.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> No. There's nothing you can do in combat you can't do out of combat (though doing it may cause you to be in combat!). There are things you can do out of combat you can't do in combat, which I explained as the constraints of time and/or concentration.



A is all the magical things a wizard can do with X, and B is a subset of A representing the magical things that he can do in combat with X *due to the constraints of time and/or concentration*

So if X = Hypnotism, is A > B, or A = B?


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## Crazy Jerome

Actually, strictly going according to what the rules say, anything extra that Hypnotism can do out of combat, that it can't do in combat, is undefined. It is up to the GM+players to decide the limits. The rules hint at this around the edges, with p. 42. and the concept of a five minute rest restoring an encounter power used outside of combat. 

Because I vastly prefer magic that augments skills rather than replaces them, at my table, I'll push really hard to force all such additional non-combat use into skill checks or skill challenges--preferably as an aid to it. There are already rules for that, too--you can get anywhere from a +2 to +5 bonus to a skill check via situation--which would include powers. This makes hypnotism into something that can be cleverly used to augment an existing social check (and perhaps perception checks, too). 

Another table might want more robust effects.  To the extent that you decide that it being called "hypnotism" means that it can do these robust effects, it is up to your table to deal with any side effects.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Actually, strictly going according to what the rules say, anything extra that Hypnotism can do out of combat, that it can't do in combat, is undefined. It is up to the GM+players to decide the limits. The rules hint at this around the edges, with p. 42. and the concept of a five minute rest restoring an encounter power used outside of combat.



That's what I what aiming for, and is what I meant by above (A > B).

If wrecan is/had been with me so far, my next baby step is to ask that no matter how you define A (=all the things hypnotism can do outside of combat), it has no affect on B (=what you can do inside combat).

Thus combat is a selectively permeable membrane. It passes mechanical information from combat to out-of-combat, but it doesn't accept mechanical information from out-of-combat into combat *no matter how out-of-combat is defined*

Am I right or wrong so far?


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> That's what I what aiming for, and is what I meant by above (A > B). I seem to have great difficulty with wrecan on simple things like this.
> 
> If wrecan is/had been with me so far, my next baby step is to ask that no matter how you define A (=all the things hypnotism can do outside of combat), it has no affect on B (=what you can do inside combat).
> 
> Thus combat is a selectively permeable membrane. It passes mechanical information from combat to out-of-combat, but it doesn't accept mechanical information from out-of-combat into combat *no matter how out-of-combat is defined*
> 
> Am I right or wrong so far?




As I see it, technically correct, but missing a critical piece of context: If you have decided at your table to expand to a more robust usage of powers out of combat, then it isn't much of a jump to selectively allow some of that to go back into the combat portion. After all, you've *already* taken responsibility for allowing "magic" to do some things outside the rules. Presumably, then, you'll be somewhat comfortable extending that ruling back into combat. 

This gets fuzzy of course. Because p. 42 is usable in combat--maybe mainly usable in combat--a character can already push the definition of powers through it. That is, per RAW, you can't just use Hypnotism to get some other effect that sound "hypnotic" or corresponds to some prior editions more wide open rulings. But you can use p. 42 in conjunction with a power to do something "hypnotic" that might not be acceptable with the power or p. 42 alone. 

For example, even running a fairly strict game, I'd be prone to let someone use the p. 42 guidelines and hypnotism to inflict a daze or slow effect. You just have to work for it a little more than using directly what the power says on the tin, and the bonuses might not be quite as good using p. 42. 

That's with my current group, who would never dream of abusing narrative freedom granted like that. The more they did, the more I'd let up too. I like it if this kind of thing grows as the campaign develops. With an D&D Encounters group (not that I'd ever run such), I'd be a lot more strict--at least until I got to know the people. Seems like there is nearly always "that guy" at such an event who always tried to find a way to abuse the letter of the rules, and however much of the spirit of the rules you left within his grasp. Part of the 4E design was to help the poor novice GM come down hard on "that guy"--until the GM got his feet under him.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> As I see it, technically correct, but missing a critical piece of context: If you have decided at your table to expand to a more robust usage of powers out of combat, then it isn't much of a jump to selectively allow some of that to go back into the combat portion. After all, you've *already* taken responsibility for allowing "magic" to do some things outside the rules. Presumably, then, you'll be somewhat comfortable extending that ruling back into combat.



Deja vu as I've touched upon this before with someone else in a previous page. I believe the most likely conclusion was that affecting combat rules in this way is too risky and game-unbalancing.



> For example, even running a fairly strict game, I'd be prone to let someone use the p. 42 guidelines and hypnotism to inflict a daze or slow effect.
> <snip>
> That's with my current group, who would never dream of abusing narrative freedom granted like that. The more they did, the more I'd let up too. I like it if this kind of thing grows as the campaign develops.



I LOVE your thinking, but if it was a good idea to use daze or slow with Hypnotism then why wouldn't the designers have thought of that themselves? There must be a game balance issue, and thus it can't be suitable for normal 4E gameplay.

Is it fair, then, to assume that the above is an exception and not the norm?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> So if X = Hypnotism, is A > B, or A = B?



A=B, as should be obvious if you read the bit I wrote that you quoted.  Sheesh.

Of course, you can always improvise additional effects using page 42 as you and CrazyJerome indicate.  But if you do that, and decide the improvisations work differently in and out of combat, then it's up to you to justify those distinctions.

How is any of this pertinent to the topic?  And what does it have to do with Zones of Truth, Choruses of Truth, and world building?


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> A=B, as should be obvious if you read the bit I wrote that you quoted. Sheesh.



Yet IIRC with Baleful Polymorph, A > B

That is, a wizard might be able to turn people into frogs for longer periods of time outside of combat, but once in combat, due to constraints of time and concentration, he can only turn them into frogs for approx 6 seconds

Yet with Hypnotism, A = B by default

So is Hypnotism not affected by constraints of time and concentration, or does Baleful Polymorph out of combat only turn people into frogs outside of combat for approx 6 seconds.



> Of course, you can always improvise additional effects using page 42 as you and CrazyJerome indicate. But if you do that, and decide the improvisations work differently in and out of combat, then it's up to you to justify those distinctions.



Do you agree that in an average game these improvisations are not used? Your question does seem to imply that it's not the norm in your experience.


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## Crazy Jerome

My emphasis added for the sticking point:



wrecan said:


> A=B, as should be obvious if you read the bit I wrote that you quoted. Sheesh.
> 
> Of course, you can always improvise additional effects using page 42 as you and CrazyJerome indicate. But if you do that, and decide the improvisations work differently in and out of combat, then *it's up to you to justify those distinctions*.
> 
> How is any of this pertinent to the topic? And what does it have to do with Zones of Truth, Choruses of Truth, and world building?




And Yesway, that also answers your question about why the designers didn't include it. First, daze and slow aren't always ok, running unhampered. Second, even if they were, you can't possibly include everything that would be ok, or conditionally ok. And finally, if you include a whole bunch of stuff, this detracts from the fact that they expect you to make some of those justifications yourself. A designer can never do as good a job of that as you can. (This, BTW, is the most telling criticism to the sheer bloody number of powers--and one that many 4E fans have made in one form or another.)

I think it is pertinent to the topic because to "justify those distinctions," in 4E you have to use somewhat different methods--in the social contract, if nothing else. In prior versions, people could gloss over the justifying if they wanted. In fairness, they had all different kinds of motivations for so glossing, but some of those motivations were definitely not the kind that others at the table appreciated. See abusing _fabricate_ and the 3E craft and equipment rules.

Some people have trouble (or no interest) in adapting to the justifications that 4E expects. Others have trouble understanding how some of the rest of us are using it. I think it seems terribly constricted to them.

Me, I see it as liberating. Even with a table of good folks, prone to clever play but not to abuse the spirit of the system, all those little details littered in the spells as fluff never seemed to quite work out right. That is, they work well enough if you make a ruling and keep and eye on them, but they can't run unfettered. If I'm going to need to keep an eye on them, might as well make the base simple. 

tl;dr version: It has always been true that if you allowed something like _zone of truth,_ then you were responsible for not letting it abuse your campaign. 4E has simply made that transparent and explicit--by means that require you to think about some of the edge cases yourself, rather than "clever" being defined as "caster memorized the right spell this morning and thought to cast it just now."  And then "dealing with it" being defined as the GM being a preemptive wizard, vastly experienced, or willing to ad hoc and ad lib his way out of trouble.


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Do you agree that in an average game these improvisations are not used? Your question does seem to imply that it's not the norm in your experience.




In 3E, the trouble cases get used anywhere that the GM or players don't put a stop to them. This also means that all the improvisations get used--until the table puts a stop to them.

In 4E, the improvisations are used when the table actively decides to use them. This means that the trouble case don't get used except when they sneak into the game.

If your table is heavy improv and low on trouble (abusing the spirit of the rules), then 3E and 4E can work equally well here. There is a shift in 4E of responsibility for how and when it gets handled, and this might mean that one or the other will work better for a given table or person. For people like me that prefer the 4E take on the responsibilities, the switch actually leads to more improvisation. YMMV.

To the extent that a table has trouble, then the people that dealt with in 3E are not going to be inclined to let it back in easily in 4E, and thus I would expect such improvisations to occur less often. I'd also expect a dog to stop coming when you call it, if you whack it with a stick every time it did before. 

To the extent that a table has a GM nervous about improvisation for some other reason besides trouble (e.g. heavy focus on playing strict and literal RAW for the sake of playing strict RAW), but otherwise has a pretty good game going--then the 3E to 4E shift is probably not going to work well. And why would it? The 3E design was centered on helping him out!  He had a nice steak bone before, but now you want him to go with this low-grade plastic model?


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## Pentius

Yesway Jose said:


> Yet IIRC with Baleful Polymorph, A > B
> 
> That is, a wizard might be able to turn people into frogs for longer periods of time outside of combat, but once in combat, due to constraints of time and concentration, he can only turn them into frogs for approx 6 seconds
> 
> Yet with Hypnotism, A = B by default
> 
> So is Hypnotism not affected by constraints of time and concentration, or does Baleful Polymorph out of combat only turn people into frogs outside of combat for approx 6 seconds.




If I recall pemerton's example correctly, with Baleful Polymorph A did equal B by default.  Allowing the npc wizard to do more with it outside of combat is the same thing, in essence, as allowing your wizard with the Hypnotism power to do Hypnoticy stuff outside combat.  I think he also alluded to having a more permanent version as a ritual, which would be mechanically a different option than the specific Baleful Polymorph power.

And a note on these sorts of rulings and/or houserules.  You keep mentioning being afraid of breaking the balance, but I think that is something you can relax on.  The game designers didn't hand out daze and such on an at will basis, but they also have different design considerations than a DM making a ruling or house rule.  The game designers need to make a game playable by many people, including those who absolutely will abuse abusable things if they can.  At your table, though, the house rule only needs to be balanced against the players present.  It doesn't really matter if a houserule could be abused, only if the players do abuse it.  Even then, when making houserules, I generally go with a disclaimer like, "We're gonna try doing it like this, but if you guys abuse this nice new toy I am giving you, I will take it away."


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Yet IIRC with Baleful Polymorph, A > B



You recall incorrectly.  Nothing in baleful polymorph's description indicates it operates differently outside combat than within it.



> does Baleful Polymorph out of combat only turn people into frogs outside of combat for approx 6 seconds.



Yes.



> Do you agree that in an average game these improvisations are not used?



I do not agree.  I wrote an article on improvising terrain because I felt that DMs were improvising actions in the average game.

But will you answer my question?  What does this have to do with world-building?


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I think it is pertinent to the topic because to "justify those distinctions," in 4E you have to use somewhat different methods--in the social contract, if nothing else. In prior versions, people could gloss over the justifying if they wanted. In fairness, they had all different kinds of motivations for so glossing, but some of those motivations were definitely not the kind that others at the table appreciated. See abusing _fabricate_ and the 3E craft and equipment rules.



You wrote before that page 42 "hints at this around the edges" about defining out-of-combat properties for a power. So it seems adjucating combat vs out-of-combat is not well understood in average gameplay.

Many games are being played to the letter of the rules. Of those many games, many DMs/players may not have gotten the "hint around the edges" and if they did, they might be afraid to experiment with that social contract and affect game balance.

You then wrote that for everyone else who does get it, 4E expects you to make some of those justifications yourself due to a social contract.

What I'm seeing here is a kind double standard if you will...

On one hand, 4E doesn't do a good job of clarifying page 42, or maybe not many people are seeing it, and many people instead play by the rules, and for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.

Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.

The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does. 

I'm not saying that YOU said all of the above, but it's got to be one or the other -- if 4E is allowed to use a clause to escape from [some scenario] then 3E is allowed to use the same clause to escape from [zone of truth, fabricate, etc.]


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## Yesway Jose

Pentius said:


> And a note on these sorts of rulings and/or houserules. You keep mentioning being afraid of breaking the balance, but I think that is something you can relax on. The game designers didn't hand out daze and such on an at will basis, but they also have different design considerations than a DM making a ruling or house rule. The game designers need to make a game playable by many people, including those who absolutely will abuse abusable things if they can. At your table, though, the house rule only needs to be balanced against the players present. It doesn't really matter if a houserule could be abused, only if the players do abuse it. Even then, when making houserules, I generally go with a disclaimer like, "We're gonna try doing it like this, but if you guys abuse this nice new toy I am giving you, I will take it away."



This is great, but forum users do not or may not represent the average gameplay. I recall an anectode of a WoTC employee ruling that a power cannot be used on an object because the spell only affects creatures. There was some controversy and some backpedalling after IIRC. I do not think that this thread in general is all that useful if everyone is discussing their game philosophy if it doesn't match the average gameplay philosophy, if such can be defined.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> I do not agree. I wrote an article on improvising terrain because I felt that DMs were improvising actions in the average game.



So why did you get frustrated with my example of Hypnotism in combat being houseruled to include falling prone as an effect, and it was ruining the fun for everyone, and so and so. There must be some sort of limit on houserules vs fun and game balance.



> But will you answer my question? What does this have to do with world-building?



Not yet. I'm running out of time, and I've gotten no work accomplished today.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.
> 
> Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.



And this is where the world-building aspect comes in.  If you play 4e, then you only have to consider the campaign-altering aspects of individual improvisation you make, and in the vast majority of cases, that won't happen.

With 3e, the campaign-altering aspects, such as Zone of Truth and Fabricate, and others are hidden in the rules.  It might not become apparent that it renders pieces of the game nonsensible until after the mechanic has already been implemented and relied upon and established.  

So, for example, an adventuring party may have been gleefully using Zone of Truth once or twice to extract information from NPCs.  Then, much later, the adventuers find themselves in some Name of the Rose situation at a secluded community of priests, where a murder has occurred.  One of the players pipes up... hey, this place is full of priests?  Why didn't they use Zone of Truth?  The DM suddenly realizes there's no in-game reason.  Now he and the players have to figure out how to undo all that's been done.

4e doesn't have that issue.  Instead, what happens is a player says, "Hey, I worship the god of truth... can I have a ritual that compels people to tell the truth?"  Only at that point, do the DM and players have to contemplate how this might affect the campaign world.

For 3e, the campaign issue is ubiquitous yet also hidden.  Every campaign world, theoretically, either has to figure out why wizards aren't getting rich off Walls of Iron, why masons exist in worlds of Lyres of Building, and why every court isn't equipped with a Zone of Truth item and a collection of Helms of Opposite Alignment, as well as a host of other problematic spells that many DMs may not come across, but may stumble across after it's too late, or house rule them.  In 4e, the campaign is built around cinematic heroic fantasy.  If your campaign world incorporates that style, you're probably fine, and then you only have to worry about altering your campaign world when you improvise.

I still have no idea what this has to do with dissociation.  Now we seem to be discussing broad mechanics that allow more creativity with the risk of imbalance and campaign damage, against narrow mechanics.



> I'm not saying that YOU said all of the above, but it's got to be one or the other



No, it doesn't, because the social contract operates very differently when you discover a problem after it manifests in a campaign vs. anticipating a problem as you improvise.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> So why did you get frustrated with my example of Hypnotism in combat being houseruled to include falling prone as an effect



I don't believe I ever said I was frustrated with your houserule.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> For 3e, the campaign issue is ubiquitous yet also hidden. Every campaign world, theoretically, either has to figure out why wizards aren't getting rich off Walls of Iron, why masons exist in worlds of Lyres of Building, and why every court isn't equipped with a Zone of Truth item and a collection of Helms of Opposite Alignment, as well as a host of other problematic spells that many DMs may not come across, but may stumble across after it's too late, or house rule them. In 4e, the campaign is built around cinematic heroic fantasy. If your campaign world incorporates that style, you're probably fine, and then you only have to worry about altering your campaign world when you improvise.



In 4E, you houserule Hypnotism to include daze/slow/prone, or Baleful Polymorph to extend frog-time, and then everyone's happy with the social contract, and those paradigms contribute to the world-building, and then you find that, like zone of truth, that it's affecting the game adversely, so then you take away the candy that you gave to the baby? And that's better than 3E's zone of truth?


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> In 4E, you houserule Hypnotism to include daze/slow/prone, or Baleful Polymorph to extend frog-time, and then everyone's happy with the social contract, and those paradigms contribute to the world-building, and then you find that, like zone of truth, that it's affecting the game adversely, so then you take away the candy that you gave to the baby? And that's better than 3E's zone of truth?



Yes!  Because when you play 3e -- and more specifically when you build a world for 3e -- there's no reason for you to contemplate the consequences of Zones of Truth, Fabricate, Lyres of Building, etc.  When you houserule Hypnotism, you know you're houseruling Hypnotism so you can spend some time contemplating the consequences.

Moreover, the problem you identify in 4e also applies to houseruling in 3e.  If you houserule in 3e, you must contemplate the consequences.  If you don't then you may have the same problems you do in 4e.  IOW, 3e has the same problems as 4e in this regard, and additional problems that 4e does not have.

What does this have to do with dissociation?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> You then wrote that for everyone else who does get it, 4E expects you to make some of those justifications yourself due to a social contract.
> 
> What I'm seeing here is a kind double standard if you will...
> 
> On one hand, 4E doesn't do a good job of clarifying page 42, or maybe not many people are seeing it, and many people instead play by the rules, and for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.
> 
> Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.
> 
> The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does.




That 4E largely avoids problem X, which is very present in 3E, does not say that 4E is problem free.  It just says that 4E does a better job than 3E of handling X, out of the book.  Nor does the claim assume that what 4E did to get this better handling of X is all roses for everyone, all the time.  And in fact, some of what 4E changed that handles X so well does lead to different problems.

But different problems are different problems.  3E has some system issues that, if they affect you, can *only* be solved via a combination of house rules and/or social contract avoidance of legal but troublesome behavior.  (Don't abuse _fabricate_, because if you do, we'll be forced to house rule your literal-minded abuse out of the game.)  

4E, on the other hand, is trying to do two tough things at once:

1. Make the game, in its simplest but still complicated form, as accessible to beginners, especially beginner GMs, as possible. 

2. Have a tight, well-integrated system for action adventure that sings in the right hands, with improvisation driving the narrative.  

The problem is that the "social contract" for those two audiences is going to be extremely different, and the 4E advice largely fails to distinguish them.  That is, the problem in 4E related to this dicussion is not so much a problem in the *rules* as a problem in the *advice* on how to navigate house rules and/or the social contract.

Nor should this be surprising.  In the tradition of D&D, people have been writing quite good advice for how to deal with things like _fabricate_ since the first players got a glimmer at the wording of the spells or magic items.  Don't tell grandma how to suck eggs--she has it down, thanks!  4E takes away the problem that needs that advice, but then has made a freshman effort at explaining how you encourage people to improvise the narrative.  Gygax didn't perfectly cover all the bases on how to handle certain behaviors in 1E, either--though he was quite explicit that the DM would have to handle it.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Yes! Because when you play 3e, there's no reason for you to contemplate Zones of Truth. When you houserule Hypnotism, you know you're houseruling Hypnotism so you can spend some time contemplating the consequences.



You might contemplate the consequences, but no DM will predict everything. Unlike designers, you may not have time at the gaming table to properly think it through. By the time you've given the players your consent, and they get used to it, and it impacts your world-building, it's too late. Now you're stuck with the same issue that comic books... what do you call it when a comic book has to retroactively change the story in order to reconcile divergent paths? recon?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Now you're stuck with the same issue that comic books... what do you call it when a comic book has to retroactively change the story in order to reconcile divergent paths? recon?




Retcon.  Remember much earlier when I said that people who were prone to play in a narrative fashion already had tools in place to deal with issues arising out of players improvising narrative?  A retcon is one such tool.  It is a blunt one, and not something you would use all the time, but also very effective when appropriate.  

And if you think about it, why would people who claim to prioritze some player control over the narrative balk at having editors?


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Retcon. Remember much earlier when I said that people who were prone to play in a narrative fashion already had tools in place to deal with issues arising out of players improvising narrative? A retcon is one such tool. It is a blunt one, and not something you would use all the time, but also very effective when appropriate.
> 
> And if you think about it, why would people who claim to prioritze some player control over the narrative balk at having editors?



I'm still skeptical. If the houseruling has repercussions beyond initial expections, then you take the candy away from the baby AND retcon it in your game world.

Yet when WoTC updates the system and nerfs powers, there is much grumbling from a significant portion of the 4E fanbase.

The only difference between 3E vs 4E in this regard is that in 3E the players have a more solidified understanding of the game world from the start, where in 4E, it's more ad hoc and you'll just deal with problems on the fly. Brushing problems under the carpet to deal with them later doesn't make 4E exempt from worldbuilding issues any more than 3E IMO.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> So a wizard has the time to say "attack" but not the time to say "fall down"?




People walk around normally.  Adventurers hit on instinct.  Until the 20th century, people seldom throw themselves to the floor.  Therefore prone is quite a lot harder to induce through that method



Yesway Jose said:


> To rephrase, there were things you could do in previous editions (ie., full round casting) that are not permissible in 4E, even though the fictional interpretation is the same. I never said the interpretation was unreasonable, I questioned that your interpretation invalidates my comment to Neonchameleon about worldbuilding or distinguishes the 4E combat paradigm from 3E.
> 
> I meant the wizard can[not] hypnotize the target to fall down. (Specifically, the wizard says [telepathically to the target] "fall down", not the player to the wizard).






Yesway Jose said:


> My point was "...which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding".




*It doesn't have to.*  In 3e NPCs used PC classes.  Every single low level spell could be cast by many people in the world.  In 4e, NPCs do _not_ use PC clases.  Therefore for the purpose of worldbuilding you do not need to worry about what a very few oddities can do.  Worldbuilding is about the _world_.  And 4e doesn't make powers like hypnotism ubiquitous.



> Thus not making 4E any easier than 3E in the original discussion with Neonchamelon about 3E powers like Zone of Truth, etc. which is the original point.




As has been pointed out you have completely missed the point about Zone of Truth and world building.  The point about Zone of Truth is that any third level cleric in the world can make it impossible for anyone who isn't a seventh level bard impossible to lie unless they cast Dispel Magic (telling enough).  If your legal system (or espionage apparatus) in 3e is not using Zone of Truth you need to explain exactly why.  And that's just one world-breaking spell.  By separating PC rules from NPC rules, even if something as world-changing as Zone of Truth existed in 4e it would not have a forcible impact on the wider game world.



Yesway Jose said:


> I LOVE your thinking, but if it was a good idea to use daze or slow with Hypnotism then why wouldn't the designers have thought of that themselves? There must be a game balance issue, and thus it can't be suitable for normal 4E gameplay.




I can tell you now that slow would not be a game balance issue.  (Daze might).



Yesway Jose said:


> You wrote before that page 42 "hints at this around the edges" about defining out-of-combat properties for a power. So it seems adjucating combat vs out-of-combat is not well understood in average gameplay.
> 
> Many games are being played to the letter of the rules. Of those many games, many DMs/players may not have gotten the "hint around the edges" and if they did, they might be afraid to experiment with that social contract and affect game balance.




If a game is played to the letter of the 4e rules, there is not one single problem.  Combat powers do _exactly_ the same out of combat that they do in combat.  Slide or force a MBA (probably with fists).  



> What I'm seeing here is a kind double standard if you will...
> 
> On one hand, 4E doesn't do a good job of clarifying page 42, or maybe not many people are seeing it, and many people instead play by the rules, and for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.
> 
> Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.
> 
> The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does.




This is not even slightly a double standard.  4e with the standard "We will use the rules as written.  Out of combat things do _exactly_ what they do in combat _works_.  And it still works irrespectively of whether the PCs push things to the limit or which limit they push things to.  You can go to any Encounters game in Britain or America and play this default style and although the game won't be the best game ever, it will be playable and fun.

3e on the other hand you absolutely need a social contract that says not to do things that are legal and encouraged in the rules.  And because it's hard to judge intent of the designers, this contract is going to be different at different tables.  The two cases are not equivalent.



> I'm not saying that YOU said all of the above, but it's got to be one or the other -- if 4E is allowed to use a clause to escape from [some scenario] then 3E is allowed to use the same clause to escape from [zone of truth, fabricate, etc.]




Except the clauses are incredibly different.  The scenarios are too - 3e is broken out of the box and needs a contract to fix.  4e is fine out of the box and needs a contract to extend.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> I'm still skeptical. If the houseruling has repercussions beyond initial expections, then you take the candy away from the baby AND retcon it in your game world.




No. If the houseruling has such repercussions, you *might* retcon as a way of dealing with it.  If it is serious enough.  I don't recall retconning for something that trivial, but I don't remember every such thing I did.

More likely, you let the narrative stand, and then modify the house rule to keep it from being a problem going forward.  The players "got away with something" here and now, but it isn't a killer as long as it doesn't become repetitive.

Also, I believe that I understand the skepticism, but as Wrecan and I have both indicated, there is a huge difference between a laundry list of problems for which you must be aware versus the much shorter list of the ones that you have chosen to risk in this adventure or campaign.  For world-building, this is even more true, as the laundry list magnifies geometrically with the number of important characters involved.

Calvin Coolidge said that if you saw 10 problems coming down the road towards you, 9 of them would run into the ditch before getting to you.  That was *not* a "don't worry, be happy," ignore all the problems piece of advice.  Rather, it is that if waste a bunch of energy trying to solve all 10 when you first see them, you'll probably do a lousy job.  And then you won't have enough left to handle the one that makes it to the point where you can effectively do something about it.  And if you are wrong and get blindsided by problem #11 coming down a side road--well, sucks to be you if you've got no resources left.

In life, we don't always do a good job picking the point at which we "can effectively do something about it."  And we don't get to pick the rules for things anyway.  In a game, we have more control.  But they still were smart enough to realize that you can't say, "you'll never need to deal with problem X in a game of D&D".  In 4E, they said, "when you can effectively do something about it" without wasting a lot of energy is when it matters.

If I invest energy in improvisation on hypnotism, then I care enough about it to pay attention to it and deal with the problems.  And if I find later that I'm wrong, we can always rein it in.  Meanwhile, the laundry list is still way down the road somewhere, and I'll deal with each one as it arises.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Also, I believe that I understand the skepticism, but as Wrecan and I have both indicated, there is a huge difference between a laundry list of problems for which you must be aware versus the much shorter list of the ones that you have chosen to risk in this adventure or campaign. For world-building, this is even more true, as the laundry list magnifies geometrically with the number of important characters involved.



Fair enough. But my problem is that I would have such a huge laundry list for 4E (I don't accept a fiction where people are turned for frogs for only 6 seconds outside of combat or hypnotism doesn't live up to its name), and less time than the designers to think through all the consequences, that the end result is even more problematic for my world-building.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> You might contemplate the consequences, but no DM will predict everything.



The problem is the same with 3e and 4e (and every setting) in the context of houseruling.  At best, it's a wash.  The problem is not the same with respect to fixing published mechanics that affect worldbuilding.



Yesway Jose said:


> Fair enough. But my problem is that I would have such a huge laundry list for 4E (I don't accept a fiction where people are turned for frogs for only 6 seconds outside of combat or hypnotism doesn't live up to its name)



Except this sounds like a problem with nomenclature.  You don't like that spells with broad-sounding names have narrow effects.  So change the name.  I still don't see what this has to do with world-building.



> the end result is even more problematic for my world-building.



What does your dislike for the names of some powers have to do with world-building?


----------



## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> People walk around normally. Adventurers hit on instinct. Until the 20th century, people seldom throw themselves to the floor. Therefore prone is quite a lot harder to induce through that method



Oh don't even get me started on that one... 



> In 3e NPCs used PC classes. Every single low level spell could be cast by many people in the world. In 4e, NPCs do _not_ use PC clases. Therefore for the purpose of worldbuilding you do not need to worry about what a very few oddities can do. Worldbuilding is about the _world_. And 4e doesn't make powers like hypnotism ubiquitous.



How the PCs integrate into the fiction is part of my worldbuilding. The PCs aren't aliens. Harry Potter has potential access the same spells and implements as the rest of the school, maybe not the exact same spell affinities for every individual, but there are similar paradigms for everyone. Harry Potter's Baleful Polymorph need not be unrecognizable and alien to other magicians.



> As has been pointed out you have completely missed the point about Zone of Truth and world building. The point about Zone of Truth is that any third level cleric in the world can make it impossible for anyone who isn't a seventh level bard impossible to lie unless they cast Dispel Magic (telling enough).



Honestly, that problem has never appeared in any of my games, so it's not a problem for me any more than Hypnotism is not a problem for you.



> If a game is played to the letter of the 4e rules, there is not one single problem. Combat powers do _exactly_ the same out of combat that they do in combat.



For me, that IS a problem, but I hadn't gone that road yet because we went down the page 42 road.



> Except the clauses are incredibly different. The scenarios are too - 3e is broken out of the box and needs a contract to fix. 4e is fine out of the box and needs a contract to extend.



I'm sure there's plenty of people playing 1e to 3.5e to PF who disagree the above, so you forgot to add "IMO YMMV"


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Fair enough. But my problem is that I would have such a huge laundry list for 4E (I don't accept a fiction where people are turned for frogs for only 6 seconds outside of combat or hypnotism doesn't live up to its name), and less time than the designers to think through all the consequences, that the end result is even more problematic for my world-building.




My suggestion is try it some time (the strategy, not necessarily 4E).  You don't fix everything on the list.  You fix the things that players have chosen, that matter, as they matter.  

In fact, that is the way I played 3E too, and all prior versions.  But I'm an experienced game master, that has known what I liked for a long time.  I'm fairly certain a lot of experienced world builders do the same things, with 3E and earlier.  Don't mistake a simple system with lots of boundaries protecting beginners from themselves as ironclad walls that you can't cross when you feel comfortable.  And what is the worst that is going to happen?  You get overly generous with a bunch of 4E powers, and the game gets out of hand?  How is that any different than the same problem in 1E or 2E or 3E?


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Except this sounds like a problem with nomenclature. You don't like that spells with broad-sounding names have narrow effects. So change the name. I still don't see what this has to do with world-building.



I don't like broad-sounding names that fail to live up the creative wonderful promises they hint at, nor do I like the narrow binary effects. And those narrow binary effects inform out-of-combat too. 6 seconds frogs indeed -- can you imagine the point of seeing a wizard in a movie turn a man into a frog for 6 seconds out of combat?



> What does your dislike for the names of some powers have to do with world-building?



I'm exhausted. No more for today. Goodbye.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> those narrow binary effects inform out-of-combat too. 6 seconds frogs indeed -- can you imagine the point of seeing a wizard in a movie turn a man into a frog for 6 seconds out of combat?



A *stunned *frog.  Yes.  It's plenty of time for his swordsman pal to impale him on the tip of his spear.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> that problem has never appeared in any of my games, so it's not a problem for me any more than Hypnotism is not a problem for you.



Just because you haven't experienced it doesn't mean it's not a problem.  Do you not understand why Zone of Truth, Fabricate, Wall of Iron, ESP, Lyre of Building and the like should have an impact on how a world develops, even if you haven't personally experienced it?

I mean, I haven't experienced dissociation in 4e, but I'm certainly not saying "I haven't experienced it, so it's not an issue" to people who say they have.  In fact, I think people would be rightfully insulted if I were to dismiss someone's experience in that way.

I'll assume that this is simply a result of your exhaustion.  We'll continue this when you're better rested.


----------



## frozenwastes

This thread has gotten too big for me to catch up.

So I don't know if anyone has posted a link to this:

anyway: 3 Resolution Systems

And the entire series:

anyway: The Dice & Clouds series from 2009


----------



## Hussar

BryonD said:


> /snip
> 
> I do find it a bit gratifying but also frustrating that we can have 40 pages heated debates over 4E fans being outraged over the idea that someone would dare say "4E doesn't feel D&D" and then we turn around and everyone suddenly agrees with the points that constitute that claim and don't accept that it has ever been challenged.




There is a significant difference between "4e doesn't feel like D&D" and "4e is exactly the same play experience as all prior editions".


----------



## Hussar

Yesway Jose said:


> That's a good thing for me! That's what great sci-fi is all about -- imagining how technology transforms society. Most D&D did a bad job of it, but the potential was there and it could be fun to explore.
> 
> How does 4E handle this -- because it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong -- that spells only work in a certain way in the heat of combat, and then are either undefined or don't work at all outside of combat, which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding.




By and large, they don't because virtually all the powers have no impact on the game world.  You don't HAVE zone of truth.  Healing powers are typically based on healing surges which are a limited resource in 4e.  The clerical "Cure" spells actually might be a bit problematic, but, it's not guaranteed that every cleric will have them and they are a bit higher level, so you can dodge the question pretty easily.


----------



## Hussar

Just caught up on my reading.



			
				YeswayJose said:
			
		

> Honestly, that problem has never appeared in any of my games, so it's not a problem for me any more than Hypnotism is not a problem for you.




Why hasn't this problem occured in your games?  I'm not being snarky here, I'm honestly curious.  Is it that you run a very low magic setting outside the default 3e assumptions, so that Zone of Truth isn't really an issue?  Or do you simply hand wave it away and none of your players have bothered worrying about it?  Or something else?

How you build your world will inform a lot of how the D&D magic system affects that world.  If you play with the default 3e assumptions, particularly the 3e demographic assumptions, then these questions are very pertinent.  Most DM's and players, I think, just ignore them because it would be such a PITA to deal with all of them.

