D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

Crazy Jerome said:

I'm curious, given what you said in the quoted post, if you can find any useful role for "disassociation" distinct from "not immersive"?

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I think there are places for mechanics that are dissociated in games, particularly for narrative control or reducing character vulnerability through limited plot immunity. I wouldn't consider them all non-immersive, though. For example, action points, like those from Unearthed Arcana and Pathfinder, are dissociated mechanics but I don't find them particularly harmful for immersion.

I believe that dissociative mechanics are defined in various blogs and threads clearly and accurately. But the word dissociative no doubt means loss of immersion and thus often does not apply to many people. But it's become a term now like simulationism which in fact has nothing to so with simulating something.

I find dissociative mechanics very disruptive to my immersion. I also find myself not being willing/able to suspend my disbelief in the whole campaign. I get this feeling of - whats the use.

I am aware others are not bothered by these things. I don't know why. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be. Most of us that are bothered I think seem to be equally baffled that others are not. From what I've seen on the other side, I believe many don't even believe it is a valid definition of anything. This is because they can't get into the minds of those who are offended by the dissociative mechanics.

But I will fight to the death that while others may not realize or understand why we are bothered that what bothers us can be defined. Obviously like many things the abundance of it will affect us. Will the 2/day power offend everyone equally to every single class having dailies in 4e? I think probably not. It will bug the living crap out of me though if 5e has this stuff. They probably will. If it's widespread enough then will likely be a deal breaker for me.

I would suggest that where X can be done in a non-dissociative way with the same results it should be because many people are affected by this stuff. Where not possible, I hope 5e will permit those of us against the idea to at least modularize it out of our system.

Crazy Jerome said:

I made the claim that "disassociation" was nothing but a poorly chosen word (with bad baggage) to mean roughly that it interfered with the speaker's immersion.

I'm curious, given what you said in the quoted post, if you can find any useful role for "disassociation" distinct from "not immersive"?

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Good question. Maybe, although I agree with @billd91 that something like action points could be labelled as dissociative, and yet not necessarily interfere with immersion.

On another note, let's say you're fully immersed in a compelling movie. Then the protagonist does something stupid like go down the dark tunnel all by herself. Given that the character shown no prior reckless behavior or lack of fear and has no urgent and important motivation to go down the tunnel at this very hour, that feels dissociative because the screenwriter wants to frame the scene that way but the viewer considers it implausible or not true to character. So anyway, that could very well be dissociative but the audience may still be immersed in the movie if the dissociation didn't bother them or just didn't think about it. So "not immersive" is probably the primary concern with a feeling of dissociation but I'm not sure that they're equivalent in meaning.

pemerton said:

But constant pawn stance once the scenario is in motion can definitely be an issue.

But what Justin Alexander is complaining about is, as far as I can tell, not pawn stance.

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Is the above example of the character that stupidly goes down the tunnel an example of pawn stance? More often than not, in an example like that, the screenwriter was clearly prioritizing the narrative over being true to character. The director or screenwriter may have retroactively "motivated" the character to go down the tunnel ('oh I dropped my pen in the tunnel, I better get it now in the middle of the night when the monster is running around') but the audience isn't really buying it. Justin Alexander's dissociation could include both i) pawn stance and ii) author stance where the metagame is prioritized so highly as to overshadow the character motivation. Just speculating.

Emerikol said:

I believe that dissociative mechanics are defined in various blogs and threads clearly and accurately.

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I disagree. I think there is a real system attribute being talked around, but the actual label is merely pejorative.

That 'real system attribute' is what I've described before as 'effects based.' A system uses a mechanic to model a variety of very different things that, none-the-less, a the system's level of granularity, produce the same effect. The 'how' is left to player or DM to fill in to fit his character concept. It's a very flexible, powerful approach to game-design, and one that 4e does not embrace that fully (which could easily lead to some confusion).

This whole 'dissociative' rationalization, rests upon mis-using that aspect of a system. You take a mechanic, you attach a 'how' to it that doesn't fit it, and then you call it flawed or dissociated. To use Hero System, again, as an example, an bow & arrow and a firearm in Hero are both typically bought as "Ranged Killing Attacks." And, both are modeled fairly well that way. If you decided to buy an RKA and define it as a feather-duster, you technically could, but if you then complained that there was a disconnect between the mechanic and the fiction, you'd be doing what the 'dissociative' article engages in when it hypothetically uses 'dailies' to model various things and gives un-satisfactory explanations for why they're 'daily.'

Ironically, it's the very flexibility and power of the effects-based approach that makes such unfounded criticism possible.

