In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My interest lies in what is worth considering in terms of my own design.

Ditto. That is probably why we keep butting heads.

For what is worth, had the whole discussion started with this topic or something very much like it, instead of how it did start, I'd have a whole lot more favorable "feel" about the whole thing--both as a way of looking at D&D and for my own design.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand your question at all (that is, "What does it mean to "learn" or "explore" how one hides, non-magically, in plain sight?"). This seems so basic to me that I don't know where to start. What does it mean to explore how to apply an arm lock? That's literally the same thing, in my mind. The disconnect you seem to be having there is something I can't explain.

If there is some non-magical technique in-game that allows you to hide while being observed, than it can be taught (and thus learned by others). It can be explored. It can be observed. The same goes for evasion, though I'd probably see it as dissociative most of the time. If, however, it allowed you to phase your body reactively, without thought, when certain conditions were met, I could see it. I'd be hard pressed to accept it (my 3.5-based game doesn't allow Reflex saves while incapacitated), but at least it's associative.

My point is that it's not enough for the game rules to stipulate that there is a method that can be learned, if the notion of such a method is contradictory or incoherent.

I would suggest that the notion, in D&D, of phasing my body as an EX rather than a SU ability, is an example of that sort of incoherence.

Hiding in plain sight perhaps not - but does it have clothing/camouflage requirements?

My take on the whole disassociated mechanic issue is that a game is much better if it doesn't have to use them.

Eliminate the problem that causes the need for them and then they can go away.

This is already assuming that metagame mechanics are a response to a problem that ignores cure in favour of treating symptoms.

The "problem" is that purely exploratory play is not guaranteed to produce dramatically satisfying play. Metagame mechanics are one well-known way of helping to produce dramatically satisfying play. 4e is not the first, nor the only, RPG to use them. For some reason, though, it's the only one that gets pilloried for doing so.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Did anybody see my glasses? I think I left them here, somewhere...

 

[chaochou]

It would be far more accurate to say

"The effects of disocciation is the result of the interplay of the choice made and the context within which the choice is made."

I was under the impression you were disagreeing with me.

It ('disocciated') describes only how you related to a mechanic given your own choice or preference at the time it was used.

What argument do you have to support the claim that the outcomes can be analysed independly of the preferences / choice?

A player chooses a stance while playing 4e and then says he had experience x as a "result of the choice made and the context within which the choice was made".

What is the objective analysis you are claiming is possible? What data are you claiming this is this producing?

 

[pemerton]

What do you think about the idea expressed in the essay that 4e should have gone farther in terms of DisMech, specifically to increase (ii)?

Well, as you know, I find less of worth in the essay than you do.

For example, the essay appears to presuppose that a combat resolution mechanics that are complex and have a signficant metagame component are at odds with, or at best orthogonal, to player control over the narrative. Whereas in my experience with 4e, they are one principal source of player control over the narrative.

If you didn't want to play a game in which combat is one of the principal focuses of conflict, and hence the combat mechanics one of the principal methods of resolving conflict, I don't think you'd choose 4e. (Not that it's non-combat resolution is shoddy - but if your focus was primarily on political or mercantile conflict, you'd have all this other combat-related stuff accreting to your character and your monsters that would not be relevant to your play.) The powers that the essay criticises are, in my experience, precisely the powers that facilitate the use of combat as a vehicle for expressing theme and resolving conflict.

So the player of a paladin, by choosing valiant strike (a "dissociated" power, as I noted upthread, though at-will rather than daily), gets to ensure that his/her PC will be valiant.

The GM, by placing a war devil, gets to ensure that at least one PC will be a foe of that devil who is besieged by devils.

The resolution of the combat will reflect these choices made by player and GM.

If I was a 4e designer wanting to emphasise this aspect of the game, I wouldn't be looking at mechanical changes (what's obviously missing are mechanically-expressed relationships - though some paragon paths approximate these - but introducing them would be a big deal, I think). I'd be looking at taking the discussion from Worlds and Monsters of the thematic significance of various sorts of monsters and planes, amping that up, and putting it into the core GMing guidelines. I really don't think that the game needs more mechanics at this point - it needs to do a better job of explaining, especially to GMs, how they can put what is there to work.

Robin Laws' contribution to DMG2 attempted this to an extent, but in my view suffered from being cribbed almost entirely from the HeroQuest rules, without being adapted to the different mechanical context of 4e - and especially 4e combat, which (unlike skill challenges) has very little in common with HeroQuest action resolution.

