Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

[Campbell]

The X-Men - especially the Chris Claremont X-Men - is maybe the single biggest influence on my approach to situation as a GM. Group dynamics, convoluted backstories that drag the PCs (and players) in, more and more emerging over time as the PCs become more competent and more invested in the setting.

That's pretty much my favorite era of comics and definitely helped form the way I see narrative.

Until the last 5 to 10 years, sword and sorcery for me was Roy Thomas's Conan. I now have some REH on my shelf, and don't mind it to read, but I can't say it's a big influence on my game.

Out of curiosity (and if you already talked about this upthread, apologies for losing track of your posts), did you move from D&D to a more simulationist (RQ, RM etc) system?

I never really went into the deep sim pool. I'm fairly young. 3e come out during my freshmen year of high school. It pretty much defined gaming in high school for me. I spent a lot of time trying to tame 3e to give the results I desired, but it never really worked for me.

When I first went to college I drifted towards games that combined a strong narrative and sim bent. When I wasn't out and about I gravitated towards Exalted, Vampire the Requiem, the Riddle of Steel, Mutants and Masterminds and read The Burning Wheel but never got to play it. All games with a strong meta element, but otherwise were strongly grounded in simulating the fiction that inspired them.

4e's release coincided with me joining the Army and my discovery of Sword and Sorcery fiction. I took a lot of liberties with it, but after awhile learned to make it sing for the sort of larger than life, violent tales I was reading at the time. As time went on my tastes drifted back towards the mythic tales I read when I was younger and I really embraced 4e's implied setting.

My rediscovery of AD&D and embracing its tropes for some games is a fairly recent phenomenon since I've gotten back to Colorado to attend business school. I'm also playing in a very narrative rich GURPS game based on Supernatural. It's further on the sim side than I would like, but the group doesn't seem to mind me approaching my character from a more narrative stand point. My fellow hunters do consider my character a bit of a loose canon, but I'm good with that.

Oops. Didn't mean to lay out my entire gaming history.

I'm glad it's looking good for you. I was thinking about backgrounds and setting, and thinking that some of [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s ideas about skills that he uses in his hack could be incorporated to use in backgrounds that would be more interesting than the ones in the playtest (eg instead of "Lore +3" you might have "Student of the Spiral Tower +3", which would bring setting into play as a direct input into action resolution).

What underwhelmed me about the playtest was the action resolution mechanics - especially the lack of mechanics for the 2nd and 3rd pillars.

It's interesting that you bring up the notion of more fiction-centric skills. That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the new skill system. Of course at that time I had visions of 13th Age dancing in my head which handles skills in exactly that manner.

I'd say so far my favorite feature of 5e is the way backgrounds decouple skills from character class and provides traits that firmly ground the character in the fiction. I've also been pleasantly surprised by how the Rogue class has thematically appropriate abilities that really validate the archetype. Rogues are cool under pressure so they're never perform below standards. They also get the job done when it matters so they have an ability that reflects that. I also really like the fact that they spend so much time skulking about that they learn to handle themselves in the dark. I really hope we don't lose elements like that. It would turn me off of 5e in an instant.

I was never really expecting too much in the way of firm mechanics for the other pillars largely because to be effective things would most likely get too meta for some folks to enjoy. I've always looked at 5e as a possible opportunity for a game that I could enjoy with my friends that 4e doesn't really work with. A sort of fusion between 1e and 4e sensibilities. I'm hoping there's enough push back that the final game is something I can still see using.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

It gives you a meta mechanic as well. When to spend stamina points as being part of spot-light management

Nope. Stamina as described is not a meta mechanic because it represents something real in the game-fiction, that being the how tired the PC is. It represents a fighter's ability to put an extra effort into a chosen attack, i.e. to put extra strength and speed into an attack. When it's gone, he's too tired to do it anymore.

[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.

Yeah. As soon as you have a resource like that, even if it's supposed to represent a character's stamina in the fiction, a player can spend them in a flurry or hold off to manage spot light time (or a variety of other purposes).

I don’t think this is how I’ve heard the term meta used before. It usually seems to describe a mechanic that is used to control the game without basis in the game-fiction. In other words, a non-associative mechanic.

In this case the fact that it can control spotlight is a feature not a bug. This example was an effort to reconcile simulationist and gamist play. The point I was trying to make is that it is possible to achieve the features of daily/encounter/etc mechanics without resorting to things that have no basis in the game fiction. With my example you have strong, cool maneuvers, when you want them but not all the time, and the whole thing is grounded in the fiction so it shouldn’t bug those who dislike meta mechanics.

