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

[thecasualoblivion]

I think the biggest problem WotC has is that they are building 5E on a false premise, that there is a "core D&D experience" we can all agree on. I think the past few months have illustrated that this does not exist, and presuming that it does was completely naive. They have compounded that mistake by creating 5E as a modular system with the mythical "core D&D experience" as they have determined it as the unchangeable core of the game, with modularity only to add to it. A significant(too large to ignore) minority of the D&D community disagrees over WotC's "core D&D experience" and the nature of 5E's modularity, that of an unchanging core and additive modularity can't address that. It would take the ability to remove and replace elements of the "core D&D experience" to do that, and such isn't being offered.

 

[pemerton]

The dissociative mechanics link was posted recently. Go to that link and read that article. If you still don't understand it then I don't think I can improve on that article.

There was a long thread about that article a year or so ago.

The principle claim of the article is that metagame mechanics are viable in some games (it mentions Wushu), but not 4e, which is characterised by the author as a series of tactical skirmishes linked by freeform improv.

Given that that doesn't describe the actual 4e play of anyone on these boards who seems to be playing and enjoying the system, I think we can infer that Justin Alexander doesn't know much about 4e, nor about what metagame mechanics are viable in a fantasy adventure RPG.

there is a category of players who move miniatures on a grid during combat and don't care a whit why the PC is doing that, and that's fine, as long as those players aren't dictating to me that none of it matters just because they aren't into "immersion"

Given that, as far as I know, none of those players post on these boards, I'm happy to put this to one side.

The PC could be thinking many things that are potentially "true to character". Like "I want to survive so I'll give my utmost to survive the next battle" or "I want to survive so I'm going to leave the dungeon now".

That is actually not a strong enough constraint to get Emerikol's result.

An example that came up on the thread I linked to:

at least one of my players regards some NPC "until end of next turn" effects as metagame effects.

What had happened was that a cultists had hit the paladin of the Raven Queen with a Baleful Polymorph, turning the paladin into a frog until the end of the cultist's next turn. The players at the table didn't know how long this would last, although one (not the player of the paladin) was pretty confident that it wouldn't be that long, because the game doesn't have save-or-die.

Anyway, the end of the cultist's next turn duly came around, and I told the player of the paladin that he turned back to his normal form. He then took his turn, and made some threat or admonition against the cultist. The cultist responded with something to the effect of "You can't beat me - I turned you into a frog, after all!" The paladin's player had his PC retort "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back."

There we have an example of a player taking narrative control on the back of an NPC's mechanic that the player knew nothing of until encountering it in the course of actual play. And at least for me, as a GM, that is the player of the paladin playing his role. And driving the story forward. On the back of a so-called "dissociated" mechanic.

Here we have a player who is thinking and playing his PC true to character on the back of a metagame (ie so-called dissociated) mechanic.

Emerikol's requirement is that every specification a player makes of the content of the fiction correspond to a choice his/her PC makes and corresponds to a mechanical resolution performed by that player. Whereas in my example, the player is specifiying some content of the fiction (that his PC's god turned him back) which doesn't correspond to a choice made by the PC (it was the god, not the PC, who turned hm back) nor to a mechanical resolution performed by the player (it was the rules as adjudicated by me, the GM, that determined that the effect came to an end).

So Emerikol's requirement is much stricter than actor stance - the player in my example never actually leaves actor stance as a matter of psychology, because the deployment of director stance authority is done from the point of view of the PC (in a sense the player occupies two stances at once, I guess).

I don't know what Emerikol thinks is happening when initiative dice are rolled, or choice between standard and move actions made, etc. Given that I assume Emerikol doesn't imagine the fantasy world as a stop motion one.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

There was a long thread about that article a year or so ago.

The principle claim of the article is that metagame mechanics are viable in some games (it mentions Wushu), but not 4e, which is characterised by the author as a series of tactical skirmishes linked by freeform improv.

