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

[Manbearcat]

Combat pillar is a resource management game for every PC - hit points are the principal resource being managed.

Your description of the social and exploration pillars make them sound as if they are important parts of the game for spellcasters, but not others (who have no resources to bring to bear in order to do better or worse).

I think that confirms rather than dispels my worry, doesn't it?

My reflexive thought as well. I'm hoping for a more thorough response about a longing for martial/mundane resources/features (not just skills...which all classes share) that can be brought to bear to either interface with a resolution system specifically or the fiction generally.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], if you haven't already, you may find it useful to scan through the posts in that earlier topic on "disassociation" that pemerton linked. It may save you some time in the long run.

 

[pemerton]

It may save you some time in the long run.

That's one way of putting it!

 

[Underman]

There is a perfectly good, non-pejorative name for such mechanics: fortune-in-the-middle. Part of what irritates me about the Alexander blog is that instead of building on the very interesting work done at the Forge (and elsewhere?) on how such mechanics work, he coins his own pejorative phrase for them and then uses that as a premise in his characterisation of 4e as a tactical board game punctuated by freeform improv.

Not to stir up more of the hornet's nest, but who elected the Forge as the official source for RPG terminology? If Alexander whoever-he-is wants to use differents terms, then that's his prerogative, isn't it? Until WoTC uses Forge terminology or the mainstream crowd chooses one over another, I think it's still a free-for-all.

On first hearing, the phrase "fortune-in-middle" doesn't mean anything to me until you explain it, but the term itself doesn't evoke any meaning for me. "Dissociated" is more evocative of the meaning. That's probably why he chose it.

Also, some (many?) posters clearly make a distinction between metagame vs ingame. That is, there is not such thing as a rule that is "more" metagame-y or "less" metagame-y -- that they are all metagame constructs. Like saying that fairies are more or less real than Santa. If that's true, you need some way to associate the metagame to the fiction, fitting the fluff to the crunch. I need a term to describe how "close" the mechanic feels to the ideal fluff I have in mind at any one time, and this term captures that goal for me. I'm sorry that it's pejorative to you, but it evokes the correct desire for me, and I don't even see it as pejorative any more than "immersive" or "simulationist" or "gamist" is pejorative.

Either way it, it is what it is, the term is out there in the Ether, alongside the Forge terminology. Let the semantic battles commence! (but not me, I'm sitting on the sidelines)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One random thought on the topic:

What do people think is represented by the randomness of the d20 roll result?

The skill and talent of the character is supposedly expressed by his modifier on that roll.
The difficulty of the task itself is expressed in the difficulty class you roll against.

So what is the d20?

In my view, it must be some random elements that we haven't exactly described that we could pinpoint it with something affecting either skill or difficulty, but that will nevertheless affect the outcome.

So narrating a failed check as something like a gorge or rain makes sense to me. It is something we didn't account for before, but something that introduces an ability to fail - the character may be an excellent rider, but this is the type of random adversity he cannot overcome just with his skill. The characer may be a gifted diplomat, but he cannot convince people if they don't hear him due to loud rain.
The character may be a master marksmen, but the enemy stil lmanages to zig where the character expected him to go zag.

 

[Imaro]

All you say here may be true. It doesn't go one step, however, towards showing that 4e is a tactical skirmish game punctuated by freeform improv, which is the main contention of the Justin Alexander blog.

Hence the reason why that blog remains rather contentious.

Uhm... I wasn't arguing in support of Justin Alexander, I was expressing my own thoughts on 4e and the relationship it creates between players and authorial stance. I don't mention the blog in my posts and I don't use the term dissassociated mechanics so please don't tie my arguments to something I never even mentioned in the context. Thanks.

 

[Imaro]

Just another point about actor/author stance. Even in earlier edition D&D, it was rarely that cut and dried. Many of the things that a character might try make virtually no sense from the character's point of view, yet, I, the player certainly want to.

Take the often mentioned swinging across the room by the chandelier. Now, this is, from the character's POV, ridiculous. It's very dangerous, doesn't really achieve anything and practically suicidal. No one in their right mind is going to do this. But, from me, the player's POV, it's really, really cool. It makes for a great scene and it's something I'd totally want to try. There's a reason it happens in the movies.

So, here we have a fairly clear case of the player and character motivations being at odds. Yet, everyone at the table would likely applaud me (the player) for trying it, and lots of high fives if I actually succeeded. From the character's perspective, it's totally ludicrous. But, on the Cool Scale, it's a winner!

Players are, in many, many events in the game, stepping outside of their character's POV to take actions that are either more pragmatic (I'll move away from this guy, get stabbed, so I can finish off that guy, because I know he's down lots of HP), more cinematic or just outright batguano crazy, because we're playing a game, and being "cool" makes for a more interesting game.

Or, to put it another way, when faced with the big button that says, "Never, under any circumstances, push this" players will almost aways push that button.

Everything you're giving an example of isn't the player taking authorial stance though, they are still making the decision and controllling only the actions of their PC.

Whether it's a good choice or bad is fundamentally irrelelvant since that's saying Protagonists in fantasy fiction never make dangerous decisions, when the fact of the matter is that they do this type of stuff all the time... maybe I'm not understamding your argument here.