I'll stand by the idea that disociated mechanics makes for MUCH easier world building because all of the above stuff doesn't have to be handwaved away.  A quick perusal of the 0 to 2nd level cleric and wizard spell lists shows a plethora of really world altering effects if they were actually taken into account.  Most people that I've played with simply don't care.

But handwaving the problem away doesn't suddenly make one system better at world building than another.


----------



## JamesonCourage

Hussar said:


> I'll stand by the idea that disociated mechanics makes for MUCH easier world building because all of the above stuff doesn't have to be handwaved away.




I think that has more to do with the types of powers than with whether or not they're dissociated. If 3.X magic was dissociated, it would still pose the same problems to you that it does now.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> my next baby step is to ask that no matter how you define A (=all the things hypnotism can do outside of combat), it has no affect on B (=what you can do inside combat).
> 
> Thus combat is a selectively permeable membrane. It passes mechanical information from combat to out-of-combat, but it doesn't accept mechanical information from out-of-combat into combat *no matter how out-of-combat is defined*





Crazy Jerome said:


> As I see it, technically correct, but missing a critical piece of context: If you have decided at your table to expand to a more robust usage of powers out of combat, then it isn't much of a jump to selectively allow some of that to go back into the combat portion. After all, you've *already* taken responsibility for allowing "magic" to do some things outside the rules. Presumably, then, you'll be somewhat comfortable extending that ruling back into combat.
> 
> This gets fuzzy of course. Because p. 42 is usable in combat--maybe mainly usable in combat--a character can already push the definition of powers through it.



I agree that page 42 is key here.

I haven't had the Hypnotism issue come up, but I have had to decide - Can Thunderwave (which deals Thunder damage and a push effect) blow its target through an open window? can Twist of Space (which deals untyped damage and teleports its target) be used to rescue a person trapped inside a mirror, or inside an extra-dimensional space with transluscent walls? Will using Fireshroud (which deals fire damage to enemies) in a library set fire to the books? What about making a close burst with a polearm - will that knock over the scroll racks? And can a close burst with a polearm be used, while standing in a pond, to wedge stone blocks at the bottom of the pond into the spring that feeds it, so as to stop the flow of water?

In each case the answer has been to require a skill check at an appropriate DC - Arcana with the spells, Acrobatics (in the library) and Athletics (in the pond) for the polearm - and in the case of the Thunderwave, when the check was failed but the attack was a crit, the table decided to let the target be blown through the window in any event!



Yesway Jose said:


> I LOVE your thinking, but if it was a good idea to use daze or slow with Hypnotism then why wouldn't the designers have thought of that themselves? There must be a game balance issue, and thus it can't be suitable for normal 4E gameplay.



I don't think it's particularly an issue of balance. As I see it, it's about sleekness and ease of design. 4e's approach, for better or worse, is that some core features of a power will be spelled out in detail, and the more contextually variable stuff - or the stuff where the GM might want to set stakes based on context (eg you can daze with your hypnotism, but if you fail your Arcana check you'll be granting combat advantage yourself as you get caught up in your own sophisticated gestures) - is left to the GM to adjudicate via page 42.

It's a halfway house between the detail of 3E's spell descriptions (which appear to incorproate all the sage advice and other contextually-governed modifications that've been identified over the years) and the completely open-ended descriptors of a game like HeroWars/Quest or Maelstrom Storytelling, where every use of a descriptor requires adjudication by the participants as to exactly what it will and won't permit to be achieved in the fiction.

Whether such a halfway house is fun to play is, no doubt, a matter of taste. Whether Hypnotism is a particularly well-designed power within that overall design paradigm is another question again - it might be better if it had text closer to that for the Prestidigitation cantrip. But the logic of the design seems fairly clear to me.



Yesway Jose said:


> Do you agree that in an average game these improvisations are not used? Your question does seem to imply that it's not the norm in your experience.



I expect that they're not the norm at Encounters or similar playing-with-strangers events, for the sorts of reasons Crazy Jerome has flagged - there aren't the shared expectations, social contract etc to support them. I don't think HeroWars would play very well in that sort of context either.

Whether they are common or not in other more serious 4e games I have no idea. My players - who came into 4e from steady diets of 3E and/or Rolemaster - haven't had any trouble. They just look down their character sheets, see the sorts of things their PCs are obviously capable of doing, and say "OK, can I do this?" I've given some examples above, and other examples less immediately related to powers (like using oil to enhance a slide effect, and using Religion to get combat advantage against a wight) upthread.



Yesway Jose said:


> Many games are being played to the letter of the rules. Of those many games, many DMs/players may not have gotten the "hint around the edges" and if they did, they might be afraid to experiment with that social contract and affect game balance.



Just out of curiosity - what is your evidence for this (outside of the context of Encounters and convention games, where I take it for granted that it is obviously true).



Yesway Jose said:


> Yet IIRC with Baleful Polymorph, A > B
> 
> That is, a wizard might be able to turn people into frogs for longer periods of time outside of combat, but once in combat, due to constraints of time and concentration, he can only turn them into frogs for approx 6 seconds



Unless I missed something, the example of Baleful Polymorph was introduced into this thread by me, explaining that - in an actual session that I ran - when the duration ended (as per the mechanical specficiation for the NPC's power), the player of the PC who had been polymorphed narrated this as his god - the Raven Queen - turning him back.

The question of how long a Baleful Polymorph might last if nothing intervened to bring it to an end - whether the Raven Queen or something else - has not come up in my game. Nor has the question of how long a Baleful Polymorph might last if cast not in combat (as a standard action ability) but when performed as some sort of ritual (as far as I know there is no such ritual, but I imagine that it could be a Paragon effect taking 10 minutes or an hour to cast that affects only a helpless target). 



Yesway Jose said:


> The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does.



Just to add to what Neonchameleon, Crazy Jerome and wrecan have said upthread - the contrast is between a system that starts out from a clear and (hopefully) unproblematic base, and then allows self-conscious tweaking and improvisation, and a system that starts out laden with potential problems, and draws attention to the _need_ for tweaking and improvisation only once those problems become manifest. I think that that is a fair description of 4e, and it _seems_ to me to be fair of 3E - but I don't have the same degree of experience with 3E as I do with 4e, so my impression is based as much on reading as on experience, and is based also on my experience with games that are similar in this respect, like AD&D and Rolemaster.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> Again, if you read a book long enough and some archer character achieves a certain nature of result consistently once per day that will stick out.  Describing the actual process of firing an arrow in exactly the same manner for the regular shots and that daily awesome shot doesn't change anything.



Right, but I think I've already established that there won't be such a pattern. X hp of damage is X hp of damage, whether delivered via Twin Strike with a good damage roll and a crit, Biting Volley with no crits, or Shots on the Run with a miss for half damage.

Furthermore, what X hp of damage _means_ is highly variable - was the monster a minion or a solo or something in between? did X hp bloody the target? reduce it to 0 hp?

Depending on the answers to these questions, it may be that the daily is, in the narrative, unimpressive and the Twin Strike - which is actually the killing shot - that seems awesome.



BryonD said:


> the character in the book would not perceive the difference.  And a new reader also would not.  But after a dozen times, maybe more, maybe less, the reader would learn.  And on going back to re-read the book, it would stick out like a sore thumb from the first instance.  Players already know.
> 
> In a pure narrative an awesome event could happen four times in a row then not for three days of trying.  Or it could happen once a day for three days straight.  Or anything else.  The results are not driven any mechanical force outside the narrative.



This is equally true - the variability of hit rolls, crit rolls, damage rolls, plus prior hit point status of a target when a given amount of damage is dealt, all ensure that an awesome event could happen four times in a row, then not for three days (eg the archer rolls lots of misses, crappy damage, no crits, and falls victim to the fighter or the sorcerer kill-stealing every time).

If the PC build rules allowed for a 1x/day play an "I win" card, _and_ this was the only reliable way for a PC to win, then I can see how a pattern might emerge. Even if there was such a card, and it _wasn't_ the only way to win, I can see how a pattern might emerge, although it would perhaps be a less evident pattern.

But the situation for 4e martial PCs (at least, the builds I'm familiar with) isn't even like this. There is no 1x/day "I win" card. Dailies change the odds, and do interesting things, but the vagaries of the dice, in combination with the interpretive complexities of hit points as a resolution mechanic, break the pattern in the fiction.



BryonD said:


> From the archer's point of view the daily can certainly look like at-will.  And the results of the daily will look like an at-will that went awesome.
> 
> But from the people sitting at the table's point of view, the ones who are there to have fun, the daily is a daily.  The difference in result is not the effect of fate on otherwise equivalent activities.  The difference in result is the effect of the mechanically established pattern.



Right. But this doesn't seem to be a pattern in the fiction. It's a pattern in the gameplay. I can definitely see the metagame wedge that is at odds with simulationist preferences. But I can't see any pattern in the narrative.


----------



## pemerton

frozenwastes said:


> This thread has gotten too big for me to catch up.
> 
> So I don't know if anyone has posted a link to this:
> 
> anyway: 3 Resolution Systems



As I understand it, this is the issue that motivates [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s 4e hack - he wants more "rightward arrows" (from the clouds (=fiction) to the boxes (=mechanical gamestate(?))) than he finds in 4e as published.

I think that skill challenge resolution, as written, requires rightward arrows - the GM has to frame the initial situation, and then reframe as part of each new skill roll (PHB p 259; DMG p 74):

Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you [the player] face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter. Then you describe your actions and make checks . . .

You [the GM] describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results.​
I interpret the plurals here as distributed, not collective - ie after each description a player responds, makes a check, and a result is narrated which provides the new environment to which a player then responds - because the other reading - describe the environment, let the players make X checks without any connection to the fiction, then narrate the overall outcome of the challenge, (i) seems to produce a crappy game and (ii) is at odds with the examples of play that are found in the DMG and RC.

Because of the role of the battlemat and tokens/minis, I think that the role of the fiction in 4e combat is more contested. Some people think that the map and tokens are a represenation of the cloud. But obviously they are also part of the mechanical gamestate, and so are boxes.

I think how 4e combat is experienced may depend a lot on whether, for any given group, the stuff that is drawn on the battlemap is first and foremost _fictional_ stuff - trees, rubble, fog, walls with doors and windows, etc - or first and foremost _mechanical_ stuff - cover, difficult terrain, obscuring terrain etc. Perhaps in part because my maps are fairly sketchy and my group uses board game tokens rather than miniatures or even WotC's picture tokens, I think that the fictional stuff prevails. And this is reinforced by the resolution of interactions with it that involve rightward arrows and not just manipulating the map - like climbing walls, overturning furniture, opening or closing doors and shutters, etc.

This in part relates to Vincent Baker's comment #4 on the blog you linked to:

There are a couple of places in the game where there are supposed to be rightward-pointing arrows, but they're functionally optional. I assert them, but then the game's architecture doesn't make them real. So it takes an act of unrewarded, unrequired discipline to use them. I suspect that the people who have the most fun with the Wicked Age have that discipline as a practice or a habit, having learned it from other games.​
To an extent, my group has habits developed playing other games (mostly D&D and Rolemaster). But there are also aspects of the 4e architecture that generate rightward arrows - the rules on damaging objects, for example, make it clear that keywords (like fire, ice, teleportation etc) have fictional signficance. A tree can be set alight, for instance, but a stone pillar can't - so here we have a rightward pointing arrow, from fiction to mechanics, that is not just boxes (in the form of a cover symbol on a map) to boxes. Icy terrain can be used to cross a river, whereas a grasping vines spell that also creates difficult terrain probably can't. And so on.

[MENTION=6679265]Yesway Jose[/MENTION] is suggesting that this sort of approach to the game is not common. I don't know whether or not that is true, but I think approaching the game as a purely boxes-to-boxes exercise, or boxes-to-clouds plus a bit of clouds-to-clouds ("improv drama linking the tactical skirmishes") requiers ignoring things like the signficance of keywords + fiction to action resolution that are expressly called out in the game rules.

Anyway, I'm not sure how (if at all) this relates dissociation, but I do think it's an important issue in game design.


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> Oh don't even get me started on that one...
> 
> How the PCs integrate into the fiction is part of my worldbuilding. The PCs aren't aliens. Harry Potter has potential access the same spells and implements as the rest of the school, maybe not the exact same spell affinities for every individual, but there are similar paradigms for everyone. Harry Potter's Baleful Polymorph need not be unrecognizable and alien to other magicians.




Unfortunately for this case, 4e PCs are sometimes different from NPCs at a fluff level.  The magic Invokers wield is normally unfamiliar or legendary for a very good reason.  And yes, there are similarities.  But the 4e hypnotism spell is just the single most basic spell of its type.  There is a charm person spell.  There are spells that knock people prone with mind control.  Or even go right the way to dominating.  I don't see your issue here.



> that problem has never appeared in any of my games, so it's not a problem for me any more than Hypnotism is not a problem for you.




I don't care if people asking about Zone of Truth and the legal system has never _appeared_.  It's not always an in game problem.  It's a world-building problem.  If there's someone in every villiage able to cast Zone of Truth (and most villiages have at least one 3rd level cleric) then you have a world where whoever wrote the law and _all_ the local judges have curd for brains.  Now it can be handled by giving a reason why they _don't_ use Zone of Truth in the legal system.  But if it isn't handled it makes the inhabitants of your world _stupid._  All of them.  And that is a worldbuilding problem.

And then there is the problem of merchants and Zone of Truth.  Merchants are generally ambitious and just a shade unscrupulous.  The ability to deploy Zone of Truth is a _huge _advantage in negotiations, especially for a relatively honest merchant.  And having a Zone of Truth used on you in many schools of bargaining is _nasty_.  It is, as I have mentioned, _very_ easy to find someone who can cast a Zone of Truth, and it's such a powerful aid to negotiations that once you have one single merchant who hires a cleric for this purpose the idea is going to spread like wildfire for anyone negotiating for _anything_ expensive.  Once one merchant starts using it, they are _all_ going to want to if only in self defence.  Or are going to take countermeasures.  Either way it's going to change their negotiating strategy.  This means that in 3e if Zone of Truth is not being either used or countered by merchants on a routine basis then there is no merchant who is either smart or thoughtful enough to think about how commons can make them be metter merchants.  And never has been.  And having _all _merchants as _stupid_ people is a massive fail in worldbuilding. 

That's just one spell.  And not taking account of it gives you a daft legal system and makes every single one of your merchants stupid.  The first is ... understandable if bad practice.  Making all your merchants stupid and unimaginative is IMO an epic fail in terms of worldbuilding.

Possibly we just have different ideas of what "Worldbuilding" means.  You seem to consider it to be somewhere that focusses on a narrow area round the PCs?  I consider it to be about the whole world, and the PCs are (at the start) a very minor part.


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## Yesway Jose

Thank you to everyone for your responses.

Please understand that with a multi-pronged debate like this one, with me singlehandedly facing several different tangents and several different people, I cannot trust myself to have the time (and inclination) to fairly process everyone's posts and in return write coherently and articulately to reflect my own opinions.

So I hope a generic summary will suffice. I wrote before:


Yesway Jose said:


> I guess that's all related to world-building - 3E would offload much of the responsiblity to the designers to decide the fluff that is *default*, 4E would offload more (but not all) of the responsiblity to the DM/players to narrate the fluff ad hoc or not. The cohesiveness of the game world is then dependant on the effort and imagination of the designer or DM/players. (I hope I'm not re-stating something obvious that someone else stated a little earlier, I think I probably am).
> 
> Oh, I agree. Following from above, though, I think it's fair to say that: with more freedom, comes great responsibility. The burden of that responsibility is entirely up to whether the players perceive it as such. Tactical skirmish, for example, don't perceive it. An immersionist would.



I fully understand the inclination to tear down a broken corrupt system and rebuild a fresh approach. I really do. I've felt this many, many times in 3E and previous editions.

However, I don't think it's fair to state that 4E is better than or is exempt from 3E-like problems in terms of worldbuilding.

3E has the advantage of a design committee that, if they have a simulationist approach, are paid to spend hours and hours tinkering and playtesting with a believable semi-coherent semi-consistent system. 4E leaves the burden to the DM and players, which is managed ad hoc, and generally without the time and resources available to a design committee.

Secondly, when "rebelling" and tearing down the status quo that is the simulationist 3E game world, what is the new ideal/foundation that supports the New Vision? Is it a dream of an amazing fiction, perhaps inspired by a new novel or movie? Is it a dream of a coherent rationale fantasy world? No, I believe the foundation of worldbuilding in 4E is none of the above, but a combat paradigm that informs out-of-combat experience, and that combat paradigm has everything to do with narrative control and game balance and little to do with good non-combat fiction.

That's my general opinion. Take it or leave it (probably leave it, and that's OK too). I may have time or not to address more specific avenues, but I'm not sure. I hope that in the last few pages, something interesting or useful can be derived by somebody.


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## pemerton

We do have some published evidence of what motivates the 4e design team in their approach to story elements: Worlds and Monsters.

I think that their inspiration is an idealised conception of the sort of fantasy that D&D seems typically to have aspired to - a fantastic world, with a long, rich and (at its base) mythical history. With many fallen empires, and prior to those, fallen gods, leading up to the present. This is a mix of Conan, The Dying Earth, Tolkein and classical mythology. The core elements of this conception of the gameworld are stated in W&M, and reiterated in the DMG (and more recent Essentials books that replicate that DMG material).

Sourcebooks like The Plane Above, The Demonomicon and Underdark (and to a noticeably lesser extent, The Plane Below and Open Grave) reinforce this conception.

It is a key feature of this conception that the gameworld support what are regarded as classic D&D-isms - ancient ruins to explore (this is 4e's take on "dungeons"), and conflicts with many sort of beings (not just humans), which conflicts are in many cases apt to be resolved by combat (this is 4e's take on "dragons").

The only relevance this has to mechanics, that I can see, is that it prioritises both PC build and action resolution mechanics that allow these conflicts to be expressed and explored in satisfying ways. Contrary to the claim, then, that "the foundation of worldbuilding in 4e . . . is a combat paradigm that informs out-of-combat experience", I think that the foundation of 4e's combat paradigm is a desire to have action resolution mechanics that are well-suited to expressing the conflicts that are at the centre of 4e's gameworld.

No doubt some PC powers, and some monster designs, do this better than others. The deathlock wight, which was mentioned upthread, I think is a good example of a monster that does this. I know (from a lot of use) that hobgoblins are another good example, as are the MM wraiths, in my experience (and somewhat bizarrely, given the criticism they receive from those who analyse them purely mechanically). The only monster I can think of at present which really feels like it's fallen short is the humble skeleton - it doesn't feel very skeletal.

As to whether or not 4e's design has a lot or a little to do with good non-combat fiction, I'm not sure that this can easily be judged in the absence of actual examples (even if we put to one side the fact that good fiction is at least in part a matter of taste).


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton, I agree with what you wrote above, with one small clarification... and this is where "disassociation" comes into play... worldbuilding is lifeless if the PCs don't interact with it meaningfully IMO.

To put it very generally for now (for lack of time), if the PCs operate by a certain paradigm, and the rest of the world operates on another paradigm, then it's like the PCs have a Twilight Zone cloud always following them, or it's like they're walking in a video-game-y bubble, or they are looking thru bulletproof transparent glass into the gameworld.

This is not to say that all NPCs must be codified like in 3E. But if an NPC has some candy, the PCs could also get that candy theoretically. If a witch turns a person into a frog for 1 minute or longer (using a spell, not a ritual), a PC wizard can learn to do so as well (and I don't mean a ritual). Also, if NPC wizards are turning people into frogs for longer periods of time, why does every PC wizard only learn the puny 6-second version by default? * There seems to be a disconnect there, and that disconnect is informed by the combat paradigm.

I need a feeling that the PCs are *part* of a living world. Otherwise, there's disassociation for me.

EDIT: * that could be worded better, but it's what I got for now.


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> 3E has the advantage of a design committee that, if they have a simulationist approach, are paid to spend hours and hours tinkering and playtesting with a believable semi-coherent semi-consistent system. 4E leaves the burden to the DM and players, which is managed ad hoc, and generally without the time and resources available to a design committee.




What is your evidence that 3e had anything resembling a committee that tested the worldbuilding, or even the balance?  Balance in 3e was pretty dire even at the tactical level that would be playtested.



> No, I believe the foundation of worldbuilding in 4E is none of the above, but a combat paradigm that informs out-of-combat experience, and that combat paradigm has everything to do with narrative control and game balance and little to do with good non-combat fiction.




There is basically one condition you need to worldbuild for 4e.  A slightly larger than life either pulp-ish or action-ish setting.  If you want to exclude a power source (Dark Sun) it just drops out.  And you can focus on the world you want to build.  You don't build worlds _for 4E_.  You build worlds for the type of game you want to play or based on whatever setting it is.  An entirely easier condition.


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## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> What is your evidence that 3e had anything resembling a committee that tested the worldbuilding, or even the balance? Balance in 3e was pretty dire even at the tactical level that would be playtested.



1) just because 3E didn't share 4E's high level of enthusiasm for micromanagement of game balance, it doesn't follow that nobody imagined or playtested how simulationist mechanics affect worldbuilding
2) I assume that multiple designers and years of edition development with simulationist mechanics can at least be relatively compared to a 4E DM pondering an ad hoc narrative and making a ruling in 30 seconds, or even by himself for a few hours before a game
3) since my post was indicated to be an opinion, I don't need to provide rigorous evidence
4) you don't have any evidence that 3E did NOT playtest for worldbuilding or less so than any one hypothetical 4E game world

If I *must* face off a multipronged debate, it would be very helpful to my sanity if we can focus on the spirit of the argument, and not pursue "evidence" and suchlike for an opinion piece.


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway, I would again strongly suggest that you read the first two or three Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collections, if you really want to understand where some of us are coming from--and perhaps experience it yourself.  Not only will it cut out some of the confusion, it will probably be a lot more enjoyable than arguing with all of us at the same time. 

While I think Pemerton and Neochameleon are correct in their assessment of the kind of action adventure 4E is meant to emulate--and it is considerably wider than Lieber's work--I think Leiber sits at the center.  That is, if you could map the various works that might qualify as a major influence on the tone of 4E's implementation of the D&D ethos, you'd see Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser running around right in the center quadrant.  No novel maps perfectly to a game, of course, but you can see parallels.

Two characters aren't a party, but two is a playground for interpersonal dynamics a whole lot more than Cugel the Clever or Conan. Abilities are often oddball, and personified.*  There is very much an improvisational flair to the heroes' actions.  Fights are dynamic.  Vividness is neither confined to combat (as with, say, Salvatore) but neither is the vividness of the non-combat allowed to dominate the story. There is a constant stream of characterization and dialogue--what at a table will be largely supplied by roleplay.  Combat is not so much a break as a heightening of the action (as if, if played to the hilt, any conflict).

* Looking at 4E as a whole, it is perhaps the least applicable here.  Compare it to 1E unfavorably, as a whole system expressed in the world.  Take, however, 4E in parts, as might be used within a single campaign and expressed narratively in the characters, and it looks a lot better on this score.  Of course, 1E also benefited from monsters and magic not always following the same rules as the characters.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> Yesway, I would again strongly suggest that you read the first two or three Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collections, if you really want to understand where some of us are coming from--and perhaps experience it yourself. Not only will it cut out some of the confusion, it will probably be a lot more enjoyable than arguing with all of us at the same time.



Thanks for the suggestion, but I honestly won't make time to read them. I already have a reading list, plus other things to do on the side. Secondly, my D&D experience is informed by various RPGs, not books per se which are more of an inspiration than a guideline to roleplaying. Thirdly, I posted an opinion piece -- so it's true that I'm arguing all the time before, but in this instance, you're arguing with me


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> pemerton, I agree with what you wrote above, with one small clarification... and this is where "disassociation" comes into play... worldbuilding is lifeless if the PCs don't interact with it meaningfully IMO.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if an NPC has some candy, the PCs could also get that candy theoretically.



To my mind, this all turns on the "could" and the "theoretically".

I look at it this way. There are some NPCs who are kings, who live in luxury, and who almost never face threats to their lives. Theoretically, the PCs could live like this. But this would be, in effect, to bring the game to an end. So while PCs _could_ be luxuriating kings, in fact they are not - even if they become kings, they don't luxuriate. They adventure.

Likewise, if an NPC wizard can do XYZ than so, theoretically, could a PC wizard. But if XYZ would be unbalancing in the hands of a PC, then while the PC _could_ do it, s/he won't. Just as s/he won't be a luxuriating king. (Note that "balance" here need have nothing to do with combat. A PC having access to unlimited long distance teleportation, or to wish magic, can be unbalancing for all sorts of reasons other than its possible implications for combat.)

Of course, that's stated at the metagame level. Within the fiction, why isn't the PC a luxuriating king? Possible answers abound. Maybe s/he was cursed by the gods. Maybe s/he has relentless enemies. Maybe s/he has wanderlust. The player and GM can work it out.

And within the fiction, why doesn't the PC wizard master technique XYZ? Maybe s/he doesn't have the time. Or the inclination. Or the personal aptitude. Maybe s/he can't find a teacher. Again, the player and GM can work it out.

Obviously this depends on drawing a distinction between the player and the PC, and on consciously permitting metagame concerns (balance, and the PC's role as a protagonist) to shape the fiction. Which may or may not be "dissociative" for any given player.

I personally find it interesting that many players - and not just D&D players, because I've seen the same thing on the Rolemaster boards discussing this sort of issue - accept that NPCs can have social status, wealth and the like that PCs of the same level would never be permitted, but arc up when NPCs have magical or martial capabilities that PCs of the same level are not permitted. My tentative hypothesis is that for those with simulationist priorities there is an important distinction between what is "internal" to the PC - like spells known or fighting move mastered - and what is "external" to the PC - like social status, relationships and wealth. In a game like HeroWars/Quest or Burning Wheel, the difference between the "internal" and the "external", in terms of their place in character building and their role in action resolution, is much less stark. As it does in many other respects also, I think 4e heads more in the direction of these latter games - although, and also as in many other respects, it is perhaps a little coy about the fact.


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> I personally find it interesting that many players - and not just D&D players, because I've seen the same thing on the Rolemaster boards discussing this sort of issue - accept that NPCs can have social status, wealth and the like that PCs of the same level would never be permitted, but arc up when NPCs have magical or martial capabilities that PCs of the same level are not permitted. My tentative hypothesis is that for those with simulationist priorities there is an important distinction between what is "internal" to the PC - like spells known or fighting move mastered - and what is "external" to the PC - like social status, relationships and wealth.



I think that's a fair hypothesis. If the players affiliate with the PC and they're exploring the narrative through the eyes of the PC, then it's logical to me to feel an urge/expectation to have a feeling of control over the internal matters, whereas people are used to external circumstances beyond our control and assuming that there must be some sort of explanation for why they have that and I don't.

If my PC was unable to become rich and buy real estate, that might bother me. Not necessarily because I wanted to retire my PC into a mansion, and I wouldn't because that's not fun roleplaying what amounts to The Sims video game, but just knowing I could do so if I wanted to.

Then all the theoretical becomes more practical when I talk about spells like Hypnotism and Baleful Polymorph as they apply out of combat and their relationship (or un-relationship) to the larger game world as per my expectations.


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## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> Yesway, I would again strongly suggest that you read the first two or three Fafhrd and Gray Mouser collections, if you really want to understand where some of us are coming from





Yesway Jose said:


> Thanks for the suggestion, but I honestly won't make time to read them.



I haven't read Lieber either, and probably won't for quite some time, if ever, for the same reasons as Yesway Jose - other priorities, both reading and non-reading.

To the extent that I have a core inspriation for my conception of D&D party play and campaign development, it is classic Claremont X-Men (but as if the X-Men were really Iron Fist and Doctor Strange).


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## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> ... the contrast is between a system that starts out from a clear and (hopefully) unproblematic base, and then allows self-conscious tweaking and improvisation, and a system that starts out laden with potential problems, and draws attention to the _need_ for tweaking and improvisation only once those problems become manifest. I think that that is a fair description of 4e, and it _seems_ to me to be fair of 3E - but I don't have the same degree of experience with 3E as I do with 4e, so my impression is based as much on reading as on experience, and is based also on my experience with games that are similar in this respect, like AD&D and Rolemaster.




Sometimes I think my whole life at ENWorld is a giant quest to spread enough XP around to give Pemerton a fraction of what I'd like. 

That said, I have a minor quibble with the above. I think that some of the designers and writers of 3E felt that way about the game. I think others were indifferent to the issue, and then a few others took the attitude that if the system stayed on track, and enough capable people worked on it long enough, that there would eventually be no need for such tweaking. I think some of this latter group felt most betrayed by 4E--not only because it was an explicit and unambiguous rejection of that approach, but because for practical purposes, it meant that they couldn't continue "the work". Seen in that light, it also becomes clear why Pathfinder was viewed as such a streak of good fortune for them. 

Me, I think 3E was, on the whole, significantly better than 3.5, despite some key and serious flaws in 3E corrected by 3.5--precisely because 3.5 was the pinnacle of that "we can fix all the details if we have it long enough" attitude in the design staff. (Not that this is isolated to 3.5. If you've read Mearls' work since Fantasy Flight, through Malhovic, then you know he has a streak of that himself, though he usually keeps it out of his main designs.) 

In a way, this is more sad than anything. 1E and 2E needed people like that. It as if you had a giant building full of books, all stacked haphazardly, just begging for a librarian. So a bright, helpful librarian took charge. And after they got the card catalog working, the shelves organized, and so forth--people quit messing up the big stuff, and only wanted to argue about whether book X went into pre teen or early teen. So they started making a whole bunch of rules that would have been bettter handled by individual judgment. The librarian doesn't want to hear that their role is now diminished, especially considering what they had to start with.


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> 1) just because 3E didn't share 4E's high level of enthusiasm for micromanagement of game balance, it doesn't follow that nobody imagined or playtested how simulationist mechanics affect worldbuilding




And it doesn't follow that there was anyone paid specifically to do so.  I have no doubt that half the designers had their own homebrew worlds and did worldbuilding in them.  But in a systematised way and paid to do it?  No.  I don't think this likely.

One reason I don't think this likely was that from everything I saw WoTC D&D was not interested in worldbuilding.  Not even as interested as late TSR D&D.  On what do I base this opinion?  There was an almost complete lack of new worlds produced by WoTC.  There was plenty of new material produced.  But I believe the only actual new world was Eberron, the result of an external talent search.  So we have a committee paid to do worldbuilding _and no worlds come out of it._  Right.



> 2) I assume that multiple designers and years of edition development with simulationist mechanics can at least be relatively compared to a 4E DM pondering an ad hoc narrative and making a ruling in 30 seconds, or even by himself for a few hours before a game




You assume.  That is all very well in a vacuum.  But you aren't looking at evidence.  For one thing, 3e isn't actually simulationist - if it was it wouldn't have hit points for one thing.  For another we can see what the results are.  And the results are that the Realms utterly don't make sense, Eberron makes a little sense but has huge gaping holes such as Zone of Truth even using just the PHB, Greyhawk has the same issues.  We can illustrate that if the designers were designing for worldbuilding, they got it badly wrong.  Ad hoc narratives on the other hand seldom break worlds - they only apply in the here and now.

So when we get to the actual comparison, your assumption doesn't turn out to be supported.



> 3) since my post was indicated to be an opinion, I don't need to provide rigorous evidence




No.  But your post was not just an opinion.  It was speculating on matters of _fact_.  Either 3e had this hypothetical committee you are talking about or it did not.  You need to produce some evidence to back up your claim.



> 4) you don't have any evidence that 3E did NOT playtest for worldbuilding or less so than any one hypothetical 4E game world




I have evidence that if they playtested for worldbuilding, they did an utterly _crap_ job.  _No_ published world, not even _Eberron_ handles the implications of Zone of Truth being a readily available spell.  And that's a second level Cleric spell in the PHB.  There are plenty of others in the PHB alone.



> If I *must* face off a multipronged debate, it would be very helpful to my sanity if we can focus on the spirit of the argument, and not pursue "evidence" and suchlike for an opinion piece.




You are free to your own opinions.  You are not free to make up your own facts.  And claiming that WoTC had a "design committee that ... are paid to spend hours and hours tinkering and playtesting with a believable semi-coherent semi-consistent system" is a matter of straight fact.  Either they did or they didn't.

Now some WoTC designer could drop in and tell me that there was a committee of people paid primarily to world build* (that somehow had no outputs in a highly competative corporate culture).  And I would take their word for it.  But as things stand I consider that there's a beyond reasonable doubt case that they did not.

And to be anything resembling effective, this committee would have had to have oversight of _every_ book produced.  Just one errant spell can bring down an economy (Fabricate, Shapechange, Wall of Iron), or revolutionise trading and the legal system (Zone of Truth).  One bad spell or item can upend an economy (Wall of Stone, Lyre of Building).  Those are just spectacular worldbuilding failures in the 3.X PHB.  If there was such a committee it clearly didn't have the influence it needed to to be able to cover the PHB.

* Chatting over lunch and calling yourself a committee doesn't count.


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## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> You are free to your own opinions. You are not free to make up your own facts. And claiming that WoTC had a "design committee that ... are paid to spend hours and hours tinkering and playtesting with a believable semi-coherent semi-consistent system" is a matter of straight fact. Either they did or they didn't.



Then put the design commitee in quotes. But at the bottom, there was a discaimer that this was my general opinion. I'm not adding footnotes from every sentence to the disclaimer. I find these semantics tiresome and tangential to my opinion. All of the above is my opinion. Thank you.


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## pemerton

Crazy Jerome, interesting point and nice library metaphor!

I don't know if you've had any, or much, exposure to Rolemaster - or visited the ICE forums. If you haven't then you might want to have a quick look as a type of ethnographic experiment - though I personally wouldn't recommend spending too much time there even if you _are_ a Rolemaster player! They're arguing over the cataloguing of book X as early- or pre-teen while the haphazard piles are not only still unsorted, but getting so high that if they fall over fatalities will result!