I’m sure that professional designers can come up with something that’s better than what I came up with off the top of my head for the purpose of this thread in reconciling various gaming preferences. As such I see no reason to need daily/etc powers in 5E. They should be able to come up with something that makes the 4E crowd happy without irritating those who don’t like it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The game needs something to give you the type of play 2E promised but failed to deliver on. Something that would make OA, Dragonlance or Birthright truly sing.

This is a crazy idea, but I wonder if, to simulate genre fiction, it helps if a game design is incoherent.

With genre fiction there will often be a conflict between the way the world works, the physical reality, which is always at least somewhat similar to the way our own world works, and the demands of the story. Or, in other words, genre fiction is full of coincidence, unbelievable characters and implausible events. The writer is pushing against the supposed rules of his reality, much in the same way that the 2e AD&D DM has to push against the rules to tell his story.

I feel that Mutants & Masterminds displays this sort of incoherence. Most of the rules resemble those of 3e - complex, complete, consistent. But all the comic booky elements, such as the PCs all being KO-ed and put in a deathtrap, are done with hero points, which are very dependent on GM-fiat, and look like a rule from another game. One might almost say they're a dissociated mechanic. Not just dissociated from the PCs, but from the other rules.

After running a campaign of M&M, I became very ambivalent about hero points. On the one hand, they do at least simulate aspects of superhero comics, such as a hero displaying a new power in one scene (to get the writer out of a jam) and then forgetting about it thereafter, that weren't simulated by Champions. But on the other, it seems wrong that 95% of the rules text should be telling the players that the universe is sane, orderly and predictable while the other 5% is saying, no wait, it isn't.

EDIT: Rpgs that simulate genre fiction always have an extra layer of dissociation, because characters in such fiction are genre-blind. For example, not only do the characters in a superhero comic simulating rpg not know they're really characters in an rpg, they don't know they're characters in a comic, that isn't really a comic but just an rpg simulation of a comic. Now *that's* what I call being dissociated!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

No...what happened is that JA didn't like 4E, and it bothered him that other people did. So he turned his not inconsiderable intellect toward crafting a spurious argument that he and others could throw at people to make them feel bad for liking what he doesn't like.

As I pointed out earlier, meta-game rules aren't a 4E thing, they're a roleplaying game thing. Trying to pretend that 4E is less of a roleplaying game because of them is silly. Also, people have pointed out time and again how many of these rules in 4E DO have in game analogs but they are rejected time and again, despite the fact that these things obviously make perfect sense to people the people who play it. Would healing surges still be considered "dissociative" if they were called something like "stamina" or "vitality"?

Yeah...so the whole "dissociative mechanics" argument is a smoke screen for: "stop liking what I don't like!"

I just went and looked at the blog in question to check and I found no evidence to support your assertions. You're unfairly ascribing motives to the guy when you say that he wrote the article because it bothered him that others liked 4E. I didn't find a single spot where he tried to make anyone feel bad about anything or said that anyone should stop liking what he doesn't. If you can find any holes in his analysis and explain how they relate to the topic at hand that would be a lot more useful to the discussion than casting aspersions on his motives.

 

[Saagael]

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.

I really wish I could XP you for this, because this whole concept is ridiculous to me. I could replace "Wushu" with "4e" in that paragraph (and "guns" with "weapons", I suppose) and it would accurately describe every 4e game I've played or run, but somehow that style of play, which is perfectly viable for Wushu, is absolutely anathema to D&D? I think not.

 

[Lalato]

Woohoo! I made it through this whole thread without blowing my brains out.

I got pretty tripped up by the circular Trip arguments. Honestly, I wish people would stick to the playtest materials in these threads. 2/day extra action... describe why you don't like about that specific thing... instead of making stuff up about 4e or tripping or what-have-you.

Instead of extrapolating to ridiculousness, stick with the information available in the playtest. If more people would do that, it would definitely make this thread more enjoyable for those of us that couldn't give a rats ass about dissociated mechanics vs. direct mechanics.

As always, just my opinion.

 

[Bobbum Man]

I just went and looked at the blog in question to check and I found no evidence to support your assertions. You're unfairly ascribing motives to the guy when you say that he wrote the article because it bothered him that others liked 4E. I didn't find a single spot where he tried to make anyone feel bad about anything or said that anyone should stop liking what he doesn't. If you can find any holes in his analysis and explain how they relate to the topic at hand that would be a lot more useful to the discussion than casting aspersions on his motives.