Given that that doesn't describe the actual 4e play of anyone on these boards who seems to be playing and enjoying the system, I think we can infer that Justin Alexander doesn't know much about 4e, nor about what metagame mechanics are viable in a fantasy adventure RPG.

Some people want to play D&D in the first person, and some people prefer to play in the third person. Neither is wrong, but people who want to play D&D in the first person seem to take an aggressive stance and have trouble seeing or refuse to see things from the other perspective.

 

[Imaro]

Some people want to play D&D in the first person, and some people prefer to play in the third person. Neither is wrong, but people who want to play D&D in the first person seem to take an aggressive stance and have trouble seeing or refuse to see things from the other perspective.

I don't think people who want to play in 1st person have an issue in understanding that some people want to play in 3rd person.... I think one of the big issues with 4e for many people who don't like it is that 4e expects you to jump back and forth from 1st person to 3rd person and I believe for many people that is more immersion breaking and irritating than fun. The fact that the rules and advice of 4e aren't exactly straightforward about when and where the different perspectives should take place is, I think, the main source of irritation... and is understandable.

EDIT: It's like when I sit down to play a FATE game, I know that much of the gameplay requires me to take a 3rd person perspective... the game is upfront about this in it's rules and advice. When I sit down to play 4e... the main perspective is very much dependant upon the precise action or game mechanic that is being used at the moment... and I don't think the rules or advice prepare players particularly well for this PoV shift... especially those that are used to the majority 1st person view of previous editions. On another note, I think a DM with alot of experience ingames with a 3rd person viewpoint can make this transition easier and more enjoyable (as opposed to a DM who has never run them before and is depending on 4e for the totality of his knowledge), which is what I believe posters like pemerton qand manbearcat do... however I think this also tends to make them less aware of how the average D&D player coming from previous editions views 4e.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't think people who want to play in 1st person have an issue in understanding that some people want to play in 3rd person.... I think one of the big issues with 4e for many people who don't like it is that 4e expects you to jump back and forth from 1st person to 3rd person and I believe for many people that is more immersion breaking and irritating than fun. The fact that the rules and advice of 4e aren't exactly straightforward about when and where the different perspectives should take place is, I think, the main source of irritation... and is understandable.

Not everyone who wants to play in 1st person has trouble with the distinction, but the subset that basically insist that only 1st person play is "roleplaying" have a very constricted view of the hobby that is analogous to claiming that only novels written in the 1st person (or any similar restriction you care to pick) are "literature." It's not the kind of assertion that can survive any kind of moderately broad experience, but can't really be countered outside that experience. If your only experience of "elves" is Keebler commercials, a lot of talk about elves is not going to make much sense.

Now as for the rest of it, I agree that 4E does a lousy job of explaining this, and furthermore it is even broader than a simple 1st person/3rd person split. There are also points of 2nd person, and then specializations of each voice, such as narrator voice, which can be thought of as 3rd person with outside knowledge. (And you don't have to get to a fully "omniscient narrator" for outside knowledge to matter, in any voice. Every player knows they are playing a character in a game, no matter how much everyone chooses to constrain that knowledge in practice.)

Some people, my group among them, play most roleplaying games in a constantly shifting voice. So we didn't need 4E to tell us when or how to do this. It's fairly obvious to us from the nature of the mechanics. I can shift voice in mid sentence while playing the parts of a small group of NPCs, and not confuse the players. It's one of those things were roleplaying becomes more like improvizational jazz than, say, a novel with a very consistent voice.

That kind of radical shifting is probably very uncommon. I seriously doubt that playing in 3rd person is.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I don't think people who want to play in 1st person have an issue in understanding that some people want to play in 3rd person.... I think one of the big issues with 4e for many people who don't like it is that 4e expects you to jump back and forth from 1st person to 3rd person and I believe for many people that is more immersion breaking and irritating than fun. The fact that the rules and advice of 4e aren't exactly straightforward about when and where the different perspectives should take place is, I think, the main source of irritation... and is understandable.