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## Crazy Jerome

Despite my generally negative view of the design ethos that populates the rules with simulation fluff meant to drive how the mechanics work, I recognize that there is a kind of fun that you can only get with that kind of design. Namely, if you want the gonzo fun of some oddball element informing the trajectory of the world, *and* you want these to be treated as a kind of pseudo physics for how things works, then there is a sense in which the person with narrative control (even if only the DM), can't have that fun absent such elements. (The players might or might not, depending upon how narrative control is distributed.)

That is, if you want the fun of figuring out how _zone of truth_ can gloriously screw up the world, then you've got to have _zone of truth_--supplied by someone else to whose ruling you will submit. G. K. Chesteron was the type to appreciate that kind of thing in life and fairy tales, which is very evident in his writing. In his view, that the fairy tale logic said that you couldn't keep the magic sword unless you circled the ring three times--was merely illustrative of the same kind of choices in real life, where things you wanted often have strange and even paradoxical requirements. Truth is stranger than fiction, and you want some of that strange truth in your world. 

Then there is the other aesthetic side of that same coin, where the engineering mindset takes those rules as physics an extrapolates to the possible conclusions, based on whatever evidence and presumptions they bring to the table, and can convince others to value. In the healthy version of this view (i.e. non-abusive), things like _zone of truth_ are valuable not only in themselves, but in interaction with other such things. They have to be complicated, because figuring out the world is a fun puzzle, and if it only has a few pieces, there isn't any challenge to it. Truth is stranger than fiction, and fiction that isn't strange enough isn't worth getting to the truth.

I rather like fairy tale logic in my games, as played. And I don't mind it in my life, or in stories written by others. But I don't much care for it in my world building. At least not the externally supplied ruling part. I want to pick and choose the places where it manifests. And being a mostly logical-minded software developer, I also get enough of dealing with oddball elements of strange truth to satisfy any unraveling desires in that respect. 

When I'm gaming, I'm more interested in the characters than the world. Accordingly, my world building is more about providing a place for the characters to act than it is about the world itself.


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## Crazy Jerome

Neonchameleon said:


> And it doesn't follow that there was anyone paid specifically to do so. I have no doubt that half the designers had their own homebrew worlds and did worldbuilding in them. But in a systematised way and paid to do it? No. I don't think this likely.
> 
> One reason I don't think this likely was that from everything I saw WoTC D&D was not interested in worldbuilding. Not even as interested as late TSR D&D. On what do I base this opinion? There was an almost complete lack of new worlds produced by WoTC...




WotC is and has been interested in individual DMs building worlds to suit themselves.  This is most evident in the DungeonCraft series that ran so long, with multiple authors.  And this is not inconsistent with early to mid TSR, either.  For a long time, it was assumed that modules and campaign source books were primarly meant to serve either as examples, or as springboards or supplements to your own world building.  Only with 2E was the emphasis shifted to playing the the campaign has provided.  

OTOH, TSR and WotC have always been inconsistent about this, because the have always had elements in both camps.  Not least because, a killer world may be only marginal profitable, but the novels and other materials that it faciliates are highly profitable.  In that context, the contest that produced Eberron makes complete sense--WotC has a strong interest in there *being* worlds for which they own the rights.  They aren't picky about how they get there, as long as it works and doesn't cost too much.


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## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> I don't know if you've had any, or much, exposure to Rolemaster - or visited the ICE forums. If you haven't then you might want to have a quick look as a type of ethnographic experiment - though I personally wouldn't recommend spending too much time there even if you _are_ a Rolemaster player! They're arguing over the cataloguing of book X as early- or pre-teen while the haphazard piles are not only still unsorted, but getting so high that if they fall over fatalities will result!




I've had just enough exposure to RM and ICE to appreciate how this could happen.  You get some of the same issues in Hero discussions, though Hero has the advantage of having a base that was put together somewhat more cleanly as a starting place.  I suppose it is not an accident that the Shadow World campaign was able to support stats for both.


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## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> That is, if you want the fun of figuring out how _zone of truth_ can gloriously screw up the world, then you've got to have _zone of truth_--supplied by someone else to whose ruling you will submit.



I'm sure that screenwriters struggled with the adoption of the cell phone in real-life. Many movie plot devices were all based on the landline phone. Now you deal with it by either a) setting the movie in the 80s or earlier, or b) make up an excuse for why your cell phone isn't working, or c) adapting the plot to cell phones for a different story. All 3 approaches are legitimate, although (b) only works for any one scenario in one movie, and only (c) really rolls with that reality.

There is option (d) -- a movie set in 2011 where no character uses a cell phone even if they could and didn't have an excuse not to. That's disassociated to me. It's forgivable though, if I'm so distracted and immersed in everything else that I completely forgot about the lack of cell phone.

I'm probably overlapping what you wrote, but with zones of truth, you can a) not even notice the implications -- true in my experience, b) notice it but purposefully gloss over it, c) houserule it out of existence, d) introduce in-game reasons to restrict its use by NPCs, e) just roll with it and work the stories around it.

So lots of different techniques and viewpoints here with worldbuilding.



> I rather like fairy tale logic in my games, as played. And I don't mind it in my life, or in stories written by others. But I don't much care for it in my world building.



Totally tangential, but is there in-game-based "fairy tale logic" and metagame-based "fairy tale logic"? In fairy tales and myths, it has one feeling. In video games, it's a different feeling. The 1st is very difficult to do successfully for me in an RPG, the 2nd I think is rather easy.



> When I'm gaming, I'm more interested in the characters than the world. Accordingly, my world building is more about providing a place for the characters to act than it is about the world itself.



Me too, but I don't know how you can have one without the other at every place that they interact.


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## tomBitonti

Whoa, you think the thread is trailing off, and it starts up again!

I wanted to point out that *Zone of Truth* is not entirely a clear-cut world breaker:

1) It allows a will save.  (And do you know if the save was successful?)

2) You can still evade telling the truth by evading questions with clever or misleading answers (they only have to be true, they don't have to be transparent or to the point).

Of course, an unsophisticated target who has a low will save is in trouble, and if a cabal has any such members, they will be easy to expose.

Also, there is the problem of knowing that *Zone of Truth* was actually cast.  Unless the audience has reasonable Spellcraft checks, how can they be sure that the proceedings are honest?  Maybe the caster gave the target a break and cast something else.  Or maybe the caster, a devious unscrupulous sort, actually cast some sort of charm or compulsion?

The whole matter would be limited by the honesty of the caster, and of the skill of the audience to detect duplicity.

TomBitonti


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> "Fairy tale logic" is a loaded word that's ripe to last another dozen pages of this thread. I would differentiate between in-game-based fairy tale logic vs metagame-based fairy tale logic. In fairy tales and myths, it has one feeling. In video games, it's a different feeling. The 1st is very difficult to do successfully for me in an RPG, the 2nd I think is rather easy.




Probably is loaded. So let me clarify that I'm using it here as Chesterton uses it, circa 1910, with a more positive meaning than it probably conveys isolated from his work and sensibilities.  It isn't the whole of it, but you can get a sense of the kind of limits Chesterton means by saying that fairy tale logic says that you can't have a non-greedy dragon.  Not because it is world breaking, rule breaking, or physics breaking--but because if you (as person with control of the narrative) take away the greed from a dragon, it isn't really a dragon in some ways.  That is, you can imagine a non-greedy dragon with no problem, but once you do, you took away several fairy tale options.  (Of course, if you are careful, you can replace the greed with something equally fairy tale inducing.  And good authors have.)


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## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> I personally find it interesting that many players - and not just D&D players, because I've seen the same thing on the Rolemaster boards discussing this sort of issue - accept that NPCs can have social status, wealth and the like that PCs of the same level would never be permitted, but arc up when NPCs have magical or martial capabilities that PCs of the same level are not permitted. My tentative hypothesis is that for those with simulationist priorities there is an important distinction between what is "internal" to the PC - like spells known or fighting move mastered - and what is "external" to the PC - like social status, relationships and wealth.




I don't think it has that much to do with simulationism. If I'm playing a barbarian, I want him to Conan, not Conan's sidekick. And part of it has to do with 



> But if XYZ would be unbalancing in the hands of a PC, then while the PC could do it, s/he won't. Just as s/he won't be a luxuriating king. (Note that "balance" here need have nothing to do with combat. A PC having access to unlimited long distance teleportation, or to wish magic, can be unbalancing for all sorts of reasons other than its possible implications for combat.)




But I don't want to be a luxuriating king. In fact, any PC that wants to be a luxuriating king probably can get there, DM willing, even if that will probably mean the retirement of the character. But if my PC wants to learn teleportation, then it may be universal in the game world, every apprentice learns it, but for some reason the PC can't. It's arbitrary, and it's arbitrary in a way that goes against what the players want to do, solely in the name of balance. It's like the weapons your enemies use disintegrating when they die.


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## wrecan

tomBitonti said:


> I wanted to point out that *Zone of Truth* is not entirely a clear-cut world breaker:
> 
> 1) It allows a will save.  (And do you know if the save was successful?)
> 
> 2) You can still evade telling the truth by evading questions with clever or misleading answers (they only have to be true, they don't have to be transparent or to the point).
> 
> Of course, an unsophisticated target who has a low will save is in trouble, and if a cabal has any such members, they will be easy to expose.



The Zone of Truth would be coupled with a Detect Magic spell (a 1st level spell).  First, the Detect Magic spell is used to determine if the subject is already under some magical protection.  If so, you remove that protection.  Second takes three rounds to determine if someone is affected by a charm.  If the person saves, you cast it again, until he doesn't save.  It doesn't take much to ensure the Zone of Truth is working.

The ability to evade with misleading answers shoudl be a nonissue.  Any half-trained attorney or merchant should be shrewd enough to ensure a precise answer, usually with yes/no questions.  If the person begins talking in flowery obfuscatory language, the magistrate will tell him to be more direct, or he'll be deemed to have made an admission of guilt (or, in a business context, the deal is off).

If you are concerned that the Zone of Truth caster is corrupt, I don't see how that's any different than being concerned about a corrupt judge.  For suspicious people. you hire a different caster with Spellcraft to cast Detect Magic to ensure the reliability of the first.  Now you have to bribe two casters whose likelihood depends in part on people believing them to be trustworthy.

While the corruption is a decent plot point, the Zone of Truth/Detect Magic combo still should have wide-ranging implications for any legal system and/or mercantile system.

This isn't even getting to the issue with Wall of Iron.  Wall of Iron costs 50 gp to cast but at the earliest level (13th), creates at least 3,744 pounds of iron worth 374.4 gp.  So that's a 324.4 gp profit.  Every decent-sized kingdom should have at least one 13th level wizard, who can supply any kingdom with all of its iron needs casting this spell once a week (100 tons of iron//year is a fine haul for any medieval-ish campaign).  Producing almost two tons of iron every day, should obviate the need for iron mines.  Throw in a fabricate spell to divide the wall into easily transportable chunks.

With a simple feat, that wizard can also create a lyre of building at a cost of 6,500 gp (affordable after only 18 walls of iron!)  In the hands of any competent bard (and the king should put this in the hands of his highest level servant trained in Perform (stringed instrument)) (let's say 6th level, with a +3 Charisma bonus and maxed ranks, for a bonus of +12), should manage to play on average of 4 hours.  That means 1200 man-days of labor every day, at a value of (1 sp/day for untrained labor) 120 gp every day (360 gp if you consider masons a trained labor force, which they probably are).  In two months (of 18 days), that lyre has paid for itself.  Moreover, you just put 1200 masons out of work.  That's probably every mason in the kingdom.

These are a handful of examples of how the published rules create established (and hidden) problems.


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## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> Moreover, you just put 1200 masons out of work.  That's probably every mason in the kingdom.




Each of which has two sabots, which are improvised weapons, doing, say, 1 HP damage, which is more than enough to kill a 6th level bard.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> 3E has the advantage of a design committee that, if they have a simulationist approach, are paid to spend hours and hours tinkering and playtesting with a believable semi-coherent semi-consistent system. 4E leaves the burden to the DM and players, which is managed ad hoc, and generally without the time and resources available to a design committee.



Yesway Jose, this seems to me to be the crux of the misunderstanding.  I see no evidence that 3e's designers spent any time considering the worldbuilding aspects of the mechanics they designed.  There is nothing "simulationist" about the Zone of Truth.  It's simply a spell that forces people to tell the truth within it.  It doesn't "simulate" anything.  Its 4e counterpart, Chorus of Truth, is no more or less simulationist.

So I don't think we're discussing anything that has to do with dissociation anymore.  3e could have designed Zone of Truth to work exactly like 4e's Chorus of Truth.  That it did not is not because 3e was simulationist, but because Zone of Truth was designed without any regard to how it would revolutionize a campaign world.

And, similarly, 3e could have designed other problematic mechanics, like Fabricate, Wall of Iron, and Lyre of Building quite differently.  

It seems to me we're getting off-track.  

What we seem now to be discussing is the world-building problems inherent in homebrewing new mechanics.  But that issue is identical between 3e and 4e.  The only difference is that you play 3e, and thus would miss those mechanics that didn't get ported over to 4e, and you appear to be hesitant to homebrew them.  But just as similarly, someone moving from 4e to 3e would miss mechanics that exist in 4e but not 3e and be equally hesitant to homebrew them.

The problem, then, is not anything inherent in 3e or 4e.  The problem is inherent to anybody changing systems and wanting to import stuff from their prior system.


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## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> Each of which has two sabots, which are improvised weapons, doing, say, 1 HP damage, which is more than enough to kill a 6th level bard.



Those masons don't exist.  They'd have been rendered obsolete as soon as the Lyre of Building was created.  The notion of masons assassinating the king's lyre-playing minstrel is as absurd as the idea that buggy-whip manufacturers would try to assassinate Henry Ford.

But even if true, it's still got world-building implications.  because now, anybody who find or creates a lyre of building is going to have to deal with 120 masons coming at them, sabots ablaze.  That seems like a pretty serious world-building wrinkle!


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Yesway Jose, this seems to me to be the crux of the misunderstanding. I see no evidence that 3e's designers spent any time considering the worldbuilding aspects of the mechanics they designed. There is nothing "simulationist" about the Zone of Truth. It's simply a spell that forces people to tell the truth within it. It doesn't "simulate" anything.



You're asking the wrong person regarding Zone of Truth as I don't remember ever using it or seeing it in-game.

Generally speaking, many spells in D&D have simulated fantasy fiction expectations. So Polymorph Other simulates a person permanently turned into a frog as per fairy tales and so forth. Baleful Polymorph does not. IMO a proper hypnotism spell would simulate hypnotism as I know in real life, Jedi Mind Trick, etc. A hypnotism spell that fails to do so should not be called hypnotism. Ditto for a hypnotism spell that seems arbitrarily binary in its possible effects. Obviously, this is all subjective to expectations.



> It seems to me we're getting off-track.



I know. I made a one/two sentence response a few pages ago to someone, and it somehow ballooned into a few pages.



> What we seem now to be discussing is the world-building problems inherent in homebrewing new mechanics. But that issue is identical between 3e and 4e. The only difference is that you play 3e, and thus would miss those mechanics that didn't get ported over to 4e, and you appear to be hesitant to homebrew them. But just as similarly, someone moving from 4e to 3e would miss mechanics that exist in 4e but not 3e and be equally hesitant to homebrew them.
> 
> The problem, then, is not anything inherent in 3e or 4e. The problem is inherent to anybody changing systems and wanting to import stuff from their prior system.



I have to disagree IMO. I don't think about "porting" from 3E to 4E. Obviously, WoTC do have to worry about sacred cows, but that hasn't been my issue.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> This isn't even getting to the issue with Wall of Iron. Wall of Iron costs 50 gp to cast but at the earliest level (13th), creates at least 3,744 pounds of iron worth 374.4 gp. So that's a 324.4 gp profit. Every decent-sized kingdom should have at least one 13th level wizard, who can supply any kingdom with all of its iron needs casting this spell once a week (100 tons of iron//year is a fine haul for any medieval-ish campaign). Producing almost two tons of iron every day, should obviate the need for iron mines.



Good point. Just for fun, and not to argue one way or another about walls of iron -- but there's nothing in the rules about breaking up walls of iron. It is easy to rule that walls of iron broken up beyond their original dimensions in any way will degrade and crumble. Fictionally, the magic wall is only bound to reality while remaining in its original form as summoned into the world.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Good point. Just for fun, and not to argue one way or another about walls of iron -- but there's nothing in the rules about breaking up walls of iron.



The spell descibes the wall as "like any iron wall".  An iron wall that crumbles so easily is not "like any iron wall".  It has the hardness and hit points of iron.  Moreover the duration of the spell is "instantaneous".  There's no lingering magic that would destroy the iron once the wall is dismantled.

Quite plainly, the spell converts 100 gp into almost a ton and a half of iron, instantly, and without conditions.



> It is easy to rule that walls of iron broken up beyond their original dimensions in any way will degrade and crumble.



I thought you were so hesitant to make spot house rules like this.  How do you know this won't come back and bite you, just as you fear whenever you are called upon to do it in 4e?



> Fictionally, the magic wall is only bound to reality while remaining in its original form as summoned into the world.



It's not a magic wall.  If it were a magic wall, like a wall of force, it would have a duration.


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> You're asking the wrong person regarding Zone of Truth as I don't remember ever using it or seeing it in-game.



I didn't ask a question.  I was making a point.



> I don't think about "porting" from 3E to 4E. Obviously, WoTC do have to worry about sacred cows, but that hasn't been my issue.



Then what's your issue?  Is it really that you don't like the names for attack powers like Hypnotism and Baleful Polymorph?  If it was "A Second of Control" and "Momentary Transmogrification", would your issues be resolved on those points?


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> The spell descibes the wall as "like any iron wall". An iron wall that crumbles so easily is not "like any iron wall". It has the hardness and hit points of iron. Moreover the duration of the spell is "instantaneous".



In fact, the SRD states "Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena." That's not the same as stating that it's like any iron wall, it only shares the qualities of rusting, perforation and natural phenomena. Artificially being cut up into blocks is not natural phenomenon.



> I thought you were so hesitant to make spot house rules like this.



No I didn't. I said I would theoretically be hesitant to introduce rules that would affect 4E combat balance for any one hypothetical gaming group.



> Now do you know this won't come back and bite you, just as you fear whenever you are called upon to do it in 4e?



I said I was thinking just for fun. I didn't houserule it. If you want to be anal about that, my response will be equally so. Is this the conversation you really want to have after admitting that it was going off track?


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> In fact, the SRD states "Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena." That's not the same as stating that it's like any iron wall, it only shares the qualities of rusting, perforation and natural phenomena. Artificially being cut up into blocks is not natural phenomenon.



It's an iron wall.  "You cause a flat, vertical iron wall to spring into being."  Your interpretation is saying it's not an iron wall at all, but merely something that looks like iron.



> I said I was thinking just for fun. I didn't houserule it. If you want to be anal about that, my response will be equally so. Is this the conversation you really want to have after admitting that it was going off track?



You said we were speculating for fun.  So I was speculating.



> It can be dispelled, right?



No.  It's an instantaneous spell.  Once cast it cannot be dispelled.  Neither a dispel magic nor an anti-magic sphere will get rid of a _wall of iron_, once cast.


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## tomBitonti

A Finer Review of "Disassociated"

An idea that I'm noticing from this ongoing thread is that "Disassociated" has several applications, and it has a different "feel" depending on the application.

A second idea is that the notion of "Disassociated" depends a lot on what associations the player is trying to make.

To very briefly online the first idea, one notion is a disassociation of a player ability from an explanation of how, for a single occurrence, the ability works.  A second notion is a disassociation based on the frequency with which an ability can be used.

For an example of the first idea, "Come and get it" is frequently used as an example.  Models which explain this ability when it is used against several different types of foes, say, a swarm, a golem, a mindless undead such as a zombie, or a barbarian.  Folks, including myself, have had problems with the explanation.  For zombies, you could imagine the fighter slashing his arm to put the scent of blood in the air, or against a trio of golems guarding a doorway, making lunges at the doorway to draw their attention.

Another example of the first idea is based on the question of who can try the ability.  If a fighter can draw zombies with a splash of blood, why couldn't anyone?

A third example of the first idea is any daily ability which is not resource (think ammunition) based.

As to the second idea, I have seen occasional wording which finds that game rules which don't, even abstractly, have any sensible correspondence to real physics, or real psychology, to be "disassociated".  In this regards, there seems to be a different underlying model against which the player is attempting to form an  association.  For example, folks new to role playing, or at least to D&D, find hit points to be a lousy model of health and damage.  On the other hand, some folks (myself included) are used to the 3E nomenclature, and keep trying to map 4E abilities to the 3E underlying model (as expressed by the keywords), and failing that, find 4E to be disassociative.  Other folks find various rules subsets to be disassociated to one degree or another, based on their actual experience, say, in fencing, or experiencing actual live fire.  As an example, based on the discussions regarding 200 falls, I found through research that, very roughly, a 50 fall has a 50% mortality rate, and a fall of between 70 and 90 feet has a 90% mortality rate.  I found also that even relatively short 10' falls can be lethal, depending on the surface and the area of incidence.

That is to say, what two different people think of as "disassociated" will be influenced, strongly, by their notion of "reasonable" game physics.

Anyways,

TomBitonti


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## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> You said we were speculating for fun. So I was speculating.



And that's all it is, speculating.

Has anybody here really expressed concern for Zones of Truth and Walls of Iron affecting their own game (and not someone else's hypothetical game)? No.

Has anybody stated that problems are completely absent from published worldbuilding rules? No.

You introduced the Wall of Iron so that you could make a point against a claim that doesn't exist on this thread.


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## tomBitonti

I should say, Zone of Truth is an excellent way to keep the kingdom safe!

Will it keep us safer?  Yes, in the hands of the wise and skillful!

Did I kill the Prince?  No! (The Prince fell onto a dagger; the fall together with the dagger killed the prince.  What I don't say is that I pushed the prince, so my push _indirectly_ killed the prince, but the fall and the dagger were the more direct cause.)

Looking at the Wall of Iron example, there is still the need to carve up the wall into usable pieces.  I guess an investment in an adamantine dagger is needed, otherwise, I just have a huge hunk of iron.  How would I even begin to carve that up?  Or fit it into a furnace to melt it down?  Seems like a big furnace.  Ok, then a bound fire elemental, and a safe spot for a rather large flame, and equipment for casting the iron into smaller portions.

Also, as a 6'th level spell, that gives you a 11'th level wizard, whom is rare in some environments.

But, by the spell, the Iron is actual Iron, as the spell has a duration of "Instantaneous".  Also as a result, the resulting wall cannot be dispelled.

Joking aside, you have a point: The resulting wall is quite valuable.

On the other hand, there is a _lot_ that is world breaking in this regard.  Any permanently bound fire or ice elemental seems to be a perpetual source of heat and cold.  A decanter of endless water is an endless source of water.  You could use teleport to shift large masses to the top of a high mountain, for a source of energy.  Or, define a frame of reference inside of a moving box carried aloft by a flying wizard using levitate, and who is moving very quickly, to shift a large mass from standing still to that same velocity.  That is, assuming that teleport is relative to frames of reference.  Otherwise, how do you teleport off of a moving boat, or to the opposite side of a world?  Or, what is the limit of using stone shape to carve a narrow slice around a block, for a fast way to create a tunnel, one block at a time?  When you travel miles underground (below sea level), why don't you experience blistering heat and unendurable pressure?

Generally, if you push too far in these lines, the game rather breaks.  Then you are back to more of a question of player expectations: How does a player _expect_ teleport to work?  What do players find is "reasonable" for game abilities?

TomBitonti


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## tomBitonti

To fill in additional detail, there is a notion here of _what_: A player has an ability to achieve a result, and _how_ or _why_: A player can teleport, at will, as a teleportation based spell.  A shadowdancer can teleport from shadow to shadow by stepping into the plane of shadow, where distances are different, and back.

Then, the explanation has a real effect: In a magic dead region, a teleport spell does not work.  In total darkness, there are no shadows.

Applying the same to a possible fighter's mark: A fighter chooses to harry a particular opponent that they threaten.  The fighter chooses to forestall their attack, but if the opponent does anything except fight defensively, the fighter gets an immediate attack with a +2 bonus against that opponent.  The fighter takes a -2 to their AC to any attack other than from the marked opponent.

In many cases, what the objection seems to be is that they player and the GM are removed from the rationale behind the ability.  The ability just "works" because "that's the way it is".  Although, they are allowed to describe the ability, as they see fit (providing that the description has no consequential effect: If I describe "Come and Get It" as the fighter shouting a challenge at the top of their lungs, so to draw the room's attention, that still doesn't alert creatures in the next room.)

I think an issue here is that some players _like_ to be involved in the "working out" of a powers explanation.  Clearly, YMMV here, as other players very much _do not_ want to be in that space.

Thx!

TomBitonti


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Has anybody here really expressed concern for Zones of Truth and Walls of Iron affecting their own game (and not someone else's hypothetical game)?



That wasn't the issue.  The issue was building a world consistent with the implications of the rules.  You had made the claim that 4e was more difficult than 3e because improvising new rules is more difficult and I was pointing out that rules that already exist that could later be discovered to reaosnably alter the rules is also damaging and 3e has more of them.  And so by way of example, I gave Zone of Truth, Wall of Iron, and Lyre of Building.

It doesn't matter whether anybody expressed a problem with them in play, because we're discussing world building and world building occurs before play.  The DM builds a world consonant with the rules as they exist.  Later, as he improvises rules, he improvises rules that fit his world.

Are you now dropping the whole worldbuilding point that you raised.  I'd be thrilled as you still haven't expressed how this relates to the issue of dissociation.



> You introduced the Wall of Iron so that you could make a point against a claim that doesn't exist on this thread.



So you didn't make a comparison about the ease of world-building between 3e and 4e?


----------



## wrecan

tomBitonti said:


> Did I kill the Prince?  No! (The Prince fell onto a dagger; the fall together with the dagger killed the prince.



So in your view Zone of Truth because no statement is ever really untrue from someone's philosophical sense?  So you've just house ruled Zone of Truth out of the game.  Doesn't that prove the point that it affects campaign worlds if you have to got o these absurd lengths to avoid ti from having an effect on the world?



> Looking at the Wall of Iron example, there is still the need to carve up the wall into usable pieces.



Fabricate can be cast by the same wizard who summoned the Wall of Iron.  And it costs nothing.



> Also, as a 6'th level spell, that gives you a 11'th level wizard, whom is rare in some environments.



As I said, under the demographics charts, every king's court would have one.  And one is all you need to dramatically and permanently alter an economy into something resembling no economy in any historical fantasy world that D&D is supposed to be mimicking.



> there is a _lot_ that is world breaking in this regard.



Yes!  In 3e, there is a lot that is world-breaking.  As I said, I only gave a handful of examples.  Decanters of endless water, elementals, candles of invocation, and numerous other items, spells and creatures cause all sorts of havoc with any attempt to create a recognizable magical fantasy world.



> Generally, if you push too far in these lines, the game rather breaks.



3e does indeed break if you try to build a world around the rules as written.  In 4e, magic is rare.  Rituals are quickly beyond the reach of even kings.  By the time adventurers have access to these rituals, they are at the Paragon Tier, and are supposed to be world-breaking.  It would be difficult to break a world using only the rituals and powers available to Heroic characters.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> You had made the claim that 4e was more difficult than 3e because improvising new rules is more difficult and I was pointing out that rules that already exist that could later be discovered to reaosnably alter the rules is also damaging and 3e has more of them. And so by way of example, I gave Zone of Truth, Wall of Iron, and Lyre of Building.
> <snip>
> So you didn't make a comparison about the ease of world-building between 3e and 4e?



I stated my opinion that "I don't think it's fair to state that 4E is better than or is exempt from 3E-like problems in terms of worldbuilding".

If you provide 3 anectodes, it doesn't prove otherwise, much less change my opinion.

Is your counterargument to tally/quantify all the many hidden problems in 3E, and then numerically compare to all the hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world, and then prove that A > B? If so, you have a long way to go.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> Generally, if you push too far in these lines, the game rather breaks. Then you are back to more of a question of player expectations: How does a player _expect_ teleport to work? What do players find is "reasonable" for game abilities?




Good post! I'm pretty much a "spirit of the rules" kind of guy, and not likely to tolerate an extreme on the other side for very long (or them tolerate me--doesn't matter which way, we won't be gaming together). So I can make anything work, with the kind of group for which I'll actually run a game.

So from a practical point of view, I see the main question is not what the players find reasonable, but how and when they want to draw the lines. 

That is, if the group rather likes that "rules as physics" style I mentioned a few posts back, but aren't hardcore unreasonable about it, then the whole point is to push up to the edge of reasonable without going over. That's part of the social contract at such a table. They might tolerate _fabricate_ tricks as a one-time gimmick to make some critical money for whatever main quest they had, but it is understood that the game is about the main quest, not making money.

Or you might have a group like mine, that doesn't want to push up to the edge on the letter of the rules. They want to engage the narrative (the story about that main quest), with a general understanding that rules gimmicks by and large don't work. There isn't, automatically, any oddball things like _fabricate_--unless and until such are established in the fiction. Making that critical money to support the main quest will probably be some harebrain mercantile scheme based on a fictionally established shortage of halfing wigs in a local town. 

The former rewards system mastery. The latter rewards narrative mastery. That is, in the most generous intrepretation of both, the former rewards marrying system mastery with observed game situation, while the latter reward marrying narrative mastery with observed game situation. The premium put on remembering (through notes, actual memory, or whatever) prior established game situation is, I think, somewhat different in the two styles as well. But I'm not as sure of that, and it might be an independent element.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> I stated my opinion that "I don't think it's fair to state that 4E is better than or is exempt from 3E-like problems in terms of worldbuilding".



Do you have a basis for that opinion?  Because I was responding to it by showing how 4e is exempt from one aspect: it doesn't have built-in mechanics that break worlds in the way that 3e does.  To show 3e does I gave a handful of examples.  If you want to show that 4e has similar problems, be my guest.  I've looked and didn't see them. But just a you never saw issues with Zones of Truth, Lyres of Building, Fabricate Spells, Wall of Iron Spells, Decanters of Endless Water, Candles of Invocation, Make Whole spells, and other issues, maybe I've missed it in 4e.  Since it's your opinion, it's up to you to find a counter, rather than demanding that I prove the negative (i.e., prove that 4e has no hidden problems).



> Is your counterargument to tally/quantify all the many hidden problems in 3E, and then numerically compare to all the hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world, and then prove that A > B? If so, you have a long way to go.



Actually, since I don't see any "hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world", B=0, and since I've alread shown A>0, then by the transitive property, A>B.  QED.

Now, feel free to counter this with an equal or greater number of hidden but existing worldbuilding problems in the 4e rules system.


----------



## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> Actually, since I don't see any "hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world", B=0, and since I've alread shown A>0, then by the transitive property, A>B.  QED.




What happens to the economy when a dragon's hoard gets dropped on it? What happens when any rogue can open a lock? How do gnomes get along with humans without the first exterminating the latter? How do Roman Catholic priests work in your world (since getting rid of masons from some sort of real world simulacrum matters, sure so would getting rid of RC priests?)


----------



## tomBitonti

What I've seen in 3E, for example, when I tried to make some extra gold by finding the relative supply and demand between Sharn and the Lhazar Principality, when the party was planning to teleport from the former to the latter, was general refusal of the other players and GM to entertain the idea.  They rather flatly declined to allow my player to engage in such trade.  Partly because my player didn't have any skill at commerce, and partly because they just didn't want to go there.  That is in spite of our players being often short on ready cash.  But they had a point: Our characters were mercenaries of high renown, not simple commercemen!

That makes the answer, in 3E, "just don't go there".  Which is unsatisfying, depending on how you want to play the game.

In 4E, though, I have to say, the rules simply take away the explanation.  To "is it magic" I hear "don't ask", or "maybe, but it doesn't matter".


----------



## Crazy Jerome

prosfilaes said:


> How do gnomes get along with humans without the first exterminating the latter?




This is one of those questions that "Man Was Not Meant To Know". You ought to be ashamed for bringing it up in this peaceful topic.  All I know, is if an elder god shows up at your house tonight, don't come crying to me for help.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

tomBitonti said:


> That makes the answer, in 3E, "just don't go there". Which is unsatisfying, depending on how you want to play the game.
> 
> In 4E, though, I have to say, the rules simply take away the explanation. To "is it magic" I hear "don't ask", or "maybe, but it doesn't matter".




I'm not sure I fully follow what you are saying here, but to the extent that I have it, I'd say the 4E answer is not that it doesn't matter, but "If it matters to you, you decide."  That "if" is important.  

This is analogous to how I already handled all kinds of details in the game, 4E, 3E, and previous.  If a player wants to know, and I don't have a preference, I get them to tell me the answer.  It is not as if the little half-elven girl apples had no name before the player named her.  In the fictional world, she has always had a name.  Whether provided by a player or me at the moment, or me earlier, or a published module--is immaterial.

From a narrative point of view, "how and why things work," is just another detail.  It might matter *now*, that someone has cared enough to ask.  It didn't matter until then.  And critically, the explanation is not presumed to be binding on another campaign, let alone another table.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> If the PC build rules allowed for a 1x/day play an "I win" card, _and_ this was the only reliable way for a PC to win, then I can see how a pattern might emerge. Even if there was such a card, and it _wasn't_ the only way to win, I can see how a pattern might emerge, although it would perhaps be a less evident pattern.
> 
> You keep going back to how you can hide the pattern under narrative descriptions.  And, yet again, I agree that you can.
> 
> But the situation for 4e martial PCs (at least, the builds I'm familiar with) isn't even like this. There is no 1x/day "I win" card. Dailies change the odds, and do interesting things, but the vagaries of the dice, in combination with the interpretive complexities of hit points as a resolution mechanic, break the pattern in the fiction.



The pattern is not at the encounter level, the pattern is at the action level.  The "I win" comments completely miss the point.

As players using the 4E system you are implementing a pattern based on use of daily and encounter powers that are established on such frequency not for any narrative merit, but purely for "gamist" expediency.  

