In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[pemerton]

I think that's a bit of an awful judgement value. Like I wrote, most people in my experience just announce "I attack with ____" and roll a die. I do it all the time myself. Are you calling all of us Boring Joe?

Not at all. Presumably you're imagining and contributing to the fiction - saying where your PC is moving, who it is attacking, with what, etc.

In 4e, the player of the thief who says "I use Trick Strike against X" is also contributing to the narrative - because s/he is now brining it about that her/his PC will engage, and be more likely to prevail, in a particularly showy duel with X. And subsequent play will bring this about in the fiction - eg the player will explain where her PC is shifting X to - which is part of the narrative.

Which is why I disagree with the Alexandrian essay that 4e's martial daily powers are not narrative control powers.

In my personal view, if nothing else ever turns on this - if X isn't, as an enemy of the PC, in some fashion integrated into the fiction in some deeper fashion, and if the PC being an impressive duelist doesn't ramify through the game in any deeper way - then it's probably not a game I'm that interested in playing. When those sorts of connections are in play - and nothing about 4e prevents them, and many aspects of it in my view encourage them - then I think that the narrative starts to have significant implications, direct and indirect, for future mechanical resolution, and either bigger implications for future encounter building by the GM.

But even a narrative that is just confined to the drama of each individual combat, with no broader ramifications through the game, is still a narative - to which the player contributes in part by choosing when to use daily powers.

Again, this is restricted to standard combat actions, not page 42, not skill challenges, not roleplaying romances. Perhaps if you didn't extrapolate so much, and stayed within the original context, then the point would be more obvious.

Well, what you see as extrapolation I see as full contextualisation. After all, page 42 is a key part of 4e's combat resolution mechanics, so even standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42, and feed into it. And romances (or emnities, or whatever) are going to be central, presumably, to a lot of encounter set ups, and thereby provide the context in which it becomes meaningful for the players to makes choices about using their daily powers.

There is a picture of 4e that is pushed fairly strongly in the Alexandrian's essay, which in my experience bears no relation to the way the game plays, or the way the rulebooks present the game. (The adventures published by WotC are, in most cases, a different matter.) Part of that picture is that 4e is a series of roleplaying-and-narrative-free skirmishs linked together by improv drama. This is what I'm disagreeing with.

 

[pemerton]

Why do I feel as if you're being purposefully argumentative on this subject?

Well, if by "purposefully argumenative" you mean "knowingly disagreeing", then you'd be right.

The reason I disagree is that I do not accept that an association between a mechanic and the fiction can be created without telling me what the relevant element of the fiction actually is. So you don't create an association between the Evasion mechanic, and the gameworld, simply by telling me that when a sleeping rogue evades a fireball, s/he is using a learnable EX ability. I want to be told - what ability is she using? How? In paticular, how does she do it while sleeping? Without waking up?

If your answer is that she phases, then my response is, What the hell is this non-magical phasing?

At which point the debate is no different from the debate about knocking a snake or an ooze prone. Suddenly "magic" doesn't have its ordinary meaning, but is a term of art (like "prone" in 4e). And suddenly Evasion means a range of different things, including phasing, in different circumstances - just like knocking something prone. And we get other parallel questions to, like Why can't the rogue phase through walls?

4e's answer to all these questions is that its mechanics are metagame (or, if you prefer, "dissociated")? What is 3E's answer?

If there is some tie from the mechanics to reasoning in-game, than it's not the case. The reasoning in-game must be able to be learned, explored, or observed, as far as I can tell.

<snip>

It doesn't really need to strike you as a very powerful association. If there is a tie to something in-game related to the mechanic that is able to be learned, explored, or observed, than it's not dissociative, as far as I can tell.

Well, as I've said, in my view you don't show that the mechanic relates to something in the gameworld until you've actually told me what is happening in the gameworld.

Why? If someone overturned Gauss's proof today, and exhibited a means to square the circle, would you study the proof?

No. I'm not a mathematician. But given that no such proof exists, I remain confident that circles can't be squared.

Is the D&D gameworld meant to be different in all these respects from the real world? I've always assumed not.

High-level characters who fall long distances don't die. It's experimentally verifiable. If it's luck, it's reliable, consistent luck.

Well, this is where I play my game very differently. Plot protection isn't experimentally verifiable by the protagonists of a story, because it is a phenomenon that exists only at the meta-level.

Again, others may play differently. I'm not really interested in playing that way, though. (It also raises other questions, like - what is the relationship between the luck conferred by hit points, and the luck that can be conferred ingame by spells, items etc?)