 

[Emerikol]

It always amazes me that people want to take D&D which has a proud tradition and totally change it. This is basically what 4e did. Why do you care? If D&D was a rotten game all the way till 2008 then you obviously have few ties to it. Wouldn't it be better to just seek out a game that caters to your interests more directly?

You see D&D pre-4e did cater to a LOT of peoples tastes. Pathfinder is proof of that if nothing else. And the ridiculous thing people are missing is that 3.5e maybe getting played as much as Pathfinder is getting played. An informal survey of players in my game club of 100 would definitely indicate that.

I'm just asking that D&D be D&D. And I've also offered that I'm ok with other styles in addition to the original style. But you seem insistent on wanting the game your way and the abolishment of my way. Well let me tell you that if 5e were just a extension of 4e, then it would fail worse than 4e. 4e got a lot of sales from Pathfinder/3.5e people who didn't realize what they were getting until they'd spent a good bit of money. I'm one of those. I know what to look for now. I won't even buy the 5e players handbook if it's just another 4.5e.

Also. These are NOT equivalent. So do not assume they are...
1. dissociative mechanics.
2. realism vs cinematic vs cartoonish
3. abstraction

None of the above are related. Something may exhibit all three or none or any one or two. They are not related.

I have an issue with #1 but not #3 and some of #2 .

 

[pemerton]

Not to stir up more of the hornet's nest, but who elected the Forge as the official source for RPG terminology?

No one. But given that more good and influential games have come out of the Forge than from Justin Alexander, I'm happy to defer to their expertise, at least in a preliminary way!

I also generally think it's preferable to describe someone's playstyle in a fashion they accept, rather than one they don't. "Dissociated" is obviously intended to be pejorative - it is the stalking horse in an argument that 4e is a tactical skirmish game, after all.

"Dissociated" also implies, what is false, that there is no importance to the fiction in metagame-heavy play. As if, unless the correlation between mechanics and fiction is established before play, as inherent to the rules themselves, then it has dropped out altogether. Given that some of the best RPGs around don't work on this principle, however, it is obviously false.

Returning to the Forge, Ron Edwards wrote about what Justin Alexander calls "dissociated mechanics" nearly 10 years ago, and managed to do it in a way that is not pejorative to anyone:

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. . .

Clearly, System is a major design element here, as the causal anchor among the other elements. . .

Resolution mechanics, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of what . . .

Before talking about dice or other specific resolution mechanics, I'll discuss two elements of Resolution which are rarely recognized: the treatment of in-game time and space. These are a big deal in Simulationist play as universal and consistent constraints, which must apply equally to any part of the imagined universe, at any point during play. . .

In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. . .

f Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes. Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. 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 [ie establishing the content of the fiction] 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.

*Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic . . .​

​

If you read Edwards' contrast between design that supports simulationism and design that supports gamism (step on up) or narrativism (story now), you can basically see every point of the debates over 4e's mechanics already played out:

*the contrast between establishing fiction via mechanics that reflect ingame causal processes (the "sim crowd") and having the mechanics set parameters within which the fiction is then established via "casual negotiation" (the "4e crowd");

*related to that, the use of FitM mechanics, which of course defer establishment of the content of the fiction ("Schroedinger's wounds", "fighters with spells");

*the use of Author stance ("immersion-breaking, metagaming mechanics").​

Instead of writing a rant about how 4e is a tactical skirmish game, Justin Alexander could have just provided some links to a well-established and calm-headed analysis. And pointed out that some RPGers are going to enjoy only sim/immersion play, while some others might enjoy a bit of non-sim play, and that one group should avoid 4e even while the others might want to check it out.

you need some way to associate the metagame to the fiction, fitting the fluff to the crunch. I need a term to describe how "close" the mechanic feels to the ideal fluff I have in mind at any one time, and this term captures that goal for me. I'm sorry that it's pejorative to you, but it evokes the correct desire for me, and I don't even see it as pejorative any more than "immersive" or "simulationist" or "gamist" is pejorative.

I find this a little hard to follow. But as I understand it, you prefer the system to tell you what is happening in the fiction, rather than to have to consciously establish that yourself.

Either way it, it is what it is, the term is out there in the Ether, alongside the Forge terminology.

That's true of a lot of dismissive terminology. Of course, the stakes in RPG play and design aren't very high, so I'm hardly on a crusade. But I do like to be able to talk about my hobby in a way that acknowledges different approaches without automatically judging some of them to be merely tactical skirmish games linked by freeform improv.

 

[Imaro]

I think WotC gives 4e players for granted and will automatically buy anything with the D&D brand on it, while at the same time trying to get back from the evil clutches of Paizo the market segment that thinks they are the devil and refused to continue buying from them, using a franskenstein monter-like set of rules based on tummy feeling.

I don't think it'll end very well.

That's one theory...

Hmmmm, I wonder if that meant during the release of 4e they took 3.x players for granted and thought they would automatically buy anything with the D&D brand on it?

You know I thought about posting a snarky commentary on what 4e's system is to alot of people who don't like it... but decided we really need less of the type of snide remarks and condencension found at the end of your first paragraph on these boards.