The ability to hide the pattern does nothing to remove the pattern and not having a pattern is a preferable option if the narrative is your ultimate objective and is not subject to gamist concerns.  (Again, I'm not saying that your gamist focused activities are not 1,000 times more awesome than my narrative focused ones)

But I'm starting to think you are not addressing the issue fairly.  Just before you clearly stated that you agreed there were patterns, but it wasn't important because the cycle of them was not frequent enough to notice.  I point out that the players have already noticed the pattern so the cycle period isn't relevant and suddenly the pattern isn't there.

Also, your defense is built on the position that out of this vast list of power the reason a pattern can not be observed is that they are indistinguishable from one another.  And, I'll admit, if in your games the daily powers are routinely unremarkable from at-wills then you probably won't observe a pattern.  I will STILL be there because everyone at the table knows when a daily is use, it just won't be relevant.  So I'll concede irrelevant as close enough.  However, you have now described a game I find even less attractive.  So I don't think that helps.



> Right. But this doesn't seem to be a pattern in the fiction. It's a pattern in the gameplay. I can definitely see the metagame wedge that is at odds with simulationist preferences. But I can't see any pattern in the narrative.



The term I've used before is "pop-quiz" roleplaying.  I've also called it the narrative being the slave of the mechanics.  You are building a narrative that fits the mechanical obligations.  And no matter how well you disguise the unintelligent monsters just always happen to pick the CAGI fighter, you are telling a story that reflects the underlying pattern in gameplay.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Do you have a basis for that opinion?



Of course. It is scattered across all the different pages and in my head. 



> Because I was responding to it by showing how 4e is exempt from one aspect: it doesn't have built-in mechanics that break worlds in the way that 3e does. To show 3e does I gave a handful of examples. If you want to show that 4e has similar problems, be my guest. I've looked and didn't see them.



Are you going by the default strictly play-by-the-rules 4E or by the paradigm discussed earlier that anything extra a spell can do outside of combat is undefined and up to the DMs/players, because remember that everything led up from the latter.



> Since it's your opinion, it's up to you to find a counter, rather than demanding that I prove the negative (i.e., prove that 4e has no hidden problems).



Why? I haven't tried to disprove your opinion.



> Actually, since I don't see any "hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world", B=0, and since I've alread shown A>0, then by the transitive property, A>B. QED.



You've convinced yourself that B=0, not me. So congratulations, I guess, for proving your own opinion to yourself.


----------



## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> Then put the design commitee in quotes. But at the bottom, there was a discaimer that this was my general opinion. I'm not adding footnotes from every sentence to the disclaimer. I find these semantics tiresome and tangential to my opinion. All of the above is my opinion. Thank you.




It might have been your opinion.  But your opinion was on matters of cold hard fact.  When the facts your opinions are based on are shown to be wrong, that means your opinions are based on nothing more substantial than hot air and should be acknowledged as unsupportable.



tomBitonti said:


> 1) It allows a will save.  (And do you know if the save was successful?)




As a matter of fact, you do know if your spell has succeeded.  And the equivalent to being sworn in is to consent to the zone of truth.  There is no problem here.



> The whole matter would be limited by the honesty of the caster, and of the skill of the audience to detect duplicity.




You mean that you can bribe judges?  Shock horror.



Yesway Jose said:


> In fact, the SRD states "Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena." That's not the same as stating that it's like any iron wall, it only shares the qualities of rusting, perforation and natural phenomena. Artificially being cut up into blocks is not natural phenomenon.




You're clutching at straws.  As apparently you went all the way to the SRD, let's see what the spell actually says.



			
				SRD said:
			
		

> Wall of Iron *Conjuration (Creation)*
> 
> Level: Sor/Wiz 6 Components: V, S, M Casting Time: 1 standard action Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level) Effect: Iron wall whose area is up to one 5-ft. square/level; see text Duration: Instantaneous Saving Throw: See text Spell Resistance: No *You cause a flat, vertical iron wall to spring into being**.* The wall  inserts itself into any surrounding nonliving material if its area is  sufficient to do so. The wall cannot be conjured so that it occupies the  same space as a creature or another object. It must always be a flat  plane, though you can shape its edges to fit the available space.
> A wall of iron is 1 inch thick per four caster levels. You can double  the wall’s area by halving its thickness. Each 5-foot square of the wall  has 30 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness  10. A section of wall whose hit points drop to 0 is breached. If a  creature tries to break through the wall with a single attack, the DC  for the Strength check is 25 + 2 per inch of thickness.
> If you desire, the wall can be created vertically resting on a flat  surface but not attached to the surface, so that it can be tipped over  to fall on and crush creatures beneath it. The wall is 50% likely to tip  in either direction if left unpushed. Creatures can push the wall in  one direction rather than letting it fall randomly. A creature must make  a DC 40 Strength check to push the wall over. Creatures with room to  flee the falling wall may do so by making successful Reflex saves. Any Large or smaller creature that fails takes 10d6 points of damage. The wall cannot crush Huge and larger creatures.
> Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena.
> *Material Component*
> 
> A small piece of sheet iron plus gold dust worth 50 gp (1 pound of gold dust).




There in black and white.  Or rather blue for emphasis.  Let me repeat the _first line_ of the spell. *You cause a flat, vertical iron wall to spring into being*.  Not an iron-like wall made of magic.  An iron wall.  One that can't be dispelled and isn't affected by an anti-magic field because the duration is instantaneous.  I do not know how the spell could be any clearer about it being iron.  But you have your opinion and seem to want to stick to it irrespective of whatever the rules say.



Yesway Jose said:


> And that's all it is, speculating.
> 
> Has anybody here really expressed concern for Zones of Truth and Walls of Iron affecting their own game (and not someone else's hypothetical game)? No.




That has nothing at all to do with the subject under discussion.  Your claim was one about _worldbuilding_.  Not play.  Worldbuilding.  And this is a problem about worldbuilding.  PCs don't often have a use for Zone of Truth on an industrial scale.  Legal systems do.  And merchants do.  PCs don't often need a weight of iron measured in tonnes.  Kingdoms do.  And armies do.  If there are such solutions readily available, the NPCs are idiots not to use them.  And making every NPC in the world an idiot is a worldbuilding problem even if it never comes up in play.



> You introduced the Wall of Iron so that you could make a point against a claim that doesn't exist on this thread.




Yesway Jose, meet Yesway Jose.



Yesway Jose said:


> I stated my opinion that "I don't think it's fair to state that 4E is better than or is exempt from 3E-like problems in terms of worldbuilding".




4e doesn't have anything like as strong or overwhelming magic as 3e.  This was a deliberate design decision



> If you provide 3 anectodes, it doesn't prove otherwise, much less change my opinion.




Facts, rules, and logical argument.  We've provided all of these.  And they haven't changed your opinion.  I wonder what it would take to change your opinion. 



> Is your counterargument to tally/quantify all the many hidden problems in 3E, and then numerically compare to all the hidden problems in any one real or hypothetical 4E game world, and then prove that A > B? If so, you have a long way to go.




Do me a favour.  Find problems in 4e that are _remotely_ comparable to the listed ones in 3e.  Oh, that's right.  4e PCs and NPCs use different rules.  Even if there was a second level wizard utility power allowing them to make gold out of thin air, this would not crash the 4e economy because only PCs use the wizard class.  It is logically _impossible_ for 4e gameworlds to have the sort of problem 3e does in this respect due to the fundamentally different design.  The best you can do is find a broken ritual - the index for them is twenty two pages, but having skimmed through some are useful but I can't see anything that seriously forces game worlds to be re-written (possibly Ironwood - altering a single wooden object to have the strength and consistency of steel for 75gp, but that's the only one I see)


----------



## tomBitonti

Crazy Jerome said:


> I'm not sure I fully follow what you are saying here, but to the extent that I have it, I'd say the 4E answer is not that it doesn't matter, but "If it matters to you, you decide."  That "if" is important.
> 
> This is analogous to how I already handled all kinds of details in the game, 4E, 3E, and previous.  If a player wants to know, and I don't have a preference, I get them to tell me the answer.  It is not as if the little half-elven girl apples had no name before the player named her.  In the fictional world, she has always had a name.  Whether provided by a player or me at the moment, or me earlier, or a published module--is immaterial.
> 
> From a narrative point of view, "how and why things work," is just another detail.  It might matter *now*, that someone has cared enough to ask.  It didn't matter until then.  And critically, the explanation is not presumed to be binding on another campaign, let alone another table.



Well, I think that gets back to the 4E powers not really being tied to the fluff.  You can describe a 4E power, but it doesn't follow from any model which can be used to educe new details and modified effects, and any model that you provide can no detail that you can use to infer a modified effect.  That goes to my example of Come And Get It: If you model it as involving any kind of visual display, will it still work in darkness?  Where-as, if you look at Marshall Auras, those require that the Marshall be audible.  Silence will, by inference, negate the ability.

Going back to the example of Wall of Iron, I think that is a bit of a misdirect: You can _fix_ wall of iron by small(ish) changes: Make the effect one hour per level, and add a provision 'any portion of the wall which is detached from the main section of the wall fades from existence'.  That is to say, Wall of Iron seems to be an example of a insufficiently thought out spell effect.  Much the same can be said for the various "Orb" spells: They were poorly implemented in terms of the underlying balance and model of the game.  Because Wall of Iron can be easily patched up, that to me says that its problems don't say much about problems with the 3E spell model.


----------



## Wiseblood

Jumping in on page sixty something. Looks like disassociated mechanics are in each game. The argument seems to be "to what degree?".

A wall of Iron does sound like a chore to cut up.


----------



## Hussar

tomBitonti said:


> I should say, Zone of Truth is an excellent way to keep the kingdom safe!
> 
> Will it keep us safer?  Yes, in the hands of the wise and skillful!
> 
> Did I kill the Prince?  No! (The Prince fell onto a dagger; the fall together with the dagger killed the prince.  What I don't say is that I pushed the prince, so my push _indirectly_ killed the prince, but the fall and the dagger were the more direct cause.)




And, if the advocate only asked you that single question you'd be fine.  But, "Were you there when the Prince died?" and "What were doing just before the Prince died?" and "Did you want the Prince to die?" should clear up most of that.



> Looking at the Wall of Iron example, there is still the need to carve up the wall into usable pieces.  I guess an investment in an adamantine dagger is needed, otherwise, I just have a huge hunk of iron.  How would I even begin to carve that up?  Or fit it into a furnace to melt it down?  Seems like a big furnace.  Ok, then a bound fire elemental, and a safe spot for a rather large flame, and equipment for casting the iron into smaller portions.




Umm, what?  You do realize that we carve up big chunks of iron all the time?  Without magic?  And we've been doing so for a REALLY long time.  A good hot furnace and you get nicely melted iron.  Sure, in this case, you need a pretty darn big furnace, but, since Wall of Iron is actually shapeable, you don't have to make it that difficult - you make a Wall of Iron three inches thick and break it off with a hammer.



> Also, as a 6'th level spell, that gives you a 11'th level wizard, whom is rare in some environments.




Not by the stated demographics in the 3e DMG.  You only need a large town or larger.  Any decent sized kingdom should have at least one and one is all you need.



> But, by the spell, the Iron is actual Iron, as the spell has a duration of "Instantaneous".  Also as a result, the resulting wall cannot be dispelled.
> 
> Joking aside, you have a point: The resulting wall is quite valuable.
> 
> On the other hand, there is a _lot_ that is world breaking in this regard.  Any permanently bound fire or ice elemental seems to be a perpetual source of heat and cold.  A decanter of endless water is an endless source of water.  You could use teleport to shift large masses to the top of a high mountain, for a source of energy.  Or, define a frame of reference inside of a moving box carried aloft by a flying wizard using levitate, and who is moving very quickly, to shift a large mass from standing still to that same velocity.  That is, assuming that teleport is relative to frames of reference.  Otherwise, how do you teleport off of a moving boat, or to the opposite side of a world?  Or, what is the limit of using stone shape to carve a narrow slice around a block, for a fast way to create a tunnel, one block at a time?  When you travel miles underground (below sea level), why don't you experience blistering heat and unendurable pressure?
> 
> Generally, if you push too far in these lines, the game rather breaks.  Then you are back to more of a question of player expectations: How does a player _expect_ teleport to work?  What do players find is "reasonable" for game abilities?
> 
> TomBitonti




This I agree with.  The magic system, and really, any system in D&D you care to name is hardly rigorous in it's approach to reality.  You can poke pretty large holes in it.  

But, then, claiming that one edition is more difficult to world build in than another edition is a bit wonky.  No one has to prove that 4e is easier to world build in, just that it's no more difficult than any other edition.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> if my PC wants to learn teleportation, then it may be universal in the game world, every apprentice learns it, but for some reason the PC can't. It's arbitrary, and it's arbitrary in a way that goes against what the players want to do, solely in the name of balance.



What you describe here seems more like a situation where PCs can't be wizards. Which is quite conceivable (eg for a Conan game).

If you are saying that the PC _is_ a wizard, but for some reason can't do what every other apprentice wizard can do, then the problem seems to me to be not one of dissociation, but a more basic one of coherence, or at least of verisimilitude.

The sorts of balance constraints on PCs I had in mind (and that I assumed Yesway Jose had in mind) tend to concern esoterica rather than bread-and-butter capabilities, precisely because coherence and verisimilitude already sort out the bread-and-butter questions.



Crazy Jerome said:


> my world building is more about providing a place for the characters to act than it is about the world itself.





Yesway Jose said:


> I don't know how you can have one without the other at every place that they interact.



No myth is one way to do it - which has also been labelled "just in time" GMing in some other threads on these boards.

For the PCs to have a place to act, it's not essential to have anything more than a description of where they are and who they can see, plus some shared understanding between players and GM of background and genre. The gameworld then gets built out of the material of actual play. Its sort of the opposite of a module which has paragraphs of backstory for the GM to read that never comes into the open when the players actually take their PCs through the adventure.

I don't run an entirely no myth game, but I suspect that by ENworld standards I'm closer to it than many.

A similar sort of approach to the prioritising of character and situation over world building is implicit in this comment by Paul Czege:

I go around the room, taking a turn with each player, framing a scene and playing it out. . . when I'm framing scenes, and I'm in the zone, I'm turning a freakin' firehose of adversity and situation on the character. It is not an objective outgrowth of prior events. It's intentional as all get out. . . I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this. . .  the outcome of the scene is not preconceived.​
I'm not saying that there is anything better about GMing in this sort of fashion. I just offer it as an answer to the question - how can you have one (character) without the other (setting) at the points where they interact?

I also think it's fairly evident that some action resolution systems support no myth or situation-driven play, in which the prior development of setting takes a back seat to character and situation, better than others.

For example, the more the action resolution mechanics require the players to focus on the minutiae of the gameworld, and discourage the players from allowing one scene to be wrapped up and another scene framed (eg because there are potential mechanical advantages to be gained by keeping the scene alive), the harder it will be to run no myth. An example of this would be dungeon exploration in classic D&D - the mechanics for that are 10' poles, ear trumpets with wire mesh, standard door opening procedures, etc, all of which (i) encourage the players to engage with the minutiae of the dungeon setting, and (ii) can't be fairly adjudicated by a GM who doesn't already know the architectural and other details of the dungeon, and (iii) tend to lead to play of the sort being described in the various recent ToH threads, focusing on operational exploration rather than engaging with situation (the module becomes, in effect, one long scene).

4e's mechanics offer better support for no myth or situation-focused play, because the action resolution mechanics- both combat and skill challenges, and also including the resource recovery elements of these mechanics - tend to encourage scene-based play rather than a one contious scene approach. To really run 4e this way, though, you need to go beyond the core rulebooks and bring in approaches and techniques from other games - such as the [utl=http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/187_Save_My_Game.pdf]Save My Game article[/url] which promoted Burning Wheel-style "Let it Ride".


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> Are you going by the default strictly play-by-the-rules 4E or by the paradigm discussed earlier that anything extra a spell can do outside of combat is undefined and up to the DMs/players



That paradigm is not actually a 4e paradigm. It's one that, if I recall correctly, you coined.

The 4e paradigm that Crazy Jerome and I discussed (and maybe others whom I've forgotten) is that anything extra a spell or other power can do _whether inside or outside_ combat is governed by page 42. That is, (i) it's not undefined (of course there can also be undefined houseruling and improvisation, but _that_ aspect of roleplaying is not remotely unique to 4e), and (ii) it has nothing to do with a combat/out-of-combat divide. In fact (and as Crazy Jerome mentioned upthread), the DMG presents page 42 as being relevant primarily _to_ combat. It is DMG2, in its discussion of skill challenges, that talks seriously about using page 42 + powers in non-combat contexts (although many, many players noticed the possibility before DMG2 was published).


tomBitonti said:


> I think that gets back to the 4E powers not really being tied to the fluff.



At this level of generality, this statement is not true. And I'm not at all suggesting that you're being deliberately slack or provocative in your wording, but mistaken descriptions of the 4e mechanics are (in my view) part of the problem in having serious discussions of the game between those who play it and those who don't.

4e powers have keywords. Keywords are crucial for understanding how the powers relate to the fiction. For example, a power with the fire keyword, that deals fire damage, can set fire to a tree. A power with the weapon keyword, that deals only untyped damage, cannot set fire to a tree. I think this is fairly obvious, but even if it weren't it is explained unambiguously (although perhaps in a slightly odd location) in the DMG's discussion of using powers against objects.

As I noted in my discussion upthread of the Vincent Baker blog that frozenwastes linked to upthread:



pemerton said:


> I think how 4e combat is experienced may depend a lot on whether, for any given group, the stuff that is drawn on the battlemap is first and foremost fictional stuff - trees, rubble, fog, walls with doors and windows, etc - or first and foremost mechanical stuff - cover, difficult terrain, obscuring terrain etc. Perhaps in part because my maps are fairly sketchy and my group uses board game tokens rather than miniatures or even WotC's picture tokens, I think that the fictional stuff prevails. And this is reinforced by the resolution of interactions with it that involve rightward arrows and not just manipulating the map - like climbing walls, overturning furniture, opening or closing doors and shutters, etc.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there are also aspects of the 4e architecture that generate rightward arrows - the rules on damaging objects, for example, make it clear that keywords (like fire, ice, teleportation etc) have fictional signficance. A tree can be set alight, for instance, but a stone pillar can't - so here we have a rightward pointing arrow, from fiction to mechanics, that is not just boxes (in the form of a cover symbol on a map) to boxes. Icy terrain can be used to cross a river, whereas a grasping vines spell that also creates difficult terrain probably can't. And so on.



"Rightward arrows", in this passage, means decisions taken in the course of action resolultion that involve reasoning from the fiction to the mechanics. "Boxes" refer to mechanical gamestates. (The terminology is from the Vincent Baker blog).


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> What you describe here seems more like a situation where PCs can't be wizards. Which is quite conceivable (eg for a Conan game).
> 
> If you are saying that the PC _is_ a wizard, but for some reason can't do what every other apprentice wizard can do, then the problem seems to me to be not one of dissociation, but a more basic one of coherence, or at least of verisimilitude.
> 
> The sorts of balance constraints on PCs I had in mind (and that I assumed Yesway Jose had in mind) tend to concern esoterica rather than bread-and-butter capabilities, precisely because coherence and verisimilitude already sort out the bread-and-butter questions.




Apprentice wizards was a bit of an exaggeration, but teleportation is not esoterica; it's one of the most useful things magic can do. In fact, pre-4ed wizards almost invariably had teleportation, and wizards who didn't spend most of their time trying to kill creatures are probably even more likely to have it. Balance constraints by their nature are about the most useful and thus most common abilities.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> teleportation is not esoterica; it's one of the most useful things magic can do. In fact, pre-4ed wizards almost invariably had teleportation, and wizards who didn't spend most of their time trying to kill creatures are probably even more likely to have it. Balance constraints by their nature are about the most useful and thus most common abilities.



OK. But 4e wizards are chock-full of teleportation, both in their powers and in their rituals. The only fantasy RPG I can think of that has _more _teleportation is Rolemaster.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Neonchameleon said:


> It might have been your opinion. But your opinion was on matters of cold hard fact.



Look, I summarized my opinion and ended with "Take it or leave it". You decided on neither, and attacked my opinion about what you claim to be an issue of "cold hard fact". I refute that it is fact, because hidden but unrealized/solvable problems do not need to be fixed, and I see no evidence that DMs were crying to TSR/WoTC about Zones of Truth destroying their game, so I think you're getting apoplectic over a non-issue. Much more importantly, however, I was frank and up-front that I had neither the time nor inclination to face off a multipronged debate, including tangents about the exact degree to which 3E worldbuilding has been playtested, not to mention how tangential it is from the central topic of this thread.



> When the facts your opinions are based on are shown to be wrong, that means your opinions are based on nothing more substantial than hot air and should be acknowledged as unsupportable.



Have you aggressively attacked everyone who failed to substantiate their opinions to your satisfaction and, failing to do so, acknowledged to you that it's unsupportable even they disagree or just don't care to argue about it, or do you only narrowly focus on me because you don't like my opinion? If we were all equally in-your-face aggressive about demanding that nobody is allow to have an opinion about "matters of fact" and subsequently attempt to prove the factuality of that opinion, thus nullifying the whole point of stating "I think" or IMO or "It's my opinion that...", then I guarantee you that this thread would not be much fun for anyone.


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## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> That paradigm is not actually a 4e paradigm. It's one that, if I recall correctly, you coined.
> 
> The 4e paradigm that Crazy Jerome and I discussed (and maybe others whom I've forgotten) is that anything extra a spell or other power can do _whether inside or outside_ combat is governed by page 42. That is, (i) it's not undefined (of course there can also be undefined houseruling and improvisation, but _that_ aspect of roleplaying is not remotely unique to 4e), and (ii) it has nothing to do with a combat/out-of-combat divide. In fact (and as Crazy Jerome mentioned upthread), the DMG presents page 42 as being relevant primarily _to_ combat. It is DMG2, in its discussion of skill challenges, that talks seriously about using page 42 + powers in non-combat contexts (although many, many players noticed the possibility before DMG2 was published).




I said it was undefined.  Then I went on to qualify that contention by noting page 42 and the general advice provided about how to handle such situations.  "Undefined" here was called out as meaning, strictly undefined by RAW--and implies a very literal reading of the RAW.  Once once has absorbed the import of the provided advice, then I agree with you.  No doubt, playing other games with similar sensibilities made this more apparent at the launch of 4E, whereas some of the advice didn't arrive until DMG 2, and some still hasn't made it.


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## Crazy Jerome

pemerton said:


> No myth is one way to do it - which has also been labelled "just in time" GMing in some other threads on these boards.
> 
> For the PCs to have a place to act, it's not essential to have anything more than a description of where they are and who they can see, plus some shared understanding between players and GM of background and genre. The gameworld then gets built out of the material of actual play. Its sort of the opposite of a module which has paragraphs of backstory for the GM to read that never comes into the open when the players actually take their PCs through the adventure.
> 
> ...
> 
> For example, the more the action resolution mechanics require the players to focus on the minutiae of the gameworld, and discourage the players from allowing one scene to be wrapped up and another scene framed (eg because there are potential mechanical advantages to be gained by keeping the scene alive), the harder it will be to run no myth. An example of this would be dungeon exploration in classic D&D - the mechanics for that are 10' poles, ear trumpets with wire mesh, standard door opening procedures, etc, all of which (i) encourage the players to engage with the minutiae of the dungeon setting, and (ii) can't be fairly adjudicated by a GM who doesn't already know the architectural and other details of the dungeon, and (iii) tend to lead to play of the sort being described in the various recent ToH threads, focusing on operational exploration rather than engaging with situation (the module becomes, in effect, one long scene).
> 
> 4e's mechanics offer better support for no myth or situation-focused play, because the action resolution mechanics- both combat and skill challenges, and also including the resource recovery elements of these mechanics - tend to encourage scene-based play rather than a one contious scene approach. To really run 4e this way, though, you need to go beyond the core rulebooks and bring in approaches and techniques from other games - such as the [utl=http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/187_Save_My_Game.pdf]Save My Game article[/url] which promoted Burning Wheel-style "Let it Ride".




What I do when I DM is a mixture of these styles. There is some real operational play mixed in, though not nearly to the degree as one would expect in a traditional 1E dungeon crawl. And my "develop in play" style is somewhat of a "just in time" version, but it is "just in time" modeled more after the inventory systems used by modern commerce than straight improvisation on demand. Or if you prefer, it is improvisational jazz rather than improvisational theatre. The key difference is when and how decisions are made. 

Let me outline how it works for me, to illustrate:

1. Scene is framed, by me and/or players. Characters are well understood. They have a place to act. Typically, I give them the broad outline, then they fill in details, as they need to ground themselves. They are in small fortified village, poorly maintained, and sloppily guarded. What are the walls made of? I know that one, already, as an image is in my mind. "Wood". How high? I decide--15 feet, but inconsistent, and thus shorter in places. There is a tavern. How does it appear? I ask the player that wants to know to narrate something appropriate. If the thing they narrate isn't entirely a good fit, I'll help them tweak it so that it is.

2. Through a series of events, the party ends up confronting corrupt guards at the door to their fortified barracks. The guards slam the door and manage to barricade it before the PCs can act. One of the PCs, a minitaur fighter (very strong) wants to break down the door. I need to know the DC of the door. No problem. But I also need to know about the floor plan inside and other such details. 

3. I decide on the things that need a decision. Then I convey that decision to the players. So before the player rolls, I have a DC for that door. I'm emphatically *not* changing it to fit with a great roll or poor roll to produce some outcome that I like or want. I know there is a stairwell to the second floor in an anteroom just inside the door, and a narrow hall to the right. When do I know it? Right before the player busts down the door, and I need to describe what they see. There is also a cloak rack in the hall (as I visualize the room), but I don't care about that in the chaos of the fight unless a player states that they are observing more carefully.

4. Players react. The ones that are prone to use scenery are going for the stairs, or asking about other options. The options are then described as decided, not based on what the player wishes for. Sorry, no giant drapes in the anteroom to drop over the guards charging down the hall.

Now, as it happens, the above scene took place in an adventure that I got from a module--a rather poorly designed and written module in Dungeon. But I used it the same way I do things myself--I got an impression from it, and then ran the session as develop in play from that impression, rather than the module itself. (I did use the NPCs and monsters more or less as written, same as I would if I wrote them out myself for my own adventure.)

This is part of that improv jazz distinction. There are pieces prepared ahead of time. These pieces fit a pattern or impression in your mind. As you need new pieces, you use the impression, tool, techniques, etc. to improv *a suitable piece that fits into what has come before*. Then you narrate. It's a subtle difference between that and "make up something cool," but it is a difference. What you get is something that does a fairly good job of emulating certain aspects of simulation, without exactly being simulation--same as, unless you really know what to look for, you'll have some difficulty definitely picking out the improv jazz from the fully prepared jazz.

Finally, to pull this off, you do need some note taking, but unlike simulation note taking, which demands a high fidelity on details, you are more worried about the fidelity to the impression. The impression is king. In simulation, you might improv a description of a dance by an orc tribe--the point being color, to immerse the players into the world with details, and if it matters later, their ability to use this detail dealing with a similar tribe in the future. Runequest is heavily slanted towards this kind of play, at least by its default presentation. I think some D&D players who value immersion go for it, as well. Whereas, in this impressionist variety, the details of the dance don't matter. The color matters, but in broad strokes. And it matters that these orc tribes have some kind of ritual dance. But the player is not asked to remember details and use them later. The player is expected to remember the impression, and use *that* later.

It is also no accident that my favorite painters are Monet and Renoir.


----------



## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> I said it was undefined.  Then I went on to qualify that contention by noting page 42 and the general advice provided about how to handle such situations.  "Undefined" here was called out as meaning, strictly undefined by RAW--and implies a very literal reading of the RAW.



Oops - sorry about that. I didn't go back and check, I just remember the comments about page 42, and about it being presented as being particularly salient for combat. (Under the heading "actions the rules don't cover", which I guess is your point!)


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> If you are saying that the PC is a wizard, but for some reason can't do what every other apprentice wizard can do, then the problem seems to me to be not one of dissociation, but a more basic one of coherence, or at least of verisimilitude.





Crazy Jerome said:


> I said it was undefined. Then I went on to qualify that contention by noting page 42 and the general advice provided about how to handle such situations. "Undefined" here was called out as meaning, strictly undefined by RAW--and implies a very literal reading of the RAW. Once once has absorbed the import of the provided advice, then I agree with you. No doubt, playing other games with similar sensibilities made this more apparent at the launch of 4E, whereas some of the advice didn't arrive until DMG 2, and some still hasn't made it.



All of the below is IMO, YMMV.

Any fantasy/sci-fi medium has the problem of incorporating new technologies or magical elements into their worldbuilding:


Yesway Jose said:


> I'm sure that screenwriters struggled with the adoption of the cell phone in real-life. Many movie plot devices were all based on the landline phone. Now you deal with it by either a) setting the movie in the 80s or earlier, or b) make up an excuse for why your cell phone isn't working, or c) adapting the plot to cell phones for a different story. All 3 approaches are legitimate, although (b) only works for any one scenario in one movie, and only (c) really rolls with that reality.
> 
> There is option (d) -- a movie set in 2011 where no character uses a cell phone even if they could and didn't have an excuse not to. That's disassociated to me...




D&D could have been completely surreal, but it isn't. There's something to be said for familiarity. D&D draws upon familiar elements in literature and movies and mythology, like dragons, Medusa's gaze, princes transformed to frogs, magic flying carpets, truth serums, Jedi mind trick, and so forth.

Earlier editions of D&D attempted to import these familiar fictional constructs, resulting in a) more fantasy and wonder, but having to account for b) game balance and worldbuilding. I think when it came to balancing (a) vs (b), the designers leaned towards (a) more fantasy and wonder.

Yes, that could result in problems, but..


Yesway Jose said:


> with zones of truth, you can a) not even notice the implications -- true in my experience, b) notice it but purposefully gloss over it, c) houserule it out of existence, d) introduce in-game reasons to restrict its use by NPCs, e) just roll with it and work the stories around it.



I think the designers knew that there was a social contract in place and houserulings to buffer against potential problems, and gosh darn it, it was worth it to have more fantasy and wonder in the game! IMO I would have pushed slightly more towards (b) but still with an eye on (a).

4E plays it safest due to its focus on combat-informed tactics and game balance. So Medusa's instant-flesh-to-stone gaze becomes a more gradual thing. Permanent polymorph until dispelled becomes a 6 second duration. Magic carpets are prohibitively expensive. Hypnotism begins as a binary effect. IMO I acknowledge the underlying goals but I think it went too far.

Personally, I think, IMO, YMMV, and accepting no responsibility for substantiating the factuality of my opinion, I think it's like D&D was a toy box full of all sorts of wonderful and colorful toys, some of which could be slightly dangerous and caused some babies to cry but were otherwise amazing toys to play with if you were emotionally mature with sharing toys, and then 4E came and took away all the sharp-edged colorful toys and left you with soft rounded toys in a padded room for your own protection -- and if you decide to stray out of the play area (through a somewhat hidden door marked 'Page 42') and create your own new toys, you do so at YOUR OWN RISK. Otherwise, you can peer through the windows of your play area and watch other kids playing with slightly dangerous but very fun colorful wonderous toys that you cannot have (this is where one type of "disassociation" comes in for me, the disconnect between your play area vs the outside world). It seems that the designers don't trust you to behave, or they just haven't figured out what to do with the fun but slightly dangerous toys so they discontinue them until they find a way to literally nerf them for your protection.

And yes, that was always happening to some extent in D&D, except that to avoid disassociation, I think most toys were designed to work more or less the same in the play area and the outside world. and if the toy worked differently in the play area vs the outside world, there was a fictional reason for it. If the toy was too dangerous, like a nuclear bomb, it would not be included at all, but you wouldn't have a half-assed half-nuclear bomb as a sort of poor man's compromise between nuclear bomb or no nuclear bomb. I think it's better to have no item at all than an item so nerfed it no longer resembles the fiction you're familiar with (Crazy Jerome, is that anything like your "fairy tale logic" that a non-greedy dragon isn't a dragon?).

I think it's interesting to note that dragons and all sorts of horrible monsters exist in the game alongside small villages to large cities. If this fiction was attacked aggressively with the same hardnosed approach to Zones of Truth and Walls of Iron, I think it could be asked why isn't the world completely overrun with monsters while the weaker races hide in holes and grub in the dirt, like the early mammals did during the reign of the dinosaurs? There's also a broken economy and so forth. Clearly, there are some unrealized worldbuilding issues in any D&D setting, but this doesn't seem to be a significant problem. The designers can be trusted to introduce dragons and so forth that integrate with the world, and the players can be trusted to use any narrative they want to fluff the mechanics that they're allowed to use, and they can even be trusted to use any narrative to justify oddball cases like marking an ooze or tripping a snake, but the PCs cannot be trusted (by default anyway) to interact with or use tools that might alter the game world in unexpected ways. As you drill down to all the mechanics behind this paradigm, it seems to me that this paradigm may partially inform some of the "disassociated mechanics" that can exist when you think your PC *could* do something but seemingly arbitrarily cannot or when a player does something mechanically that you cannot quite explain why/how the PC is doing so within the context of the game world.

So if you play strictly by the rules, there's a certain spectrum of fantasy roleplaying you'll ever get. If this bothers you, and if you're still playing 4E, and if you allow for more use of Page 42, and if you're not afraid of upsetting game balance and worldbuilding, and if you have a solid social contract between the DMs and players, (and by this point, a large fraction of gaming groups are eliminated), then you can expand the worldbuilding to include more advanced/swingy fantasy elements. Since you're going at it solo, with no guidelines, like a pioneer, it's a very different experience, like writing your own mini-RPG system. You might end up like Lost or Battlestar Galactica, starting off strong and then meandering and diverging and retconning and leaving behind plotholes and lost threads as your write every season on the fly without a long term vision for how all the new elements integrate into your gameworld. Some people enjoy equally every episode of Lost and BSG, but others wished that the screenwriters had a more coherent vision from the get-go.

So yes, the mechanics are excellent for their design intent. Yet going back to the 1st post of page 50 of this thread, I think one can have "disassociation" when one defines the Rule as Page 42 and defines the Fiction as the story of the PCs and their relationship to a game world that is potentially dynamic and variable in the hands of any one gaming group. I don't know that Page 42 on its own is robust enough in the hands of any one DM to tell the stories that will prevent "disassociation" for the scope of an evolved post-4e campaign or game world. And if one gives up and does away with all that, then one circles back to the top of this post...

