"Stumbling Around in My Head" - The Feeling of Dissociation as a Player

[innerdude]

So over in the D&D Next section of the forums there's been (yet again) several lengthy discussions about "dissociative mechanics" (yes, I know, didn't we cover this a year ago?). It was mostly going around in circles (again), but I was genuinely curious to discover that some opponents of the concept were having difficulty understanding why some rules "feel" dissociative to certain players, while others that should seemingly feel the same don't even register on the dissociation needle.

As a result, I wanted to share some thoughts, hopefully to shed more light on what's actually going on inside a player's head when a mechanic feels "dissociative."

To be sure, this is purely from an Innerdude-ian perspective. I don't claim to speak for any one player or group specifically. However, I think my overall experience and approach to the subject is consistent with the general "gist" of what the Alexandrian's essay was trying to get at--even though in retrospect, the essay is incredibly "messy" and somewhat heavy-handed in the way it assumes certain things about gameplay style and mechanical resolution. The overall concept is real, I think, but there's an enormous level of subjectivity to it that the Alexandrian ignores.

Also, I'm sure some posters are simply going to respond to this by saying, "Dissociation doesn't exist," or "I don't care." Both are totally valid responses.
If you're burned out on the subject entirely, hey, I don't blame you; I'm just trying to provide some perspective on what was going on in the other threads.

So, when an RPG mechanic is labeled as "dissociative," what does that really mean to a player who feels affected by it? Does it mean it breaks "verisimilitude," however that's defined? Does it move too far away from "simulationism," such that the player and character can no longer make viable decisions about the fiction of the game world? Does it pull the player out of "actor" stance? Does it reinforce "gamist" tropes that push against the boundary of what can be considered an RPG?

The short answer is, "Yes." It can be one, some, or all of these at once in varying degrees. When some of us talk about a mechanic being "dissociative," it is in some ways literally that--it causes a "break" in the current player mindset. It draws the player out of one "mode" of gameplay, and into another.
It can be a change in style, stance, fiction, pace, or resolution. There's probably other shades and nuances to it, depending on circumstances, but at it's core, that's what's going on. Some mechanics "feel dissociative" to certain players because they exert a distinct influence on player expectations in the moment.

Now I understand that as players, we're constantly shifting between various modes of play at the table. We can shift from gamist, to "immersive roleplaying" mindsets in a matter of seconds. "Dissociation," however, happens in cases where the mechanics dictate the shift, when an in-the-moment resolution suddenly pushes the player to interact with the game system in a manner or modality that A) cannot be easily resolved by the player internally, and B) runs counter to their expected method of resolution.

This can involve interactions with the game, players, fiction / world, and GM.

For me, this typically sounds in my head like, "Huh? What was that again?"
"Dissociation" happens for me because something about a mechanic as presented forces me to "resolve" something about it in my head that isn't readily apparent. In some cases, it's a conflict with my internal "world physics" meter. Sometimes it's working out "narrative" aspects--why did that mechanic force NPC Y to do that? Is that realistic based on the current scene framework? Sometimes it's about conflict with genre and character tropes--how does a fighter played as a gruff, mostly silent type use Come and Get It, exactly?

(And yes, I know there's a million reasons why a gruff, silent fighter might make Come and Get It work in the fiction. The fact that I have to stop and think about it all is part of the problem.)

Sometimes it's about a forced switch from actor stance into author / pawn, or director stance. "Wait, my character would react to that--no, but there's no reason to react at all unless the room now has object X over there, or NPC Y wasn't doing Z." Sometimes it's because a rule is hightly gamist in its presentation--"I can add two more damage dice in circumstance X, but only if one of the other players does Y first, and the monster is bloodied." It's not that there's no "verisimilitudinous" way of explaining it in the fiction, it's that the moment of resolution requires transparently metagame thinking.

Bottom line: like many things in life, there's no hard and fast rule why some mechanics "feel" dissociative, and some don't. It's a question of the manner, degree, frequency, kind, and substance of the mechanic in question.

So why does something like hit points not trigger the dissociation flag? For the most part, it's that it doesn't require any "in the moment" thought during resolution. Many mechanics that opponents claim should be "dissociative" but are not often recognized as such are typically things that are "hard wired" into the basic world of the fiction, either explicitly in the rules, or implicitly in the group's "this is the way the world works."

Hit points and AC are the two biggies here. Are they really a great way of representing what they're trying to abstract? Eh, not so much, but we've either worked out in our minds before hand a reasonable explanation, or we've just grown numb to the particulars of its effects. Is that inconsistent? Yeah, maybe, but for me, that's just the way it works.

Now occasionally, in corner cases, the artificiality / dissociativeness of hit points becomes readily apparent. And frankly, I don't like those instances any better than anything else. Interestingly these are typically "in the moment" happenings that require a re-reading of what hit points mean in the fiction at that particular moment--like, falling from a cliff.

This "in the moment" aspect of "dissociation" is why it's most apparent to those who prefer "immersion," "verisimilitude," actor stance, and clear process resolution. It's hard enough getting into solid, immersive gameplay with all of the "background noise" in the rules. We don't want in-the-moment resolution mechanics adding to it.

Anyway, I don't know how much of this is making sense. But for me, this is a fairly accurate description of how I experience "dissociation" when it happens.

 

[Li Shenron]

So why does something like hit points not trigger the dissociation flag? For the most part, it's that it doesn't require any "in the moment" thought during resolution. Many mechanics that opponents claim should be "dissociative" but are not often recognized as such are typically things that are "hard wired" into the basic world of the fiction, either explicitly in the rules, or implicitly in the group's "this is the way the world works."

This is a good point. In retrospect, despite their oddness HP never triggered my dissociation flag... at some point in my life I started playing RPG and I immediately encountered HP, but I felt no dissociation at all.

 

[S'mon]

I don't fully understand why I sometimes get that 'dissociation' feel in 4e but not in prior editions. It seems to be something to do with prior design approach of 'this is happening in-world, here are some mechanics to model it', where 4e design often seems to take a design approach of 'here are some mechanics, make up some explanation of what's happening in-world'. I've also noticed that it was a big problem in my early 4e games, but much less recently, and I think that is mostly due to the attitude of the players - if the players are willing to buy into the collective fiction, and don't metagame too much, then everyone stays immersed in the world-fiction rather than treating it as a mechanical game of number-crunching. It also helps that my players don't dispute my world-based judgements - I couldn't stand playing with anyone who used the rpgnet phrase "Mother May I?" or used "GM Fiat" as a bad thing. And I've edited monster stats so they're not so immersion-breaking: minions have a Damage Threshold before they die, so you no longer get the dissociated feel from 'you don't have to roll damage, it's just a minion'. And likewise I halved other monster hit points, so they now feel about as tough as 'feels right'; eg they can die from falling damage same as a PC, men can die from being shot by an arrow same as IRL, and (more abstractly) Elite monsters are directly comparable to PCs; PCs are now just more-detailed Elites.

 

[prosfilaes]

This is a good point. In retrospect, despite their oddness HP never triggered my dissociation flag... at some point in my life I started playing RPG and I immediately encountered HP, but I felt no dissociation at all.

HP certainly can cause dissociation for me. There's a scene in the Pathfinder Adventure Path I'm running right now that's presented as a scene to be told to the players, where one character puts a crossbow bolt into the head of another, and then we're apparently surprised that she lives and kills the first character. It's an excellent fantasy scene, but it doesn't work for me in D&D. I mean, she has a few levels under her belt, and a crossbow bolt does 1d10, x2 crit. Did you really expect her to drop from one bolt? Fed straight to me as a player, I'd be frustrated; I'm getting all these cues that a story should be interpreted one way, but it interferes with I know of the world my PC interacts with.

The classic example is the fighter throwing himself off a cliff. I do get why that's dissociative to some people, but I tend to break the other way. Heroes in fiction can do a lot of stuff that real life people can't. My character walks into things, like dragon's breath and balls of acid, that would be certain death to real life people; the HP tells me, the player, that that's within my character's tolerance level. Why isn't jumping off the cliff the same way? If I can't jump off the cliff when I need to and the rules say it's okay, then the edges of HP get dragged out, and I have to wonder where I can no longer think in terms of HP.

 

[S'mon]

HP certainly can cause dissociation for me. There's a scene in the Pathfinder Adventure Path I'm running right now that's presented as a scene to be told to the players, where one character puts a crossbow bolt into the head of another, and then we're apparently surprised that she lives and kills the first character. It's an excellent fantasy scene, but it doesn't work for me in D&D. I mean, she has a few levels under her belt, and a crossbow bolt does 1d10, x2 crit. Did you really expect her to drop from one bolt?

Sounds like a clear coup de gras, which was pretty nasty in 3e and I'd expect in Pathfinder, so I'd certainly be at least open to the idea of it as a serious threat. Although it was kinda silly how crossbows were less effective at CDG than bows due to the lower crit multiplier...

 

[S'mon]

Sounds like a clear coup de gras, which was pretty nasty in 3e and I'd expect in Pathfinder, so I'd certainly be at least open to the idea of it as a serious threat. Although it was kinda silly how crossbows were less effective at CDG than bows due to the lower crit multiplier...

Yup, just checked PF CDG, pg 197 core rulebook: if target "at your mercy" from melee weapon bow or x-bow, crit dmg, Fort save 10+dmg or die... so the woman had to make an average DC 21 Fort save (assuming no sneak attack or other bonus to dmg) or die instantly, which seems pretty hardcore to me.

Edit: I find the 4e nerfed CDG rules a lot more problematic in terms of immersion-breaking, actually. With 4e you quite often just have to say "Rules are for PCs", since the system is quite aggressively hostile to even limited Rules-as-Physics.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You're absolutely right. Disassociative has a use for describing something mostly subjective. And that's why people using it as an edition war club (as it almost invariably is - that after all was the Alexandrian's point) bug me so much.

To me the single most diassociative game I've ever played is AD&D. And it's disassociative for a simple reason. One minute combat rounds. A minute is a massive time period in what is a complex and unfolding situation, and this means that my character is only able to think literally once per minute. Which means that entering combat in AD&D feels as if the game has slapped control of my character out of my hand at an absolutely critical moment and turned it into a pure property of the rules - and I have no choice other than to check out until the combat is over because my PC is on the autopilot the rules have forced on him or her. 6 seconds is short enough that I can visualise it as an OODA loop - and remain in my character's head because of this.

And I find even badly written powers less disassociative than I do normal 3e combat (ignoring the Bo9S). When I fight against more than one foe, I'm looking for opportunities. I'm seeing relative positions and where people are and seeing how to exploit gaps. My best choice changes second to second. In 3e with all attacks being essentially At Will if I'm a fighter I might as well put myself into autopilot with whatever trick is my favourite and do the same thing every round. And although this voluntary autopilot isn't as bad as the enforced autopilot of AD&D it's still disassociative to me. If I have a limited and changing list of powers (and I don't care how it's done - any of AEDU or the three versions in the Bo9S work) then the battle is unfolding. I am at last able to see the sort of opportunities and there's a measure of opportunity cost and opportunities.

Ultimately I don't care how badly written the individual powers are - that I have a changing list of options allows me to think much more closely into the head of my PC than I could otherwise. I'm happy to accept that powers, especially badly written ones, metagame ones, or out-of-genre ones (the monk's wuxia teleport comes to mind) disassociate you if you are to accept that lack of powers disassocates me. If you are talking about disassocated mechanics as if they are an objective one-size-fits-all thing (as The Alexandrian does) then I'm going to object - for me even with its bugs the 4e power structure is the most associated there has ever been in D&D, with only the Book of Weaboo Fitan Majik running it close.

 

[FireLance]

Sometimes it's about conflict with genre and character tropes--how does a fighter played as a gruff, mostly silent type use Come and Get It, exactly?

Arguably, such a fighter shouldn't pick come and get it as a power, in much the same way that he shouldn't suddenly break out into eloquence when he has to talk to the Duke. Funny how one is disassociative and the other is bad roleplaying ... or good roleplaying, depending on who you ask.

Fundamentally, that's how I deal with disassociative mechanics: I work out a explanation for them that satisfies me, I decide not to use them, or I just ignore them and enjoy the game as a game. Of course, YMMV.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] So the 1-minute AD&D round feels more dissociative to you than the 6 second 3e/4e round, even though it takes much less time to resolve? Because you're in a climactic moment where there are assumed off-screen parries and ripostes?
[MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] As a DM in 4e, I loathe it when a player uses a power, reads the effect it has, and when I say "so what's happening, what's the story?" they look puzzled, go "uh...", shrug, or just repeat the power's effect. Aaargh!! That drives me nuts!

 

[GreyICE]

The entire premise of the OP is wrong. Lets discuss why, using the example of FATE.

Combat - combat is an opposed skill check between two skills. It can be divided into three areas, Social, Mental, and Physical, all of which share the same resolution mechanics. If players lose an opposed roll against an attack they take a certain amount of stress, and after they max out their stress track they have to take a minor/major/severe consequence or be "taken out."

The interesting bits of combat are finding what elements within the scene or opponents they can use to invoke aspects. Invoking an aspect gives them a +2 bonus (+2, mechanically, is around the benefit of a +5-+8 bonus in D&D) to their roll, but costs them Fate points.

Described that way, it seems horrifically disassociated, right? I mean it doesn't matter if you're firing an assault rifle on full auto or an ancient crossbow, whether you're having a battle of wits in a chess match or in the middle of a tense negotiation, it's all resolved the same way.

But because of the virtue of being dissociated, it becomes infinitely flexible. Players are free to adapt and narrate what's happening. The search for "+2 bonuses" leads them to poking and prodding at the scene and characters, alert for possible bonuses. The storyteller is free to narrate what he likes when a character is taken out (usually he works with the player).

See, there's something that hasn't been taken into account in this debate. It's not whether "Dissociated mechanics are bad or merely irrelevant." It's whether they're a virtue or not.

I would say that in many cases they are an excellent virtue. Hit Points are dissociated. This lets you narrate the flow of combat how you choose, and have outcomes that make sense within the flow of the game world. Whereas when you have a called shot to the kidney with a spear, and it hits, it's very hard to have the narrative continue after this point. Spear to the kidney, you're recuperating for three weeks (unless you introduce magical healing, another very dissociated mechanic).


Dissociated mechanics can really enhance narrative roleplaying, and I think there's a tad of a crusade mentality among a certain subset of players that fails to acknowledge this reality. "Even if you don't care about dissociated mechanics, you should just let us have our way, because it really doesn't effect you!" Well no. It DOES effect people who care more about the narrative than about the simulation, more about telling a good story than having events happen in a formulaic and predetermined manner.


Oh and by the way? Dissociated mechanics exist along the N <-> S axis of Narrativist/Simulationist/Gamist. Gamism is mute on the subject. Gamism wants GOOD mechanics, which can either be dissociated or associated. Many people make the mistake of associating dissociated mechanics with gamist interests because 3E mechanics were both simulationist AND largely TERRIBLE from a gamist perspective. 4E mechanics were narrativist and much better from a gamist perspective, but that doesn't mean that gamist mechanics are dissociated.

For example, take a game about giant fighting robots (mechwarrior, anime, whatever you want). There might be simulationist rules about how each part of the robot takes damage, and a chart on how systems get knocked offline and how it effects the mechwarrior. As long as the mechanics are good, flow well at the table, and make an interesting game, the gamist is satisfied.

The narrativist, on the other hand, is pissed as hell, because there's no STORY to the laser hitting the mech. It will do damage based on table A-3, with a chance to damage either the heat dissipation mechanisms or power regulation to a limb. There's no narrative tension. The laser does the same thing every time, and hits in the same way every time, depending on dice rolls. They can't tell any sort of story with it. "I got hit with a laser. Oh gee. Uh... I reroute power through my secondary power conduits, lemme roll my 'Mech mechanics' skill modifiied by +3 for the secondary power grid I installed..."