I find dissociative mechanics very disruptive to my immersion. I also find myself not being willing/able to suspend my disbelief in the whole campaign.

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I think 'willing' is a big part of it. A lot of this stuff is circular or self-fulfilling. If you don't like an activity, then any amount of time spent doing it seems 'too long,' thus 4e combat takes too long. If you don't like a system, you worry at each little flaw in it, and that distracts you from becoming immersed or suspending your disbelief.

That's yet another thing that makes 5e's cause seem hopeless: you can try to make a game that should be inoffensive to everyone, but if someone doesn't like it, they'll /find/ things in to find offensive.

I get this feeling of - whats the use.

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You also give other people that feeling. ;(

Tony Vargas said:

You also give other people that feeling. ;(

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And you give another feeling...one that is offensive.

Deer Hunter 2: License to Hunt.

Tony Vargas said:

I think 'willing' is a big part of it. A lot of this stuff is circular or self-fulfilling. If you don't like an activity, then any amount of time spent doing it seems 'too long,' thus 4e combat takes too long. If you don't like a system, you worry at each little flaw in it, and that distracts you from becoming immersed or suspending your disbelief.

That's yet another thing that makes 5e's cause seem hopeless: you can try to make a game that should be inoffensive to everyone, but if someone doesn't like it, they'll /find/ things in to find offensive.

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I was ambivalently following your post until this last section I don't follow.

Assume there are 2 groups of people:
1) those who read the rules, decide they don't like the system, have a preconceived agenda before game play, and when they play, their dislikes get in the way
2) those who read the rules without judgement, play the game, don't like it, have a gut feeling/holistic opinion of their dislike, explain/articulate their feelings by pinpointing or highlighting certain rules

#2 is not self-fulfilling and not circular logic because they're just dissecting what they've already decided upon

#1 you said is "finding things to find offensive" which is perjorative to me. People do this all the time. They watch a trailer for a movie or read a blurb about a book and claim they won't watch or read it. If they end up doing so later, only a minority will sit in the theatre grumbling with their arms crossed and their minds closed. #1 also doesn't acknowledge that if they really could like it and didn't know it, the game session would have a chance to change their mind. The rest of the time, it can be self-affirming ("I gave the movie a shot, it sucked just like I suspected from the trailer, watching the full movie didn't change my mind about so-and-so").

Some people might be narrow-minded like you imply, but the majority won't, and it's the majority that will decide if 5E's cause is hopeless or not.

As long as 5E gets the presentation right (and I think it's their onus to do so), they can honestly claim they've done 100% to challenge preconceptions.

Underman said:

Good question. Maybe, although I agree with @billd91 that something like action points could be labelled as dissociative, and yet not necessarily interfere with immersion.
/snip

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And this is what causes people like me to pull out my hair in frustration. Why is it perfectly okay to have some dissociative mechanics but not others? After all, Action Points are about as dissociated as you can get. There's no in game rationale for them. You can rationalize them after the fact, but, that's true of virtually ANY dissociated mechanic.

So, it's perfectly fine that my character gains the use of a given feat for a single action (allowed under the 3.5 definition of Action Points) but it's not fine for Come and Get It (the poster child for this sort of discussion)? Why?

That's where it comes down for me. Why is it perfectly fine to have something like Hit Points (a very dissociated mechanic - one that has virtually no in game rationale) in the game, but, 4e mechanics are bad?

Hussar said:

And this is what causes people like me to pull out my hair in frustration.
<snip>
Why is it perfectly fine to have something like Hit Points (a very dissociated mechanic - one that has virtually no in game rationale) in the game, but, 4e mechanics are bad?

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Firstly, I don't know about others, but I've just been half speculating, half musing, half analyzing my own likes/dislikes. Although I have some opinions, I didn't go so far as to say anything about "bad" 4e mechanics. Why you are so frustrated? Stop pulling your hair, take a deep calming breath, and when you're no longer feeling antagonized by my speculations, then we can talk (Oh, also, in response to your "Why, why?" what could I possibly say that hasn't already been said a thousand times in a thousand different ways?)

Underman said:

Is the above example of the character that stupidly goes down the tunnel an example of pawn stance? More often than not, in an example like that, the screenwriter was clearly prioritizing the narrative over being true to character.

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That sounds like author stance to me, but it's a bit awkward because the screenwriter isn't a player.

The sorts of priorities that would normally be in play in author stance are standard metagame ones like keeping the party together, or doing cool stuff, or setting up a cool scene. I'm from the school that doesn't think that it's the players' job to actually worry about an interesting narrative in any deeper sense.