Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[Bedrockgames]

People worried about dissociating are hairsplitting to begin with, quibbling with implications of how you might translate abstract game mechanics into imagined actions of imaginary characters in an imaginary world.

There's no disconnect between other abstract mechanics and in-game events, either, unless you force their to be. Power Attack? Obviously if you're swinging a lot harder, that's obvious to your enemy, and he'll make more of an effort to avoid it, thus the penalty. But, wait! Your enemy can't decide /not/ to do so, nor can he decide to make that extra effort when he's low oh hps, so you're exercising control over something other than your character when you Power Attack! Oh no, another dissociative mechanic!

It's not, really, because no mechanic ever is, only the visualization constructed by the player to /make/ it dissociative is. As you point out, it's easy to, instead, imagine power attack as simply swinging harder, but wildly. Just as it's easy to imagine Action Surge and Battlemaster CS dice as being 'exhausting,' even though using up one doesn't exhaust the other, rather than the player decision somehow forcing circumstances not under the PC's control. Just as it's easy to imagine any martial encounter or daily in 4e, exactly as the PH1 described them, as being exhausting in the same, 'selective' way that Action Surge, Second Wind, and CS dice are in 5e and Stunning Fist, Rage, and a few other extraordinary powers in 3.5 were.

True. Abstraction is real.

However, they are closely related: any dissociative mechanic is going to be abstract, because it's abstraction that leaves room to manufacture the disconnect. And, of course, because any TTRPG mechanic is necessarily abstract.
If you find any mechanic not to be dissociative, you just haven't tried hard enough to come up with an inappropriate enough way of imagining it.

No they are not hair splitting. They are reacting to something tgat leaps out at them in the moment and dissociation is one possible explanation after the fact. If you are only finding dissociative mechanics by rigorously analyzing mechanics after the fact (rather than how they feel in the moment) I think you are misapplying the concept. The key aspect of what it is, is to explain the immediate disconnect people feel around a mechanic. I think it points to something genuine. If it doesn't help you in gaming or in design, then there is little value in you trying to use it. For me, I find it useful, and I am not a big hair splitter.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Turning all Fighters into mystic warriors loses a lot of potential tropes (cf. Conan).

The 5e Eldritch Knight, and 3.x supernatural-ability Stunning Fist as a 'fighter bonus feat,' aside, single-class fighters have never been 'mystic warriors,' let alone 'all' mystic warriors. There might have been kits, Themes, Backgrounds, or feat options for such concepts, but 'all' is just absurd - never been the case, no reason to think it ever will be. I suppose this was some sort of hypothetical tangent I missed.

There's nothing inherently wrong with such stories and for certain settings (Wuxia, Fantasy Anime, Power Ball Z, etc.) it works just fine. But if you want to play a more traditional sword and sorcery where your fighter is just a guy really good at shoving half a yard of steel into things, then you might have a harder time making the mental adjustment.

I can see how that might be a drawback in some game that eschewed having any sort of non-magical class options. Even 5e (with 33 of 38 PC sub-class options using some sort of magic to some degree) doesn't go that far - while every class in 5e /can/ use magic, not every character of every class is forced to.

In the context of 4e (which, originally, this thread was about), BTW, there were 4 classes that didn't use magic, with 24 builds among them plus 3 non-magical Essentials sub-classes, and one potentially non-magical sub-class of the barbarian, by the time D&D went on hiatus. To make an apples:apples comparison, the 4e PH1 had 4 of 8 classes and 8 of 18 builds entirely non-magical; 5e has 0 of 12 classes and 5 of 38 sub-classes entirely non-magical. For historical perspective, the PH1 in 2e had 4 class groups, none of which were exclusively non-magical, and 9 sub-classes (if you count the specialist wizard as one sub-class rather than 8), 2 of which were entirely non-magical. In the 3e PH1, 3 of 11 classes had no spellcasting or other supernatural abilities.

4e had more non-magical options at launch than any other edition - and they were all reasonably viable choices at any level, also a first. While those facts are nearly the exact opposite of your hypothetical all-mystic game, it may well be that, while not the polar extreme (only non-magical classes) of that, it could still elicit a similar, shocked, 'not really D&D' reaction, since D&D has, for so long, leaned towards a larger majority of magic-using PC options, and the trend seems to have been for the proportion of those options to increase.

4e bucking that trend so dramatically could well have been an issue. Doing so meant leaving supernatural classes like the Druid and Bard out of the PH1 for the first time, 'demoting' the ranger to a non-caster, and introducing an entirely new non-casting class, the Warlord - along with significantly boosting the choice, relative power, and resources of all 4 then-martial classes, and correspondingly decreasing the vast number and power of spells available to casters, to achieve a semblance balance through rough parity.

To get all the way back to the original topic, I think, ultimately, those factors were problems only because of the D&D imprint. Were it not for that, 4e would have received no appreciable criticism, things like Dissociative Mechanics would never have been invented to facilitate such criticism, and the game -whatever it was titled instead of D&D 4e - would have slipped by relatively unnoticed, just another 'fantasy heartbreaker' with strictly better mechanics than D&D, but nothing to make it stand out. Of course, 4e probably couldn't have been produced by some 3pp on a shoestring or via crowdfunding the way 13A or the many other retro-clones and heartbreakers and imitators of D&D were.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Tony, not everyone is going to like 4E the way you do, and some folks will have reasons for not liking it that don't match your experience of the game. At a certain point both sides have to allow for a live and let live approach. This constant effort of each side to convince the other to see things it's way is futile (as evidenced by the fact that this discussion has the same group of core posters it always has when it comes up---and has had for like the past five years). I mean 4E is always going to feel dissociative to me and never going to feel like D&D to me, no matter what you say. And it is never going to feel dissociative to you or feel like it isn't D&D to you. Those strikingly different reactions can be real and genuine without either of us being crazy, misguided, stuck in the past, etc. we don't need to pathologize each other's preferences.

 

[Tony Vargas]

They are reacting to something tgat leaps out at them in the moment and dissociation is one possible explanation after the fact. If you are only finding dissociative mechanics by rigorously analyzing mechanics after the fact (rather than how they feel in the moment)

I certainly expect that the reaction is really experienced. I just don't count dissociative mechanics as among the possible explanations.

And, I'm not 'finding' such mechanics, I'm manufacturing rationalizations for applying the label to arbitrarily-chosen mechanics. The only difference is that they're not 4e mechanics.

I think you are misapplying the concept. The key aspect of what it is, is to explain the immediate disconnect people feel around a mechanic.

I'm just applying the concept evenhandedly.

I think it points to something genuine.

I assume it must, or it wouldn't have been so enthusiastically embraced as a rationalization. What that something is may not even be a question that can be answered in a forum like this.

Tony, not everyone is going to like 4E the way you do, and some folks will have reasons for not liking it that don't match your experience of the game. At a certain point both sides have to allow for a live and let live approach.

Yes. That point was in 2008.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I certainly expect that the reaction is really experienced. I just don't count dissociative mechanics as among the possible explanations.

And, I'm not 'finding' such mechanics, I'm manufacturing rationalizations for applying the label to arbitrarily-chosen mechanics. The only difference is that they're not 4e mechanics.


I'm just applying the concept evenhandedly.

I assume it must, or it wouldn't have been so enthusiastically embraced as a rationalization. What that something is may not even be a question that can be answered in a forum like this.

I think you are being much less evenhanded and far more emotional than you realize.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think you are being much less evenhanded and far more emotional than you realize.

I (obviously) can't change what you think, just as you can't know my emotional state. But what, exactly, do you find less than even-handed about applying the rationale of dissociated mechanics to Power Attack?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I (obviously) can't change what you think, just as you can't know my emotional state. But what, exactly, do you find less than even-handed about applying the rationale of dissociated mechanics to Power Attack?

Because the level of digging required for you to find it is extensive and I don't think you are making a strong case (for the reasons I and others have given about the ability). It feels like you are combing through trying to find reasons and they are not really holding up. I don't know, it feels a bit disingenuous.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yes. That point was in 2008.

So you are just going to rehash the editions wars because of what happened in 2008? I think this is stuff all of us really need to move past. I for one don't care whether others like 4E or not. If you think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, more power to you, enjoy it and have fun. By the same token, it is a bit annoying being told I ought to like or I'm somehow regressive (or that my reasons for not liking it are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG). But do what you want.

 

[Tony Vargas]

At a certain point both sides have to allow for a live and let live approach.

Yes. That point was in 2008.

So you are just going to rehash the editions wars because of what happened in 2008? I think this is stuff all of us really need to move past.

No. The critical point when both sides needed to 'live and let live,' was in 2008. Instead, we got the edition war.

Now, 4e is dead, "live and let live" is no longer an option. We can let 5e and Pathfinder 'live and let live, though.'
And, except for a few Pathfinder fans declaring that 5e is doomed and denying that it's really outselling Pathfinder, that mostly seems to be happening.

I for one don't care whether others like 4E or not.

Then why are you so intent on finding rationalizations for those who, like yourself, dislike it? Isn't that just telling people they shouldn't like 4e?

By the same token, it is a bit annoying being told I ought to like or I'm somehow regressive (or that my reason for not liking it are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG).

I'm not trying to tell you want you should like, I'm just pointing out why a particular form of criticism - dissociative mechanics - is invalid. It can be applied to any abstract mechanic, it's only validated by confirmation bias, so it's meaningless. That doesn't mean you have to go back and like something just because you used that invalid criticism as justification for disliking it. You don't even have to give it a second, 'fair' chance. You don't /need/ a justification for your gaming preferences.

But what, exactly, do you find less than even-handed about applying the rationale of dissociated mechanics to Power Attack?

Because the level of digging required for you to find it is extensive and I don't think you are making a strong case (for the reasons I and others have given about the ability). It feels like you are combing through trying to find reasons and they are not really holding up. I don't know, it feels a bit disingenuous.

I'm glad.

All of those things are equally true of the original presentation of Dissociated Mechanics, and the constant edition war repetitions of it. The difference is not the amount of digging or combing, the strength of the case, how poorly the reasons hold up, nor even the tone. The difference is only which edition the criticized mechanic is in, and the confirmation bias of the reader.

That was the point.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well i think we just disagree on this point.