The PC can't assume that they're a 1 HD creature. The PC may not know with a mechanic certainty that they can survive a dragon's breath, but they aren't going to do a frontal assault of a dragon if they can't.

But what does "1 HD" even mean here? Does it refer to skill? Meat?

The PCs know they're more skilled than the aveage villager. The fighters know they're also tougher than the average villager. But do they know that they're less vulnerable to physical punishment than the typical elephant? I've always played the game under the assumption that the PCs don't know this, and that the players' knowledge of this is metagame knowledge.

 

[JamesonCourage]

That's fine, I was just helping out. The post you wrote "If whether or not something is dissociated is based on if it can be learned, explored, or observed in-game". You left out "reasoning". People will attack you for it if you leave out a word like that.

True enough. I appreciate your help, honestly. So many people get caught up in semantics rather than intent sometimes that you're probably correct to point this out.

EDIT: Although you do realize this circles back all the way back to the bottom of page 1 of this thread?

Yeah. Lost Soul is a reasonable guy, and I agree with that post, to an extent. I don't think it's as character-based as the post makes it seem. I think it's more setting-based. I mean, wolves can't really reason much out, but attack rolls are dissociated for them, in my mind.

Anyways, I like your posts, too. Thanks for constructively contributing to the discussion.

As always, play what you like

 

[pemerton]

But Justin didn't claim that about Trick Strike any more than he said it about dissociated mechanics in general. So your re-trenching here still isn't true.

<snip>

I see you've got even more misquotes and misrepresentations in subsequent messages

I notice that when I correct your misinterpretation of what I said I'm "retrenching", and when I - in your view - misinterpret Alexander's essay (or is it your essay?- for some reason I had the impression that you are Justin Alexander), I'm "misrepresenting".

No doubt you are a very virtuous reader and writer, and I a very malicious one.

In any event, I deny that I have misquoted. All the text I have attributed to the essay is found within it. I also do not believe that my ellipses have in any material way distorted or misrepresented the content of what I am quoting.

The essay actually says the exact opposite of that. He likes the tactical skrimish elements of D&D.

Yes. I've read the essay. And I never said that the author does not like the tactical skirmish elements of AD&D or 3E.

But the essay denies that the tactical skirmish elements of 4e contribute to roleplaying, or support the game as roleplaying game.

Tell me - in what way is the following not an attack upon 4e for being a tactical skirmish game rather than an RPG?

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.

At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game. When the characters' relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts.

You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics that you're using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world -- and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook.

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 accidentally. . .

Games are fun. But games don't require roles. 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.​

For the same reasons that choosing when to use your clue tokens in Arkham Horror isn't a narrative mechanic.

I believe that Arkahm Horror is a boardgame.

How is the player getting to determine that, against this particular foe, I will have a dramatic duel that is more likely to be successful than my other duels in the fight, no more narrative control than playing a boardgame?

That's right - because 4e is just like playing chess except giving my rook a funny name!

You are not roleplaying when you grab a fistful of Cheetos and stuff 'em in your mouth.

You are not roleplaying when you get up from the table to hit the head.

You are not roleplaying when you stack your dice.

You are not roleplaying when you need to jump start your car because you left the headlights on.

I don't want to do any misreading or misrepresenting. So I'll just ask - how is the nature of urinating, eating or driving remotely relevant to thinking about whether or not a player using 4e martial dailies is roleplaying?

 

[JamesonCourage]

Well, if by "purposefully argumenative" you mean "knowingly disagreeing", then you'd be right.

Nope, not what I meant at all. I meant it exactly as I said it. You can disagree without argument. I tend to think of that as a method of constructively discussing something. It feels, to me, that in some of your posts, that you're arguing, rather than discussing.

The reason I disagree is that I do not accept that an association between a mechanic and the fiction can be created without telling me what the relevant element of the fiction actually is. So you don't create an association between the Evasion mechanic, and the gameworld, simply by telling me that when a sleeping rogue evades a fireball, s/he is using a learnable EX ability.

I'll assume that we're pretending it's not dissociated in this discussion.

I want to be told - what ability is she using?

Evasion.

How?

The rogue learned the technique.

In paticular, how does she do it while sleeping?

The technique, once learned, allows the subject to phase out when certain conditions are met (such as area attacks).

Without waking up?

It does not require conscious thought.

If your answer is that she phases, then my response is, What the hell is this non-magical phasing?

