In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[Beginning of the End]

How does Joe know that he needs to rest, given that he is not impaired? How does Ziggy discern this? The players can tell, by looking at the hit point totals. But how do the characters know?

Mechanics are always abstracted. Because of this, there will always be information about the game world which is not included in the mechanics. That's the nature of abstraction. (In this case, the specific information which is not being included in the mechanics is the degree to which a character's injuries are impairing them.)

The lossy quality of mechanical abstraction means that sometimes there's information available in the game world which is not available in the mechanics. For some people, the information being lost may be a deal-breaker. (For example, few if any RPGs mechanically answer the question, "Did I slash with my sword or stab with it?" And basically no one cares about the loss of that information. The loss of impairment from wounds, OTOH, is a common concern for many people... which is why lots of games have included mechanics for that.)

Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.

I can see why, at first glance, it can be tempting to simply equate the two types of information loss. But I think there's an important qualitative distinction. This may be relevant reading.

* Of course, dissociated mechanics are still mechanics and, therefore, they're still abstracted. Which means they can also suffer from the same problems as all other mechanics.

 

[pawsplay]

How?

How does being at 1 hp manifest itself in game? In what way are they different from being at full hit points? What associated mechanic (ie. A mechanic that has an in game parallel) in any version of D&D allows the PC or anyone else for that matter, to know that he has 1 hit point left?

Why do we need a mechanic that says would someone looks like at 1 hp? It says 1 hp on the character sheet. If a player asks, "How badly hurt does Pogo the Clown look?" that's a valid question. 1 hp is pretty badly hurt. "It looks like a bad scrape or a thrown rock would finish him off," would be the answer if the PCs were judged to be a good position to assess their opponent's health.

Just because a "traveler's outfit" in 3e has no stated color, that doesn't mean that there's no way to discern what color it is. How do you know slashing weapons have edges? How do you know trolls have long arms? How do you know what kind of weapons the orcs are wielding? How do you know otyughs smell bad?

I'll turn the question around. Given that hit points represent combat attrition, why WOULDN'T someone be able to make a ballpark guess?

 

[FireLance]

The fact that a Knight can only move in an L-shape in Chess is a dissociated mechanic. The fact that you collect $200 when you pass "Go" in Monopoly is a dissociated mechanic.

I'll give you the former, but I believe the income from Monopoly is supposed to represent a salary or allowance of some kind. Perhaps changing the name of the square from "Go" to "Bank" or "ATM" might help remove the disassociation.

The idea that you have some sort of "responsibility" to avoid using those mechanics is... bizarre. Those mechanics are part of the game. If the existence of those mechanics is not serving the purpose of the game; then they shouldn't be part of the game.

No more "bizarre" than the idea that you should not use classes, spells or monsters if they do not fit in with your concept of your fantasy world.

Some people don't like monks in a western medieval fantasy setting, so they don't use them. Some people don't like psionics, so they don't use them, either. I personally have encountered some spells that I consider to be nothing more than combo platters of disassociated effects, so I don't use those. I find some classic D&D monsters like the beholder to be rather silly, so I don't use them, either. But so what? Even if some people don't use these classes, spells and monsters, others do.

The same goes for disassociated mechanics. I don't think disassociation is something that can be objectively proven. Some abilities might seem disassociated to one person, and not to another. As for "serving the purpose of the game" ... Frankly, for a game of fantasy and imagination like D&D, I'd say the purpose of the game is better served by pushing the boundaries of the possible (admittedly, to subjective degrees of success and acceptance) than by staying firmly within the boundaries of what we have always known.

 

[LostSoul]

First of all, thanks for replying!

Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.

My big question is: how does this work with negative mechanics? The fact that one cannot trade precision for power in a melee attack without the proper Feat - Power Attack - in 3E is the example I'm thinking about. It seems to me that, in that case, there are meaningful mechanical decisions that have no association with the decisions made by the character - assuming the character wants to trade precision for power yet does not possess the Power Attack Feat.

[sblock=Aside]As an aside, I think the idea of dissociated mechanics is sound, even if I'm not sure that I understand it. (RPG mechanics are very complicated things.) I think that 4E would have been a more successful game - that is, it would have achieved its design goals more ably - if it had adopted dissociated mechanics throughout its design. I think that an "Encounter" should have been more dissociated, linking up to elements set by the narrative; "Extended Rests" should have been tied to something in the narrative, not a daily event.[/sblock]

 

[pemerton]

The lossy quality of mechanical abstraction means that sometimes there's information available in the game world which is not available in the mechanics.

<snip>

Dissociated mechanics, OTOH, are the exact opposite of that*: Here there's meaningful mechanical information which is not available to the game world. And, more importantly, meaningful mechanical decisions which have no association with the decisions being made by the character.

With hit points, it seems to me that there is information available to the player - eg I will die if I take one more hit, or I can jump over that 200' cliff and survive, or There's no way a single blow of that sword can kill me - that is manifestly not available to the PC.