 

[pemerton]

Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.

This strikes me as obviously false. For example, as far as I know, no version of D&D has rules governing love, or the consequences of love (this is a difference from HeroQuest, for example, or The Riddle of Steel). Nevertheless I have played D&D games (and Rolemaster games, which in this respect resembles D&D) where romantic love has been a prominent part of the fiction, and manifestly has mattered.

Generalising: not all significant consequences in an RPG result from direct application of the action resolution mechanics.

what if the battle is taking place in a jungle (to be extreme) and the player declares there's a rug on the ground? Does that mean he genuinely believes that there are rugs in the jungle, or is he just throwing out an excuse so to speak to use the mechanic? And if he did make up a limp excuse, does that make it any less legitimate?

In HeroQuest, this issue is framed as a Credibility Test - with genre conventions as the starting point for adjudication, and with adjudication ultimately in the hands of the GM.

Introducing a similar sort of credibility test into the 4e action resolution mechanics for combat would be a houserule, but a fairly minor one in terms of complexity (obviously not necessarily minor in terms of implications for play!). The idea of a credibility test is already part of the skill challenge mechanics, although it's not framed in quite those terms (it's somewhere around p 75 of the DMG, I think).

The observer assigns 1 point any time one of the following occurs:

- a player invokes a game mechanic as a direct result of a perceived fiction (ie., enemy is standing on a rug, so I'd like to use a Str check to pull the rug out from under him)

- a player refrains from using a game mechanic, despite the mechanic being legitimate or even optimal, because the imagined effect is perceived as lacking plausibility (ie., a zombie knocking a hydra prone)

Does this tick your first box: the GM describes to a player how the player's PC notices his mortal enemy across the street, and the player responds by saying "Cool, I run across the street while drawing my sword to cut her down!"?

Does this tick your second box: a player expresses a desire to use a mechanical ability, someone at the table expresses some curiosity as to what in the fiction the ability represents, a brief discussion ensues, and the ability is then used?

As evidenced by their lack of ability to avoid that death blow as well as they could when they were fresher. And that works well enough for me.

Except that it's only a death blow because the character is low on hit points. Mechanically, it's just another roll of the old d8 damage die. What in the fiction does this damage roll correspond to. And what in the ficiton does this low hit point status correspond to? A liability to being killed by some indeterminate set of weapon strikes?

I'm not feeling the association.

Which is not to say that hit points are a metagame mechanic. But they're not a causal-process-simulationist one either.

In 4E terms, I suppose this would be a rogue power (or similar) that produces hit point "damage" on a target, but is:

1. Dependent on sneaking, trickery, or the like, and
2. Negated if the final attack misses.

this would seem to be an area where 4E is failing to pursue an avenue of its design that is unique to it.

It's getting there. The module in the Monster Vault outlines a social skill challenge to deal hit point damage to the solo at the end of the module.

 

[pemerton]

Double post.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Any fiction that is not permitted (by the rules) to have consequence does not matter.

This strikes me as obviously false. For example, as far as I know, no version of D&D has rules governing love, or the consequences of love

I think you extropolated the statement a bit out of context. Make love (not war) as much as you want.

In HeroQuest, this issue is framed as a Credibility Test - with genre conventions as the starting point for adjudication, and with adjudication ultimately in the hands of the GM.

I think I like the idea, as well as ThirdWizard's description of FATE Declarations, but if DMs can raise the DC as high as they want to effectively negate a fiction they don't want to exist (for "good" or "bad"), I don't see how it's any different than "old school" DM adjucation that some people enjoy being removed from.

Does this tick your first box: the GM describes to a player how the player's PC notices his mortal enemy across the street, and the player responds by saying "Cool, I run across the street while drawing my sword to cut her down!"?

No, I've decided I would cancel that scoring altogether, for the sake of a more rigorous methodology. If you move away into subjective assessments, then the thought experiment is swayed too much by the interpretation of the observer and the statistical noise of a multitude of scenarios.

Does this tick your second box: a player expresses a desire to use a mechanical ability, someone at the table expresses some curiosity as to what in the fiction the ability represents, a brief discussion ensues, and the ability is then used?

No, because the player didn't ultimately refrain from using the ability. The thought experiment would measure the tolerance limit for what is "too much disassociation" as perceived in actual gameplay by thousands of gaming groups over many gaming sessions, and the only way to rigorously measure is that is when you force a binary measurement of "did they do it, or did they not do it?".



Did anybody see my pen? It's a blue pen.