I'm not here to defend Justin Alexander's stance on Wushu versus 4E. I've read the essay as well. That isn't the only place he gets into the subject and he does clarify his position further throughout the essay.
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But he does continue to talk about Wushu for paragraphs after your quote
Not really. I quoted everything relevant that he says about Wushu, in post 107 upthread and again in the post that you quoted. I'll quote it again if you like, including a bit more tedious detail about scene-based resolution:
Instead of determining the outcome of a particular action, scene-based resolution mechanics determine the outcome of entire scenes.
For example, in Wushu players describe the actions of their characters. These descriptions are always true. Instead of saying, “I try to hit the samurai”, for example, you would say: “I leap into the air, drawing my swords in a single fluid motion, parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head, and land behind him.”
Then you roll a pool of d6’s, with the number of dice being determined by the number of details you put into your description. For example, in this case you would roll 4 dice: “I leap into the air (1), drawing my swords in a single fluid motion (2), parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head (3), and land behind him (4).”
Based on Wushu‘s mechanics, you then count the number of successes you score on the dice you rolled and apply those successes towards the total number of successes required to control the outcome of the scene. If you gather enough successes, you determine how the scene ends.
In practice, it’s more complicated than that. But that’s the essential core of what’s happening.
BENEFITS OF DISSOCIATION
Clearly, a scene-based resolution mechanic is dissociated from the game world. The game world, after all, knows nothing about the “scene”. In the case of Wushu, for example, you can end up defeating the samurai just as easily by carefully detailing a tea ceremony as by engaging in flashy swordplay. The dice you’re rolling have little or no connection to the game world — they’re modeling a purely narrative property (control of the scene).
The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we’ve established, is that it disengages the player from the role they’re playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).
The advantage of a mechanic like Wushu‘s is that it gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. For example, in the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it’s just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they’re imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).
Is this style of play for everybody? No.
Personally, I tend to think of it as a matter of trade-offs: There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project.
TRADE-OFFS
And it’s important to understand that everything we’re talking about is about trade-offs.
In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.
So why can I see the benefit of the Wushu-style trade-off, but am deeply dissatisfied by the trade-offs 4th Edition is making?
That last question is rhetorical - Alexander doesn't answer it, but goes on to say things like:
There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn’t actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you’re playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.
To put it another way: I can understand why you need to accept the disadvantages of dissociated mechanics in order to embrace the advantages of narrative-based mechanics.
What Justin Alexander appears not to have noticed is that 4e is not a wargame with "improv taking place between tactical skirmishes", but is rather a RPG based (like Wushu) around scene-based resolution, with a series of player resources that serve as (what he calls, rather imprecisely) "narrative-based mechanics".
What informational content is there in the screed I've quoted? All it tells anyone is that Alexander likes Wushu, and the tropes it supports via its mechanical systems, but not 4e and the tropes it supports via its mechanical systems.
He thinks that narrating my guy sliding under a truck with guns blazing is awesome (though "not for everybody"); but having my guy be charged by the goblins and then cutting them down (CaGI) is not awesome. Why the difference in judgment? No explanation is forthcoming. He should have concluded that, just like Wushu, perhaps 4e is "not for everybody". Instead he goes on a wild rant about it not being a RPG. What powerful analysis!
There is also a bit about Wushu in relation to skill challenges, which I ignored upthread because all it does is show that Justin Alexander hasn't read the skill challenge rules:
The basic dissociation of the skill challenge mechanics lie in their nature as scene-based mechanics. Because they still use skill checks, this can be a little more masked than it was in the case of the Wushu example we looked at before, but the dissociation is still there.
Basically, the skill challenge mechanics don’t care what the PCs are doing — they only care how much the PCs have done. . . .
Okay, so we’ve established that the skill challenge mechanics are dissociated. Why is that a problem?
Because, unlike the Wushu mechanics, the skill challenge mechanics don’t seem to actually be accomplishing much. You’re making all the sacrifices inherent in the use of dissociated mechanics, but you aren’t gaining anything in return.
Most notably, the skill challenge mechanics aren’t giving the players any meaningful narrative control.
Skill challenges
are responsive to what the PCs are doing, and do give the players meaningful narrative control (in the sense of giving the players the capacity to shape the content of the shared fiction). Here are the relevant passages from the DMG (pp 73 and 74, but quoted by me in reverse sequence):
You [the GM] describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results. . . .
Always keep in mind that players can and will come up with ways to use skills you do not expect. Stay on your toes, and let whatever improvised skill uses they come up with guide the rewards and penalties you apply afterward. Remember that not everything has to be directly tied to the challenge. Tangential or unrelated benefits, such as making unexpected allies from among the duke’s court or finding a small, forgotten treasure, can also be fun.
In other words, Justin Alexander is just wrong. Skill challenges in 4e are, in basic function, no different from closed scene resolution that are found in a range of RPGs (Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, Marvel Herioc RP, just to name some of the ones I'm familiar with). Because they involve players rolling all the dice, they give rise to some GMing challenges (a bit like DungeonWorld in that respect) which the books don't give very good advice on (the DMG 2 is better in this respect than the DMG, though).
But they absolutely are responsive to the actions declared by the players for their PCs.
It's also ironic, from such a fan of 3E, to see complaints about not caring what the PCs do but simply how much they do. Could there be any better description of combat by way of hit point attrition? (Which is why 4e is the only version of D&D combat that I really enjoy, because moreso than any other version it does make considerations other than hit point attrition relevant, such as positioning and condition infliction.)