It's an ability that is not magical in nature that breaks the natural laws of the world. Most laymen within the setting might indeed think it's magic. It, however, is not technically magic. It is a fantastical ability within a fantasy setting. Do you at least grasp the concept being presented? If you do, I'll expand on it more if you have questions. If you don't, I do not think I can put it any more plainly.

If the evasion ability is not explained within the setting yet still allows for the mechanic to be utilized, it's dissociated.

At which point the debate is no different from the debate about knocking a snake or an ooze prone. Suddenly "magic" doesn't have its ordinary meaning, but is a term of art (like "prone" in 4e).

Magic in D&D means something magical. It does not mean supernatural, as the term is normally used. If, in 4e, prone does not mean prone in the traditional sense, then those terms would have something in common.

And suddenly Evasion means a range of different things, including phasing, in different circumstances - just like knocking something prone. And we get other parallel questions to, like Why can't the rogue phase through walls?

It depends on the technique in question. If it's only against area attacks, it could not then be used to move through walls (unless the wall was making an area attack). It cannot be used consciously.

If you're trying to make me defend a dissociative mechanic, then let's talk about barbarian rages. Of course, I'll say that they're dissociated unless they're given fluff in-game that notes otherwise. As, as far as I can tell, that's the definition of what's dissociative and what isn't.

4e's answer to all these questions is that its mechanics are metagame (or, if you prefer, "dissociated")? What is 3E's answer?

If 4e's answer is that its mechanics are metagame, than they are indeed dissociative. If 3e does not have reasonable in-game explanations, than those mechanics are dissociative. Why you think I'm attacking 4e, or even defending 3e, is beyond me.

Some people in this thread have said they don't believe in dissociative mechanics. I think that's obviously false. Now, people are saying, "other editions have them too!" That's obviously true. It seems as if 4e embraced them, while other editions merely used them. It rubbed some people the wrong way. Your mileage varied.

I don't get why you're trying to make me defend any particular mechanic. I have no problem admitting that mechanics are dissociated pre-4e. As I told Hussar when he brought up this same thing, I never said that there aren't dissociated mechanics in 3e, much less in other editions. I'm even of the opinion that all abilities, even dailies, can become associated if they're explained in-game, though I expressed a problem this presents to some people.

Well, as I've said, in my view you don't show that the mechanic relates to something in the gameworld until you've actually told me what is happening in the gameworld.

I'm pretty sure that's been covered. Again, this seems overly argumentative. I have very little interest in argument. If you'd like to discuss the topic, I'd find that interesting.

As always, play what you like

 

[MrGrenadine]

[sblock=Hussar's post]

But, we're playing a role playing game that takes place during a football game. There is no "referee", only the people around the table playing the game. The referee can't make an error in judgment, since he doesn't exist.

So, we need some sort of mechanic that adds in (well, maybe not need, but, work with me here) a "game changing bad call" to the game since many football games exhibit this thing. Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature.

About the closest you could get to an associated mechanic would be to have a Referee NPC with some sort of perception ability and then assign some sort of stealth rating to every rules infraction. Possible but extremely cumbersome. Particularly since we're not really concerned with minor infractions that get missed, and, well, trying to introduce yet another mechanic that would simulate infractions being committed is just adding yet more complexity.

It's possible to do, but, very, very cumbersome.

Another option, and pretty much completely disassociated from the in game fiction would be to have "bad call" occur randomly. Let the dice gods decide. Charts and tables govern when and how bad the call is. Again, this works (and Rolemaster comes to mind here, as well as GURPS) but it's slow and often leads to somewhat illogical results because of the vagaries of the dice.

A third option would be to have the DM rule by fiat when the referee makes a bad call. Again, possible, but problematic for the reasons I outlined earlier.

A fourth option is to allow the players to decide when the bad call occurs, but turn it into a player resource so that they have to choose when the bad call happens. Make a bad choice and you won't have that resource available later.

If you want to add in bad calls to the football game RPG, you have to design mechanics that will allow them to be added. Which version you use will depend on all sorts of criteria. If you want the most clearly associated mechanics, the first version will work, but, it's going to be a bear. You have to accept that it's going to slow the game down.

OTOH, the least associated mechanics - Player Chooses - is probably the fastest and simplest one. Not necessarily the best, depending on your criteria, but, certainly the one that will resolve the fastest.

It might be inconsistent with the rules of football, but, it is not inconsistent for the rules of FootBall The RPG.