And I don't know that fingers recently pointed at 3E, no matter how justified, prove that 3E is more "disassociated" than 4E, assuming that's an interesting discussion to have. IMO I'm waiting for Mearls' hints at 5E and layers that might bridge the divide.

*DISCLAIMER:* All of the above is IMO, YMMV. I'm not purposefully attempting to disprove anyone's opinions, and I'm willing to agree to disagree. Please accept my apologies in advance for any semantic errors or opinions that conflict with yours.


----------



## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> What happens to the economy when a dragon's hoard gets dropped on it? What happens when any rogue can open a lock? How do gnomes get along with humans without the first exterminating the latter? How do Roman Catholic priests work in your world (since getting rid of masons from some sort of real world simulacrum matters, sure so would getting rid of RC priests?)



How is any of this a function of 4e mechanics?


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## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Are you going by the default strictly play-by-the-rules 4E or by the paradigm discussed earlier that anything extra a spell can do outside of combat is undefined and up to the DMs/players, because remember that everything led up from the latter.



Everything didn't lead up from the latter.  Everything led up from your opinion that 4e worldbuilding was not easier than 3e.  I pointed out a specific instance in which that is not true, which did not involve the houseruling that people can do in both 3e and 4e.  It's now up to you to present countervailing evidence.



> Why? I haven't tried to disprove your opinion.



I'm not asking you to disprove my opinion. I'm asking you to support yours in the face of the countervailing evidence I presented.



> You've convinced yourself that B=0, not me.



On what basis do you believe that 4e has hidden mechanical obstacles to worldbuilding analogous to the ones I identified in 3e?


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## wrecan

nvm


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## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> How is any of this a function of 4e mechanics?




The size of a dragon's hoard and the nature of gnomes are given in the Monster Manual. The rogue's ability to pick locks is in the PHB. And the clerical magic in the PHB totally changes the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to the world around them. (And if you give up the Roman Catholic Church, what's the big deal about giving up the historically less significant masons?)



wrecan said:


> In fact most of us have been explicitly saying not  that some people don't like 4e, but that the reasons for the dislike  are inherently subjective, and not objective, as TheAlexandrian in the  blog that started this thread has indicated.




And the Mona Lisa is not objectively a better painting than the one's you can buy at a flea market. That many people do like it better is objective, and the reasons why can be discussed reasonably, even if they are inherently subjective.

Put a different way: just because something is subjective, doesn't mean it's not real.


----------



## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> The size of a dragon's hoard and the nature of gnomes are given in the Monster Manual. The rogue's ability to pick locks is in the PHB.



The size of a dragon hoard is given in the Monster Manual?!  I don't think so.  A dragon hoard would be given out as treasure parcels based on the level of the dragon and the party confronting it.  

At any rate, how is world-breaking for dragon hoards to be introduced into an economy?  Certainly, the specific hoard may have an inflationary impact, depending on the robustness of the economy, but that's isn't world-breaking from a design perspective, particularly since most of any dragon's hoard will be spent on buying equipment to keep the PCs' appropriately equipped for their level.  

Nor is it world-breaking from a world-design perspective for any "rogue" to open a lock, especially since in 4e, the only "rogue" is a PC who takes that class, or specific NPCs that the DM decides should be trained in Thievery.

Nor is a Roman Catholic priest a necessity in athe heroic fantasy realm that D&D is designed to imitate.  You seem to have confused "heroic fantasy realm" with "Earth".




> (And if you give up the Roman Catholic Church, what's the big deal about giving up the historically less significant masons?)



I wasn't referring to the Craftmasons.  I was referring to stonemasons, the actual profession.  I think a world in which quarries, stonemasons, engineers, and the like have been replaced with singing minstrels is a much different fantasy realm than what D&D is intended to emulate, as evidenced by the fact that none of the campaign worlds for which 3e sourcebooks were released (including Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft) have minstrels replacing stonemasons.

I know you're probably just being smarmy, but since you didn't include  an emoticon, I'm going to proceed as if you were being serious and  didn't understand why your questions didn't have anything to do with  fantasy world-design.



> just because something is subjective, doesn't mean it's not real.



Agreed.  But nobody is saying the feeling of dissociation that some people experience isn't genuine.


----------



## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> At any rate, how is world-breaking for dragon hoards to be introduced into an economy?  Certainly, the specific hoard may have an inflationary impact, depending on the robustness of the economy, but that's isn't world-breaking from a design perspective, particularly since most of any dragon's hoard will be spent on buying equipment to keep the PCs' appropriately equipped for their level.




If the PCs can buy level-appropriate equipment, that means there's enough traffic in PC equipment of that level to support the industry that makes it. People don't have million GP items unless there's a demand for them; if they're older items that the merchant has happened to pick up, they won't be priced at a million GP unless there's people around with that type of money to buy it. That's pretty alien to most fantasy.



> I wasn't referring to the Craftmasons.  I was referring to stonemasons, the actual profession.




So was I.



> I think a world in which quarries, stonemasons, engineers, and the like have been replaced with singing minstrels is a much different fantasy realm than what D&D is intended to emulate, as evidenced by the fact that none of the campaign worlds for which 3e sourcebooks were released (including Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft) have minstrels replacing stonemasons.




I don't recall masons having much of an impact on any of those settings; if they are mentioned in the rulebooks, it's as a note in some table. Nor do I think the issues are that big; in a non-capitalistic world, where the concept of ROI is unknown, where wizards and clerics are some of the most powerful figures around, where lords might want to keep powerful magic in reserve instead of giving it to just everyone, where guilds exist that will object, possibly violently, to anything that detracts from their power, where lords depend on their support by those guilds, I don't think every lord would summon their pet high-level wizard, have them make a specific magical item, and then use it all over the place.



> Agreed.  But nobody is saying the feeling of dissociation that some people experience isn't genuine.




No, but you're acting like it isn't connected to specific features of D&D 4e.


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## Crazy Jerome

Yesway, if the only possible choices were the 3E way and the 4E way, when it came to having fairy tale things act with their full oomph, then I might agree with you.  At the very least, I'd be happy to have both systems to choose from, so that I could switch my priorities with my system, as needed.

But having recognized the issue in the 3E way, why would it be necessary for 5E to undo what 4E did to solve the new issue?  In another topic, I'm already on record as saying that I think artifacts and rituals should be explicitly fenced off from the rest of the system, allowed to be wildly unbalanced, and be a lot more prevalent.  

That is, if you ask me in D&D if a wizard should be able to shout Hocus-cabra, and nigh instantly turn his foe into a toad, and failing a save, he stays that way until changed back--I vote no.  Have a much weaker version or not (your choice) for combat.  Probably have it, as you don't have to use it if you don't want.  But then the really effective, mythologically evocative, version can be a ritual, take some time, etc.  If the bad wizard can pin the hero down long enough, toad-dom here we come.

And I'll keep right on saying that as long as a wizard spell means, "mark off a slot and nasty thing happens, absent saving throw."  It bypasses the whole hit point mechanic, with all kinds of bad side effects.  In Fantasy Hero, for example, we don't have that issue.  Spells can fail and cost energy--and the stronger the effect, the greater the risk and cost.  If the caster wants to get the opportunity cost back down to something reasonable, they have to start taking lots of extra time or make it easier to disrupt or all kinds of choices.

Now, if you wanted to say that (low-grade) Powers or (stupendous) Rituals is too binary, and you'd like something in the middle, then that is definitely a design hole.  I'm not sure how well it can be filled in the D&D manner, but it is a hole. However it is filled, if at all, the costs of doing things in the middle needs to be inline with the results.

And like I'm sure that we could never have had 4E without the effort that 3E put into standardization, I'm sure that 5E can improve on 4E--in part because 4E solved some problems, and made the next set more apparent.


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## Neonchameleon

Yesway Jose said:


> Look, I summarized my opinion and ended with "Take it or leave it". You decided on neither, and attacked my opinion about what you claim to be an issue of "cold hard fact". I refute that it is fact, because hidden but unrealized/solvable problems do not need to be fixed, and I see no evidence that DMs were crying to TSR/WoTC about Zones of Truth destroying their game, so I think you're getting apoplectic over a non-issue. Much more importantly, however, I was frank and up-front that I had neither the time nor inclination to face off a multipronged debate, including tangents about the exact degree to which 3E worldbuilding has been playtested, not to mention how tangential it is from the central topic of this thread.
> 
> Have you aggressively attacked everyone who failed to substantiate their opinions to your satisfaction and, failing to do so, acknowledged to you that it's unsupportable even they disagree or just don't care to argue about it, or do you only narrowly focus on me because you don't like my opinion? If we were all equally in-your-face aggressive about demanding that nobody is allow to have an opinion about "matters of fact" and subsequently attempt to prove the factuality of that opinion, thus nullifying the whole point of stating "I think" or IMO or "It's my opinion that...", then I guarantee you that this thread would not be much fun for anyone.




Not all opinions are equal.  I personally think that people who find Pathfinder a better game than 4e are missing out badly on what is the better game.  But it's an opinion based on subjective preferences.  I don't mock people for that.  On the other hand there are people who believe that the moon landing was faked.  Whether the moon landing was faked or not is not something that opinions matter a damn about.  And if someone was to argue that the moon landing was faked I'd first ask them why they thought that, rebut their evidence, and then if they continued, I'd mock them because it's all that's left.

You are waaaaay into the moon landing territory with your opinions.  World building is a mix of science and art.  But impacts on world building are demonstrable and measurable.  Your opinion about the impact of certain abilities and spells on world building is about as relevant as someone's opinion that Michael Jordan is the greatest baseball player of all time.  And that you try to shy away from any possibility of your lack of knowledge being called into question by calling it an opinion is laughable for the exact same reason that it would be laughable to call Michael Jordan the greatest baseball player of all time.  Your opinion that the worldbuilding issues that arise in 3e from giving NPCs access to a range of abilities that are fine in the hands of adventurers who focus on doing something else* but would break the world in the hands of NPCs who specialised in them are the same as in 4e where NPCs do not get PC abilities is akin to an opinion that football is played in an oval with a diamond at the middle and involves someone flinging a ball and someone else trying to hit it with a bat.  The rules and fundamental principles are just that different.  And your trying to defend yourself with the claim that it's just your opinion would be mocked in that example too after attempts to explain the difference had failed.

And with that I'm bowing out of this thread.  It's too frustrating.

* For a thought experiment, picture what a 11th level wizard with the two spells Wall of Iron and Control Water (along with Craft Wonderous Item to create Decanters of Endless Water) does to the economy of Athas.  In the hands of PCs this isn't generally a problem - it's just another reason to send people after the PCs.  In the hands of a Sorceror-King or Templar with Sorceror-King protection, you've just put one city leagues ahead of the others.  Because they have the protection and the security that PCs lack.


----------



## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> If the PCs can buy level-appropriate equipment, that means there's enough traffic in PC equipment of that level to support the industry that makes it.



No, it doesn't.  All it means is that the PCs have the means to obtain the specific item they seek to commission with the loot they made.  It does not require -- and this edition does not suggest -- an industry dedicated to equipping adventurers.



> So was I.



So you are suggesting that because Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, and other fantasy settings don't mention stonemasons, that means that the setting assumes edifice-making minstrels?!  It doesn't occur to you that the fantasy world resembles our own except in those ways specifically mentioned?  (Which of course, takes care of your canard about the Roman Catholic Church, as each of the aforementioned fantasy worlds specifically sets forth what churches exist in those worlds.)



> I don't recall masons having much of an impact on any of those settings; if they are mentioned in the rulebooks, it's as a note in some table. Nor do I think the issues are that big



From a world-building perspective, the issues of eliminating the entire construction industry are huge.  At a minimum, players should be told that their character histories shouldn't include quarries or stonemasons because those professions don't exist.  No adventurers born of quarrymen or stoneworkers.  Second of all, this completely affects the construction of keeps and fortifications, which can be very relevant to many plots.  The 3rd edition Stronghold Builder's Guide, for example, which is set in the default world of Greyhawk, gives completely inaccurate charts for the construction of castles and doesn't even mention the cost and time requirements for building castles using a minstrel.  So this not-so-big issue has now caused an entire supplement to be rendered obsolete.



> I don't think every lord would summon their pet high-level wizard, have them make a specific magical item, and then use it all over the place.



I guess that's why feudal societies never introduced new technology... oh, wait.  They totally did introduce new technology.  Again, you've proposed that Henry Ford should have been afraid of assassins from the buggy whip guild.  Or, more medievalesque, that the guy who invented (or, technically, rediscovered the Roman technology for) the treadwheel crane (a technology introduced during the medieval age that dramatically reduced the time and manpower needed to construct castles) was not killed by the masons who were put out of work by its introduction.

Lords are not going to eschew the technology that allows them to build strategically important fortifications and castles (not to mention palaces) at 100 times the rate of manual labor, which eliminates the horrific death rates associated with large construction, and which doesn't require taking hundreds of people away from their homes for months on end, just because a craft guild is rendered obsolete.  In fact, I know that to be so, because that's how it actually worked in medieval Europe with the treadwheel crane, even though it wasn't a capitalist society.  And the treadwheel crane wasn't nearly as strategically valuable as a lyre of building would be.

Once one lord does it, they all have to do it, or else they will fall behind technologically, and be overrun.  That's exactly why cannon spread as quickly as the technology was allowed.  And why the introduction of the treadwheel crane in the 13th century led directly to the rapid proliferation of castles and keeps throughout Europe.  At best, the masonry guild will do the best they can to train their own people to be minstrels or to find a different profession.  I know of no historical instance in which craft guilds ever successfully prevented the introduction of labor-saving technology.  General Ludd was not a successful general.



> No, but you're acting like it isn't connected to specific features of D&D 4e.



It isn't.  That's the anthropic principle at work.


----------



## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> So this not-so-big issue has now caused an entire supplement to be rendered obsolete.




No; what made this supplement obsolete is the fact that the 3rd level spell Fly exists. Castles are not reasonable in a world where many of your threats come from the sky. 



> It isn't.  That's the anthropic principle at work.




Which is a fancy way of dismissing experiences you don't agree with.



Neonchameleon said:


> I personally  think that people who find Pathfinder a better game than 4e are missing  out badly on what is the better game.  But it's an opinion based on  subjective preferences.




That's at best myoptic, and is in many cases objectively wrong. Many people have played both Pathfinder and 4e, and of those a number of them have found that they enjoyed Pathfinder better. For them, Pathfinder is a better game. To think that between two very different games, there is one that is clearly better for everyone is silly.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> If the PCs can buy level-appropriate equipment, that means there's enough traffic in PC equipment of that level to support the industry that makes it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> in a non-capitalistic world, where the concept of ROI is unknown, where wizards and clerics are some of the most powerful figures around, where lords might want to keep powerful magic in reserve instead of giving it to just everyone, where guilds exist that will object, possibly violently, to anything that detracts from their power, where lords depend on their support by those guilds, I don't think every lord would summon their pet high-level wizard, have them make a specific magical item, and then use it all over the place.



Doesn't the second paragraph here tend to resolve the issue in the first? There _is_ no industry producing PC equipment. There is no _traffic_ in that equipment - at least, not in the mortal world. When a PC pays multiple astral diamonds for a high level sword, s/he might be making a donation of inestimable value to her church, in order to be permitted to wield its most treasured relic of some martial saint. Or s/he might be paying an efreeti merchant in the City of Brass for the finest of efreeti craftwork. But s/he's pretty obviously not participating in any _mortal_ commerce, nor acquiring the fruits of any mortal _industry_.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> 4E plays it safest due to its focus on combat-informed tactics and game balance. So Medusa's instant-flesh-to-stone gaze becomes a more gradual thing. Permanent polymorph until dispelled becomes a 6 second duration. Magic carpets are prohibitively expensive.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think it's like D&D was a toy box full of all sorts of wonderful and colorful toys, some of which could be slightly dangerous and caused some babies to cry but were otherwise amazing toys to play with if you were emotionally mature with sharing toys, and then 4E came and took away all the sharp-edged colorful toys and left you with soft rounded toys in a padded room for your own protection -- and if you decide to stray out of the play area (through a somewhat hidden door marked 'Page 42') and create your own new toys, you do so at YOUR OWN RISK. Otherwise, you can peer through the windows of your play area and watch other kids playing with slightly dangerous but very fun colorful wonderous toys that you cannot have (this is where one type of "disassociation" comes in for me, the disconnect between your play area vs the outside world).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the PCs cannot be trusted (by default anyway) to interact with or use tools that might alter the game world in unexpected ways.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So if you play strictly by the rules, there's a certain spectrum of fantasy roleplaying you'll ever get. If this bothers you, and if you're still playing 4E, and if you allow for more use of Page 42, and if you're not afraid of upsetting game balance and worldbuilding, and if you have a solid social contract between the DMs and players, (and by this point, a large fraction of gaming groups are eliminated), then you can expand the worldbuilding to include more advanced/swingy fantasy elements. Since you're going at it solo, with no guidelines, like a pioneer, it's a very different experience, like writing your own mini-RPG system.



There is stuff here that strikes me as a bit confused. For example, you suggest that the designers don't trust the PCs. But the PCs are just fictional beings - they can't _do_ anything to anyone. Maybe you really meant the designers don't trust the _players_. But in that case, the _players_ aren't "peering through a window" at other kids with better toys - because here you seem to be referring to an imputed contrast between PC and NPC abilities.

If this apparent confusion between players and the fiction is removed, I'm not sure what's left. I don't see much, other than a typically simulationist concern that metagame considerations - about the effect that particular PC build rules, action resolution rules, etc will have on the nature and experience of play - is being allowed to trump a purist-as-system simulationist approach to desigining those mechanics.

Which takes us back to a wellknown fact - that 4e does not support simulationist play especially well.

There are some more detailed comments on the 4e mechanics, also, that I think are just mistaken.

First, your comment that Baleful Polymorph lasts for only six seconds begs the question against other ways of resolving the mechanic. As I posted upthread, in my game - which is the only actual play report of Baleful Polymorph in this thread - the reason that the polymorph lasted only six seconds is because the PC's god turned him back. This is no different from an outcome in AD&D in which a PC is hit by Polymorph Other, and the player of the PC then makes a successful Divine Intervention roll. Absent that divine intervention, how long would the Baleful Polymorph last in my gameworld? I don't know - it's never come up - and so a fortiori _you_ can't know.

Second, a 4e table that uses page 42 is not "going at it solo". There are DC-setting guidelines. Damage guidelines. And, since wrecan wrote his online article, guidelines for conditions and for actions. It's nothing at all like writing an RPG mini-system. If you were _right_ about this, then HeroQuest, with its pass/fail approach to DC-setting (ie set the DC based on pacing/drama considerations, and then retrofit the fictional situation to accomodate this) would require "houseruling" (to use The Alexandrian's term) every time a DC was set. But it doesn't. It just requires a GM who is able to read the suggested DC tables, and who is ready to narrate the fiction in real time rather than read it from a prepared sheet. Similarly for page 42 - this just requires players who are ready to engage the fiction outside the parameters of their power descriptions, and a GM who is able to read the suggested DC, damage and condition tables.

Last (and probably least), magic carpets aren't prohibitively expensive per se. They're prohibitively expensive for PCs below mid-to-high paragon level. (I assume that 1st level PCs in 3E can't build a magic carpet.) A magic carpet riding wizard is actual a significant NPC in my current game, and has been present in the game since the PCs were 5th level or so.

*TL;DR*: if you describe 4e play in a way that presupposes an approach to play - purist-for-system simulationism and disregarding the possibility of metagaming approaches to the mechanics, treating the situation of the PCs and of the players as indistinguishable, eschewing even a hint of author or director stance - then you will get a picture of the game as limited, confining and even incoherent. But what does this show? As far as I can see, nothing but what is already common knowledge - namely, that 4e does not support simulationist play and includes metagame mechanics that are intended to be used to exercise narrative control, rather than to dictate, without interpretation, the content of the fiction.

It's also true that if you think that approaching the game in a "just in time", spontaneous narration fashion is hard, than you may not enjoy 4e. But not everyone finds this hard, let alone onerous. Yes, it's different from mapping and stocking and mechanically describing a dungeon. Yes, it's different for writing and then running an adventure path. That's part of the point.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> As players using the 4E system you are implementing a pattern based on use of daily and encounter powers that are established on such frequency not for any narrative merit, but purely for "gamist" expediency.
> 
> The ability to hide the pattern does nothing to remove the pattern



I don't understand this. Speaking literally, an invisible visual pattern is in fact not a pattern at all.



BryonD said:


> Just before you clearly stated that you agreed there were patterns, but it wasn't important because the cycle of them was not frequent enough to notice.  I point out that the players have already noticed the pattern so the cycle period isn't relevant and suddenly the pattern isn't there.
> 
> Also, your defense is built on the position that out of this vast list of power the reason a pattern can not be observed is that they are indistinguishable from one another.  And, I'll admit, if in your games the daily powers are routinely unremarkable from at-wills then you probably won't observe a pattern.  I will STILL be there because everyone at the table knows when a daily is use, it just won't be relevant.



As far as I can see here, you seem mostly to be discussing a pattern in the _gameplay _- the use of dailies, encounters etc. _This_ is what the players know. On its own, it does not amount to a pattern in the fiction.

You also seem to be asserting that there will be patterns in the fiction - of greater or lesser damage, more or less impressive exploits, etc - that either will emerge over the course of play, or at least can be anticipated, in advance, by the players. I don't think that these patterns exist. In the case of the archer, that seems to me obviously true - it's simply not the case that once per encounter there will be an impressive hit (from Biting Volley) because sometimes the impressive hit comes from critting on a Twin Strike. Mutatis mutandis for the daily.

With a PC like the polearm fighter the gameplay is more complex, and both the resemblences and differences between the various powers - at-will, encounter, daily - more intricate. (This is part of what tends to make fighters more interesting PCs than archer rangers, at least in my view.) But the interactions are sufficiently complex and varied that I don't think there is a signficant pattern. For example, not every close burst power gets used every encounter (eg because for some reason or other the PC does not have multiple adjacent foes). Not every daily gets used every day. Some of the dailes don't always hit, or hit that many targets (and a daily damage + push does that hits only one target need not, in the fiction, look any different from a ceratin sort of use of Footwork Lure).

This is why I asked, upthread, for actual play, or at least actual build, examples. I mean, consider a PC whose at-will was (let's say) swing-and-push. Whose encounter power was (let's say) shift-and-strike. And whose daily powers was (let's say) fall-back-then-charge-back-in. Then perhaps these patterns would emerge in the fiction, because everything that the PC in question does, at a given level of mechanical frequency, is quite different from the things s/he does at a different level of mechanical frequency.

But how many PCs does this describe? The whole power+feat aspect of 4e pushes in favour of specialisation rather than diversity (I'm a pusher; I'm a shifter; I'm a charger; I'm not all three of those). Plus, my hypothetical PC has only one encounter power and one at-will. As PCs gain levels - about one every three or four sessions - they add new powers, or (at higher levels) swap powers, or (at any level) retrain powers. Plus add new feats (or retrain them). These considerations all tend to disrupt any patterns in the fiction.

There are obvious patterns in the gameplay. But I haven't experienced these patterns in the fiction.



BryonD said:


> no matter how well you disguise the unintelligent monsters just always happen to pick the CAGI fighter, you are telling a story that reflects the underlying pattern in gameplay.



Most of the time, actually, the monsters - intelligent or otherwise - don't pick the Come and Get It fighter. Indeed, they would like to avoid him. But he is a polearm specialist. His deftness with the polearm is inimitable (I think of him as a sort of dwarvish Jet Li). He picks them.

(If I had a Come and Get It fighter who specialised in the dagger, the story would have to be a bit different most of the time. I'm sure I'd cope, though.)



BryonD said:


> not having a pattern is a preferable option if the narrative is your ultimate objective and is not subject to gamist concerns.  (Again, I'm not saying that your gamist focused activities are not 1,000 times more awesome than my narrative focused ones)



I'm not 100% sure how you're using "narrative" and "gamism" here. In Forge terms, as this and dozens of other threads I think have made pretty clear, my play is narrativist, not gamist.

As best I can interpret you , you seem to be saying that patterns at the level of gameplay, which can be disregarded in the fiction only by admitting a signficant _difference_ betwen what the players experience at the mechanical level, and what the PCs experience within the fiction, are inimical to your preferred playstyle.

If that _is_ what you're saying, I believe you. Because it would be utterly consistent with your apparently very strong simulationist (as I would call it, following Forge usage) priorities, as expressed in this and dozens of other threads. It would be consistent with your evinced distaste for non-Actor stances. It would be consistent with your desire to make the rules "invisible" in a certain sense (the relevant sense seems to be - invisible at the metagame level, because they are in fact just models of ingame causal processes - so a player rolling a die is not invisible per se, but is consistent with immersion because equated to the PC swinging his or her swordarm).

But this doesn't mean that there are patterns in _my_ fiction. The fiction in my game is not established solely on a simulationist basis, by reading off the mechanics. This is not "disguising" anything. It's not as if the gameworld is _really_ as a simulationist reading of the mechanics would suggest, but we quickly cover it up!

The point is made (in particular in relation to failed skill checks and attack rolls) here:
Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates Narrativist play . . . It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too. . . It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.​


BryonD said:


> The term I've used before is "pop-quiz" roleplaying.  I've also called it the narrative being the slave of the mechanics.  You are building a narrative that fits the mechanical obligations.



Yes.

I've given actual play examples in this thread. One that has been discussed a bit is when the player of the paladin decidied, without (as far as I can tell) leaving Actor stance in any psychological (as opposed to purely logical) sense, that the reason his PC turned from a frog back to a tiefling was because his goddess intervened.

You seem to think that because he made this decision abut the content of the fiction _not_ because the mechanics dictated it, but rather: (i) by drawing on what the mechanics permitted (ie I told him that his PC turned back, as the rules dictate); and (ii) by drawing on well-established genre and setting consideratins (ie his PC is a paladin of the god in question, and the god undoubledly does care about the paladin, and also undoubtedly has the capacity to work miracles of various sort); and (iii) because it expressed his conception of his character, and of his character's story and thematic place within the fiction; that the resulting narrative is in some sense inferior or shallow or unengaging. That's not my personal experience. Others who have tried narrative play might feel differently, though - there's no accounting for taste!

But anyway, you labelling this a "pop quiz" doesn't change the character of my experience at the table. Nor does you describing it as "the narrative being the slave of the mechanics" (which in any event I still don't understand - in 3E, the action resolution mechanics dictate the narrative - eg if I attack, and I hit, and I drop it to 0 hp, it is dead - unless the GM suspends the action resolution rules - which I call "cheating").

(And as an aside, I assume that you play with a "hit points as meat" model. Otherwise, how do you work out the difference, in the fiction, between an 8 hp wound against a dragon, and 8 hp wound against a high level PC with the same number of hp as the dragon, and an 8 hp wound against a 1HD orc? Not by way of pop-quiz, I assume!)


----------



## pemerton

In my post above, I cited Ron Edwards discussing fortune in the middle:

Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates Narrativist play . . . It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent goofs​
By chance, I was just reading an extract from a new FR sourcebook on the WotC side, and came across this "grandmaster training" power that PCs can acquire:

*Drizzt’s Kick * Level 8 Uncommon*
_Drizzt innovated this attack when he found his swords locked with an opponent during training in Menzoberranzan._

<snip>

Daily Attack (Minor Action)
Requirement: You must have missed an enemy with a melee attack during this turn.
Effect: You make a melee basic attack against the same enemy. On a hit, the enemy grants combat advantage until the end of your next turn.​
Why is this interesting? Compare the flavour text and the requirement: they show that the 4e designers acknowledge that a miss, in 4e, need not be a feeble or failed attempt, but could in fact represent expert ability thwarted by an equally expert foe ("locked swords").

Here is another pertinent quote from Ron Edwards:
Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things: 

*Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict;

*Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

*More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.​
This seems to me to capture 4e pretty well. I think it helps explain why Balesir, chaochou and other can play gamist 4e, and I can play narrativsit 4e, without anyone having to do a great deal of rewriting or ignoring of the rules.

And here's another quote, this time from Vincent Baker, about the relationship between play and narration:
In your game, the game you're actually playing, a) in which stage does _invention _happen, and b) in which stage does _meaning _happen?

Invention - creating setting, character, nifty toys, potent powers - invention can happen before the game or during the game. (It can't really happen after the game, can it?)

A game where the invention happens mostly pre-play would be one where there are maps, characters, factions, technology, societies, interests, all in place when the game begins. I can't think of a good example of this in fiction - maybe _Babylon 5_? - but clearly lots of roleplaying happens this way. Look at all the dang setting books!

A game where the invention happens mostly during play would have the same list of things, maps characters societies etc., but they'd be created at need as the game progresses. We have one serious bazillion examples of this from fiction: Howard wrote _Conan_ this way, their writers wrote _Farscape_ and _Buffy _this way, and lots of roleplaying happens this way too. It's underrepresented in rpg books because it doesn't call for or produce 'em. . .

Similarly, meaning:

A game where the meaning happens mostly pre-play is one in which somebody or everybody has something to say and already knows what it is when the game starts. You can always tell these games: the GM expects his or her villains and their schemes to be absolutely gripping, but they aren't; the players keep wanting to play their characters as well as the characters deserve, but it's not happening. I make my character a former slave but when it comes up in play it's because I force it to, and my fellow players dodge eye contact and the GM wants to get on with the plot.

A game where the meaning happens mostly during play is also easy to spot: everybody gets it and is engaged. Other players than me are into my former-slave character, and when she gets passionate about something, the other players hold their breaths. The GM lets the players pick the villains through their PCs' judgements, then plays them aggressively and directed-ly and hard. Every session is hot. Nobody sacrifices the integrity of his or her character for the sake of staying together as a party or solving the GM's mystery - the action comes right out of the characters' passions.

And a game where the meaning happens mostly post-play - telling it is better than it was. Sometimes there'll be one person, the GM or the GM's favorite player, whose needs the game mostly met, and if you talk to _that _person the game will sound rockin', but if you talk to the other players, it'll sound eh. If people talk afterward about how cool this kind of game was, they'll talk about highlights that happened once every three, four, five sessions - as though a game with one gripping, thrilling, passionate moment per twenty hours of play were a successful game.

My goal as a gamer and a game designer is to push _both _invention and meaning as much as possible into actual play.

Problem: the hobby, represented by the books in your game store and the conventional habits of most gamers, prefers the pre-game over the game. . .

The solution is to design games that're inspiring, but daydreaming about how much fun the game will be to play seems pointless and lame, and you can't create extensive histories or backstories because that stuff's collaborative -

- so you call a friend.​
And while I'm quoting better theories than The Alexandrian's, here's Baker on GNS (on the same page):
So you have some people sitting around and talking. Some of the things they say are about fictional characters in a fictional world. During the conversation the characters and their world aren't static: the people don't simply describe them in increasing detail, they (also) have them do things and interact. They create situations - dynamic arrangements of characters and setting elements - and resolve them into new situations. . .

Why are they doing this? What do they get out of it? For now, let's limit ourselves to three possibilities: they want to Say Something (in a lit 101 sense), they want to Prove Themselves, or they want to Be There. What they want to say, in what way they want to prove themselves, or where precisely they want to be varies to the particular person in the particular moment. Are there other possibilities? Maybe. Certainly these three cover an enormous variety, especially as their nuanced particulars combine in an actual group of people in actual play.

Over time, that is, over many many in-game situations, play will either fulfill the players' creative agendas or fail to fulfill them. . . As in pretty much any kind of emergent pattern thingy, whether the game fulfills the players' creative agendas depends on but isn't predictable from the specific structure they've got for negotiating situations. No individual situation's evolution or resolution can reveal a) what the players' creative agendas are or b) whether they're being fulfilled. Especially, limiting your observation to the in-game contents of individual situations will certainly blind you to what the players are actually getting out of the game.

That's GNS in a page.

I don't think I've said anything here that Ron Edwards hasn't been saying. I do think that I've said it in mostly my own words.​
I think 4e is a particularly unsatisfactory RPG for those who not only want to _be there_, but want to get there by daydreaming before play even starts.


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> There is stuff here that strikes me as a bit confused. For example, you suggest that the designers don't trust the PCs. But the PCs are just fictional beings - they can't _do_ anything to anyone. Maybe you really meant the designers don't trust the _players_. But in that case, the _players_ aren't "peering through a window" at other kids with better toys - because here you seem to be referring to an imputed contrast between PC and NPC abilities.




This is actually the same perception that I have of the 4E rules presentation.  Didn't the 4E designers basically come out and say this?  That is, that they were the "experts"?  My whole sense here is that the "interpretation" part of the rules is specifically removed from the player's (and GM's) realm.  Some of that is good: Unbalancing the game is harder; running PUGs at the local gaming store is a lot easier; keeping rules to a well defined grammar allows machine encoding of those rules, hence the character builder.  On the other hand, there is some that is bad: Players and GMs are removed from interpretation-space, breaking immersion.

TomBitonti


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> By chance, I was just reading an extract from a new FR sourcebook on the WotC side, and came across this "grandmaster training" power that PCs can acquire:
> 
> *Drizzt’s Kick * Level 8 Uncommon*
> _Drizzt innovated this attack when he found his swords locked with an opponent during training in Menzoberranzan._
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Daily Attack (Minor Action)
> Requirement: You must have missed an enemy with a melee attack during this turn.
> Effect: You make a melee basic attack against the same enemy. On a hit, the enemy grants combat advantage until the end of your next turn.​
> Why is this interesting? Compare the flavour text and the requirement: they show that the 4e designers acknowledge that a miss, in 4e, need not be a feeble or failed attempt, but could in fact represent expert ability thwarted by an equally expert foe ("locked swords").




Yes, it is interesting ... but to some (or at least myself), it jumps over too many details.

Note "melee basic attack".  I don't see the "weapon" keyword, so a punch works as well as a sword swing.  (Unless that is omitted from your paste.)

Or what if the opponent is not trying to attack me with a melee weapon, themselves?  Let's say, a big bat with a screech (sonic), flyby type attack?

