Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

[Campbell]

No, not at all. What he did was figure out one important reason why certain people don't like certain games and express it clearly.

This was pretty valuable for me personally. I knew I didn't like 4E, but his writing helped me figure out why I didn't like it.

I really don't like dissociated mechanics in general. I'll put up with them if there's a really good reason to do so (e.g. hit points), but when writing a rule I'll always try to find something related to in-game fiction or character knowledge first.

I whole heartily disagree. It's fine to discuss why meta mechanics are dissatisfying to some people, but that's not what he did. He took things a step too far, and used the academically dishonest practice of definition play to attempt to ghettoize people who play in a manner he disagrees with. Ironically it smacks of the same sort of gaming elitism that extreme elements of the Forge community used to engage in.

Story gaming was a natural outgrowth of traditional role playing games. Many fairly traditional RPGs have elements of story gaming integrated into them, and there are very few games that lack any sort of disassociated mechanics. Story gaming is not some sort of other activity - it is a subset of role playing. One still engages the fiction primarily through a single character.

Here's the thing - you can discuss disassociated mechanics without necessarily attacking them as anathema to gaming. Simply state that you prefer to engage the game mechanics from the perspective of your character. There's no need to say that doing otherwise means someone is not actually playing a role playing game.

 

[AngryMojo]

He took things a step too far, and used the academically dishonest practice of definition play to attempt to ghettoize people who play in a manner he disagrees with.

And that's how derogatory language is born. Every game mechanic falls under the definition of "dissociated" from some perspective, assuming you go by the definition stated. There's an argument that can be made to the level of dissociation or abstraction in a given mechanic, and I think that's a far more constructive debate to have.

While I agree you can discuss dissociated mechanics without the discourse turning in an uncivil direction, I don't think I can recall seeing this actually happen. Usually it just winds up turning into an argument of which mechanics in the opposition's game are dissociated. When I see nothing but negativity with a term, my brain files it as derogatory language.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I like a system like that where you can build on one attempt to unlock other maneuvers. Like unbalancing someone as a side effect of a good attack roll means they are now open to a trip attack should you choose to use one on your next turn.

There's an interesting example of a system - Spellbound Kingdoms - taking that approach here.

Deatils are in the Combat Primer. But essentially, each character has one or more Combat Styles, which provide a variety of possible combat maneuvers - a little like a set of 4E powers, maybe. But only certain of those maneuvers are available in the first round you use a style... and the maneuvers that are available in any subsequent round are determined by the maneuver you used in the preceding round.

For example, if someone is using the Free Sword combat style, they can open with Lunge, Feint, Warrior's Strike, or Block. His two best attacks are Eviscerate or Brutalize, but he can only use them if he used Slash last round. Slash can be used after Trip, Driving Onslaught, or a couple of other maneuvers, and Driving Onslaught can be used after a Block.

So if he wanted to get to Brutalize as quickly as possible, he might use Block in round 1, Driving Onslaught in round 2, Slash in round 3, and Brutalize in round 4.

If his opponent is familiar with the Free Sword style, though, she might expect the Slash in round 3, so she'll plan for a maneuver which is particularly effective against Slash in that round. And if he's wise to that, he might instead go Block, Driving Onslaught, Unbalancing Feint, then Slash...

I haven't seen it in play yet, but the idea's intriguing to me.

-Hyp.

 

[pemerton]

This has relaxed a bit in recent versions of the game.

OK. My knowledge of RQ stops around the 1990 imprints. (I mean, I know Mongoose is publishing it, but I haven't looked at their version beyond the reviews.)

My major departure with Forge theory is that I think they kept GNS as creative agendas only because of emotional and tradition-driven reasons. I think the big model makes them unnecessary and most of the time people misuse them. Having these three categories also leads people into identifying certain mechanics or approaches (or even games) as only producing a certain creative agenda.

I propose that there are multiple means of aligning the elements of exploration to produce very, very different results. Even by using the same mechanics and techniques. For example, many mechanics traditionally associated with "Story Now!" play are actually excellent at simulating a certain genre of fiction. The actual exploration of theme during play isn't the priority, but the representation of fiction that contains those themes is what's important.

