In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[Crazy Jerome]

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What's the difference between an "excuse" vs an "explanation"? Are we likely to read novels where rogues believe that Lady Luck allows him to maneuver opponents but once per day, and Mister Fate has separately declared the rogue's destiny to use a different ability (or produce a different outcome) once per day, and so forth? Is this the fate/destiny/luck version of the Vancian system?

The difference? The difference is one of credible adaption to different media versus too slavish adaptation. That is, if I am reading a novel with some before or after relation to a version of D&D, I'll take Raymond Feist, Steven Brust, or Leiber or Vance themselves. Their worst stuff is noticably better than the best slavish adaptations. And it is no accident that some of the better "system" novelist of D&D have felt the most free to diverge from the mechanics (e.g. Elaine Cunningham). There is also an example of the problem in reverse, where Ed Greenwood actually let his novels sink another notch in order to preserve a game conceit! (I forget the titles. The books were very forgettable. It was the ones where the characters were burning magic items all the time to power their spells.)

That is, given the choice between playing out something like a novel and then reading a faithful report of it, or playing out something like an RPG session and then reading an adapation to the a novel of it--I'd pick the latter every time--on both counts. I think that not only will the novel be better to read, but the game will be more fun to play. YMMV on the game side, and I can see why it would. From a critical perspective, though, I think practical history thus far has born out my conclusions on the novel.

 

[pemerton]

I find that 'disassociated mechanics' is already contentious enough and prone to cyclical discussions, thus trying to relate that to any one's definition of 'roleplaying' (which you keep trying to do) is so fraught with danger of fragmenting into infinite sub-threads, that I prefer to abstain from it.

Maybe there's some difference of perspective here. The notion of "dissociated mechanics", as far as I know, has no general currency in RPG design discussions other than the essay from the Alexandrian cited in the OP.

And the whole point of that essay is to characterise "dissociated mechanics" by reference to their adverse effect on roleplaying. That is what the alleged "dissociation" consists in.

This has been reiterated, in this thread, by Beginning of the End.

It is precisely this aspect of the notion of "dissociated mechanics" that makes them contentious. If an essay had been written about the use of metagame mechanics in 4e it wouldn't be contentious, but the author presumably wouldn't write such an essay, because without the (pseudo-)notion of "dissociation" there wouldn't be a starting point for a series of characterisations of 4e as a tactical skirmish game whose skirmishes are linked by improv drama, etc.

That's just utterly absurd to me. I don't care what the writer's biases are. I'm saying dissociated mechanics obviously exist.

<snip>

This really doesn't matter to me. I really don't mind you being upset that someone took an obvious shot at your game. His article basically says, however, that mechanics that do not have reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game pull you out of role you're playing. This will not be true for everyone, obviously -general, blanket statements are always bad - but it is true for many. Even a few posting in this thread.

I think my response to this is to repeat Crazy Jerome and chaochou's points from way upthread: if so-called dissociated mechanics are defined in terms of the effect they have on some particular players' RPing experience, then any mechanic is potentially dissociated, because who knows what effect it might have on some or other player.

Conversely, if we're talking about metagame mechanics, than the claim that they have some general, or even interesting, tendency to impede roleplaying is highly controversial, and denied at least by me.

The claim that 4e has some interesting category of mechanics that can't be learned or reasoned about ingame is itself obviously contentious, as Third Wizard's posts have shown by implication, and as wrecan's post shows explicitly. For example, a rogue's fencing skill, which Trick Strike exemplifies, obviously is learnable in the gameworld - after all, the rogue learned it - s/he wasn't born with a rapier in hand!

I don't dispute that 4e has metagame mechanics - this is obvious, and I've been one of the main posters on these boards over the past three years discussing this aspect of 4e, and the influence of contemporary RPG design that it obviously reflects.

I don't dispute that some RPGers don't like games with metagame mechanics in general, or don't like 4e's metagame mechanics in particular. And that for some of them, it's because they find it hard to roleplay, or to enjoy roleplaying, in a game that has such mechanics.

But it doesn't follow from this that there is an interesting category of mechanics, which 4e possesses in some distinctive fashion, and which have any general or interesting tendency to impede roleplaying. And which are therefore "dissociated" in some interesting fashion.

It can be quite interesting to reflect on the way different games, with different mechanics, seem naturally to fit with the adoption of various stances. What does using the notion of "dissociation" - ie a contentious and disputed claim that some particular mechanics are at odds with roleplaying - add to the discussion? Or to our analytic vocabulary?

 

[Yesway Jose]

The only time a daily power is truly daily, is when the player is fighting in meaningful combat. Now, 4e is designed for 30 levels, each level having about 10 encounters (which will include skill challenges, puzzles, quests). But, at most, a character will have at most 300 meaningful combats over his entire career, but more likely to be about 200-250. These encounters are designed to be about 4-5/day, possibly less. So that's only 60-75 adventuring days, but most likely only about 40 adventuring days with multiple encounters per day. (Those days are spread can be spread out over months, years, or decades of travel, research, recuperation, and other downtime.)

Thank you. As someone who has been struggling with this, your post is the most beneficial at explaining it at a level that means something to me. All other reasons haven't addressed this 'big picture' pattern. If the above is true, then it explains the difference between how the mechanics read vs how they play out in practice.

Then again, I wrote earlier, for myself, 1/day on its own was not a gamebreaker. I'm not yet satisfied about Hypnotism, marking oozes, zombies knocking hydras prone, come and get it, etc. and I am more interested in the sumtotal experiene of these and other 'diassociations'.

But one step at a time (still catching up on all the other new posts)...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It can be quite interesting to reflect on the way different games, with different mechanics, seem naturally to fit with the adoption of various stances. What does using the notion of "dissociation" - ie a contentious and disputed claim that some particular mechanics are at odds with roleplaying - add to the discussion? Or to our analytic vocabulary?

Can't XP you right now. Everything you said was right on the money, especially this last bit, considering that "pull you out of a role you are playing" already has a useful and long accepted term--immersion. I think people conceded that 4E has many elements that were anti-immersion from about 90 days prior to launch.

 

[pemerton]

We can and have talked about stances. They are useful to distinguish core activities during discussion. However, I think it is a mistake to take the distinct parts of a discussion as somehow always distinct in reality. You can talk about water and dirt, but the mixture has a quality that is very distinct from each element in isolation, for many purposes (not all, of course).

Agreed. This is, as I understand it, the same (or very closely related) point to that which I was trying to make with my example, upthread, of the decision as to whether or not to jump over the edge of the Rift in G2.

I think that there is a certain logic to the tendency of D&D mechanics - hit points, daily powers, etc - to blur the line between adopting Actor stance and Author or Director stance. It makes the players advocacy for the character crystal clear. And it helps with D&D's tradition of having a fairly strong simulationist chassis to support other agendas for play.

I read the above, and the first thing that springs to mind is that you are telling me that things that happen at my table do not happen.

<snip>

My opinion, is that a person who doesn't get that style of what we do well enough to include it in their analysis has a fatal gap in their understanding that prevents them from defining roleplaying as it actually practiced by people. (There may be other gaps, including some that I share. I wouldn't know about those. We are talking "necessary" here, not "sufficient.") Furthermore, it is difficult for those of us practicing this different style to convey it to people who insist, as a starting point to all such discussions, that it does not exist.

Notice, from a strictly discussion analysis, that our position is much less ambitious. We only claim that something we do, happens as we say it does. This says nothing about what others do.

You can say politely, "Play what you like." You can't politely say, "Play what you like, but when you play what you like, you aren't playing what you think you are." It is difficult to define hard boundaries for roleplaying and not run that risk.

100% agreed.

This really captures what I find frustrating about the Alexandrian's essay, about the notion of "dissociated mechanics", and about many discussions of 4e on these boards. Instead of looking to see what the mechanics actually do, and how they are used by those who use them, the analysis begins with an assumption that 4e play must be at a lower level, or that these mechanics must be compensating for some other lack, or be a second-best solution to some "problem" that serious roleplayers would deal with in a superior fashion.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Then again, I wrote earlier, for myself, 1/day on its own was not a gamebreaker. I'm not yet satisfied about Hypnotism, marking oozes, zombies knocking hydras prone, come and get it, etc. and I am more interested in the sumtotal experiene of these and other 'diassociations'.

Just a note here on this. Even if you suddenly adopted/embraced this style of play that some of us are discussing, it is likely that a few elements would always remain unsatisfying in this manner. I suspect that there are very few, if any, people for whom there are no such elements.

This relates back to what I talked about earlier, where as each element is integrated into the fiction in a way that the table can accept, decisions are made, and this cuts off some future avenues. What typically happens is that you end up with a handful of things that simply won't fit, unless you go back and revisit the earlier decisions. (And if you do that, then something else won't fit.)

Not infrequently, though, the last few elements that don't fit are likely to be things you don't like, anyway. I don't much care for tieflings, but for our game, it isn't merely dislike. Other decisions we have made have tended to not leave a coherent space for something like tieflings. And if we did make a space for them, it would be semi-parody.

 

[Yesway Jose]

It is precisely this aspect of the notion of "dissociated mechanics" that makes them contentious. If an essay had been written about the use of metagame mechanics in 4e it wouldn't be contentious, but the author presumably wouldn't write such an essay, because without the (pseudo-)notion of "dissociation" there wouldn't be a starting point for a series of characterisations of 4e as a tactical skirmish game whose skirmishes are linked by improv drama, etc.

So what definition would you apply to the question of "This is the story I want to tell, and do I think these mechanics help or hinder me telling the story I want to tell?"

 

[pemerton]

Another semi-random factoid: 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.

I'm sure that player, or one of the other players in my game, could find interesting things to make out of the war devil's Beseiged Foe power, too.

 

[pemerton]

So what definition would you apply to the question of "This is the story I want to tell, and do I think these mechanics help or hinder me telling the story I want to tell?"

Personally, I don't think that there is any useful technical (or semi-technical) characterisation of such mechanics, because what they are and how they will work will vary from group to group and game to game.

I mean, when I GMed Rolemaster I made the mechanics work for me, even though there are very few metagame mechanics in that ruleset.

And now that I GM 4e I make its mechanics work for me, including the very many metagame mechanics it has.

But I don't think that the fact that I can make both sets of mechanics work for me doesn't mean that they have anything more fundamental in common, from the perspective of RPG design. The way I used them was pretty different, precisely because of their differences.

As to how the metagame mechanics that are found in 4e work for me, I've tried to describe that in a lengthy reply to a couple of your ealier posts about 15 or so posts up.

 

[Yesway Jose]

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."

If I acted the paladin character, I might wonder after the battle:
1) Whenever an evil caster turns me into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn me back to normal a minute later?
2) When an evil caster turns someone else into a frog, will the Raven Queen always turn them back to normal a minute later?
3) If an evil caster affects me with another foul spell, will the Raven Queen save me too, or does she only help with frog-related spells?
4) If (gods forbid!) I ever fell out of the Queen's favor, will she still save me? Would I be a frog forever? Or would I revert to normal after a minute whether or not I have the Queen's favor?
5) If I seek a wizard for advice, will he laugh and sing: What's the Raven Queen got to do with, got to do with it...?

The player's narration was nice for that moment, but it's still 'disassociated' from the big picture.

I DO respect players contributing to the narrative and making it more interesting and imaginative world. I just don't know that ad hoc narratives make the entire story plausible and consistent enough that resolves concerns of 'disassociation' for everyone else, except to those who are already on board.