In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[wrecan]

So why did you get frustrated with my example of Hypnotism in combat being houseruled to include falling prone as an effect

I don't believe I ever said I was frustrated with your houserule.

 

[Yesway Jose]

For 3e, the campaign issue is ubiquitous yet also hidden. Every campaign world, theoretically, either has to figure out why wizards aren't getting rich off Walls of Iron, why masons exist in worlds of Lyres of Building, and why every court isn't equipped with a Zone of Truth item and a collection of Helms of Opposite Alignment, as well as a host of other problematic spells that many DMs may not come across, but may stumble across after it's too late, or house rule them. In 4e, the campaign is built around cinematic heroic fantasy. If your campaign world incorporates that style, you're probably fine, and then you only have to worry about altering your campaign world when you improvise.

In 4E, you houserule Hypnotism to include daze/slow/prone, or Baleful Polymorph to extend frog-time, and then everyone's happy with the social contract, and those paradigms contribute to the world-building, and then you find that, like zone of truth, that it's affecting the game adversely, so then you take away the candy that you gave to the baby? And that's better than 3E's zone of truth?

 

[wrecan]

In 4E, you houserule Hypnotism to include daze/slow/prone, or Baleful Polymorph to extend frog-time, and then everyone's happy with the social contract, and those paradigms contribute to the world-building, and then you find that, like zone of truth, that it's affecting the game adversely, so then you take away the candy that you gave to the baby? And that's better than 3E's zone of truth?

Yes! Because when you play 3e -- and more specifically when you build a world for 3e -- there's no reason for you to contemplate the consequences of Zones of Truth, Fabricate, Lyres of Building, etc. When you houserule Hypnotism, you know you're houseruling Hypnotism so you can spend some time contemplating the consequences.

Moreover, the problem you identify in 4e also applies to houseruling in 3e. If you houserule in 3e, you must contemplate the consequences. If you don't then you may have the same problems you do in 4e. IOW, 3e has the same problems as 4e in this regard, and additional problems that 4e does not have.

What does this have to do with dissociation?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You then wrote that for everyone else who does get it, 4E expects you to make some of those justifications yourself due to a social contract.

What I'm seeing here is a kind double standard if you will...

On one hand, 4E doesn't do a good job of clarifying page 42, or maybe not many people are seeing it, and many people instead play by the rules, and for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.

Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.

The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does.

That 4E largely avoids problem X, which is very present in 3E, does not say that 4E is problem free. It just says that 4E does a better job than 3E of handling X, out of the book. Nor does the claim assume that what 4E did to get this better handling of X is all roses for everyone, all the time. And in fact, some of what 4E changed that handles X so well does lead to different problems.

But different problems are different problems. 3E has some system issues that, if they affect you, can only be solved via a combination of house rules and/or social contract avoidance of legal but troublesome behavior. (Don't abuse fabricate, because if you do, we'll be forced to house rule your literal-minded abuse out of the game.)

4E, on the other hand, is trying to do two tough things at once:

1. Make the game, in its simplest but still complicated form, as accessible to beginners, especially beginner GMs, as possible.

2. Have a tight, well-integrated system for action adventure that sings in the right hands, with improvisation driving the narrative.

The problem is that the "social contract" for those two audiences is going to be extremely different, and the 4E advice largely fails to distinguish them. That is, the problem in 4E related to this dicussion is not so much a problem in the rules as a problem in the advice on how to navigate house rules and/or the social contract.

Nor should this be surprising. In the tradition of D&D, people have been writing quite good advice for how to deal with things like fabricate since the first players got a glimmer at the wording of the spells or magic items. Don't tell grandma how to suck eggs--she has it down, thanks! 4E takes away the problem that needs that advice, but then has made a freshman effort at explaining how you encourage people to improvise the narrative. Gygax didn't perfectly cover all the bases on how to handle certain behaviors in 1E, either--though he was quite explicit that the DM would have to handle it.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Yes! Because when you play 3e, there's no reason for you to contemplate Zones of Truth. When you houserule Hypnotism, you know you're houseruling Hypnotism so you can spend some time contemplating the consequences.

You might contemplate the consequences, but no DM will predict everything. Unlike designers, you may not have time at the gaming table to properly think it through. By the time you've given the players your consent, and they get used to it, and it impacts your world-building, it's too late. Now you're stuck with the same issue that comic books... what do you call it when a comic book has to retroactively change the story in order to reconcile divergent paths? recon?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Now you're stuck with the same issue that comic books... what do you call it when a comic book has to retroactively change the story in order to reconcile divergent paths? recon?

Retcon. Remember much earlier when I said that people who were prone to play in a narrative fashion already had tools in place to deal with issues arising out of players improvising narrative? A retcon is one such tool. It is a blunt one, and not something you would use all the time, but also very effective when appropriate.

And if you think about it, why would people who claim to prioritze some player control over the narrative balk at having editors?

 

[Yesway Jose]

Retcon. Remember much earlier when I said that people who were prone to play in a narrative fashion already had tools in place to deal with issues arising out of players improvising narrative? A retcon is one such tool. It is a blunt one, and not something you would use all the time, but also very effective when appropriate.

And if you think about it, why would people who claim to prioritze some player control over the narrative balk at having editors?

I'm still skeptical. If the houseruling has repercussions beyond initial expections, then you take the candy away from the baby AND retcon it in your game world.

Yet when WoTC updates the system and nerfs powers, there is much grumbling from a significant portion of the 4E fanbase.

The only difference between 3E vs 4E in this regard is that in 3E the players have a more solidified understanding of the game world from the start, where in 4E, it's more ad hoc and you'll just deal with problems on the fly. Brushing problems under the carpet to deal with them later doesn't make 4E exempt from worldbuilding issues any more than 3E IMO.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So a wizard has the time to say "attack" but not the time to say "fall down"?

People walk around normally. Adventurers hit on instinct. Until the 20th century, people seldom throw themselves to the floor. Therefore prone is quite a lot harder to induce through that method

To rephrase, there were things you could do in previous editions (ie., full round casting) that are not permissible in 4E, even though the fictional interpretation is the same. I never said the interpretation was unreasonable, I questioned that your interpretation invalidates my comment to Neonchameleon about worldbuilding or distinguishes the 4E combat paradigm from 3E.

I meant the wizard can[not] hypnotize the target to fall down. (Specifically, the wizard says [telepathically to the target] "fall down", not the player to the wizard).

My point was "...which still leaves the DMs and players at loss to figure out how that fits into worldbuilding".

It doesn't have to. In 3e NPCs used PC classes. Every single low level spell could be cast by many people in the world. In 4e, NPCs do not use PC clases. Therefore for the purpose of worldbuilding you do not need to worry about what a very few oddities can do. Worldbuilding is about the world. And 4e doesn't make powers like hypnotism ubiquitous.

Thus not making 4E any easier than 3E in the original discussion with Neonchamelon about 3E powers like Zone of Truth, etc. which is the original point.

As has been pointed out you have completely missed the point about Zone of Truth and world building. The point about Zone of Truth is that any third level cleric in the world can make it impossible for anyone who isn't a seventh level bard impossible to lie unless they cast Dispel Magic (telling enough). If your legal system (or espionage apparatus) in 3e is not using Zone of Truth you need to explain exactly why. And that's just one world-breaking spell. By separating PC rules from NPC rules, even if something as world-changing as Zone of Truth existed in 4e it would not have a forcible impact on the wider game world.

I LOVE your thinking, but if it was a good idea to use daze or slow with Hypnotism then why wouldn't the designers have thought of that themselves? There must be a game balance issue, and thus it can't be suitable for normal 4E gameplay.

I can tell you now that slow would not be a game balance issue. (Daze might).

You wrote before that page 42 "hints at this around the edges" about defining out-of-combat properties for a power. So it seems adjucating combat vs out-of-combat is not well understood in average gameplay.

Many games are being played to the letter of the rules. Of those many games, many DMs/players may not have gotten the "hint around the edges" and if they did, they might be afraid to experiment with that social contract and affect game balance.