I think what you say about different results from given techniques is true. Rolemaster character gen is one example I'm pretty familiar with - when a player levels up his/her PC, and gives it a rank in Seduction, that can be (i) a reflection of action that happened in the lead-up to levelling and hence a type of "exploration of situation and character", or (ii) a reflection of a desire to build a genre-emulating PC, or (iii) a sign that the player anticipates the opportunity to get some wins out of social skills in the coming level, or (iv) a flag to the GM from the player that s/he wants romantic situations to figure prominently in what's coming up next level. I've GMed Rolemaster players taking all of these approaches (sometimes the same player taking multiple approaches, sometimes even across different skills at the same level-up). And I've also seen these different approaches cause arguments to break out on the old ICE message boards.

Anyway, my major disagreement with Forge theory is that the "official" definition of narrativism - as generation of thematically satisfying story - is too narrow. You can see the narrowness when it comes to actually looking at games. Edwards, correctly in my view, identifies The Dying Earth as tending to support narrativist play - but the Dying Earth isn't particularly about producing thematically satisfying story. It's more about a certain type of ironic and cynical humour.

My other difference from the Forge is practical rather than theoretical - I read their stuff and then use it to help me improve my GMing of games that they would laught at! - Rolemaster and 4e, for example. I'm happy with avant garde theory, but my taste in RPG tropes and mechanics is pretty conventional.

I took 4E and drifted it hard towards Runequest like play. I had to mangle it to get it there, but I did.

That sounds like hard work. Is it OK to ask why? Was there something about 4e that was more appealing than the classic RQ-ish games themselves?

If WotC wants any hope of getting revenue out of a D&D pen and paper RPG that would make Hasbro happy, they need to start doing what they were talking about ASAP and bring in modularity to deal with these issues of different people wanting different things from their D&D.

<snip>

so far their modularity has been limited to dropping themes and backgrounds.

I'm a bit of a modularity sceptic, but won't be sorry to be proved wrong.

The biggest thing warning flag for me in the playtest is that there is not the least hint of an approach to play where "winning" isn't crucial - or, to put it a bit less crudely, where the stakes are multi-dimensionsal. On page 3 of the DM Guidelines they seem to assume the exact opposite - that stakes are single-dimensionsal - when they talk about encouraging creativity and engaging the fiction by making those sorts of solutions the easiest way to succeed.

Part of the attractiveness of games like RQ and RM - at least in my experience - is that they encourage a type of detail in character building that then comes to be reflected in the setting and situation, so there are often multiple viable approaches (social isn't obviously inferior to combat, for example) and situations are less likely to be obviously zero-sum in relation both to means and to ends.

Skill challenges and similar sorts of meta-gamey conflict resolution mechanics are a completely different way to achieve non-single-dimensionality. As a simple example, if you set up a situation in which the low-CHA, no social skills dwarf fighter PC will look a complete tool unless he says something (eg he's being gratuitously insulted by an NPC), then the player will probably have his/her PC say something - and probably fail the skill check, which then lets the GM introduce new complications, but these don't have to mean that the PC failed to save face. Because of the metagame element to this sort of action resolution, the GM can introduce a complication in a different dimension. (In my 4e session on the weekend, when the dwarf fighter-cleric PC failed his Diplomacy check bringing news to the Baron of the end of the war the Baron didn't get angry - he collapsed, overwrought and unable to sustain himself now that the immediate need to do so had passed.)

Whereas when I look at the playtest I see PCs who are narrow in their detail, suggesting a narrow setting and narrow points of engagement with situation, and GM advice that is similiarly narrow and single-dimensioned in its focus. The medusa could be a great encounter, but I don't see the GM advice or the tools - whether on the PC sheets, or in the action resolution mechanics and guidelines - to make it happen.

And if the answer is "well, that sort of stuff is going to come in the modules", where exactly are these going to be bolted on?

 

[pemerton]

In 2, you can bring this up with Hussar, since he's here. I don't think he's saying what your initial post was implying was his point, though.

In fact, he says epxressly that "All Dailies and ONLY Dailies" is a problem.

 

[pemerton]

I can tolerate some meta mechanics, but I prefer them to be more abstract and to be explicitly called out as meta mechanics rather than being disguised as standard mechanics.

Fair enough. Whereas I'm becoming strangely fond of D&D's way of mixing the two together (hit points, non-3E saving throws, and 4e encounters/dailies, especially the martial ones). At least with a certain sort of player, I think it actually help occlude the fiction/meta divide.