EDIT: It's like when I sit down to play a FATE game, I know that much of the gameplay requires me to take a 3rd person perspective... the game is upfront about this in it's rules and advice. When I sit down to play 4e... the main perspective is very much dependant upon the precise action or game mechanic that is being used at the moment... and I don't think the rules or advice prepare players particularly well for this PoV shift... especially those that are used to the majority 1st person view of previous editions. On another note, I think a DM with alot of experience ingames with a 3rd person viewpoint can make this transition easier and more enjoyable (as opposed to a DM who has never run them before and is depending on 4e for the totality of his knowledge), which is what I believe posters like pemerton qand manbearcat do... however I think this also tends to make them less aware of how the average D&D player coming from previous editions views 4e.

I don't see where 4E necessitates the 1st person perspective(and the switching you describe), and further I don't see where earlier editions focus on 1st person play. I have played(and run) D&D as a 3rd person narrative since 1995 playing 2E, and I never found the system to disagree with me on that. In my 4E experience, I've started in 3rd person mode and just stayed there, there was no switching. In my opinion, pre-4E D&D didn't really support either perspective, but at the same time didn't actively interfere with either. Its why I'm confused with people who hold the 1st person perspective to be of the utmost importance fixate themselves on pre-4E D&D, since the system didn't really support that compared to other systems. I also think 4E is very clear on what it is and what perspective it comes from, with the caveat that it might not be clear to people who read it with preconceived notions of D&D that conflict with 4E.

The two styles do conflict with each other. We've seen the 1st person complaints in detail in the form of complaints against 4E, but on the other side I find that focus on 1st person narrative interferes with my enjoyment as a 3rd person player in the form of adding cumbersome modeling of realism, taking things far too seriously, and detracting from the experience by focusing too much of the game's energy on things that aren't important.

Most importantly, the biggest issue I see is that while earlier editions of D&D didn't truly support 1st person narrative, people have projected their own opinions on to those editions and what they are calling for from 5E as a result goes beyond the reality of those earlier editions and instead is asking for the institution of their own idealized idea of D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm sure that the odd couple of hundred people that I've run games for over the years have been somewhat self-selected to fit my style, and thus are suspect as a group. So when I consider a question like playing in voice, I think back to my college days where I had extended opportunities to play to, run for, and observe a wide variety of preferences.

With exceptions, of course, I find that theatre majors or fans, extroverts, and the like tend to stay in 1st person as much as possible. Whereas more technically oriented or introverted people gravitate towards 3rd person. There are bunch in the middle--notably musicians--who will adapt to the dominant voice at the table. And then you have people like me--introverted, technically oriented, literature majors that play music--who are all over the place. And of course just from the demands of the position, many people who like to DM can be all over the place.

 

[Underman]

Here we have a player who is thinking and playing his PC true to character on the back of a metagame (ie so-called dissociated) mechanic.

Perhaps ALL metagame mechanics are "dissociated" until they are connected to the game world. In which case, the mechanic was dissociated until the player associated it to the Raven Queen's power of intervention.

A sim mechanic (a "descriptor" as you once put it IIRC) is connected to the game world at the design stage, so it's already associated before the session. If the mechanic feels dissociated from the game world in some sort of corner case during play, then it's now/temporarily disassociated again.

So I think the former mechanic is dissociated until associated in play, whereas the latter is associated until dissociated in play.

But then the former mechanic (originally dissociated, then associated) could be dissociated yet again if the players start thinking or asking awkward questions about the scope of the Raven Queen's interventions and other polymorph-like spells that end so quickly as the adventure continues.

Emerikol's requirement is that every specification a player makes of the content of the fiction correspond to a choice his/her PC makes and corresponds to a mechanical resolution performed by that player.

