I don't see this. I'm not sure how it even bears upon the issue. Could you give me a specific example where the mechanic is dissociative and not and why the not helps?
I do agree that the narrativist playstyle favors dissociative mechanics generally.
Consider the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power:
Horrific Visage (standard action; recharge 4, 5 6 ) * [Fear]
Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares.
I assume that this power counts as dissociated for you, because it recharges on a metagame basis, it uses the blast mechanic to model facing (ie only those on one side of the Wight can see its horriric visage), it uses an attack vs Will that deals psychic damage to model someone being frightened by a glimpse of the Wight's true undead form, and it uses forced movement (the push) to model fleeing in fear.
But for me, this is the single most evocative Wight I've ever used in nearly 30 years of fantasy RPGing. That power, when resolved at the table, perfectly captures the trope of the undead revealing its true, decaying form (like the Barrow Wights in Tolkien) and sending the heroes recoiling in horror.
Here is another power, which the Alexandrian himself puts forward as a paradigm of dissociation:
Besieged Foe (minor action; 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.
Whereas I have used a Deathlock Wight, I have yet to use a War Devil. But this power strikes me as excellent for doing exactly what it says in it name: bringing it about that the target is besieged. Because it gives the GM a very concrete reason to have every ally of the war devil stack on the target (to get the benefit of the +2 to hit). It's the converse of the paladin power Valiant Strike, which grants +1 to hit for every adjacent foe, therefore giving the player a reason to play his/her paladin as Valiant (ie as charging into the fray, to get the maximum benefit to hit by being surrounded by the maximum number of foes).
[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] can of course correct me if I've misunderstood what was intended, but the above powers are example, for me, of so-called "dissociated" mechanics making monsters feel more like their mythical archtypes, and thereby reinforcing theme and hence suppporting narrative play.
The player becomes immersed in the game-world, seeing it from the perspective of his own character. The rules, the dice, the character sheet, the room the player is in, vanish, or, at least, recede, and the fantasy world becomes in a sense the primary reality.
Immersion is associated with simulationism, verisimilitude, and suspension of disbelief.
I think of immersion differenty - maybe idiosyncratically. I think of it as emotional investment in the ingame situation, and in one's PC. Getting angry when the PC is angry; crying when the PC is sad; feeling love or conviction that the PC feels.
The receding of the character sheet and preeminence of the fantasy world are tangential to this. It's about emotion, not perception or cognition.
Yes. That was kind of my point, above.
Yes, I didn't mean to give any impression that I'd missed your point. I was just adding my own comments on that somewhat curious post.
People who don't understand a concept feel the need to denigrate those who do. It's your own failing. It's not some random distribution of preferences. Amazingly we seem to agree on what is wrong. So there is an underlying connection between these mechanics.
No one is arguing that the preferences are randomly distributed. They are disputing your explanation for the distribution. In particular, they are suggesting that you are disregarding
familiarity as an explanation for your acceptance of hit points.
I want to add to that candidate explanation: there were a very large number of RPGers in the late 70s through the 80s who abandoned D&D because they found hit points "dissociative" (to speak anachronistically). The people who stuck with AD&D 2nd ed, and then 3E, were those who could handle hit points. Now some of those people don't like martial encounter and daily powers.
There is no reason to think that 4e mechaniics possess some non-relational property that you and the Alexandrian can perceive, but that others of us keep missing no matter how hard we look.
I imagine it's true that many Americans associate pumpkin pie with a certain homely, holiday feeling. But don't have the same association with (say) mince pies or hot cross buns or fruit puddings. That doesn't provie that pumpkin pie has any interesting objective difference from traditional British (and therefore Australian) festive foods, though. It just shows that some people are familiar with one rather than the other.
And, in the even that that culinary analogy fails (maybe Americans
do tend to eat hot cross buns at Easter and mince pies and fruit puddings at Christmas), here is another one: were I overseas, Tim Tams and Vegemite would give me a certain nostalgic feeling. And that response would be non-randomly shared with a large number of other Australians. But that doesn't prove that Tim Tams and Vegemite have any inherent property that distinguishes them from (say) Oreos and Peanut Butter, neither of which would produce the same response in me or my compatriots.