Nope. Stamina as described is not a meta mechanic because it represents something real in the game-fiction

[MENTION=83293]nnms[/MENTION] can correct me if I'm wrong, but I took the comment to be this: that as soon as you have a resource that a player can choose to spend (like a stamina point), then even if mechanically it is defined in simulationist, ingame terms, there is no easy way to stop players metagaming it.

That's part of the distinction I'm drawing between RQ and RM: in RM, a melee fighter has to make round-by-round decisions about resource allocation (attack, defence, initiative etc) and a spellcaster has to make similar decisions spell-by-spell (spell point cost vs speed, risk etc). And these are the cracks into which players can wedge their metagame agendas.

RQ is very austere in comparison.

 

[LostSoul]

I like a system like that where you can build on one attempt to unlock other maneuvers. Like unbalancing someone as a side effect of a good attack roll means they are now open to a trip attack should you choose to use one on your next turn.

That was what I tried to do in my 4E hack: martial encounter powers have an in-game trigger; when that trigger is met, you can use the power.

I think one PC has "when my target is not paying attention to me." "When my target is off-balance" is pretty common. Ranged attacks are a little trickier, as they tend to rely on seizing advantage from an opponent's action instead of setting one up yourself.

The "action" system is pretty simple: you say what your guy does, and the roll determines if you do it or not. Damage is still a mess, though, since it doesn't really rely on what your guy does but instead the standard D&D trope of "bigger weapon, bigger damage".

Writing the system and thinking about things is what leads me to wonder if the typical D&D attack roll + damage would qualify as a dissociated mechanic, or if it's just abstract, or where that line is. I was going to make a point about that earlier but I got distracted.

 

[pemerton]

Justin Alexander is really good at taking a big, smelly, passive-aggressive <snipped for decorum>

I'm not sure it's grandma-friendly, but I agree with your take on JA's essay (the stuff about Monty Python and fart jokes I'll leave to one side).

I didn't see anything passive-aggressive.

Regardless, now I am sad I can't +rep his post. Not worded how I would, but ...

Yep.

No, not at all. What he did was figure out one important reason why certain people don't like certain games and express it clearly.

I whole heartily disagree. It's fine to discuss why meta mechanics are dissatisfying to some people, but that's not what he did.

Agreed. Here're the passages that most irritate me:

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 accidental. . .

The advantage of a mechanic like Wushu‘s is that it gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. . .

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. . .

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.​

The actual informational content of this is a biographical fact about Justin Alexander - he like Wushu but not 4e. But the rhetoric is that 4e is not an RPG but a series of tactical skirmishes linked by improv.

It doesn't both me that Justin Alexander doesn't enjoy, or can't see how, tactical combat could itself be a site in which narrative control is exercised and drama and theme can be expressed. But that's no grounds for projecting his aesthetic preference (or limitation) onto everyone in general, and in needlessly rude terms at that.

We also get to learn a few other biographical facts about Justin Alexander. First, he seesm to think that colour is more important than actual authority over the plot. Because he criticises 4e's rules for granting players control over action resolution in combat, while praising Wushu in these terms:

n the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: 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 ​

Second, he apparently doesn't understand skill challenges as a resolution system (and in particular the role of the GM in adjudicating the introduction of complications in relation to successful or failed checks), and I infer therefore doesn't understand their predecessors and close analogues in other systems (eg HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling) either.

 

[pemerton]

Writing the system and thinking about things is what leads me to wonder if the typical D&D attack roll + damage would qualify as a dissociated mechanic, or if it's just abstract, or where that line is.

I've seen you say this a couple of times recently, and I think that you are correct.

That's why, in a recent post (maybe in this thread?) I listed three metagame/fortune-in-the-middle mechanics in classic D&D, from least to most: attack rolls (especially in the AD&D context of a 1 minute round and some unspecified amount of parrying and feinting until one (and exactly one) opportunity presents itself); saving throws; and hit points.

 

[VannATLC]

4e, in my mind, had a very sting narrative bent. It was intended for the players to be deeply involved in crafting their characters stories, and for building the scenes they were in. Daily powers were disassociated from the character, a story resource the player knows he can tap.
However, this was a fairly dramatic change from 3.5, and a lot of players and DMs did not respond well.