I suppose the daily represents that the trick won't work against the same opponent twice, hence I can work with the daily requirement.  But, I strain because that understanding of "daily" conflicts with a fight against a wholly different opponent two encounters later.

Another issue is that ... wouldn't taking advantage of circumstance be a normal part of combat training?  Perhaps this shows a difference between formal or orthodox methods, and informal and the unorthodox.  It would seem that to many a rogue, making a strike to unbalance their foe would very normal: Sand in the eyes, or a sap to the back of the head, or a shove to send the foe reeling.

TomBitonti


----------



## Yesway Jose

prosfilaes said:


> It isn't. That's the anthropic principle at work.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which is a fancy way of dismissing experiences you don't agree with.
Click to expand...


I agree with you. AFAICT, the anthropic principle seems to apply to cosmology. IMO, to summon it into a forum discussion about D&D seems, at best, a overbearing way of shutting down an opposing opinion.

That is, paying lip service to the idea that another person's subjective opinions are genuine, but then seemingly feeling threatened by the very existence of an opposing opinion in the same room (which I think we can all feel to *some* extent, I know I do on some level, either a little bit or much more), but then attempting to thwart that opinion with blunt semantic instruments (=arguing to "win") rather than exploring the conflict (=discussing, agreeing to disagree).

This is a neutral zone, not a 4E stronghold, and this thread is about a perception of "disassociated mechanics" in 4E. We are allowed to state our preferences with a few paragraphs of reasonable prose and not a goddamn logical thesis. Nor is there any obligation on anyone to spend hours of their free time on a counter thesis if that's not enjoyable. I think: Discuss these opinions on their own terms or go home.

Being on the receiving end of a hardnosed argumentative style is not enjoyable whatsoever, and that's going to limit my options with them.

In contrast, pemerton's and Crazy Jerome's replies to me are like a breath of fresh air, present excellent points, and I am happy to read their posts, maybe agree with some points, maybe agree to disagree with other points, maybe respond in kind when I have time.

IMO, YMMV.


----------



## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> No; what made this supplement obsolete is the fact that the 3rd level spell Fly exists. Castles are not reasonable in a world where many of your threats come from the sky.



So throw that onto the long list of things that impact world-building, but that 3e never addresses.  It's not one of the things that 4e need address, since flying isn't nearly as common in the 4e default world as it is in the 3e default world.  It remains, however (and is now bolstered by your observation of fly spells in 3e), that 3e suffers a problem with respect to world-building that 4e has not been demonstrated to suffer.



> Which is a fancy way of dismissing experiences you don't agree with.



Sigh, no.  The anthropic principle is simply the observation that people who observe things tend to disregard the fact that other potential observers don't exist.

In this case, you made the implication that because people are complaining about dissociation in 4e, it must be something unique about 4e that causes dissociation.  But that ignores the possibility that the people who were dissociated by prior editions had already moved onto other games and/or left the hobby.  Such people, were they to try 4e and still feel dissociated, would have chalked it up to the same things that dissociated them from prior editions of D&D.  (And those who weren't dissociated by 4e wouldn't complain of dissociation in 4e.)  By definition, the only people who complain about dissociation in 4e are people who were not dissociated by prior editions (either because it didn't meet their threshold for dissociation, or because they never played prior editions).

The anthropic principle, which is not limited to cosmological debates, Yesway, simply states that one cannot conclude anything about an observation simply by referencing the qualities of those who observe it.



> Many people have played both Pathfinder and 4e, and of those a number of them have found that they enjoyed Pathfinder better. For them, Pathfinder is a better game.



That doesn't mean that 4e has something unique or universal about it causing dissociation.


> To think that between two very different games, there is one that is clearly better for everyone is silly.



Nobody said that!  You keep saying this and I keep telling you that nobody -- and certainly not me -- is telling anybody that one game is better for everyone.  Please stop making this claim.

In fact, I'm saying that this conversation about "dissociation" is simply dressing someone's aesthetic preferences up in the false garb of objectivity.  There is no universal definition of "dissociation".  Rather, people have been using it, on an individual basis, simply to describe what they don't like about whatever systems it is they don't like.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> In this case, you made the implication that because people are complaining about dissociation in 4e, it must be something unique about 4e that causes dissociation. But that ignores the possibility that the people who were dissociated by prior editions had already moved onto other games and/or left the hobby. Such people, were they to try 4e and still feel dissociated, would have chalked it up to the same things that dissociated them from prior editions of D&D. (And those who weren't dissociated by 4e wouldn't complain of dissociation in 4e.) By definition, the only people who complain about dissociation in 4e are people who were not dissociated by prior editions (either because it didn't meet their threshold for dissociation, or because they never played prior editions).



Yet pemerton stated (not to cherry-pick a sentence out of context): "Which takes us back to a wellknown fact - that 4e does not support simulationist play especially well".

The point is that other people are able to discuss the opinion on its own terms, instead of appealing to grandstanding cosmological principles.

AFAIK the principle doesn't prove anything -- it only suggests the possibility of a bias, but does not actually prove it exists.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> The point is that other people are able to discuss the opinion on its own terms, instead of appealing to grandstanding cosmological principles.



I had already described this argument at length and identified it as the "anthropic principle".  Rather that repeat the discussion at length, I used the label I had already identified for it.  It's rather like other labels people seem to be using like "dissociated mechanics" and "simulationist play".


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> AFAIK the principle doesn't prove anything -- it only suggests the possibility of a bias, but does not actually prove it exists.



The principle points out a logical flaw in reaching a conclusion about an observation based on the qualities of the people observing it.  That's all I used it for.  The only thing I was "proving" was that prosfilaes' statement employed faulty logic.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> The principle points out a logical flaw in reaching a conclusion about an observation based on the qualities of the people observing it. That's all I used it for. The only thing I was "proving" was that prosfilaes' statement employed faulty logic.



Ya, it's like talking with a vegan who claims that vegetables are more healthy (or sub with any other example, if you don't like that one) and your response is "But you're biased, because you haven't tried meat". Which may be true, but who cares. I think you're wasting my time and page count by saying "But you're biased" in a fancy way.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Ya, it's like talking with a vegan who claims that vegetables are more healthy (or sub with any other example, if you don't like that one) and your response is "But you're biased, because you haven't tried meat". Which may be true, but who cares. I think you're wasting my time and page count by saying "But you're biased" in a fancy way.



It's not "bias" as in you're prejudiced.  It's simply that the observation you are making is skewed because of its indirect nature.  It's not a personal attack in any way.  It is a statement about the logic of the argument, not the attitude of the arguer.  I am not arguing that you ropinion is skewed because you haven't played 4e (although that could explain the frequent misstatements about 4e).  I am not arguing that you are biased.  I'm only saying that your preference is an aesthetic one that doesn't indicate an inherent flaw in 4e.  It's like people arguing whether Monet or Picasso is a better artist.  Neither is "better"; they simply cater to different tastes.

Look, you clearly have a personal and emotional issue with me, Yesway.  You probably shouldn't respond to me anymore if that's the case.


----------



## Yesway Jose

wrecan said:


> Look, you clearly have a personal and emotional issue with me, Yesway. You probably shouldn't respond to me anymore if that's the case.



Let me be clear. I do not have a personal and emotional problem with you. I have a problem with your method of arguing.



wrecan said:


> It's like people arguing whether Monet or Picasso is a better artist.



Great example!

Artist 1: I think this Monet work is ______.
Artist 2: True, yet look at this Picasso painting, it's extraordinary because ______.
Wrecan: Excuse me, but that's the anthropic principle at work.

Can you imagine that neither artist appreciates Wrecan's statement, because they want to talk about impressionism and cubism, and that neither artist cares about rigorously logical conclusions exactly because it is a matter of opinion so why won't wrecan just leave them alone?


----------



## TwoSix

Yesway Jose said:


> Let me be clear. I do not have a personal and emotional problem with you. I have a problem with your method of arguing.
> 
> Great example!
> 
> Artist 1: I think this Monet work is ______.
> Artist 2: True, yet look at this Picasso painting, it's extraordinary because ______.
> Wrecan: Excuse me, but that's the anthropic principle at work.
> 
> Can you imagine that neither artist appreciates Wrecan's statement, because they want to talk about impressionism and cubism, and that neither artist cares about rigorously logical conclusions exactly because it is a matter of opinion so why won't wrecan just leave them alone?




Maybe they would appreciate Wrecan's point more after 900 posts about whether Monet or Picasso is better.   Context is everything, after all.

(BTW, Monet is better.)


----------



## Yesway Jose

TwoSix said:


> Maybe they would appreciate Wrecan's point more after 900 posts about whether Monet or Picasso is better.  Context is everything, after all.
> 
> (BTW, Monet is better.)



(Can someone please XP TwoSix for me?)

Except some new points are being made every dozen pages or so regarding cubism and impressionism, which are more interesting for their own sake than any cosmological principle.

Picasso is better IMO YMMV


----------



## TwoSix

Yesway Jose said:


> (Can someone please XP TwoSix for me?)
> 
> Except some new points are being made every dozen pages or so regarding cubism and impressionism, which are more interesting for their own sake than any cosmological principle.
> 
> Picasso is better IMO YMMV



Well, the observation didn't come out of nowhere.  Once "dissociated" became linked to the observer, questions about observational bias become relevant.

Also:  dissociated mechanics -> anthropic principle -> anthropogenic climate change.

Ergo, 4e kills polar bears.  

I hate 4e so much right now.

Other salient points:

1)  We're still 500 posts from matching the Wizards & Warriors thread, so we need some energy in here.

2)  No one has called anyone a "douchebag" yet, so net win here!  Although I think Hussar and BryonD whispered it under their breath a few pages back.


----------



## Yesway Jose

TwoSix said:


> Well, the observation didn't come out of nowhere. Once "dissociated" became linked to the observer, questions about observational bias become relevant.



Aah, but only one person suggested to coin the phrase "disassociated player" and who was that?

BTW in regards to all above posts, I did make the mistake of conflating the summoning of the anthropic principle with other argumentative methods that I personally think are unhelpful, so that may have confused the issue a bit.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Great example!
> 
> Artist 1: I think this Monet work is ______.
> Artist 2: True, yet look at this Picasso painting, it's extraordinary because ______.
> Wrecan: Excuse me, but that's the anthropic principle at work.



But I wouldn't have invoked the anthropic principle there.  I would invoke it in the following statement:

Art Critic 1: Picasso is a hack because his paintings are abstract.
Art Critic 2: But you like Monet and his paintings also employ abstraction.
Art Critic 1: That doesn't count because nobody is put off by Monet's abstraction.  Why just look.  Nobody put off by Picasso is put off by Monet.
Wrecan: That's the anthropic prinicple at work.  Monet came first.  Anybody put off by Monet's level of abstraction would have been put off before they even got to see Picasso.  So of course, the only people being put off by Picasso were not put off by Monet.  

See?  My analogy is apt when placed in the proper context.  I would not cite the anthropic principle when discussing specific qualities of 4e and 3e, and in fact, we've had many discussions in this thread about qualities of 3e and 4e and I never invoked the anthropic principle in those contexts.

The anthropic principle only applies when someone tries to make an observation about something (like art or RPGs) based on the qualities of those doing the observing.  And that's the only context in which I invoked the anthropic principle.

I'm sorry you find the notion of the anthropic principle problematic.  I would too, if I kept trying to violate it.


----------



## wrecan

Yesway Jose said:


> Aah, but only one person suggested to coin the phrase "disassociated player" and who was that?



Me, and I withdrew that sugestion as soon as it was pointed out to me that it might be confused with a psychological condition.  In other words, when confronted with compelling evidence, I changed by opinion.  I did not engage in puerile insults and complain that the other person was speaking in a "fancy way" and using "grandstanding cosmological principles".


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Ya, it's like talking with a vegan who claims that vegetables are more healthy (or sub with any other example, if you don't like that one) and your response is "But you're biased, because you haven't tried meat". Which may be true, but who cares. I think you're wasting my time and page count by saying "But you're biased" in a fancy way.




I like the analogy, but you didn't take it to its logical conclusion. TA is the vegan with a long argument explaining why meat isn't food because of some inherent property in it. When non-vegans quite naturally point out all kinds of objections to this (some people like it as food, it has certain food values, etc.), the response is that none of those matter to vegans. They may not matter *enough* to vegans to get them to try it. That's their choice. They should matter enough to back away from "not food" to "food I don't like". 

Once you get that resolved, you can talk about why you don't like the food. *So far*, no one in prior arguments or in the nearly 1,000 in this topic has been able to demonstrate a why they don't like it that is an inherent property in the thing itself. No one. Everyone that thinks they have, has pulled some version of TA's tricks, whether consciously or not. One of the more common is to keep trying to go via the backdoor into the assumption that "simulation == roleplay". 

This is why, when Pemerton, Wrecan, and several others of us have freely and even gleefully conceded that 4E is not particularly suited to a simulation focus, some of you keep jumping on that as if it proved your point. Really, I think by now, that if you really want to continue down this line, you need to develop a straight-forward argument as to why you think "simulation == roleplay" and quit trying to simple assert it or sneak it in as an assumption. Good luck with that! 

Now on the other hand, given the tone of the preceding, if the confusion about simulations relation to roleplay is due to lack of experience with 4E or even more narrative examples--perhaps thinking the only other option to "roleplay" is a rather tactical, board-gamish which you have dismissed in the back of your mind as gussied up, second class hack and slash--then I humbly suggest that you don't know what the hell you are talking about, and really need to get some wider experience with the options in roleplay before you presume to tell others what is inherent in a system that they play and that you do not.

In other lines of inquiry, people doing that would be laughed out of the room.

Wrecan's logic on these recent points is correct.  If you've missed why, then you've missed it.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I like the analogy, but you didn't take it to its logical conclusion. TA is the vegan with a long argument explaining why meat isn't food because of some inherent property in it.



Is that supposed to be analagous to someone's opinion on this thread? I don't think anyone would be so absurd as to argue that.



> *So far*, no one in prior arguments or in the nearly 1,000 in this topic has been able to demonstrate a why they don't like it that is an inherent property in the thing itself. No one. Everyone that thinks they have, has pulled some version of TA's tricks, whether consciously or not. One of the more common is to keep trying to go via the backdoor into the assumption that "simulation == roleplay".



Who stated that simulation == roleplaying? Who tried to prove that there werre inherent properties of disassociation? I've emphatically insisted it was a non-existent premise several times and I've repeatedly insisted that it was a ridiculous premise because it was undefined.



> you need to develop a straight-forward argument as to why you think "simulation == roleplay" and quit trying to simple assert it or sneak it in as an assumption.



Please don't make that presumption that that's been my assumption (in case you were thinking that was my direction)



> Wrecan's logic on these recent points is correct. If you've missed why, then you've missed it.



Perhaps you need to rethink the above and then come back to see if this is the correct conclusion.

BTW, I thought we moved past the interpretation of the essay anything but an opinion piece dozens of pages ago.


----------



## prosfilaes

wrecan said:


> It's not one of the things that 4e need address, since flying isn't nearly as common in the 4e default world as it is in the 3e default world.




No dragons, huh. I'll give you that; once you've stripped all the fantasy out of a world, pointlessly realistic world building does become easier.



> In this case, you made the implication that because people are complaining about dissociation in 4e, it must be something unique about 4e that causes dissociation.




I didn't. That may have been what you inferred, but but it's not what I implied. I'll grant that many games have various degrees of dissociation.



> By definition, the only people who complain about dissociation in 4e are people who were not dissociated by prior editions (either because it didn't meet their threshold for dissociation, or because they never played prior editions).




First place, that's false. There are a number of people above who said they felt various degrees of dissociation with prior editions. D&D is the giant in the industry; new editions drag people back who weren't enchanted with the old editions frequently.

Secondly, so what? People complain Duke Nukem Forever has too many jumping puzzles. But by definition, they're video gamers; that means the jumping puzzles in every other game haven't driven them away. Does that mean their opinion is meaningless?



> The anthropic principle, which is not limited to cosmological debates, Yesway, simply states that one cannot conclude anything about an observation simply by referencing the qualities of those who observe it.




I honestly don't understand; the last sentence I quoted dismissed observations by referencing the qualities of those that make the observation.



> That doesn't mean that 4e has something unique or universal about it causing dissociation.




There's nothing unique or universal about a knife causing stab wounds, either. That doesn't mean we dismiss the connection between knives and stab wounds.



> Nobody said that!  You keep saying this and I keep telling you that nobody -- and certainly not me -- is telling anybody that one game is better for everyone.  Please stop making this claim.




If you had bothered reading my post, I quoted the person saying that.



			
				Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> I personally  think that people who find Pathfinder a better game than 4e are missing  out badly on what is the better game.




Okay?


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Yesway Jose said:


> Who stated that simulation == roleplaying? Who tried to prove that there werre inherent properties of disassociation? I've emphatically insisted it was a non-existent premise several times and I've repeatedly insisted that it was a ridiculous premise because it was undefined.




I know.  Lately, we've been circling back to that assumption creeping in again.  It is the basis for not liking what Wrecan is saying.


----------



## Crazy Jerome

prosfilaes said:


> First place, that's false. There are a number of people above who said they felt various degrees of dissociation with prior editions. D&D is the giant in the industry; new editions drag people back who weren't enchanted with the old editions frequently.




Several people who don't believe that "disassociation" has any useful meaning have stated that one of the reasons that they don't think it does, is because the reported feeling that is supposed to be evidence for, has occurred in earlier editions. They have then gone on to express why they label that symptom as a result of immersion issues or simulation issues or other things. 

For example, I used the fencing example repeatedly some time ago to show why the fencing background made associations very easy for me in 4E, and then later someone stated that fencers were feeling disassociated. When all I had said was that if a fencer were to feel disassociated in a version, it would be though other mechanics that were equally present in all versions, not because of things like Come and Get It. *Yet somehow these other things were acceptable to me and others*. 

You are trying to use evidence that supports Wrecan's point to argue against it. The bolded part above is the objection that no one supporting any theory of disassociation has been able to explain. I think it is because of lack of understanding of why and how we find certain things acceptable.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> I know. Lately, we've been circling back to that assumption creeping in again. It is the basis for not liking what Wrecan is saying.



I don't think the assumption is there at all or has anything to do with whatever wrecan (who is now on my ignore list) was saying. Unfortunately for me, the tone and manner of his argument seems to be the major obstacle for me.

I thought post 1 of page 50 summarizes as best I can my opinion of disassociation in general. I *thought* that recent discussion was about more specific scenarios for #7 to #9 and nothing to do with simulation == roleplaying.


----------



## wrecan

prosfilaes said:


> No dragons, huh.



I clearly wrote "isn't nearly as common".  Of course there are dragons; they are just not so common as to affect the construction of castles.  



> I'll grant that many games have various degrees of dissociation.



Then what point were you trying to make when you were engaging my discussion of the world-building problems inherent in 3e that are not inherent in 4e?



> First place, that's false. There are a number of people above who said they felt various degrees of dissociation with prior editions.



Right.  I don't know how that statement renders my statement that "the only people who complain about dissociation in 4e are people who were not dissociated by prior editions" false.  There are people who felt dissociated by prior editions.  There are people who felt dissociated only by 4e.  There are people who felt dissociated by all editions of D&D.  There are people who have never felt dissociation by D&D.  What can we conclude?  That the feeling of dissociation is not itself probative of an issue with regard to 4e.  And in fact, it may very well be that the feeling of dissociation is simply the way people express an aesthetic dissatisfaction. 

You are correct to point out that simply because we cannot use the qualities of the observer to make conclusions about the subject of observation does not mean we cannot make conclusions of the thing being observed.  To use your "knife" analogy...

We cannot conclude that knives cause wounds merely because people who have fear of knives also think knives cause wounds.  That does not mean knives causes no wounds .  It only means that the "fear of knives" is not evidence of it.



> If you had bothered reading my post, I quoted the person saying that.
> Okay?



You are correct and I apologize and retract all that I have said in response to this statement.

I think NeonChameleon's statement is subjective, hostile, and unhelpful.  I did in fact miss that you were referring to his statement.  You are correct.  NeonChameleon did say that 4e is objectively better than 3e.  I think he is incorrect on that point.


----------



## innerdude

wrecan said:


> In this case, you made the implication that because people are  complaining about dissociation in 4e, it must be something unique about  4e that causes dissociation.




First, let me state that I'm fairly well satisfied in my own mind, thanks to the robust discussion in this thread, about the nature and effects of dissociative mechanics--



Dissociation, as I would define it now, is the conscious feeling, sense, or emotional state of being removed, or displaced, from within a fictional construct by an external artifact. It is not wholly the domain of RPGs either; we see this in absurdist movies/theater parodies all the time, where it's called "breaking the fourth wall." It can be related to _immersion_, in terms of playing a character, but can also be related to other aspects, such as association to world physics, social order, economy, bio-naturalism, and so on.
Dissociation is nearly always subjective, based on some agreed-upon point of view, or shared assumptions about the game world, narrative, playstyle, or all of the above. As a result, groups will largely decide what is and is not dissociative for them at their own tables.
Almost all potential dissociating artifacts can be resolved through change in narrative, change in inherent property of the milieu, or both, as long as the parties engaged agree to it. The principle behind this type of association is governed by a character's ability to observe, learn, or explore the potentially dissociative effect in game*.
All RPGs contain some level of abstractions, meta-game components, and potential dissociations. However, the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of dissociation will, as stated earlier, vary depending on individual preference--the natural expectations and assumptions established by the group, rules mechanics, personal experience, and GM worldbuilding.

#4 in this list is where the argument that 4e is "unique" could come into play. 

Coming from earlier editions, which assumed a much higher level of association by inherent property or "simulationism," then 4e is definitely unique, in that the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of potential dissociations arise from a much different paradigm than earlier editions. 

In other words, 4e's potential for dissociation is not unique; all editions possess it to some degree. It's the _properties _by which 4e's potential dissociations arise that are unique, at least compared to older D&D rule sets. 

This is what I think the 4e apologists have been so vociferous about, that The Alexandrian fails to point out that 4e is only dissociative as a comparison to 3.x, _if you come to 4e with the same assumptions about the nature of the rules paradigms as prior editions. 

_I think his mistake was not being clear about this distinction--"If you approach 4e's core mechanics with the same assumptions about how 3e's rules reflect a particular type of narrative, or inherent world property, you will likely find them dissociative." This is not an entirely unreasonable assumption, considering the roots and history of D&D, but it's still subjective. 

Whether or not you're willing to make the switch to 4e's narrative paradigm would then be the question, not whether "dissociation" is real, or how/why 4e is uniquely "dissociative."


*(thanks to JamesonCourage for this concept)


----------



## wrecan

innerdude, I have no problem with what you wrote.  I think we are in accord on that analysis.  My only caveat is that I think that every edition is unique in the factors that it possesses that may cause dissociation as you defined it.  Any abstract mechanics may cause a player to feel the fourth wall is broken.  And since every edition changes some mechanics the potential is always there for an edition change to cause dissociation for players of the prior system


----------



## Yesway Jose

innerdude said:


> This is one of the things The Alexandrian fails to point out--that 4e is only dissociative as a comparison to 3.x, _if you come to 4e with the same assumptions about the nature of the rules paradigms as prior editions._




Or if your first D&D game is 4E and you later try out 3.x/PF for comparison

If we've all been tainted by exposure to previous editions, then maybe what this thread could use are viewpoints from people with some fresh blood like that.


----------



## Yesway Jose

Crazy Jerome said:


> ...have freely and even gleefully conceded that 4E is not particularly suited to a simulation focus, some of you keep jumping on that as if it proved your point.



Re-reading this, I think IT is the point.

What is the difference between these 2 statements in terms of its usefulness in describing RPG rules?

1) Mechanic X is "disassociated" because the reasoning cannot be observed, learned or explored in-game, subjectively
2) Mechanic X is not simulationist, subjectively

...with the clarification that:
- a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is simulationist as read and in gameplay
- a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay
- a person may have no desire to have a mechanic feel simulationist as read or in gameplay
- the labelling of non-simulationist is a matter of subjective taste, and an opposing opinion is not a criticism, and should not be conflated with "not roleplaying"

So then we're just discussing or arguing if abstractions (like 1/day) are subjectively simulating a desired fiction or not, but at least we're not hung up on the term "disassociated".

Simulationism may be not rigorously defined, but everybody seems to understand generally what it means, and that's the label used in the Big Model.

Yes, the oP suggests that "simulationist" might be a misnomer because it doesn't describe what is the fictional construct being modelled/abstracted, but the same is true for "disassociated" because it doesn't define what fictional construct the rule is (dis)associated from.

In reference to the essay, you alluded to a certain wariness that 4E players have regarding the topic of simulationism, because 4E roleplaying is not accepted by some of the RPG community, and thus feel the need to constantly defend against criticism. But with all due respect, if one can get over any such hang-ups and not feel threatened that expressions of simulationist preferences impinge on your game, and people recognize that we're not in 2007 anymore and non-simulationism is a valid roleplaying choice (which I actually think has been true on this thread?), then I think we should be good to go?

Personally, I'm not a fan of rigorous semantics, but I can't tell any significant difference between "disassociation" vs "non-simulationist".


----------



## Crazy Jerome

Gee, several excellent posts in a row. Everyone is on a streak! 

If one wants to use Jameson's definition instead of TAs, then I agree that "disassociation" is more in line with a question of simulation than abstraction or metagaming principles. OTOH, if we go with Innerdude's take, then as he already identified, immersion is the big issue. As I understand immersion, it usually ties into questions of abstraction and metagaming.

So then we are back to one of the original questions: Outside of simulation or immersion issues, what is left for "disassociation" to cover? If someone wants to argue that it is a synonym (or I guess, technically, an antonym) for what happens during lack of immersion or failure to simulate via process--then I guess we can all declare victory and go home. It's been nothing but semantics the whole time, no doubt obscured by the TA's treatment and BotE's rabid peddling of it for the last three years.  You more sensible guys can now rescue the concept, perhaps finding a better word that doesn't tie into psychological pathology. 

My one reservation on the simulation angle is that, while simulation is often appreciated by people who prefer simulation by process, I'm not sure that is the full scope of what simulation is. But I suppose most 4E fans have long since settled on "emulation" as the replacement for how the world is built and imagined during the kind of narrative play that 4E can support.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> maybe what this thread could use are viewpoints from people with some fresh blood like that.



Hello, here I am! Well, as fresh as you're likely to get on this sort of thread.

My 3E experience, as I've posted, is pretty limited. I came back to D&D _because_ of 4e. The mechanics that ostensibly make 4e peculiarly _unattractive_ are the ones that attracted me to it.



innerdude said:


> Dissociation, as I would define it now, is the conscious feeling, sense, or emotional state of being removed, or displaced, from within a fictional construct by an external artifact. It is not wholly the domain of RPGs either; we see this in absurdist movies/theater parodies all the time, where it's called "breaking the fourth wall." It can be related to _immersion_, in terms of playing a character, but can also be related to other aspects, such as association to world physics, social order, economy, bio-naturalism, and so on.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> All RPGs contain some level of abstractions, meta-game components, and potential dissociations. However, the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of dissociation will, as stated earlier, vary
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Coming from earlier editions, which assumed a much higher level of association by inherent property or "simulationism," then 4e is definitely unique, in that the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of potential dissociations arise from a much different paradigm than earlier editions.





wrecan said:


> I think that every edition is unique in the factors that it possesses that may cause dissociation as you defined it.



I agree with innerdude that responses to mechanics vary, and also with wrecan that every edition is unique.

Personally I would prefer to play AD&D to 3E, I think (or perhaps C&C or some similar, slightly tidied-up version of AD&D). I find 3E to be a particularly unattractive mixture of "D&Disms" like hit points, gonzo spells and magic items, etc, with gritty, purist-for-system aspirations in its disarm, grapple, trip, skill point, etc mechanics. It is this apparent attempt to be simultaneously gritty and gonzo that, for me, "breaks the fourth wall". Whereas this is not an experience I have playing 4e - it has metagame, but isn't (for me) at all absurdist.



Yesway Jose said:


> Yet pemerton stated (not to cherry-pick a sentence out of context): "Which takes us back to a wellknown fact - that 4e does not support simulationist play especially well".



I also agree with wrecan's use of the anthropic principle, as I've indicated upthread.

My use of "simulationism" is an attempt to bring the discussion back from a description of subjective experiences - "dissociation" - to goals of play and the mechanics that support them.



TwoSix said:


> Well, the observation didn't come out of nowhere.  Once "dissociated" became linked to the observer, questions about observational bias become relevant.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> We're still 500 posts from matching the Wizards & Warriors thread, so we need some energy in here.



Agreed with the first paragraph. Trying my best to follow the instruction in the second!



Crazy Jerome said:


> This is why, when Pemerton, Wrecan, and several others of us have freely and even gleefully conceded that 4E is not particularly suited to a simulation focus, some of you keep jumping on that as if it proved your point. Really, I think by now, that if you really want to continue down this line, you need to develop a straight-forward argument as to why you think "simulation == roleplay"
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if the confusion about simulations relation to roleplay is due to lack of experience with 4E or even more narrative examples--perhaps thinking the only other option to "roleplay" is a rather tactical, board-gamish which you have dismissed in the back of your mind as gussied up, second class hack and slash--then I humbly suggest that you don't know what the hell you are talking about, and really need to get some wider experience with the options in roleplay before you presume to tell others what is inherent in a system that they play and that you do not.



This is part of why I quoted Vincent Baker and Ron Edwards a bit upthread. To try to show some of the thinking about roleplaying, worldbuilding etc that motivates non-simulationist game design and game play.


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> Didn't the 4E designers basically come out and say this?  That is, that they were the "experts"?



I don't know. Personally, when I buy what they produce I _am _relying on them having thought harder than me about how the game will work and what it will deliver in play.



tomBitonti said:


> My whole sense here is that the "interpretation" part of the rules is specifically removed from the player's (and GM's) realm.



I'm not sure what you mean here by "interpretation".

In one sense of "interpretation" - namely, constructing the fiction on the basis of the deliverances of the mechnics - it seems to be widely accepted (at least in this thread) that 4e invites the participants at the table to do more of this than does 3E. Some examples that I have given upthread include: the player of the paladin deciding that the ending of the Baleful Polymorph was the result of his god intervening; the use of Come and Get It by a polearm fighter being characterised as deft maneouvring with a polearm.

If I understood innerdude's posts properly, they expressed a concern that this sort of interpretation is a lot of - perhaps too much - work.

In another sense of "interpretation" - namely, determining the mechanical resolution and consequences of a spontaneous manoeuvre by a PC - it seems to be widely accepted (at least in this thread) that 4e invites the GM to use page 42 to adjudicate that resolution in a flexible fashion but within some pre-established paramters.

If I understood Yesway Jose's posts properly, they expressed a concern that this sort of interpretation is "going it solo".

Anyway, these aren't interpretations that have been removed from the realm of the participants in the game.



tomBitonti said:


> Players and GMs are removed from interpretation-space, breaking immersion.



Because I don't know what "interpretation-space" is, I don't know how to adjudicate this claim. I gave an example, upthread, of the player of the paladin - apparently without actually leaving Actor Stance as far as his psychology was concerned - making it the case, in the game, that his PC's god had rescued him from transformation into a fog. This is a fairly typical instance of 4e play, at least for me. Where is the breaking of immersion?



tomBitonti said:


> Yes, it is interesting ... but to some (or at least myself), it jumps over too many details.
> 
> <snip reiteration of objections to narrative flexibility, fortune-in-the-middle and metagame rationing of narrative control>



I agree that this power exhibits typical 4e characteristics - it establishes parameters on narration but doesn't mandate any particular narration, leaving this to be resolved in the course of actual play. And it is a martial daily, and hence has a metagame component.

What I thought was _distinctively_ interesting is that it confirms that the 4e desingers have noticed that a "miss", in 4e, needn't represent failure at the _task_. It only represents failure to achieve the desired _goal_ - but that failure may be the result of succeeding at the task but having someone else's success intervene ("locked swords").

So we can't infer, for example, from the fact that I rolled a "1" on my bow shot that my arrow flew wild. Perhaps it went true, but my enemy snatched it out of the air with her yadomajutsu! This is another example of the mechanics establishing parameters for the fiction, but not dictating it.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> What is the difference between these 2 statements in terms of its usefulness in describing RPG rules?
> 
> 1) Mechanic X is "disassociated" because the reasoning cannot be observed, learned or explored in-game, subjectively
> 2) Mechanic X is not simulationist, subjectively
> 
> I can't tell any significant difference between "disassociation" vs "non-simulationist".



If I read a post in which (2) was asserted, I would interpret it this way:

Mechanic X is not likely to support simulationist play, and/or is likely to be unsatisfactory for those whose goal in play is to achieve simulationism. Where, by "simulationism", I mean what The Forge means: ingame causal logic is a high priority, and the mechanics are meant to model this, so that _playing the game_ is simultaneously _exploring the gameworld_. When I, at the table, am rolliing to hit, _at the very same time_ my PC is swinging his sword.​
But, as my earlier exchange with Jameson Courage showed, I find (1) quite unhelpful. For example, it seems to presuppose simulationism - because it seems to presuppose that what is happening at the table ("I'm using my daily") correlates to what is happening in the gameworld ("I'm doing this thing that can be done only 1x/day, although the reason for that can't be observed, learned or explored ingame").

But, at least when I play 4e, when a player uses a martial daily, _the PC in the gameworld_ is doing something the logic of which _can_ be observed, learned or explored ingame. Eg if the player of the rogue uses Trick Strike, the rogue PC is doing something that can be learned and understood ingame - typically, the rogue is doing clever fencing.

So _I_ have trouble telling the difference between "dissociation" and "non-simulationist mechanics described by those who appear not to be very familiar with how they work, and the sort of relation between mechanical resolution and fictional content that non-simulationist mechanics presuppose".



Yesway Jose said:


> In reference to the essay, you alluded to a certain wariness that 4E players have regarding the topic of simulationism, because 4E roleplaying is not accepted by some of the RPG community, and thus feel the need to constantly defend against criticism. But with all due respect, if one can get over any such hang-ups and not feel threatened that expressions of simulationist preferences impinge on your game, and people recognize that we're not in 2007 anymore and non-simulationism is a valid roleplaying choice (which I actually think has been true on this thread?), then I think we should be good to go?