As to decisions which have no association with decisions being made by the PC - deciding to use a daily power has an associate with all sorts of decision made by the PC, like where to move to, what to do beforehand, what to do afterwards, etc. If by "association" you mean something like "the player's dedision-making process, in deciding to use the martial daily, does not correspond to any particular decision made by the PC", that may or may not be true. If a particular table, following page 54 of the PHB, takes the view that martial dailies represent deep reserves, then there is this sort of correspondence - namely, the player decides to use a daily and the the PC decides to draw upon every last ounce of his or her being. But obviously some other tables will run (at least some) martial dailies in a purely metagame fashion - doing a 3W daily rather than a 1W at-will becomes equivalent to spending a Fate Point for bonus damage. I believe some versions of 3E (eg Eberron) use such a mechanic. So does Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. The presence of this sort of mechanic in 4e is not all that revolutionary, although it's packaging of it (as a mechanism to balance martial PCs against spell users) might be new to some.

In 3.5e, the description of hit points is clear - they represent both the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. It's easy to see how a character would at any given time be aware of how much physical punishment they had taken, and also how much longer they think they can avoid taking a serious blow. The description is also well supported by other rules that modify max HP according to character class, level, and Constitution scores.

If it's physical punishment, why does it not wear the character out?

Do you do some houseruling, like positing an adreline rush during combat? That keeps going even hours or days after the combat ended?

Why do we need a mechanic that says would someone looks like at 1 hp? It says 1 hp on the character sheet. If a player asks, "How badly hurt does Pogo the Clown look?" that's a valid question. 1 hp is pretty badly hurt. "It looks like a bad scrape or a thrown rock would finish him off," would be the answer if the PCs were judged to be a good position to assess their opponent's health.

Yet Pogo the clown has no impairment to any limbs or organs. What sort of biological condition is a creature in such that both (i) a bad scrape would knock it out, yet (ii) it has no functional impairments?

Perhaps some houserules would settle this question!

Just because a "traveler's outfit" in 3e has no stated color, that doesn't mean that there's no way to discern what color it is.

Assuming that you houserule that it's not colourless, as the actual rulebook appears to suggest!

Consider this - if besieged foe is meant to work by directing subordinates against dangerous foes, as the description states, then why is the actual effect that allies get a bonus to hit the target? Why does it still grant a bonus to an ally that was already engaging the target before any direction was given to do so? The mechanic could be adjusted to have a direct association with the description (e.g. the war devil forces its allies to stop whatever else they were doing and attack the target), or a description could be provided that better associates with the mechanic (e.g. the war devil sends telepathic guidance to allies on how to exploit the target's weaknesses). But as the essay points out, these would have to be house rules with their own new implications, and besieged foe is far from being an isolated example.

So now a GM who decides to run beseiged foe as a curse is houseruling! A GM who decides that, instead, it represents telepathic guidance is houseruling!

In Gygax's DMG, the combat section has a discussion of saving throws. He explains how a saving throw is always permitted - that it represents a last-ditch chance at ingenuity and luck. Even a fighter chained to a rock gets a save against dragon breath - perhaps at the last minute the fighter finds cover behind the barest ridge, or perhaps the chains break! Not until this thread had it ever occurred to me that a GM who runs saving throws as per Gygax's instructions in the DMG - which is to say, extrapolating some saving situation out of the context of the game that is ready-to-hand for the participants, although variable from occasion to occasion, houseruling! I'd always assumed that this was called running the game.

 

[pemerton]

Here are some extracts from the Alexandrian's essay:

Of course, you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever.

<snip>

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.

<snip>

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).

<snip>

There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project.

<snip>

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.

So why can I see the benefit of the Wushu-style trade-off, but am deeply dissatisfied by the trade-offs 4th Edition is making?

Well, the easiest comeback would be to say that it's all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don't like the tactical wargaming.

That's an easy comeback, but it doesn't quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games.

My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the roleplaying of roleplaying games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story.

<snip>

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.​

It's got it all: 4e is primarily/overwhelmingly a tactical wargame/skirmish game. It's mechanics impede roleplaying. Unlike other (not merely so-called) RPGs, 4e does not produce stories, or permit the player to engage with the PC through story.

Is anyone really telling me that this isn't edition-bashing!?

What is the actual purpose, in RPGing, of encounter and daily powers? To produce combats which have dramatic pacing. Does the 4e implementation of these class features succeed at that? In my experience, yes. In the experience of some others, apparently not. A serious discussion of 4e's power design, from the point of view of the relationship between player, character and narrative, would ask why it is that some but not others get this experience from the mechanics. (You might talk about encounter design; or party composiition; or tolerance for fiddly mechanics; or the approach that the GM takes to page 42; or any other of the myriad factors that can effect how the game plays at one table or another.)

It may be, of course, that some - perhaps many - RPGers don't particularly care for a game in which combat is a, if not the, principal mode in which the expression and resolution of conflict takes place. (Presumably these people don't care for superhero comics either, or Arthurian legends - or maybe they bring different aesthetic preferences to RPGs from those other forms of storytelling.) A moment's glance at the 4e rules will reveal that 4e is not the game for them - the rules make it obvious that combat will be a principal - perhaps the principal - mode of expressing and resolving conflict.

But this has nothing to do with whether or not 4e is a tactical skirmish game, to which the accretion of any roleplaying is a mere accident.