If you say so, I'm not sure it's that stringent, I just kind jumped in based on JC's post and what I understood from Emerikol's posts regarding martial dailies on another thread.

Whereas in my example, the player is specifiying some content of the fiction (that his PC's god turned him back) which doesn't correspond to a choice made by the PC (it was the god, not the PC, who turned hm back) nor to a mechanical resolution performed by the player (it was the rules as adjudicated by me, the GM, that determined that the effect came to an end).

I think that's a non-sequitur because PC couldn't make a choice if he was passive/impotent regarding the spell duration? But the PC could understand that a magic effect has a certain duration, so that would still be associated.

So Emerikol's requirement is much stricter than actor stance - the player in my example never actually leaves actor stance as a matter of psychology, because the deployment of director stance authority is done from the point of view of the PC (in a sense the player occupies two stances at once, I guess).

I think that's still OK, as long as the player (and fellow players) feels that the characters have some understanding or interpretation that leads to "true to character" behavior.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Not everyone who wants to play in 1st person has trouble with the distinction, but the subset that basically insist that only 1st person play is "roleplaying" have a very constricted view of the hobby that is analogous to claiming that only novels written in the 1st person (or any similar restriction you care to pick) are "literature." It's not the kind of assertion that can survive any kind of moderately broad experience, but can't really be countered outside that experience. If your only experience of "elves" is Keebler commercials, a lot of talk about elves is not going to make much sense.

I find people who seem to insist that only 1st person play is "roleplaying" tend to use words like immersion and verisimilitude as weapons, as if their perspective owned those words. Detracting from immersion or verisimilitude detracted from roleplaying, as opposed to merely detracting from roleplaying from the specific perspective of 1st person play.

I also don't agree that 1st person play was ever inherent or integral to D&D itself. D&D was merely vague and unfocused enough to enable it and not interfere with it to the point where it wasn't possible.

 

[Imaro]

I don't see where 4E necessitates the 1st person perspective(and the switching you describe), and further I don't see where earlier editions focus on 1st person play. I have played(and run) D&D as a 3rd person narrative since 1995 playing 2E, and I never found the system to disagree with me on that. In my 4E experience, I've started in 3rd person mode and just stayed there, there was no switching. In my opinion, pre-4E D&D didn't really support either perspective, but at the same time didn't actively interfere with either. Its why I'm confused with people who hold the 1st person perspective to be of the utmost importance fixate themselves on pre-4E D&D, since the system didn't really support that compared to other systems. I also think 4E is very clear on what it is and what perspective it comes from, with the caveat that it might not be clear to people who read it with preconceived notions of D&D that conflict with 4E.


The two styles do conflict with each other. We've seen the 1st person complaints in detail in the form of complaints against 4E, but on the other side I find that focus on 1st person narrative interferes with my enjoyment as a 3rd person player in the form of adding cumbersome modeling of realism, taking things far too seriously, and detracting from the experience by focusing too much of the game's energy on things that aren't important.

Most importantly, the biggest issue I see is that while earlier editions of D&D didn't truly support 1st person narrative, people have projected their own opinions on to those editions and what they are calling for from 5E as a result goes beyond the reality of those earlier editions and instead is asking for the institution of their own idealized idea of D&D.

You know, your above argument has made me realize that I am probably using the wrong descriptors here... let me try this...

Previous editions didn't require players to step into authorial stance... 4e requires one to switch back and forth from authorial to protagonist stances (regardless of whether it's 1st person, 2nd person or third person)... and when you don't you get the "fiction doesn't matter" or "dissassociated mechanics" arguments. And no I don't think D&D 4e is clear on when and where players take which stance, especially since it is called D&D, and with the name come certain expectations of gameplay (especially so when marketing is claiming "ze game remains ze same!!!")

EDIT: The other concern is that not every player wants authorial stnce or control forced upon them... and 4e tends to. Some players really just want to be players as opposed to demi-DM's and I don't think 4e accomodates them well.