In an earlier but fairly recent reply to you, I criticised your characterisation of Baleful Polymorph, which appeared to me to ignore the way in which (at least in my game, which is the only actual play example anyone has provided) the duration of that power operates as a metagame mechanic.

And I think you treatment of (1) and (2) above as equivalent similarly depends upon ignoring that, if a metagame mechanic is used not as a _model_ of the gameworld but as establishing parameters on _permissible narration_ of the gameworld, then _there need not be anything in the gameworld that cannot be learned, explored, explained, understood, etc_.

This is why I remain wary regarding the topic of non-simulationist play, and what seem to be (mis)characterisations of it, because they are worded in ways that already presuppose simulatoinist priorities (such as mechanics as a model of ingame causal processes).


----------



## pemerton

Neonchameleon said:


> I personally think that people who find Pathfinder a better game than 4e are missing out badly on what is the better game.  But it's an opinion based on subjective preferences.  I don't mock people for that.  On the other hand there are people who believe that the moon landing was faked.  Whether the moon landing was faked or not is not something that opinions matter a damn about.  And if someone was to argue that the moon landing was faked I'd first ask them why they thought that, rebut their evidence, and then if they continued, I'd mock them because it's all that's left.





wrecan said:


> I think NeonChameleon's statement is subjective, hostile, and
> unhelpful.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> NeonChameleon did say that 4e is objectively better than 3e.  I think he is incorrect on that point.



To be fair to Neonchameleon, his claim _wasn't _that 4e is _objectively _better than 3E/PF. He very expressly said that his view that 4e is the better game is an _opinion_ based on subjective preference. He contrasted that with an opinion that the moon landing is faked, which is an opinion about a matter of fact that is based on radically inadequate evidence.

Although Neonchameleon sometimes does post in a fairly hostile manner, I think that this particular post is actually reasonably courteous in its tone and content.


----------



## pemerton

Crazy Jerome said:


> My one reservation on the simulation angle is that, while simulation is often appreciated by people who prefer simulation by process, I'm not sure that is the full scope of what simulation is.



Agreed. Purist-for-system doesn't exhaust the scope of simulationist play, even if we're using "simulationism" as The Forge uses it. "High concept" simulationism is a very important category of simulationist play - where the exploration is _genre_ exploration rather than _world/setting/causal_ exploration.

Call of Cthulhu is, in my view, the poster child for high quality, high concept simulationist play. Sit down to play it and you'll get the experience of sliding into insanity as you confront truths that human beings were not meant to know!

Alignment rules are, in my view, the worst instance of high concept simulatonist priorities creeping into D&D. Part of the problem is that they encourage the GM to use a whole heap of force - in terms of judging behaviour, penalising behaviour, NPC-ifying PCs (at least in many games with a "no evil PCs" clause), etc. Many D&D players have a tendency to try to purist-for-system-ify alignment, though - "moral forces as real parts of the world's causal power" - which I think produces weird outcomes (like angels and devils partying together in Sigil).

The most dysfunctional high concept mechanic, though, is the core mechanic of White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D, namely, the "golden rule" that the GM may suspend the action resolution mechanics willy-nilly "in the interests of story". One great thing about CoC is that, instead of dysfunctional GM force, it offers a robust mechanic to ensure genre outcomes, namely, sanity.


----------



## JamesonCourage

innerdude said:


> First, let me state that I'm fairly well satisfied in my own mind, thanks to the robust discussion in this thread, about the nature and effects of dissociative mechanics--
> 
> 
> Dissociation, as I would define it now, is the conscious feeling, sense, or emotional state of being removed, or displaced, from within a fictional construct by an external artifact. It is not wholly the domain of RPGs either; we see this in absurdist movies/theater parodies all the time, where it's called "breaking the fourth wall." It can be related to _immersion_, in terms of playing a character, but can also be related to other aspects, such as association to world physics, social order, economy, bio-naturalism, and so on.
> Dissociation is nearly always subjective, based on some agreed-upon point of view, or shared assumptions about the game world, narrative, playstyle, or all of the above. As a result, groups will largely decide what is and is not dissociative for them at their own tables.
> Almost all potential dissociating artifacts can be resolved through change in narrative, change in inherent property of the milieu, or both, as long as the parties engaged agree to it. The principle behind this type of association is governed by a character's ability to observe, learn, or explore the potentially dissociative effect in game*.
> All RPGs contain some level of abstractions, meta-game components, and potential dissociations. However, the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of dissociation will, as stated earlier, vary depending on individual preference--the natural expectations and assumptions established by the group, rules mechanics, personal experience, and GM worldbuilding.
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
> *(thanks to JamesonCourage for this concept)




I like this post (couldn't XP you). I also like your status 

I think this thread can still be potentially be pretty informative and productive, but both sides tend to be getting pretty irritable, which has in part caused be to stop posting in it. I'm kind of hoping we can go back to talking about our views and opinions even if they conflict with the opinions of others, and stop trying to disprove someone else's opinion.

At any rate, I liked this post because it seemed to be stating his view in a civil way (and it mentioned me ). As always, play what you like 

EDIT: After reading several posts following it, I'm impressed. Nice turn around in tone in the thread. It looks a lot more productive than it did a few pages ago.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> If I read a post in which (2) was asserted, I would interpret it this way:
> Mechanic X is not likely to support simulationist play, and/or is likely to be unsatisfactory for those whose goal in play is to achieve simulationism. Where, by "simulationism", I mean what The Forge means: ingame causal logic is a high priority, and the mechanics are meant to model this, so that _playing the game_ is simultaneously _exploring the gameworld_. When I, at the table, am rolliing to hit, _at the very same time_ my PC is swinging his sword.​



I really, really, really, really... really, really, really don't want to get entanged in semantics like this, except to point out that I think getting caught in rigorous definitions is part of the problem of this entire thread in the first place. The above interpretation may or may not be more narrow than how many people interpret simulationism, I don't know, and I think it's dangerous to go there, because...



pemerton said:


> And I think you treatment of (1) and (2) above as equivalent similarly depends upon ignoring that, if a metagame mechanic is used not as a _model_ of the gameworld but as establishing parameters on _permissible narration_ of the gameworld, then _there need not be anything in the gameworld that cannot be learned, explored, explained, understood, etc_.
> 
> This is why I remain wary regarding the topic of non-simulationist play, and what seem to be (mis)characterisations of it, because they are worded in ways that already presuppose simulatoinist priorities (such as mechanics as a model of ingame causal processes).



In the referenced post, I did include the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.

I also mentioned that I think simulationism has not actually been defined for everyone and is just a concept. So when you state that my understanding of simulationism "depends upon ignoring that--" and that you "remain wary" because of "(mis)characterisations" of non-simulationism and (mechanics?) that "presuppose simulatoinist priorities" --- well, there is no objective way of differentiating between simulationism vs non-simulationism with as so-and-so parameters for any one individual. If one sets certain parameters in one's mind for a concept, and other people have different parameters for that concept and do not share the same nuanced definitions and the other seemingly contradictory opinions are characterized as infringing on one's subjective definitions/parameters, I fear that one will forever be wary and never have peace about the topic of simulationism.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I really, really, really, really... really, really, really don't want to get entanged in semantics like this, except to point out that I think getting caught in rigorous definitions is part of the problem of this entire thread in the first place.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In the referenced post, I did include the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there is no objective way of differentiating between simulationism vs non-simulationism with as so-and-so parameters for any one individual. If one sets certain parameters in one's mind for a concept, and other people have different parameters for that concept and do not share the same nuanced definitions and the other seemingly contradictory opinions are characterized as infringing on one's subjective definitions/parameters, I fear that one will forever be wary and never have peace about the topic of simulationism.



As far as I can tell you are trying to be conciliatory in your post(s). Unhappily, though, I read some of your posts as mischaracterising the way I play 4e D&D. What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.

That's not particularly your problem, and there's no particular reason you should care. There's probably no reason why I should care either! But driven by some irrational impulse, I have this continuing desire to try and convey the way I play the game.

For example, you say:

the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.​
What does this exactly mean - that when I read the mechanic in a rulebook, it strike me as a metagame mechanic, but when I play the game I do something to make it feel like it's _not_ a metagame mechanic? _I'm not even sure what that means._ I may be wrong, but I don't think it's a notion that you've come up with based on actual play experience of someone doing such a thing.

The best sense I can make of it is something like this:

A mechanic is a metagame mechanic. Such a mechanic therefore does not bring all of its ingame consequences with it. So when it is used in play, the participants at the table supply the narration ("fluff") - constrained by whatever parameters the mechanic establishes - in order to determine what is happening in the gameworld.​
For you the difference between these two ways of putting things might be mere semantics. For me, it is the difference between saying something I can't understand (but suggests that narrativist players try to trick themselves, during the course of actual play, into thinking that they're playing sim) and something that I can understand, that reflects how I actually play the game, and is consistent with the generally accepted characterisations of non-simulationist play that I have quoted upthread (from Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker).

Here is another post of yours, from upthread, that I responded to earlier:



Yesway Jose said:


> Permanent polymorph until dispelled becomes a 6 second duration.





pemerton said:


> your comment that Baleful Polymorph lasts for only six seconds begs the question against other ways of resolving the mechanic. As I posted upthread, in my game - which is the only actual play report of Baleful Polymorph in this thread - the reason that the polymorph lasted only six seconds is because the PC's god turned him back. This is no different from an outcome in AD&D in which a PC is hit by Polymorph Other, and the player of the PC then makes a successful Divine Intervention roll. Absent that divine intervention, how long would the Baleful Polymorph last in my gameworld? I don't know - it's never come up - and so a fortiori _you_ can't know.



As I said earlier, I don't know, and so you don't know either, whether or not there is permanent Baleful Polymorph in my gameworld. What I do know is that the Raven Queen has the power to turn her paladins, who have been polymorphed into frogs, back into their own forms. I know this because one of my players narrated events in that way, and it went uncontested at the table. What permitted that narration to occur was that the rules mandated that, at a certain point, the polymorphed PC will revert to his/her own form. _But the rules left it open why the polymorph comes to an end._ The player supplied an ingame explanation.

As far as I can tell, _this_ is the sort of mechanic that The Alexandrian is describing as dissociated.

As far as I can tell, _this_ is the sort of mechanic that innerdude has been discussing, over the past 200 or so posts, as requiring "narrativist" interpretation which, for some participants at least, might "break the fourth wall".

As far as I can tell, _this_ is the sort of play - whether in the context of polymorph durations, or the movement of enemies when Come and Get It is used, or in narrating second wind, or in using a daily power like Trick Strike - that is what many of those who don't like 4e don't like about it.

Namely, _the mechanics don't bring with them, ready made and pre-determined, their ingame content/interpretation_. That is what I mean, and what I think many others mean, when I say that they are not good mechanics for simulationist play.

Using these mechanics _does not involve_ "fluffing things to make them feel simulationist in gamelplay". The point of narration isn't to resolve some issue _with the mechanics_. It's to resolve some issue _that arises from the fiction, and is compelling for the participants_. The function of the mechanics is to set parameters on that. Not more. Not less.

Here are the most relevant passages from Edwards and Baker:
*RE*: Fortune-in-the-Middle . . . preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. . . It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.

*VB*: My goal as a gamer . . . is to push _both _invention and meaning as much as possible into actual play.​When the player of the paladin in my game said, in character, "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back" that was _invention _- world building, narration, establishing the content of the fiction, whatever exactly you want to call it - and _meaning _- faith, loyalty, hope, dependence, all the meaning that accompanies blind devotion - _taking place during actual play_.

This isn't achieved by starting with metagame mechanics but then pretending, in play, that they're simuationist. Simulationist mechanics _predetermine_ invention and meaning. _That's_ why I don't use them.


----------



## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> As far as I can tell you are trying to be conciliatory in your post(s).



Yes. But I'm not being conciliatory in the sense that I used to be against you and then retraced to meet you halfway. I am trying to meet halfway by insisting that semantics and attitudes are preventing two parallel opinions from happily co-existing.



> Unhappily, though, I read some of your posts as mischaracterising the way I play 4e D&D.



That, and the implication that I'd think that non-simulationism is not roleplaying, is what baffles me. To be totally honest, I don't care about how you play your game, thus I have no interest in characterising it for you. I may see you eating vanilla, and I think that I prefer chocolate, but that doesn't mean I would think for one second of taking your vanilla ice cream away from you or demanding why you don't like chocolate.



> What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.



Which, for me, is still semantics.



> That's not particularly your problem, and there's no particular reason you should care.



Agreed, except when threads that should be about fun conversation devolve into the wrong kinds of arguments.



> There's probably no reason why I should care either!



To faciliate discussion and increase your enjoyment of such threads?



> But driven by some irrational impulse, I have this continuing desire to try and convey the way I play the game.



Me too, but from the other perspective. The key, as I keep attempting (and I guess failing) to articulate, is that one person's impulse to be understood does not invalidate another's.



> For example, you say:
> the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.​What does this exactly mean - that when I read the mechanic in a rulebook, it strike me as a metagame mechanic, but when I play the game I do something to make it feel like it's _not_ a metagame mechanic? _I'm not even sure what that means._ I may be wrong, but I don't think it's a notion that you've come up with based on actual play experience of someone doing such a thing.



It's basically regarding use of Author stance defined in the Big Model as "The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions based on the person's priorities, independently of the character's knowledge and perceptions. Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions. When it lacks this feature, it is called Pawn Stance".

So a player applies a metagame-y mechanic, and then retroactively motivates the character so that the effect of the mechanic ends up being simulationist after all.



> The best sense I can make of it is something like this:
> A mechanic is a metagame mechanic. Such a mechanic therefore does not bring all of its ingame consequences with it. So when it is used in play, the participants at the table supply the narration ("fluff") - constrained by whatever parameters the mechanic establishes - in order to determine what is happening in the gameworld.​



Yes, exactly!



> For you the difference between these two ways of putting things might be mere semantics.



I agree!



> For me, it is the difference between saying something I can't understand (but suggests that narrativist players try to trick themselves, during the course of actual play, into thinking that they're playing sim) and something that I can understand, that reflects how I actually play the game, and is consistent with the generally accepted characterisations of non-simulationist play that I have quoted upthread (from Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker).



To put it more succinctly than it deserves, I think the only difference is your vs mine subjective expectations, and this has been touched upon numerous times, but no bridge-building there for some reason?



> As I said earlier, I don't know, and so you don't know either, whether or not there is permanent Baleful Polymorph in my gameworld. What I do know is that the Raven Queen has the power to turn her paladins, who have been polymorphed into frogs, back into their own forms. I know this because one of my players narrated events in that way, and it went uncontested at the table. What permitted that narration to occur was that the rules mandated that, at a certain point, the polymorphed PC will revert to his/her own form. _But the rules left it open why the polymorph comes to an end._ The player supplied an ingame explanation.
> <snip>
> As far as I can tell, _this_ is the sort of mechanic that innerdude has been discussing, over the past 200 or so posts, as requiring "narrativist" interpretation which, for some participants at least, might "break the fourth wall".



I acknowledge that you've repeatedly brought this up and I've repeatedly ignored it, mostly because I think it adds an extra layer of complexity.

Discussions often are based on whether somebody can subjectively satisfactorily find an objective in-game reason for a mechanic that can be observed, learned or explored in the fiction. I emphasize "objective" as in there's one single in-game explanation for it (whereas the adequacy of the in-game explanation is subjective to the player).

I find the Polymorph to be extra tricky, because while you insist that it was the objective in-game explanation, I perceive that it *could*, if it happened in my game or any other, be *subjective* to the paladin PC, and that since the polymorph spell would have ended anyway, that *not every player at the table* can be guaranteed to conclude which was true (raven queen ended the spell vs paladin thought the raven queen ended the spell and it would have ended anyway). Since it cannot be guaranteed which way every player at any one gaming table would approach that, I have studiously avoided the topic -- especially after it blew up out of proportion and became tangential to the thread topic.



> Namely, _the mechanics don't bring with them, ready made and pre-determined, their ingame content/interpretation_. That is what I mean, and what I think many others mean, when I say that they are not good mechanics for simulationist play.
> 
> Using these mechanics _does not involve_ "fluffing things to make them feel simulationist in gamelplay". The point of narration isn't to resolve some issue _with the mechanics_. It's to resolve some issue _that arises from the fiction, and is compelling for the participants_. The function of the mechanics is to set parameters on that. Not more. Not less.
> <snip>
> This isn't achieved by starting with metagame mechanics but then pretending, in play, that they're simuationist. Simulationist mechanics _predetermine_ invention and meaning. _That's_ why I don't use them.



This deserves a more careful reading and articulated response then I'm able to provide at the moment. I'm not sure, though, how it relates to the core issue that what you think of as simulationist may or may not be what other people think is simulationist and that's OK.


----------



## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I am trying to meet halfway by insisting that semantics and attitudes are preventing two parallel opinions from happily co-existing.



The issue for me is that, unless I've badly misunderstood, they're two parallel opinions about _what is happening in my game_. 



Yesway Jose said:


> I don't care about how you play your game, thus I have no interest in characterising it for you. I may see you eating vanilla, and I think that I prefer chocolate, but that doesn't mean I would think for one second of taking your vanilla ice cream away from you or demanding why you don't like chocolate.



I don't for a second think that you care how I play my game. My concern is that, as far as I can tell, you don't really _understand_ how I play my game. And so are misdescribing it.

I may be wrong about this, but what makes me reach this belief is that you keep posting characterisation of 4e play, of "dissociation", of metagame mechanics, etc, that don't resemble my own experiences of play. And are at odds with the actual play I have described in this thread.

For me, to borrow your ice cream analogy, it's as if I'm sitting here happily gobbling down my vanilla and you pass by and say "Hey, don't mind me, keep eating your chocolate!" I don't get the impression that you want to police me. I do get the impression that you've misunderstood what I'm doing.



pemerton said:


> What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.





Yesway Jose said:


> Which, for me, is still semantics.



If I'm eating vanilla, and you're telling me I'm eating chocolate, to me that is more than semantics. It's inadequate, mistaken description.



Yesway Jose said:


> Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So a player applies a metagame-y mechanic, and then retroactively motivates the character so that the effect of the mechanic ends up being simulationist after all.



OK, this is where I quite strongly disagree. And this is where I'm trying to work out whether you're basing your descriptions of what is going on your own play experience, or on theory, or as an attempt to interpret how others have described their play experience, or . . . ?

It is true that author stance (as opposed to pawn stance) involves retroactively imputing a motivation - ie cauastion - to the PC. It is equally true that director stance (which may be in play when a power like Come and Get It is used, or when a saving throw is made in AD&D and this is explained as the fates intervening at the last moment to protect the PC) involves imputing causation into the gameworld.

But there is no simulationism here. The _mechanic_ does not suddenly become simulationist. It was a metagame mechanic. It permitted, or perhaps mandated, some narration. The narration took place. The narration established some ingame causal connections. _Nothing in the mechanic corresponds to, or models, those ingame causal connections_. So we have a mechanic, that is metagame. We have some narration, that is coherent, consistent, genre-preserving, verisimilitudinous, etc. _But we don't have any simulation_.



Yesway Jose said:


> To put it more succinctly than it deserves, I think the only difference is your vs mine subjective expectations, and this has been touched upon numerous times, but no bridge-building there for some reason?



I'm not sure what subjective expectations you're referring to. The difference that _I_ see is that you are asserting that some simulation takes place, whereas I am denying that.

You may regard this as mere semantics, but I don't think that it is. It is a fundamental difference in how RPGing can be approached, that Vincent Baker refers to in the quotes I've posted upthread. Of course Baker is describing matters from his side of the divide in approaches - BryonD upthread describes the view from the _other_ side. The issue is this: _is the content of the gameworld, the way it works, the way events will unfold, etc_ determined _PRIOR TO PLAY_, by the logic of the mechanics, or determined _IN PLAY_, by the narrative choices of the participants (using the mechanics to establish constraints)?

If you play the first way, then the ingame duration of Baleful Polymorph is determined in advance by the mechanics (eg as per AD&D and 3E, this might be "until dispelled"). And any divine intervention to shorten that duration has to be determined according to the divine intervention mechanics, which take into account considerations like piety, frequency of previous calls for intervention, etc, etc (it's a while since I've read that part of the AD&D DMG).

If you play the second way, then the mechanics might tell you that, after a round, the target of Baleful Polymorph returns to his/her original form. But _why that happened in the gameworld_ is left as something to be worked out by the participants in the game _as part of playing the game_. If they want to tell a story about divine intervention, they can. If they want to tell a story about an apprenctice magician with the barest of control over his magic, they can. If they decide that, in this gameworld, Baleful Polymorph is per se a very short transformation, they can go that way instead. _The mechanics don't, on their own, answer the question_.

These are very big differences in playstyle. They're not just differences in subjective experience. If you sit down to play at the second sort of table (playing, say, HeroWars/Quest) and all your experience has been at the first sort of table (playing, say, Runequest) then you'll find it hard to work out what's going on. Hard to play the game. And vice versa. There are objectively different things going on at these tables. And in my view this is obscured rather than illuminated by saying that the second table is really simulationist too. Yes, the people at the second table have a coherent story going on - they're roleplayers, not boardgamers, and they try to avoid contradiction in their narration. _But the mechanics they use aren't simulating anything._

(4e is not as metagamey as HeroWars/Quest. 3E and AD&D are obviously not as simulationist as Runequest. At some of these tables, then, the contrast may not be so markd. But if the 3E player is feeling "dissociated" by 4e, then I think that is sufficient to mark _some_ relevant degree of difference.)



Yesway Jose said:


> I find the Polymorph to be extra tricky
> 
> <snip>
> 
> since the polymorph spell would have ended anyway



This, right here, is why I get the impression that you don't understand non-simulationist play. Your description of this mechanic, and its implications for gameplay, runs together metagame and gameworld in a way that only makes sense if simulationism is assumed.

It's true that the mechanics required that, in the fiction, the paladin turn back from a frog to himself, _but this is not a fact about the gameworld_. It is a fact about the gameplay - ie the rules required that, as from this point in the course of play, everyone at the table must agree that, in the fiction, the paladin is no longer a frog.

But _why_ that should be so, in the fiction, is up for grabs. As far as anyone in the gameworld is concerned, _the polymorph would have continued but for the divine intervention_. _As far as the gameworld is concerned_, it is just not true that the polymorph spell would have ended anyway.



Yesway Jose said:


> This deserves a more careful reading and articulated response then I'm able to provide at the moment. I'm not sure, though, how it relates to the core issue that what you think of as simulationist may or may not be what other people think is simulationist and that's OK.



Well, for me the core issue is the one I keep coming back to with the polymorph example. You consistently say "The spell would have ended anyway". But this is a statement only about the mechanics, namely, that they mandate a narration of the paladin as having retransformed. The further inference that you make, from the mechanics to the gameworld - that _in the gameworld_ he would have turned back anyway - is sound _only if a simulationist reading of the mechanics is taken for granted_. My table didn't read the mechanic in that way. So it's simply not true that, absent the divine intervention, the paladin would have turned back. (It's true that, absent a narration about divine intervention, some other story would have been told about why the paladin turned back. But this isn't a truth within the fiction. This is a truth about how me and my friends in the real world would have played the game.)

This is exactly what it means to use the mechanics to set parameters on the narration of what is happening in the gameworld, rather than to treat them as a model of what is happening in the gameworld. The other stuff - about invention and meaning happening in play rather than before play - is the reason _why_ I like using metagame rather than simulationist mechanics.


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> The issue for me is that, unless I've badly misunderstood, they're two parallel opinions about _what is happening in my game_.



This thread isn't called "In Defense of Pemetron's Game". Is it fair for you to internalize every topic as to how infringes or meshes with your game? With all due respect, that's a big egocentric, no?



> For me, to borrow your ice cream analogy, it's as if I'm sitting here happily gobbling down my vanilla and you pass by and say "Hey, don't mind me, keep eating your chocolate!" I don't get the impression that you want to police me. I do get the impression that you've misunderstood what I'm doing.



We're all eating different flavors of ice cream in the same ice cream parlor. You have the right to those impressions but I question the objectivity of them. EDIT: I misread the 2nd sentence. You're correct, I don't always know what you're doing, except I don't think you're eating chocolate instead of vanilla, I understand you're eating another flavor but I just don't like the taste of it. Sometimes I empathize with a point, sometimes I only understand it rationally, sometimes the information is a bit too dense for me to absorb even rationally.



> It is true that author stance (as opposed to pawn stance) involves retroactively imputing a motivation - ie cauastion - to the PC. It is equally true that director stance (which may be in play when a power like Come and Get It is used, or when a saving throw is made in AD&D and this is explained as the fates intervening at the last moment to protect the PC) involves imputing causation into the gameworld.
> 
> But there is no simulationism here. The _mechanic_ does not suddenly become simulationist. It was a metagame mechanic.



Is this one of those "inherent" semantics?

My original post stated "Mechanic X is non-simulationist, subjectively".

That's not a statement about the inherent properties of the mechanic. It's a statement about the relationship between the mechanic and the simulationism (or lack thereof) to fiction Y.

I've insisted before that mechanics are "dumb" things uncognizant of the fiction, and thus cannot have any inherent properties like that.

The above seem to the main sticking points. I think only after both sides can agree *how* to discuss, can anyone actually have a meaningful discussion about complex topics like this.


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> My original post stated "Mechanic X is non-simulationist, subjectively".
> 
> That's not a statement about the inherent properties of the mechanic. It's a statement about the relationship between the mechanic and the simulationism (or lack thereof) to fiction Y.



What does this mean.? What do you mean by "simulation"?

Here is an extract from the rules for a free online RPG by Paul Czege, The World, The Flesh and The Devil:
Begin by writing a two or three sentence description of a problem. . .

The next step is to underline significant words or phrases . . . and to annotate them with a sentence or two each . . . The Annotations are what make it personal to the character. . .

The final step is to take a blank six-sider and allocate sides to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, creating your character's W/F/D die. . .

The game also requires that the GM have a set of five dice with different allocations of plus and minus symbols on them . . . in black and red . . .

When a player has stated intent for the character to do something where the outcome is in question, the GM will give the player one of the conflict resolution dice with the plus and minus symbols on them. . .

The player rolls both his W/F/D die and the one the GM gave him. If the result is a Devil+, it means the victory was one in which the character transcended some aspect of the Devil, and the player narrates the outcome. If the result is Flesh-, it's a failure of the flesh and the player narrates the outcome. . .

If a player isn't satisfied with his dice throw, he can use an Annotation to give himself a re-roll. . .

And regardless of whether the result is a failure or a success, the player must incorporate some aspect of the Annotation he used for the re-roll in his narration of the outcome. . .

There are no opposed rolls, and the GM never rolls. However, if a player rolls a red plus or red minus it means the GM narrates the outcome, rather than the player. This give the GM power to introduce bittersweet victories and dramatic, crippling failures. 

And if a red plus or minus comes up when a player has used an Annotation to trigger a re-roll, it's the GM that references the Annotation in his narration of the outcome.​
Can you explain what it might mean, or be like, to play this game in a fashion that was "subjectively simulationist"?

I personally can't make sense of this. It strikes me as very obvious that, in this game, rolling the dice isn't modelling anything in the world. It's assigning narration rights, and establishing parameters on that narration.

4e's mechanics obviously aren't identical to this. Apart from anything else, they establish narrative parameters in a much more finegrained and nitty-gritty way. But many of them are as much like this as they are like Runequest.

(This also has nothing much to do with Actor or Author stance, it seems to me. I can imagine playing The World, the Flesh and the Devil predominantly in Actor stance.)


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> What does this mean.? What do you mean by "simulation"?



As I said before a few times, I'm really, really, really, really, really, really not interested in that, and like Neonchamelon, I'm also going to bow out of this thread due to frustration. I'll give you the courtesy of explaining why:
- I'm disheartened that after 65 pages, plus how may other threads, that we're still stuck at that baseline. Obviously, there is something very wrong here
- the thread inevitably gets caught up in the kinds of semantics that I don't enjoy. There was the anthropic principle before, and you said how much agree with it, but how do you know that people who play 4E and continue to play 4E who don't believe that 4E is "special" or "unique" for generating "disassociation" aren't also self-selected to say so? The problem is getting caught up in these logic and semantic games which can be twisted one way or another tangential to what I want to talk about. I don't want to be unfair, because I know you were putting out an olive branch, so I suppose it's my fault for having a low tolerance for that
- if we don't have a shared even vague understanding of "simulation" by this point then it's pretty much hopeless, but perhaps someone else is more willing than I to explain
- I realized how much time I have wasted here


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## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> I don't know. Personally, when I buy what they produce I _am _relying on them having thought harder than me about how the game will work and what it will deliver in play.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean here by "interpretation".




Sorry to put out an undefined term.

Here is an example:

In 3E, an actor may have a state, either of "erect" or "prone".  While a coarse model (can one take a singe knee, or crouch?), the two terms do actually model a state of real people and creatures.

Then "trip" is used as a special attack which changes the targets state from "erect" to "prone".

There have been various discussions about what does it mean to trip a, say, a flying creature, or a snake.

My understanding is that trip when used against a flying creature, puts them into a stall, and I have heard either that some creatures should be considered untrippable, or (I think more officially) that even a snake can be tripped, and it just means something different (I'm not sure what) for a snake.

For some creatures, say, a gelatenous cube, being tripped doesn't make sense to me, and I would rule that a gelatenous cube just cannot be tripped.  The same for various oozes.  If you animated a bean-bag chair, that would seem to be untrippable.

The actual mechanics of the trip are largely unstated: Did you hook their legs?  Push them over a small obstruction?

Trip is made as an unarmed attack, or with special weapons (flail, guisarme, gnome hooked hammer, kama, sickle, whip).  That certain weapons are usable for tripping (generally, they can be used to "hook" or, in the case of the whip, "grab and pull"), that provides a space to have a creature natural attack be used for trips, if the natural attack has these properties.

The effectiveness of trip is varied in several ways: It's harder to trip someone larger than you, or stronger than you, or that is more stable, say, because of an innate property (Dwarf) or because of having more legs.

Trip is also more effect for someone who has put in an extra effort to train and practice.

All of these details provide a process by which a player and GM can understand a trip attack.  That process includes a step where the trip attack is mapped to an imagined action, and the result is viewed as a mapping back of the imagined result to game terms.

That is to say, the mapping to an imagined action and the mapping back to the result are a part of the resolution process.

For many cases, the actual mapping is not done: The rules provide a guarantee to the player of a result for normal cases.  However, the mapping is still there for unusual cases.

I could say, for example, that turtles should have dwarven stability, and the rules provide some justification for this ruling.

The point here is that the player and GM have a presence in the space where the stated action is envisioned, and that this presence may be used to adjust the result of unusual cases relative to the usual result.

TomBitonti


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## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> To be fair to Neonchameleon, his claim _wasn't _that 4e is _objectively _better than 3E/PF. He very expressly said that his view that 4e is the better game is an _opinion_ based on subjective preference.




He didn't say that 4e is the better game; he said that people who find they enjoy PF more than 4e are wrong, and that they would enjoy 4e better. Dressing it up as a subjective opinion is no different then dressing up a belief in the moon landing hoax as a subjective opinion.


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## Crazy Jerome

Just a comment that if I receive private messages from someone about this topic, but they do not themselves accept private messages, then I can't really comment. I don't think it correct to reply here to a private note, and I can't very well respond privately if is not accepted.  

Having typed a long reply with considerable thought, and found it unsendable, I don't care to repeat the process.  Anything I have to say about the topic will be said in a public post here.


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## Hussar

tomBitonti said:


> Sorry to put out an undefined term.
> 
> Here is an example:
> 
> In 3E, an actor may have a state, either of "erect" or "prone".  While a coarse model (can one take a singe knee, or crouch?), the two terms do actually model a state of real people and creatures.
> 
> Then "trip" is used as a special attack which changes the targets state from "erect" to "prone".
> 
> /snip for space
> 
> TomBitonti




I was thinking about trip as it relates to this thread.  See, your definition of "erect" or "prone" is very telling I think.  In 3e, these terms and exactly how a trip works is defined by the mechanics.  In 3e, I make an attack with some sort of weapon (possibly bare handed), possibly suffering a counter-attack, and if I succeed, then that attack knocks the opponent prone.

Every single instance of tripping in 3e works this way AFAIK.  Plus, the idea of a hit is also defined as something along the lines of physically striking your opponent.

But, and this is where I think Pem and Yesway's disagreement arrises, 4e's mechanics are disassociated.  Yes, they do include a default narrative, but, it also is pretty clear that this is only included as an example, not as a rule.

So, in 4e, there are several powers which cause an opponent to gain the prone condition.  Now, prone is defined as lying on the ground, but, again, 4e definitions are default, not proscriptive.  Anything which you can narratively account for and then slap on the Prone condition works - being off balance, flipped over, whatever.

Plus, in 4e, a hit is defined as a successful attack, not as physically striking something.  Thus, you can "hit" with a sword, or a really nasty joke (cf. The 4e Bard) and cause effects and damage.  Thus, when using a power that causes something to become prone, the in-game narrative is not defined by the mechanics.  

At no point do the 4e mechanics tell you HOW something works.  They simply tell you what the effects are and the expectation is that the table will self-police themselves to find a rational explanation.  

If you want to play 4e with a 3e mindset, it won't work.  Or, at least, it won't work very well.  The mechanics are geared differently.  In 3e, the mechanics are meant to "actually model a state of real people and creatures", the 4e mechanics really, really aren't.


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> As I said before a few times, I'm really, really, really, really, really, really not interested in that, and like Neonchamelon, I'm also going to bow out of this thread due to frustration.



I'm sorry to hear of your frustration. I'm also sorry that you think I'm pettifoggin on semantics.

From my perspective, you're putting forward a notion - mechanics that are metagame on the page, but are rendered simulationist in play - that I don't understand. I'm not looking for an abstract definition. I'm looking for illustrations - whether actual play or seriously worked out hypotheticals  - that explain what you have in mind.



Hussar said:


> But, and this is where I think Pem and Yesway's disagreement arrises, 4e's mechanics are disassociated.