 

[pemerton]

I think that 4E would have been a more successful game - that is, it would have achieved its design goals more ably - if it had adopted dissociated mechanics throughout its design. I think that an "Encounter" should have been more dissociated, linking up to elements set by the narrative; "Extended Rests" should have been tied to something in the narrative, not a daily event.

I think there is quite a bit of truth to this.

As it stands, the notion of "encounter" in the game rules is ambiguous. For example, supppose that during the course of an extended skill challenge my Warlock PC use Beguilng Tongue (an encounter utility power) to get +5 to a social skill check. If I take a short rest during the course of the skill challenge, do I get to use Beguiling Tongue again in that challenge? My personal ruling is No, but (unlike deciding what exactly Beguiling Tongue represents in game - is it a boost to facility with choosing words, or a boost to tone and delivery, or a change in appearance, or something else?) this actually is a houserule.

With extended rests, my "solution" to the issue is to link rests during overland travel to success or failure in skill challenges. (Although there is an argument that this is bad rather than good for pacing, as it makes success breed easier rather than harder challenges.)

I assume that the reason they went for "daily" powers (and surges etc) is because the day as a means of parcelling out these sorts of PC resources was already familiar to D&D players (through spell memorisation, magic items, healing rates, etc).

 

[Yesway Jose]

-A villian is holding a world-shattering artifact, so a wizard casts Hypnotism on him. The spell mechanics state the wizard can slide the target or force him to make a basic melee attack against a creature. The fictional writers imagine that the wizard could feasibly mind-control the villian to drop (or throw) the artifact and withdraw. The mechanics don't allow the spell to work that way. That would be disassociation of mechanics.

Frankly, this to me is more a case of the effect of a spell not fully living up to its name (or its default flavor). If the spell was explicitly described as being able to trigger only one of two very basic reactions in the target (effectively, fight OR flight, and nothing else) then there would be a much lower level of disassociation.

Even if any or every 4E spell or power was renamed and/or refluffed to be reconciled with its name or default flavor, then that wouldn't lower enough the level of disassociation for those that care about it. The mechanic in question would still be dis(ass)ociated as long as enough people want or expect mind control magic to be more flexible than a binary 'fight or flight'-or-nothing option.

To a certain extent, I think that the "cure" for disassociation is simply internalizing the way things work in the game. When I first started playing D&D, the biggest source of disassociation for me was the way that spellcasters worked. Magic-users and clerics simply didn't work the way I expected them to. What was this "memorization" nonsense? Wizards don't run out of spells (at least, they never did in the fiction that I was familiar with - mostly because spellcasters were usually anagonists or plot devices, but this didn't even feature in novels like A Wizard of Earthsea where the protagonist was one).

There are many different magic systems between so many fantasy novels and films. I think most people recognize that. Nobody (I hope) freaks out that Harry Potter magic is different than Earthsea magic.

The Vancian system was simply an attempt to reconcile or associate the mechanics with the fiction.

For those 2 reasons, I think that's why people have been able to internalize (or at least tolerate) the way magic worked in the game for so many years.

Not that it was perfect by any means. For one thing, 3E sorcerers were created to appease a surge in expectations that not all magic-users should constantly forget their spells once cast.

Anyway, returning to the rogue. The rogue hasn't forgotten how to do it. Or been rendered unable to do it. It's just that s/he doesn't do it. Why not (from her perspective)? Any number of reasons is possible - s/he gets unlucky, s/he doesn't bother because not enough is at stake, s/he has something else she'd rather be doing, etc, etc.

Expanding on that premise, if you take a thousand PC Rogues over a thousand days of adventuring, then that's a million instances of a rogue never using that power more than once a day.

I think it's improbable that in all those million instances, not one single rogue ever had the luck or opportunity or interest to use it more than once.

You may say that 4E is not modelling 1 million fictional instances in any one gaming group's subjective fictional world, which is true, but it's only a thought experiment illustrating the disassociation of my expectations from what the rules technically would allow me to experience. Even if there are just a couple dozen instances of a Rogue not using the power more than 1/day, the probability curve outcome is already failing to associate for me.

As usual, it's all relative and a question of degree and tolerance.

 

[Mallus]

So if I'm understanding this (clarified) explanation of dissociated powers...

... feinting in melee combat in AD&D is dissociated because it isn't something the player can choose to do. It's assumed their character is doing it --all the time, when they're in the mood, if they got bit by a feinting bug that morning-- but declaring a feint has no effect.

... critical hits in D&D 3e are dissociated, because they're a product of mere probability, modified by weapon type and possibly feat choice and class ability. But not by player choice during live play. A player can declare "I'm shooting for the eyes --or any other vital spot-- but this, again has no effect.

... saving throws are dissociated powers aren't necessarily tied to specific character actions, and the representation of a saving throw in the game fiction is described after the fact. The order of operation is: player makes a saving throw --> die roll is evaluated --> character's action in the fiction is described.

So dissociated mechanics have always been around, right? So can we talk about in a more nuanced way, perhaps discussing why some are good, or at least tolerable, while others get people's dander up?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed