In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some inherent tendency to produce that result. And I am showing that by instancing counterexamples to any such alleged tendency.
Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.

If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from.

If you're playing a pure abstract game, there is 100% disassociation because there is no fiction. However, you could also say that there is zero disassociation, because there's no story to be disassociated from.

I think it may be impossible to prove that a mechanic has any inherent property for disassociation, because your definition is entirely dependant on which position you're looking from.
 

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Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.

If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from.

If you're playing a pure abstract game, there is 100% disassociation because there is no fiction. However, you could also say that there is zero disassociation, because there's no story to be disassociated from.

I think it may be impossible to prove that a mechanic has any inherent property for disassociation, because your definition is entirely dependant on which position you're looking from.

Seems to me like you made Pemerton's point for him.
 


What's farcical about that? If the characters decide that's a trade-off they're willing to make, then why shouldn't they do that?

I don't get it. If my character has the capacity to send his opponents reeling through a wall of fire, he's going to do that. If the mechanics say I can do that and you think I shouldn't, then there's something wrong with the mechanics, not the players.

That's why I said for the ping pong example, I'm only guessing. I wasn't there. We don't have a lot of information. Whereas, with the druid example, I was there. I know it was farce and tactical skirmish gaming because the players were very overt about it. They discussed it in metagaming terms before they did it. And it was about 2:00 A.M., which for us was the usual time for the silly stuff to come out. Plus, the play was noticable different before that level, and noticabley different the next morning when we picked up again. That is, the players wanted to play it as farce and skirmish--so they did. I just went along for the ride, because, hey, it was 2:00 A.M. :D I don't know that the ping pong example was like that. I'm guessing that it might be.

As for whether there is anything wrong with that or not, as far as I'm concerned, it is all social contract. The social contract at our table is you can do things like that at times. It might be interesting or funny or a change of pace or any number of things. However, if you start repeating it as a standard tactic, then it is the worst of all possible gaming instances--supremely boring for a story point of view. We don't expect any system to fully protect us from ourselves on that count. YMMV. If someone wants to play a game as a tactical skirmish game, then story boring is often a positive aspect--or at least a necessary evil to avoid disputes.
 

I assume "disassociation" must be a relative measure. Thus "disassociated mechanics" is staking your claim from the fiction, and, say, "disassociated narrative" is staking your claim from the rules. The 1st cannot be objectively true because the fiction is as true as you think it should be. The 2nd cannot be objectively true because rules change (official playtests, official updates, houserules and new editions). We can argue about what could be subjectively true = a rule removed from a fiction, or a fiction removed from a rule, and I think that's what we have been doing (ping pong wall of flames, falling 200', hit points, hypnotism, 1/day trick strike, and soooo much more) and that's OK. I don't know exactly how this relates to the essay, and I don't care... subjectively, of course :)
 
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Perhaps there is a logician on this forum who can corroborate, but I think your agenda is untenable.

If you're telling a pure narrative in which whatever you say is true, there is zero "disassociation" because there are no mechanics. However, you can could also say that there is 100% disassociation, because there are no mechanics to be disassociated from...

I'm enough of a logician to answer that. :D The Alexandrian claim is mechanic X is disassociative inherently. (He doesn't say it that plainly, but unless you back away to something more tenable, as Jameson has, then that's what the essay demands.) He then goes on to set some parameters for that.

Pemerton, following the parameters thus established, has claimed that at his table, mechanic X was used with no disassociation. Therefore, the mechanic is not inherently disassociative. He has not claimed, in this part of his argument, that no one using the mechanic could ever honestly report disassociation.

That is, because the Alexandrian has made a strong claim, all that is necessary to dispute parts of it is to provide counter examples. Since that is manifestly true, a great deal of the sturm and drang surrounding counter examples is teasing out exactly what happens.

There is thus the side issue of how much reported evidence from participants to take at face value. This is highly embedded into the dispute from the get go, because it is fairly clear that the Alexandrian and some of his "evangelists" could not permit counter evidence to be presented without disputing the reports. This distinguishes them from some of the more thoughtful discussion that has often occurred in this topic. But since our discussion comes after a lot of sturm and drang, good faith has to be repeatedly affirmed.

Given all that, then, there is separate but more difficult argument about whether there is any meaningful concept occurring to attach the label "disassociated" to, outside of other related terms, such as metagaming and abstraction. And if so, what is its nature and scope? Pemerton, Wrecan, I, and others have intuited that there is not--because no one advocating that there is has yet shown us a scope or nature for the term that we agree falls outside of those other related terms.

But it is granted up front that the latter claim is mainly negative. We intuit that there is no such scope, because all such evidence presented for it thus far--by people presumably trying their best--fails to persuade us. As such, it is a much weaker claim than Pemerton's first claim. I don't think Big Foot exists. If you produce him tomorrow, my thinking is shot. If I don't think something like Kevlar can be produced--a few years ago, I got a nasty surprise. Such are all negative claims.

The first claim is a lot more threatening to the "theory", in part because once it is established, people start talking more reasonably around the second one. There is a sense in which we can't even talk seriously with the OP or Jameson or you until all that underbrush is cleared out. You'll note that BotE works really hard to make sure that the underbrush keeps growing.
 

I'm enough of a logician to answer that. :D The Alexandrian claim is mechanic X is disassociative inherently. (He doesn't say it that plainly, but unless you back away to something more tenable, as Jameson has, then that's what the essay demands.)
Mechanic x is disassociated inherently from what?

I googled "disassociated inherently" and "dissociated inherently" and "inherently disassociated" and "inherently dissociated" and few/nobody seems to be using this term.

EDIT: and googling "inherently associated" seems to always appears as "inherently associated with..." or "inherently associated to..."

LOL, I feel like a poster boy for arguing about game theory essay that I wasn't really here for
 
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You've misread the definition.

The Alexandrian claim is that "Mechanic X inherently produces dissociation in [all] players; it is thus a dissociative mechanic; this is bad."
The essay states: "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world". Which definition of dissociation are you using?
 

IMO, with all due respect, I think some of you are being a little silly.

Does anybody know if
- the essay is a formal logical theorem
- you're applying rigorous logic to something that isn't
- the definition of disassociation or dissociation
- what mechanic x is (dis)associated to or with
- what is meant by an inherent property of a mechanic

The essay states "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have no association with the game world".

The only thing that is defined is the mechanic, as written in a D&D book.

Everything else is undefinable.

Is "game world" your game world, his game world, Bob's game world?

And he didn't say "encounter" or "adventure" or "campaign", he said "game world" which is imaginary and hypothetical and potential.

But he didn't say "your game world". He said "the game world" which is undefinable because it doesn't exist.

Even if "the" is subjective, your own perception of "the game world" is variable and dynamic and can change at any time.

And what is meant by "no" association? Is that a binary, all or nothing, 0% or 100%. How do you measure the distance between a defined thing (the mechanic) to an undefined or variable point ("the game world').

And what is meant by "association". One definition of "associate" is "connect in the mind or imagination". What is the formal definition then for mentally connecting a mechanic to a fiction?

So what you have is: "When I talk about 'dissociated mechanics', I'm talking about mechanics which have [undefinable] association [definition?] with the [undefinable]".

Is this really why we're here?
 

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