That's confirmation bias.

You're not seeing these things, because you want to believe that his blog was a rational argument completely free of personal agenda instead of a childish temper tantrum disguised as an essay against a game he doesn't personally like.

He didn't come right out and insult anyone openly, but if you read between the lines of what he's saying, it becomes clear that he's implicitly attacking 4E and the people who play it.

Note: The original blog post is ALL about 4E and it's mechanics. That is the only game that he cites where dissociated mechanics have a negative impact on the gameplay. Every single example he calls out is a 4E example...and no...other...game. This is despite the fact that metagame mechanics have always been around.

Note: The structure of the bog post is NOT an introduction to the idea of dissociated mechanics. It's written more or less as a thesis, the premise being: "4E is not a roleplaying game, but rather a miniatures wargame because of dissociated mechanics".

The implication here is that, according to the Alexandrian, when you are playing 4E and making use of a martial daily power, or a healing surge, or an action point, then you are not roleplaying. You are in fact playing a tactical miniatures game and not a roleplaying game. And since D&D is traditionally a roleplaying game, when you are playing 4E, which by virtue of the mechanics is NOT a roleplaying game, then you are playing D&D wrong.

To condense his message down into it's most basic premise:

4E=Wrong D&D.

JA wrote that blog specifically to lambast 4E and insult it's fans (by implicitly stating that they were playing D&D wrong), and all under the guise of a theory which, as it turns out, is actually nothing but a pretentious hissy fit based on logic that is spurious at best.

Now if you really feel the need to talk crap about how people play their games, then fine. But please do them the basic courtesy of making it explicit, rather than hiding behind the Alexandrian's bs pseudo-intellectual posturing.

 

[Doug McCrae]

But that's no grounds for projecting his aesthetic preference (or limitation) onto everyone in general, and in needlessly rude terms at that.

Yeah, I think this very subjective aspect is one of the article's major failings, and why dissociated mechanics as described by JA can't be accorded the status of theory.

A proper theory would talk about how individuals vary greatly in their capacity to find a mechanic plausible or otherwise. That JA can't find a satisfying game-world explanation for martial dailies or, as I recall, the legion devil's power, doesn't mean no one can. The 4e rules text provides explanations for both, in fact, in true Gygaxian sim justification for non-sim mechanic style. A good theory of dissociation would state that any given mechanic is not inherently dissociative, but associated for some players and dissociated for others.

And, as you say, such a theory wouldn't regard those who can't find an explanation as lacking in imagination, or those who can as having a surfeit of credulity. It should use neutral terms. Not just out of politeness, but also, I think, because it would be more true.

 

[pemerton]

The point I was trying to make is that it is possible to achieve the features of daily/encounter/etc mechanics without resorting to things that have no basis in the game fiction. With my example you have strong, cool maneuvers, when you want them but not all the time, and the whole thing is grounded in the fiction so it shouldn’t bug those who dislike meta mechanics.

<snip>

As such I see no reason to need daily/etc powers in 5E. They should be able to come up with something that makes the 4E crowd happy without irritating those who don’t like it.

One consequence of your system (as I understand it) would be that a given martial manoeuvre would be repeatable provided that the player had stamina points remaining to spend. This is a bit like the psionics power point system in 4e - and that system gives rise to some well-known balance problems. Whereas one of the strengths of the 4e enc/daily system is that, even if a given ability is somewhat overpowered for its level, there is a hard limit on its usage and hence on its abusability.

I didn't find a single spot where he tried to make anyone feel bad about anything

Did you notice the bits I quoted upthread, where he says that 4e is a serious of tactical skirmishes linked by improv drama? If so, do you not think that's intended as something of an attack upon those RPGers who enjoy 4e?

 

[pemerton]

This is a crazy idea, but I wonder if, to simulate genre fiction, it helps if a game design is incoherent.

<snip>

genre fiction is full of coincidence, unbelievable characters and implausible events. The writer is pushing against the supposed rules of his reality, much in the same way that the 2e AD&D DM has to push against the rules to tell his story.

It's an interesting hypothesis. But who is the "writer" in an RPG? Part of the issue with 2nd ed AD&D is that it is the GM who has to do the pushing - hence the tendency to railroading that I think is part of 2nd ed AD&D.