[/sblock]

Aha! I see now. Interesting. I'm not sure how the concept of "bad calls" relates to the PC power structure in 4e, but I'll take a stab at commenting. Full disclosure--I'm no expert on football or dissociated mechanics, so someone jump in if anything I say doesn't make sense.

[sblock=Football the RPG assumptions]Just to make sure we're working under the same assumptions--Football the RPG follows the same rules as American football, in a world with real-world physics, and either each of the 22 players on the field is a PC, or the two PCs are the coaches, and the players are NPC henchmen. The ref, umpire, head linesman, and various other judges are NPCs.

So, in a game with coach PCs, I guess the 4e version would at least involve coaches choosing different plays and defensive set ups (stances?) from a list, and then using the interaction of the choices and die rolls to calculate success/failure resulting in yardage forward/back. Sounds fun.[/sblock]

Early in your post you state "Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic [for bad calls] we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature", and right off the bat I have to disagree. Even though there's no live ref, (controlled by a player), there is an NPC ref (or seven officials total) on the field, and we can easily assign them qualities that can be used to determine all sorts of actions and reactions. Also, the first of your examples is associated.

[sblock=Your options]
1) Perception/stealth checks. This seems associated to me, too, although I agree its certainly not an elegant solution. I can see adding stealth ratings to players, modified by how many others players are adjacent, referee LOS, the type of infraction, how many times the infraction is attempted, etc.

2) Random die rolls to determine if a bad call happens, and charts to determine results. I see how this is dissociated, since it doesn't have anything to do with whats happening on the field, (or more specifically, what choices the PCs are making on the field).

3) DM fiat. I also think this is dissociated for the same reason as option 2and a bad choice, since nothing so game changing should be decided by fiat!

4) Player resource. Dissociated. As an example, each coach gets a "bad call" card to play which turns a call from "against" to "for". The card can be used once per game.[/sblock]

Given your options, you concluded you would choose option 4, which is dissociated, but would resolve the fastest.

And given that, I have to ask--is that what this is all about? How fast something is resolved in-game? Because your pref (option 4) is definitely resolved quicker, no argument there, but in terms of 4e (which I play every week) I'm not seeing the dissociated mechanics speeding anything up significantly. During combat, I'm seeing a lot of searching lists of powers, reading definitions of conditions, marking and re-marking PCs or NPCs, resolving attacks that affect multiple enemies or an area after making sure all modifiers--which may be different for every target--are present and accounted for, etc etc.

Fun, it is! But not elegant or speedy. I'm sure we can think up some specific dissociated mechanics that are elegant and fast, though, just as I'm sure that we could think of a few quickly resolved associated ones, but although fast resolution is a huge plus to me, too, the issue, as far as I'm concerned, isn't about speed of play.

My preference for associated mechanics has more to do with the feel of the game world, and how the characters fit into that world. As mentioned earlier, I like PC/NPC behavior and the game-world's physical laws to be observable, consistent, and reliable, and there's no reason that a mechanic can't preserve that and be elegant.


So in the case of Football the RPG and bad play calls, I would assign each official a bad call rating of some sort, based on the rate that bad calls occur in real football. If a real football game averages about 120 plays, we have 120 opportunities for a blown call. Based on 2 bad calls a game, thats about 1.6%.

So, if an average official has basically a 2% chance of botching a call, then after every play we roll percent dice to see if the nearest official got the call right. That seems associated to me. (This doesn't resolve blatant fouls, or cheating, especially between plays--but I think for those cases you're back to stealth and perception checks.)

And if rolling d% after every play is too much, then maybe just roll once for each official per quarter. A roll of 01 or 02 means that official will botch a call that quarter--and then you'd need some sort of mechanic to figure out which call. And if you wanted to make it more associated (and complex), you could modify the roll based on distance from the play, how many players are involved, the type of play, etc.


In any case, I'm just always going to prefer an associated mechanic based on the official's abilities and the physical laws of the world, over the more gamist "player chooses" mechanic. Playing a "bad call" card on an opponent's successful game-winning hail mary pass with no time on the clock would be fun, sure--at least for one team--but forcing that to happen when needed, although dramatic, lacks the feel I'm looking for in an RPG.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting?

Adrenaline. And the same way I'd explain the pulling out the stops only at the end of a film.

This can be problematic to people that want to play classes purely based in the mundane (even if their capabilities exceed mundane capabilities).

That they pick specific powers that don't fit their character concept is indeed a problem. I don't see that offering powers that do not fit all possible character concepts and relying on the players to built to their concept is one.