You might be right. I'm not sure where we disagree, because I don't know what Yesway Jose has in mind (as above).

And every time Yesway Jose describes metagame mechanics (like the duration of Baleful Polymorph) it seems to incorporate an assumption that the mechanic in fact operates in a simulationist fashion (ie that because the power must be narrated as ending at a certain time _come whay may_, this means that _within the gameworld_ the power will end at that time _come what may_).



Hussar said:


> Yes, they do include a default narrative



Are you thinking of the flavour text at the top of a power?

There are also the effect and damage keywords, which (as I've tried to explain upthread) are the key anchor between mechanics and fiction in narrating and resolving 4e power use.



Hussar said:


> 4e definitions are default, not proscriptive.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Plus, in 4e, a hit is defined as a successful attack, not as physically striking something.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> At no point do the 4e mechanics tell you HOW something works.  They simply tell you what the effects are



Right. This is the stuff I cited upthread from Ron Edwards about fortune-in-the-middle and Vincent Baker about invention occurrng during play, not prior to play.

The 4e mechanics set parameters on permissible narration - an attack was successful, or some fire damage was dealt, or someone moved here or move thered, or whatever - but the narration of how that comes about is up for grabs until worked out in the course of actually playing the game.

This is what [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s recent posts have been reflecting on - how it changes play from a simulationist approach.



Hussar said:


> If you want to play 4e with a 3e mindset, it won't work.  Or, at least, it won't work very well.  The mechanics are geared differently.  In 3e, the mechanics are meant to "actually model a state of real people and creatures", the 4e mechanics really, really aren't.



Agreed. This is why I say that 4e's mechanics don't support simulationist play very well. (I don't like the word "dissociated", because it implies a lack of immersion or engagement that doesn't reflect my experience - as per my anecdote about the paladin player in my game - but that's orthogonal to my agreement with you excellent post.)


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## Hussar

Pem said:
			
		

> And every time Yesway Jose describes metagame mechanics (like the duration of Baleful Polymorph) it seems to incorporate an assumption that the mechanic in fact operates in a simulationist fashion (ie that because the power must be narrated as ending at a certain time come whay may, this means that within the gameworld the power will end at that time come what may).




From my reading of what YeswayJose was saying, I'd say this is pretty close to his position.  At least, that's what I took it to be.  If a given mechanic is not disociated, then the mechanic must match the in-game effect to a large degree.  There must be (as close as possible) a 1:1 relationship between the mechanic and what it's describing.

Thus, you get the idea of To Hit.  In 3e, this is an associated mechanic.  If you hit something, you MUST make some sort of physical contact with it.  You can't hit something without actually making physical contact.  Which is why you get rules for what happens if an unarmed attacker attacks something that level drains on a touch (a question that was largely unanswered IIRC in previous editions).  

4e doesn't bother with that since the concept of "Hit" simply means "successful attack".  And, it goes even further that since the mechanics of "To Hit" in 4e are disociated, that you don't even need to narrate a successful attack as the source of the effects or damage.  I use a power which causes targets to fall prone.  I succeed.  I narrate it as lunging forward, my opponent backpedals, stumbles on the loose ground and falls in a clatter.

Barring keywords in the power, that will work.  If the power does have keywords, as you rightly point out Pem, then the narrative I construct is a bit more limited.  If my power includes the Fire keyword and causes things to fall down (I have no idea if there are any powers that do this, but, work with me here) then the narration would include something about flinching away from the flames, stumbling and falling.  Or perhaps the blast lifts them off their feet.  Whatever.

Where I get tripped up in all of this is the idea that somehow this is more limiting to the players.  That having disociated mechanics somehow makes it more difficult to create a narrative in the game.  Isn't disociation by definition more liberating?


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## pemerton

Hussar, to my mind your "unarmed attack vs wight" example for 3E, and your "opponent falls ina clatter" and "flinch back from the flames" examples for 4e, are excellent examples of the difference in orientation of simulationist-leaning and metagame-leaning rules (including, for the latter, narration under parameters established by eg keywords). (Cant' XP you yet, though.)



Hussar said:


> Where I get tripped up in all of this is the idea that somehow this is more limiting to the players.  That having disociated mechanics somehow makes it more difficult to create a narrative in the game. Isn't disociation by definition more liberating?



I get tripped up by this too.

Some of what innerdude has posted seems to me to push in this direction (I think - but innerdude's ideas also seem to be developing a bit from post to post). A _lot_ of what BryonD has posted, in this and other threads, seems to me to push in this direction.

This is what I had in mind when I was posting Edwards and Baker upthread - Edwards makes the point that, with metagame/fortune-in-the-middle mechanics, you can narrate as you think best fits your conception of your character, or of the situation. Like with your "falling back in a clatter" example - there are different ways to describe this that have different implications for whether my PC is an incredibly good fencer, or my foe is incredibly clumsy, or even (if I'm going with comedy) that my PC is loveable lucky klutzy kind of guy.

And to me - and this is where I see Vincent Baker coming in - a game based around this sort of action resolution naturally tends to support more flexible-but-powerful scene framing, more joint participation in _invention_ and _meaning_ during play rather than preplay. (My paladin example is just a little instance of this.) This sort of mutual, real-time invention isn't going to come unstuck (which is something that innerdude and Yesway Jose seemed worried abut) becaue the mechanics give you the flexibility to keep it going downstream. 

I think at least two explanations are possible. One is that these posters don't really have much experience, or much of a vivid sense, of how this sort of game is played. So the reason that you and I get tripped up is that these other posters just don't really know what it is they're talking about. (And [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] hinted at this possibility upthread.)

Another possible explanation is that these posters, when they talk about "creating a narrative", mean something very very different from what I mean (and, given I think we're on the same page here, from what _you_ and I mean). This is also something that Crazy Jerome hinted at upthread.

[MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION]'s description of "being inside the novel" is, I think, an attempt to articulate this sense of "creating a narrative". I have trouble making sense of it, because what I tend to see when "being inside the novel" is combined with "creating a narrative" is _loads_ of GM force being used in either an overt or an illusionist fashion to shape the story and generate that sense of "being inside the novel". I think 2nd ed AD&D, in part because of some stuff in the rulebooks and in part because of the sensibility displayed in its modules and sourcebooks, is particularly prone to this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of it around with 3E.

But I assume what BryonD and the other immersivists have in mind is something else. But I haven't quite got a handle on what it is, such that the players getting use force too (as mediated and permitted via the action resolution rules) would disrupt it.

EDIT: For the sake of clarity - I can see how metagame mechanics _might_ disrupt the sense of "being inside the novel", because they have the potential to make it very obvious to the player that what is taking place is in fact creation rather than literal inhabitation. (I say "might" and "potential" because, depending on both the mechanic in question and the player in quetion, things can go one way or another. As I've said upthread, I don't think my paladin player lost immersion when he also, in a technical or logical sense, entered Director Stance and stipulated something about the Raven Queen on the basis of a metagame reading of a duration mechanic.)

The puzzle, or "tripping up", that I'm experiencing is when the "inside the novel" is _combined with_ "creating a narrative".


----------



## prosfilaes

Hussar said:


> That having disociated mechanics somehow makes it more difficult to create a narrative in the game.  Isn't disociation by definition more liberating?




It's frequently true that things that make processes easier are less flexible. When it comes to making music on a computer, most people use a piano-like keyboard, which is limited to 88 notes; using a computer keyboard and a hex editor to directly create a wav file lets you create any sound the computer can output, and is thus much more liberating. Why bother with singers and a sound studio, when it's just bits on a disc that can be typed in directly?

In theory, having associated mechanics can never hurt, because you can always disconnect them. They provide narrative support; you can embellish all you want, but you're never searching for the basic statement of what just happened.


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## Pentius

prosfilaes said:


> It's frequently true that things that make processes easier are less flexible. When it comes to making music on a computer, most people use a piano-like keyboard, which is limited to 88 notes; using a computer keyboard and a hex editor to directly create a wav file lets you create any sound the computer can output, and is thus much more liberating. Why bother with singers and a sound studio, when it's just bits on a disc that can be typed in directly?
> 
> In theory, having associated mechanics can never hurt, because you can always disconnect them. They provide narrative support; you can embellish all you want, but you're never searching for the basic statement of what just happened.



And by the same token, having "disassociated"(still hate that term) mechanics can't hurt, because you can always connect them.  They provide narrative liberty, you can have them be always the same if you wish, but you're never locked into, or pressured into, a single choice.


----------



## 'Arry

I have found this thread to be very interesting and _most_ informative.  I've finally managed to get my head round how things like _'trip'_ works in 4E.  Particular thanks to Hussar for his clear summing up in his post I commented on.


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## Neonchameleon

prosfilaes said:


> He didn't say that 4e is the better game; he said that people who find they enjoy PF more than 4e are wrong, and that they would enjoy 4e better. Dressing it up as a subjective opinion is no different then dressing up a belief in the moon landing hoax as a subjective opinion.




As I am being actively and openly slandered in my absence and deliberately quoted out of context in a manner to present me in the worst possible light, I am going to drop back in to the thread briefly.  You had what I actually wrote in front of you when you replied to PMerton (and thanks for stepping in to my defence).  

When you quoted me it was a selective quotation and you cut the very next sentence " But it's an opinion based on subjective preferences."  There are ways in which 4e is a superior game to Pathfinder.  There are ways in which Pathfinder is a superior game to 4e.  Some of these are for the exact same reasons - is the stronger magic in PF something that makes for a better or a worse game?  Comparing between two such different games, simmilar as they are in the whole scheme of things, the results are always going to be subjective.  But _of course_ I believe my preferences to be the best ones.  If I found a better set I'd adjust mine to fit them.

Of course I'm hardly the only person whose words you are twisting to create a straw man to rail against even in posts where you are selectively quoting me, stripping the context:



> Originally Posted by *wrecan*
> 
> 
> _It's not one of the things that 4e need address, since flying isn't nearly as common in the 4e default world as it is in the 3e default world._





			
				prosfiles said:
			
		

> No dragons, huh. I'll give you that; once you've stripped all the fantasy out of a world, pointlessly realistic world building does become easier.




No one ever said there were no dragons in 4e.  Or that no one could fly in 4e.  This was once more you reading things that aren't there into what someone said.  To take the obvious counter-example, there are dragons in Middle Earth.  And Nazgul.  However castles are still relevant because there are _Nine_ Ring-Wraiths and not very many dragons.  Even where there are dragons, Smaug was taken down by an archer from the ground.  When _Middle Earth_ fits the description of the thing you are arguing has had all the fantasy stripped out of it, you've already lost.

But there are thousands upon thousands of orcs against whom castles do work.  So castles with only minor modifications are still extremely useful (note that this does not apply in Dragonlance...)  On the other hand in 3.X, Fly is a third level spell.  _Any_ level 5 wizard can theoretically cast it.  And any Int 16 L5 wizard can cast it on two people per day.  A decent army is going to have a lot of wizards who can cast fly on a few people.  So instead of just trying to keep the ladders off the wall and handle the occasional tower, at any time of day or night they can be confronted by squads of people who just fly over the walls.  A whole different ballgame from "The enemy has nine flying creatures.  Everyone keep your eyes peeled.  And remember, kill one and they have eight left.  And stay on the walls.  Hold them and the ten thousand orcs can't get in."


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## Yesway Jose

Hussar said:


> From my reading of what YeswayJose was saying, I'd say this is pretty close to his position. At least, that's what I took it to be.
> <snip>
> Thus, you get the idea of To Hit. In 3e, this is an associated mechanic. If you hit something, you MUST make some sort of physical contact with it.



Just to clarify, I know that "to hit" in 4E (and even maybe in 3E for me) does not necessarily mean physical contact -- it's whatever the player wants it to mean under the paradigm that hit points = stamina, wounds, luck, morale, etc. Several posts of mine on other thread(s) would indicate that.

Thank you, don't mind me, please continue.


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## Crazy Jerome

Hussar said:


> Where I get tripped up in all of this is the idea that somehow this is more limiting to the players. That having disociated mechanics somehow makes it more difficult to create a narrative in the game. Isn't disociation by definition more liberating?




The effect you described *can* be liberating, if used in the spirit with which it is intended.  However, "disassociation" implies something very much the opposite, both in its use by TA and in the original pathological meaning.  Taken to its extreme case, disassociation implies--among other things--a personality somewhat imprisoned in the owner's skull--expressly, not free to act in ways in which the personality ultimately desires.

One of the characteristics is replacement of decision points with process--even when this might not be the best way to handle the situation.  I had a conversation yesterday, with someone suffering from the psychological condition, about the trouble a "locked in" process can cause when the normal parameters for the process are not fully applicable.

Bringing it back to the less serious gaming side, the thing about process-based simulation methods is that they are as much of a double-edge sword as narrative methods.  When the process allows you to work efficiently, it is "liberating" in that it lets you get on with the game in a way that is satisfying.  When the process locks you in, you obviously get something more confining (the only way I can "make discombobulated" in the story is to use a mechanics explicitly tied to tripping or perhaps confusion).  A narrative method that replaces a *limiting* mechanic is liberating--if you care about the limit.  A narrative method that leaves the choice up to you, perhaps making you stop longer than you care to, or cause analysis paralysis due to the options, is confining.  "Limits are freeing" is about avoiding analysis paralysis by imposing a structure.  

In either case, applying narrative mechanics as a process method are nearly always going to have all of the bad sides of both methods, and neither of the good sides.  You've, in effect, got a limited choice process that nonetheless suffers from analysis paralysis and other open-ended issues because the limited choices are not part of the process.  "Make up something appropriate--in the simulation process sense--that causes this creature to be prone."


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## Yesway Jose

pemerton said:


> I'm sorry to hear of your frustration. I'm also sorry that you think I'm pettifoggin on semantics.
> 
> From my perspective, you're putting forward a notion - mechanics that are metagame on the page, but are rendered simulationist in play - that I don't understand. I'm not looking for an abstract definition. I'm looking for illustrations - whether actual play or seriously worked out hypotheticals - that explain what you have in mind.



The key thing here that I feel that a more holistic approach is ultimately the most useful and important goal in mind, rather than constantly dissect any one element out of context because I think the latter has already been done ad nauseum without consensus.

Even illustrations tend to fail if we consider the last 65 pages.

I find now that lurkerdom is a much better return on investment, as I don't feel compelled to defend my opinions from misrepresentation especially from those who are temporarily belligerent or overly-analytical or both. That said...

I think Roleplaying is just telling an interactive shared story of some sort, usually (but not always) with use of mechanics.

I think Simulationism is if Roleplaying results in a narrative with (subjectively adequate) verisimilitude. There are very complex and very subjective interactions here: the nature of the mechanics, the interaction between mechanics, the way the DM uses mechanics, the way *each* player in the group uses the mechanics, the kinds of stories that each player subjectively wants to tell, the stories that each player considers to be relatively plausible, and the stories that end up being told in the shared narrative after all.

I think Immersion is how I feel *while* that narrative is being formed. There are complex and subjective interactions here as well. There are subjectively independant but related at any one time, so there can be simulationism or immersion or neither or both.

I think all of the above points have been touched upon in the previous pages and many other threads, although I believe it's the 1st time in this thread that I've personally dared to hazard a general interpretation of "simulation" and "immersion". For the above reasons, I feel it's futile for me to drill down into any further detail, so I don't know what else to say.


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## prosfilaes

Neonchameleon said:


> When you quoted me it was a selective quotation and you cut the very next sentence " But it's an opinion based on subjective preferences."




Not in my first response, and I stand by my statement then; that's a meaningless statement of the form used by many to try and avoid the consequences of their statement. Claiming a factual claim is a subjective opinion does not change its nature.



> Comparing between two such different games, simmilar as they are in the whole scheme of things, the results are always going to be subjective.  But _of course_ I believe my preferences to be the best ones.




First, no; I am well capable of understanding that my preference for Coke doesn't mean it's better in any way. I can even go further; The Day After Tomorrow is one of my favorite movies, but objective I can say it's a lousy movie.

Secondly, you didn't say that 4e was better; you said that for people who have found Pathfinder better than 4e (they have done the test, and PF won), that they are badly missing out (they would enjoy 4e better.) Which is absurd; if someone tells you they enjoy Chick Flick #12 or Horror Movie #47 to Citizen Kane after having watched both, they're probably telling the truth.


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## innerdude

Yesway Jose said:


> The key thing here that I feel that a more holistic approach is ultimately the most useful and important goal in mind, rather than constantly dissect any one element out of context because I think the latter has already been done ad nauseum without consensus.
> 
> Even illustrations tend to fail if we consider the last 65 pages.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think Roleplaying is just telling an interactive shared story of some sort, usually (but not always) with use of mechanics.
> 
> I think Simulationism is if Roleplaying results in a narrative with (subjectively adequate) verisimilitude. There are very complex and very subjective interactions here: the nature of the mechanics, the interaction between mechanics, the way the DM uses mechanics, the way *each* player in the group uses the mechanics, the kinds of stories that each player subjectively wants to tell, the stories that each player considers to be relatively plausible, and the stories that end up being told in the shared narrative after all.
> 
> I think Immersion is how I feel *while* that narrative is being formed. There are complex and subjective interactions here as well. There are subjectively independant but related at any one time, so there can be simulationism or immersion or neither or both.
> 
> I think all of the above points have been touched upon in the previous pages and many other threads, although I believe it's the 1st time in this thread that I've personally dared to hazard a general interpretation of "simulation" and "immersion". For the above reasons, I feel it's futile for me to drill down into any further detail, so I don't know what else to say.




This is a FANTASTIC summation of my own sensibilities about dissociation/narrative/immersion when it comes to RPGs. 

I wish I had more time to address pemerton's comment about looking at "narrative" differently, because it's really in the center vortex of my ideas behind why I started this thread in the beginning, but I'll have to come back to it later.


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## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> In theory, having associated mechanics can never hurt, because you can always disconnect them. They provide narrative support; you can embellish all you want



I guess unsurprisingly, I don't agree. I'll try and explain - and the point of the explanation isn't to try and prove that everyone would be better off with metagame mechanics, but to try and show how _sometimes_ "associated" (or, a I prefer to say, simulationist) mechanics _can _hurt.

First, you _can't_ embellish simulationist mechanics all you want. They establish parameters.

Of course, as I've been saying, metagame mechanics impose parameters as well. But metagame mechanics that have been designed well will put on just the parameters that the participants want, while leaving just the right scope for narration ("embellishment"). Whereas simulationist mechanics, which if they've been well designed will have been designed to efficiently but plausibly model ingame causal processes, may well not establsih the right sort of parameters.

To give an example - as far as I know, the only way to _stop_ someone in 3E, using a martial maneouvre, is to grapple them or trip them. Both require making a touch attack. They leave it open to embellishment as to what part of my body I am using to touch my foe. But they don't leave it open to embellish eg that I didn't touch them at all, but wrongfooted them such that they tripped over their own scabbard.

To give another example - a simulationist treatment of spell duration, which says that the Baleful Polymorph ends after 6 seconds because _that's just how the magic works_ preclues the end of the duration being negated as a miracle bestowed on a paladin by his god.

Second, when it comes to "disconnecting" simulationist mechanics, at least in my experience - and also in many rulebooks that I'm familiar with - it is _the GM_ who has authority over disconnection. Which tends to mean that the idea of "disconnecting" simulationist mechanics brings with it the threat of GM force in action resolution. And GM force in action resolution is, in general, at odds with player protagonism.

I think this is particularly an issue with high concept simulationism. Purist-for-system design is generally intended to be "GM-proof" in this way, because part of the point of play is for everyone - GM included - to engage with and enjoy the mechanics. But in high concept simulationism the mechanics are a means to a different end (roughly, a genre experience). So the temptation to disconnect, when the connection won't produce that experience, is high. And so we get the "golden rule", "fudging in the interest of story", etc etc. And I'm a completely orthodox Forge-ite when it comes to this sort of play - I find it very dysfunctional.

So if you want to play in the way that I'm interested in playing, "associated" mechanics can (and do, and have) hurt. There's a reason I switched from Rolemaster to 4e, after all!


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## pemerton

Yesway Jose said:


> I think Simulationism is if Roleplaying results in a narrative with (subjectively adequate) verisimilitude.



OK, that makes some of your earlier posts a whole lot clearer.

Outside of some "comedy" games like Paranoia and Toon, I don't know of any approach to RPGing that isn't interested in what you call simulationism here. (At the Forge, they call it "exploration of a shared imaginary space" - and its verisimilitudinous, for those at the table, is part of what helps it be shared.)

From my point of view, all the action in this thread, and in my hostile response to The Alexandrian's essay, is in talking about different ways to achieve this sort of shared imaginary versimilitudinous space. I take it for granted, though, that this is what is being done. (_Why_ a group of people want to get together and create a shared imaginary space is another issue - this is Vincent Baker's point, when he says some just want to "be there", others want to prove they've got what it takes, others want to SAY SOMETHING in the Lit101 sense, maybe there are other reasons too that the Forge hasn't noticed yet.)

The Alexandrian seems to assume that 4e's mechanics, because of the way in which they are not Forge-simulationist (ie don't model ingame causal processes) can't deliver a shared imaginary space (hence comments about imrov drama linking tactical skirmishes). A bit part of my goal in this and other threads is to show that this can be done, and how it is done, without playing in a Forge-simulationist fashion.


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## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> I am well capable of understanding that my preference for Coke doesn't mean it's better in any way. I can even go further; The Day After Tomorrow is one of my favorite movies, but objective I can say it's a lousy movie.
> 
> Secondly, you didn't say that 4e was better; you said that for people who have found Pathfinder better than 4e (they have done the test, and PF won), that they are badly missing out (they would enjoy 4e better.) Which is absurd; if someone tells you they enjoy Chick Flick #12 or Horror Movie #47 to Citizen Kane after having watched both, they're probably telling the truth.



It's a bit orthogonal to the main point of the thread, but I wanted to say something about this.

It's true that one can have a personal preference for an artwork that is not the best. One of my favourite movies, for example, is Kubrick's Spartacus, but it's certainly not the (asethetically) best movie I've ever seen.

But it's equally true that one can explain preferences by an appeal (perhaps only partial) to quality. Part of what explains my pleasure in Spartacus is that it is nevertheless a good movie, and better than many. And when I say it's not the best, the coherence of that judgement relies upon their being a quality in movies that is independent of my personal pleasure in them. (The idea that a person can cultivate their taste - which is a pretty commonplace idea - also presupposes that there can be quality independent of personal pleasure.)

If I heard someone say that s/he enjoyed Chick Flick #12 or Horror Movie #47 over Citizen Kane, I'd be happy to believe him or her. I'd also suspect that s/he doesn't have very good taste in movies. If s/he tried to explain her enjoyment in terms of her preferred movie being _better_ than Citizen Kane, then I'd treat my suspicion as confirmed!


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## innerdude

Based on the discussion of narrative, I've given some thought to how I see narrative working within RPGs. 

Others may have their own take, but I see there being three levels of "narrative" that coincide with in-game activity: 


Meta-narrative
Indirect Character Narrative
Direct Character Narrative
 Interestingly, depending on the circumstance, any of the three can be  "dissociative," in the sense of breaking subjectively acceptable  verisimilitude, as Yesway Jose kindly stated. 


1. *Meta-narrative* is solely the domain of the GM. This is the  "backstory" of the world, its population, nations, economy, and so on.  All NPCs fall into this category, at least until they come in contact  with the party. 

Meta-narrative is typically causally associated to world physics,  historical events, biology/naturalism, or anything else that constitutes  "why things exist in the state they are." 

Meta-narrative is the least-engaged narrative element for players; typically they only interact with it when indirect or direct narrative presents a conflict--for example, the  player thinks their character background should be one thing, but the  player's desire conflicts with the GM's "vision." 

The overall story "arc" of any campaign is usually played out in  indirect and direct narrative, but ultimately the "story" becomes  meta-narrative as well. Long-running campaigns and long-term PCs/NPCs  very much become part of the meta-narrative fabric. 


2. *Indirect Character Narrative *is negotiated between the player  and the GM. It's the bridge between direct narrative and meta-narrative,  typically related to individual player/character's decisions about _who their character is_. This includes negotiating race, class, powers/feats/magical abilities,  skills, where the character is from, hobbies/professions, and so on. 

Indirect character narrative can be engaged somewhat by players,  especially when questions of "How would my character react to this?"  come up. 

Indirect narrative can be influenced both backwards and forwards by mechanics, and the meta-narrative. 

For example, we probably generally expect a paladin to have a much different  emotional/personal reaction to a starving orphan on the street than a  rogue. Why? Because the rules generally point players to some common  elements that make up a paladin character's indirect narrative. Does this mean that a rogue couldn't have the same reaction? No, not at all; there's just no mechanical impetus for the rogue character to feel the same way. 

Some games even provide specific indirect narrative elements as part of  character creation. For example, GURPS has the option to use the Enemy  disadvantage, where it's generally assumed that the GM and player will  create a narratively acceptable recurring villain that meets the  requirements of the mechanic. 


3. *Direct Character Narrative*—This is where most RPG sessions  operate in a moment-to-moment basis; it's anything the character does  while participating in an actual session. 

Meta-narrative, indirect narrative, and mechanics all influence how the  player approaches direct character actions--"My paladin character would  feel the need to help that ragged orphan on the street" (indirect); "My  sorcerer wants to find out the history of the Chancellor's magic ring"  (meta-narrative)"; "My fighter wants to climb that wall. Tell me if I  succeed" (mechanics).  Many times the narrative elements will overlap  and interconnect. 

There's more that I want to touch on regarding the ways the three  narrative elements connect to mechanical association/dissociation, but  I'll have to come back to it.


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## Hussar

Innerdude - I mostly agree with what you wrote, although I would point out that this:



> 1. Meta-narrative is solely the domain of the GM. This is the "backstory" of the world, its population, nations, economy, and so on. All NPCs fall into this category, at least until they come in contact with the party.




is something that is perhaps not always true.  There are numerous games out there where the "backstory" of the world is partially the domain of the DM.  FATE, for example, allows players to add or subtract elements to the game world based on their Aspects.  At the most basic, you have mechancs like Action Points in 007 which allow the player to add or subtract elements from a scene in order to make it more "Bondesque".  Being chased by thugs?  Spend an action point and random Chinese Delivery Boy #27 steps out in front of the thugs and trips them up.  That sort of thing.

But, I agree, in D&D, typically this is entirely the realm of the DM.


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## MrGrenadine

Hussar said:


> Where I get tripped up in all of this is the idea that somehow this is more limiting to the players.  That having disociated mechanics somehow makes it more difficult to create a narrative in the game.  Isn't disociation by definition more liberating?




It doesn't seem limiting to me--quite the opposite.  It actually gives me access to more decisions than in previous editions. The only problem for me is that they're decisions I don't want to make.  Just personal preference for a certain play style, I guess, but ultimately, I want to play hero in a world that works according to consistent, observable rules, and during play I want to create only_ part_ of the overall narrative, by choosing how my character acts and reacts to that world.

In other words, I don't want to create a narrative about anything that my character wouldn't actually have control over, like the attack choices enemies make (CaGI), or how divinity works in the game world, (the Baleful Polymorph example, above).

So while I agree 4e's style is less _limiting_, I don't find it more _liberating_, because its not freeing me from anything that was constricting my play.


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## Hussar

MrGrenadine said:


> It doesn't seem limiting to me--quite the opposite.  It actually gives me access to more decisions than in previous editions. The only problem for me is that they're decisions I don't want to make.  Just personal preference for a certain play style, I guess, but ultimately, I want to play hero in a world that works according to consistent, observable rules, and during play I want to create only_ part_ of the overall narrative, by choosing how my character acts and reacts to that world.
> 
> In other words, I don't want to create a narrative about anything that my character wouldn't actually have control over, like the attack choices enemies make (CaGI), or how divinity works in the game world, (the Baleful Polymorph example, above).
> 
> So while I agree 4e's style is less _limiting_, I don't find it less _liberating_, because its not freeing me from anything that was constricting my play.




Yeah, I can see that.  This goes pretty much hand in hand with what Crazy Jerome said above about the difference in approaches.  If you want the mechanics to do much of the heavy lifting of defining the narrative, then disociated mechanics are not going to do the job for you.  The expectations are too different.

The one nice thing that has come out of this thread for me has been a bit of an epiphany as to why I just couldn't grok where you (and others) were coming from.  I don't approach mechanics this way.  To me, having the mechanics define things like this has advantages that I can see, but the disadvantage of pre-defining a lot of gameplay.

I had a rather lengthy back and forth with [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] a while back as to why I couldn't use a wooden spoon to tap open a lock in 3e.  To me, because the mechanics are pre-defining the narrative, it would never occur to me to try - after all the mechanics tell me what the narrative is.  In 4e I woud try because the narrative isn't defined.

On the flip side, I can totally see how this could be off putting if you have no interest in those decision points.  Which, I think, fits into BryonD's example of wanting to feel like you're inside a novel.  In a novel, I don't make any decision points about the setting or the background stuff, and the protagonist certainly doesn't either.  

I can understand, finally, where you guys are coming from.


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## pemerton

innerdude said:


> *Meta-narrative*



For me as a GM, this is a resource to draw on. If the game will be more interesting, a situatin more challenging, by changing what I had planned here, then I'll change it.

I think I quoted Paul Czege upthread on the idea of keeping NPC personalities/backstory flexible, to put them to maximum use during play. I share that approach, and generalise it the gameworld as a whole. I'm reading the Burning Wheel Adventuer Burner at the moment - a good resource for non-BW GMs, in my view! - and it also talks about keeping backstory loose and sparse to start with (no worldbuilding!), tightening it up and bringing it into play in the most interesting/provocative/challenging ways. The Adventure Burner also makes (what I regard as) an obvious point that _once backstory has been revealed in play_, then it is locked in. Thus, over the course of the campaign the gameworld becomes more and more richly defined - but because this has emerged from play, the ever-more-defined gameworld is an ever-more-detailed record of the PCs' struggles and victories, and of the game participants' joint endeavour.



innerdude said:


> *Meta-narrative* is solely the domain of the GM.



I don't play this way. Players create backstory as part of building their PCs. (In my current campaign, they have created cultural details, political details, geographical details like towns and villages, historical details, secret societies, etc as part of their PC building.)

Players can also create backstory in the course of play. I don't have as formalised approach to this as BW does with its "Wises", but just following some of the tips in the DMG and DMG2 is enough. A simple example - one PC is talking to an NPC merchant and asks, "Do you know my uncle so-and-so." Until that point in time the existence of this uncle wasn't known to anyone at the table - the player just made it up. But it fit with the PC's backstory (a refugee from a fallen mercantile city) that he should have an uncle whom another merchant might no. On the "say yes" principle - there was nothing at stake here that suggested a roll was needed, or that I should just give a "no" answer - I had the NPC reply "Yes, and have you heard about . . .".



innerdude said:


> Meta-narrative is the least-engaged narrative element for players



I've tried to explain how, in my approach to play, this is not really so.



innerdude said:


> *Indirect Character Narrative *is negotiated between the player  and the GM. It's the bridge between direct narrative and meta-narrative,  typically related to individual player/character's decisions about _who their character is_. This includes negotiating race, class, powers/feats/magical abilities,  skills, where the character is from, hobbies/professions, and so on.



I don't see any clear distinction here from what you are calling the meta-narrative and what I tend to think of as the backstory.

I tend to see things in terms of the distribution of backstory authority - which in D&D, at least asI play it, tends to be informally distributed among the players and the GM, although it is generally understood that the more remote some fictional fact is from a given PC, the more likely it is that the GM will assert authority over that particular element of backstory.



innerdude said:


> Indirect character narrative can be engaged somewhat by players,  especially when questions of "How would my character react to this?"  come up.



I see it as much more than that. The PCs' histories, affiliations, hopes, aspirations etc very much shape the game, in my experience. I frame situations to try and engage them. The players bring them into play - eg asking merchant NPCs about friendships with family members, or taunting cultists that their magic failed due to divine intervention.



innerdude said:


> *Direct Character Narrative*—This is where most RPG sessions  operate in a moment-to-moment basis; it's anything the character does  while participating in an actual session.



Because it is the _players_, and not the PCs, who participate in a session, I think that this can sometimes be less clear than you suggest. Eg if a player says that, during some downtime, his PC goes and visits his mother, and then drops off some eggs for the local priest, is that direct narrative or backstory? Without knowing more about what is happening at the table, it is a bit hard to tell in my view. If the GM goes on to tell a story about the priest being robbed of his eggs by a kobold, is it getting closer to direct narrative? Or is it backstory motivating an adventure hook? If, several sessions later, the player has his PC try to get an advantage in a negotiation with the priest, by saying "Remember when I gave you all those eggs?", is that drawing on past direct narrative, or on backstory?



innerdude said:


> Meta-narrative, indirect narrative, and mechanics all influence how the  player approaches direct character actions--"My paladin character would  feel the need to help that ragged orphan on the street" (indirect); "My  sorcerer wants to find out the history of the Chancellor's magic ring"  (meta-narrative)"; "My fighter wants to climb that wall. Tell me if I  succeed" (mechanics).



Your division here appears already to rule out a host of possible (and actual!) RPG mechanics. In Pendragon, for example, the paladin's attitude towards the orphan might be dictated by the game's personality trait mechanics. Arguably, in classic D&d, the alignment mechanic might play a similar role. In many games (eg Burning Wheel), learning the history of the ring might be no different, mechanically, from climbing the wall. And it may not be the GM who has sole authority over the history of the ring, or over whatever it is that is to be discovered behind the wall.



Hussar said:


> There are numerous games out there where the "backstory" of the world is partially the domain of the DM.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But, I agree, in D&D, typically this is entirely the realm of the DM.



The 4e DMG and DMG2 are pretty clear that this is something that can, and perhaps should, be shared with the players. So in part it turns on "which D&D"?



Hussar said:


> To me, having the mechanics define things like this has advantages that I can see, but the disadvantage of pre-defining a lot of gameplay.



That bit about "pre-defining a lot of gameplay" - _that's_ Vincent Baker's point, and Ron Edward's point. _That's_ what non-simulationist play (and perhaps narrativist play moreso than gamist play) is trying to avoid.


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