If a game is played to the letter of the 4e rules, there is not one single problem. Combat powers do exactly the same out of combat that they do in combat. Slide or force a MBA (probably with fists).

What I'm seeing here is a kind double standard if you will...

On one hand, 4E doesn't do a good job of clarifying page 42, or maybe not many people are seeing it, and many people instead play by the rules, and for those that do swing with page 42, there is a social contract to justify those distinctions.

Yet with zone of truth, fabricate, etc. there is a Problem that Needs to Be Addressed.

The double standard is that 4E is exempt from Problems due to a social contract clause, but 3E is fraught with problems like Zone of Truth and does not have the right to use the "social contract" clause like 4E does.

This is not even slightly a double standard. 4e with the standard "We will use the rules as written. Out of combat things do exactly what they do in combat works. And it still works irrespectively of whether the PCs push things to the limit or which limit they push things to. You can go to any Encounters game in Britain or America and play this default style and although the game won't be the best game ever, it will be playable and fun.

3e on the other hand you absolutely need a social contract that says not to do things that are legal and encouraged in the rules. And because it's hard to judge intent of the designers, this contract is going to be different at different tables. The two cases are not equivalent.

I'm not saying that YOU said all of the above, but it's got to be one or the other -- if 4E is allowed to use a clause to escape from [some scenario] then 3E is allowed to use the same clause to escape from [zone of truth, fabricate, etc.]

Except the clauses are incredibly different. The scenarios are too - 3e is broken out of the box and needs a contract to fix. 4e is fine out of the box and needs a contract to extend.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm still skeptical. If the houseruling has repercussions beyond initial expections, then you take the candy away from the baby AND retcon it in your game world.

No. If the houseruling has such repercussions, you might retcon as a way of dealing with it. If it is serious enough. I don't recall retconning for something that trivial, but I don't remember every such thing I did.

More likely, you let the narrative stand, and then modify the house rule to keep it from being a problem going forward. The players "got away with something" here and now, but it isn't a killer as long as it doesn't become repetitive.

Also, I believe that I understand the skepticism, but as Wrecan and I have both indicated, there is a huge difference between a laundry list of problems for which you must be aware versus the much shorter list of the ones that you have chosen to risk in this adventure or campaign. For world-building, this is even more true, as the laundry list magnifies geometrically with the number of important characters involved.

Calvin Coolidge said that if you saw 10 problems coming down the road towards you, 9 of them would run into the ditch before getting to you. That was not a "don't worry, be happy," ignore all the problems piece of advice. Rather, it is that if waste a bunch of energy trying to solve all 10 when you first see them, you'll probably do a lousy job. And then you won't have enough left to handle the one that makes it to the point where you can effectively do something about it. And if you are wrong and get blindsided by problem #11 coming down a side road--well, sucks to be you if you've got no resources left.

In life, we don't always do a good job picking the point at which we "can effectively do something about it." And we don't get to pick the rules for things anyway. In a game, we have more control. But they still were smart enough to realize that you can't say, "you'll never need to deal with problem X in a game of D&D". In 4E, they said, "when you can effectively do something about it" without wasting a lot of energy is when it matters.

If I invest energy in improvisation on hypnotism, then I care enough about it to pay attention to it and deal with the problems. And if I find later that I'm wrong, we can always rein it in. Meanwhile, the laundry list is still way down the road somewhere, and I'll deal with each one as it arises.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Also, I believe that I understand the skepticism, but as Wrecan and I have both indicated, there is a huge difference between a laundry list of problems for which you must be aware versus the much shorter list of the ones that you have chosen to risk in this adventure or campaign. For world-building, this is even more true, as the laundry list magnifies geometrically with the number of important characters involved.

Fair enough. But my problem is that I would have such a huge laundry list for 4E (I don't accept a fiction where people are turned for frogs for only 6 seconds outside of combat or hypnotism doesn't live up to its name), and less time than the designers to think through all the consequences, that the end result is even more problematic for my world-building.