Why? If someone overturned Gauss's proof today, and exhibited a means to square the circle, would you study the proof?

In much the same way I would if they demonstrated water was made up of Helium and Potassium. Someone has just changed the laws of the universe without informing me.

Cool. You disagree with a lot of 4E fans. That is a good thing.

Find me those 4e fans. 4e critics, certainly. But find me the fans. There may be a few. But I have ssen no evidence that it's lots. Now people leaving 4e after Encounters is a different story. Encounters is Lowest-Common-Denominator 4e that is all about the combat.

There is no value in debating personal preference.

Agreed with the exception of trying to understand where the other person is coming from. Which is why things concentrate on the combat system that's overwhelmingly different. And it is my belief that this is what gives you the IME mistaken impression that it's just the tactical that matters to 4e fans.

I'm glad we both have games we like.

Agreed.

 

[ThirdWizard]

This is an excellent point, but also, there are some things that I, personally cannot justify in 4e. I've tried (maybe not hard enough, I'll grant you...my 4e DM is better at it than I am) but I've failed.


How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense.

But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.

In thinking about this, I have perhaps several implied assumptions that aren't universal, which is difficult to convey, because in my mind they are implied. I don't consciously think about them. For example, perhaps something important, although I'm not sure, is that in my implied narrative, the martial character is just fighting. They take advantage of situations that come up better than non-martial characters in many cases, but for the most part, they aren't concously using any "abilities" - this term would have no meaning for the character.

So, to the character, it isn't that once per day they can use Trick Strike which does... you know I've forgotten at this point. But, the use of the "ability" is just their natural ebb and flow of the battlefield, how they react to situations that come up every once in a while - not too often but often enough. To them, an opening has shown itself, whether that be an opponent tripping, a quick feint, a distraction, or whatever. To them, that's just how they fight.

So, there is no explaination for daily powers within the setting. Within the setting, they don't exist. They are a construct. The fact that you can describe Trick Strike twenty ways in twenty uses helps with this. The character has no clue they are using a "daily power" because to them they simply aren't. There's nothing observable about the game mechanics in character.

I guess this is wildly different than how some people play, and how I actually used to play, where the game mechanics define the physics of the world. The mechanics, in that sense, are all observable to people living in the game world under that viewpoint. This is a different way of looking at the game, where the rules of the game arent' necessarily reflected in what the characters see around them.

 

[BryonD]

On this, he disagrees with the concept of "4E fans" that is apparently sometimes projected onto the whole body from a fairly small and, not infrequently, misread sample.

"I can find examples of" != "a lot of". Not even if you look at the sample with your biases raging full bore.

Shrug.

I'm not saying "I can find examples of". I'm saying this is, or at least has been, an extremely typical position in discussion after discussion.

A more appropriate statement would be "the great majority" != "everyone". And I don't remotely dispute that. But I'm talking about the audience as a whole and the fact that I readily accepted NC as not being in that group should clearly demonstrate that.

Of course there have also been several more recent examples of 4E fans being offended when terms that used to be considered rallying crys of the new edition are used to describe it. So this fits right in to the evolution.

 

[BryonD]

Find me those 4e fans. 4e critics, certainly. But find me the fans. There may be a few. But I have ssen no evidence that it's lots.

No, I'm sorry but that is the position that comes from FANS.

Now people leaving 4e after Encounters is a different story. Encounters is Lowest-Common-Denominator 4e that is all about the combat.

HA!!!!

This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system. You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.

I guarantee you there are people who reject your characterization of essentials just as vehemently as you reject other people's view of 4E.

And I accept that all these views can be reasonable opinions. But it seems something of a double standard coming from you.

(And just to clarify, I personally don't think 4E is nearly that bad. I just think there are other games that are a whole lot better. So if Essentials is the default approach going forward for new material, and you see it is "Least-Common-Denominator", then you may be a bigger "H4TER" than me. )

Agreed with the exception of trying to understand where the other person is coming from. Which is why things concentrate on the combat system that's overwhelmingly different. And it is my belief that this is what gives you the IME mistaken impression that it's just the tactical that matters to 4e fans.

It is my knowledge of the system and routinely repeated comments from actual fans that led me to my correct assessment of the overall position. And I don't claim this is at all limited to the combat system, that is just the easiest talking point.

I embrace the idea that there are exceptions.




totally unrelated:
I initially typoed Least-Common-Denominator as Least-Common-Demoninator.
There's gotta be an idea buried in there somewhere.