And this is a big deal.
Here you make it sound like a trivial thing----"Just let the players make up the narration."
The point is, when it comes to describing the rules in question, and the feature you don't like, it
is trivial - in the sense of
easy to describe. Ron Edwards described it in the half-a-dozen lines that I posted upthread. That's all that needs to be pointed out.
The fact that some people really don't like rules with these features doesn't mean that a multi-thousand word essay by The Alexandrian, inventing new pejorative terminology, is needed to explain or analyse it.
It was obvious in 2008, in the pre-release phase for 4e, that for those RPGers who value causal linearity with system-delivered fiction in action resolution, 4e would not be the game for them. (Again I register my puzzle - what were those RPGers doing playing D&D, which has always violated causal linearity with system-delivered fiction when it comes to combat? I guess they mostly used hit points as meat, and imagined "you take 12 hp of damage" as describing some genuine physical state of the gameworld.)
When the fiction is decoupled from the mechanics, SOMEBODY, AT SOME POINT has to make up the fiction.
I have two responses to this.
First, the need to make up fiction is utterly ubiquitous in RPGing. You could even say that it is at the core of the game form.
For instance, in AD&D or 3E or 5e, when a thief fails a climbing check and falls, something has to be narrated, because the mechanics
don't tell us why the thief fell: "You miss the foothold" or "You reach for a handhold, but none are there to be found" or "Your rope breaks" or "The rock is to slippery, and you fall."
When a monster is hit for 12 hp of damage that doesn't kill it (whether in AD&D or 3E or 5e), something has to be narrated because, unless it is a killing blow, the mechanics
don't tell us what 12 hp of damage means in the fiction: "You strike it smartly on the snout" or "You sword bites into its thigh" or "The effort of avoiding your well-placed blow cleary wears your foe down".
Second, in my experience, many times at many tables
no narration is provided: we know the thief fell, but not exactly why; we knock off the 12 hp, but don't make any effort to establish what has happened to the enemy in the fiction.
4e encounter powers are no different in the way they work: just as you can know that the thief fell, but not why, and the game goeson; so you can know that the fighter can't do such-and-such trick again, but not why. If some narration is desired, someone - in D&D, typically the GM - provides it.
Different groups place different priorities - in all these cases, be it AD&D or 3E or 4e or 5e - on fleshing out the fiction sometimes, often or always.
Now, here is something which is a puzzle to me: most people who are dissatisfied with 4e encounter powers because they don't come with inbuilt narration are perfectly happy with climb checks that don't come with inbuilt narration. That is, "The thief fails a climb check and therefore falls" is considered perfectly adequate, but "The fighter has used his/her encounter power and so can't use it again" is considered inadequate. But both contain exactly the same amount of information about the ingame situation: neither tells you what the cause is (why did the thief fall? we don't know; why can't the fighter use the power again? we don't know) and both dictate a new ingame situation (the thief is back at the bottom of the cliff; the fighter is not in a position to use that technique again).
My best conjecture as to an answer to the puzzle is that knowing the thief is back at the bottom of the cliff has a higher degree of specificity than knowing that the fighter is not in a position to use the technique again.
based on the situational use of a given power, the fiction for that power has to change. I've seen numerous, numerous times where 4e proponents say, "Well, just because you used that martial encounter or daily THERE, doesn't mean the character did the same thing in the fiction when they used it HERE."
Of course. Just because 12 hp of damage dealt to this gnoll there meant a fatal blow, doesn't mean that 12 hp damage dealt to this giant here meant a fatal blow - in respect of the giant, it meant a glancing blow to the shins.
I can't even make up one single fictional narration for a given power, I have to recreate the fiction for that same power multiple times throughout the course of even a single gaming session
Yes. Just as, every time N hp of damage is dealt, you (or, more likely, your GM) has to
decide what it means in terms of the fiction, and then narrate that.
Just as, every time a thief fails a climb check, the GM has to decide what that means in terms of the fiction, then narrate that. (Just because
this time it means that you lost your grip on some slime, it won't mean that every time, will it?)
When I'm playing an RPG, I don't want to be making up the fiction for what just happened every single combat round, for every use of every power. I want to be in the head of my character.
Sure. But of course all the 4e players I know want to be in the heads of their characters.
This is why "dissociation" is, in my veiw, such an unhelpful term - because it purports to be labelling a feature of some mechanics, whereas in fact it is labelling some (many?) players' psychological response to certain mechanics.
I can give actual examples if you like. The dwarf fighter PC in my 4e game is a tough polearm wielder. He has been built around reach, multi-target attacks and forced movement from the beginning of the game. His 1st level encounter power was Passing Attack. His 27th level encounter power is Cruel Reaper. These are nearly the same thing, except with Passing Attack it is single-target attacks on either side of the movement, whereas with Cruel Reaper is is close bursts on either side of the movement.
When this player chooses what to do on a turn of combat he is not divorced from the head of his character. As a character, he is surveying the battlefield looking for openings and opportunities to do what it is that he does, namely, take control of his enemies by laying into them with his polearm and radically out-manoeuvring them. As a player, he is deciding what ability to use based on a survey of (i) his character sheet, and the techniques/options it presents to him, and (ii) the combat situation as laid out in the form of tokens on a gridded map and amplified by his knowledge of the various elements of the fiction that these token and symbols represent (eg "That token is a hydra, and so has threatening reach, so if I move through there I'll draw an OA" or "That line marks a ledge, so if I push my enemy over there I can knock him over the edge, which will cause extra damage but mean that I lose control of the situation", etc).
Thus,
there is no "dissociation". The player is making choices which correlate to the choices the character is making: the player's survey reveals information about the opportunities available, and the sensible technique to deploy, just as the character's survey reveals information about the opportunities available, and the sensible technique to deploy.
Another example. One of the PCs in my game is a deva Sage of Ages. This PC's skill bonus in the core knowledge skills (Arcana, History, Religion) are between +38 and +42, depending on precise skill and some feat-derived situational bonuses. And if a check fails for some reason, there is always the option to roll the "memories of one thousand lifetimes" die to add another 1d8.
No statted creature in any 4e publication has comparable bonuses (Vecna, as statted in Open Grave, has +34). Within the fiction, it is easy to imagine that the only more knowledgeable being in the cosmos is the god Ioun.
How does this manifest in play? One way is that this player virtually always succeeds on those checks - which creates certain GMing challenges I've discussed in another recent thread.
Another way is relevant to the current discussion: when the players are discussing some issue of cosmology, or campaign backstory, or similar thing (eg "How was X related to Y in the Dawn War?" Or, "What exactly is at stake in our confrontation with Primordial Z?" Etc) the player of this character will frequently answer those questions. What answers does the player give? Ones that are made up, based on extrapolations from established campaign lore, plus established D&D lore more generally (this player has been a D&D-er for 30+ years), plus knowledge of my inclinations as GM (the player and I have been RPGing together for 20+ years).
From what you've said,
for you (innerdude) this would take you out of the head of your character, because you are narrating stuff. For my player, this is essential to
being in the head of the character, because part of being in the head of the most knowledgeable being in the cosmos other than the god of knowledge is knowing the answers to things.
Energy spent trying to couple the use of a power to the fiction is wasted time in the game for me, and dramatically reduces my enjoyment of and inducement to play the game.
I'm sure that's true for you. It doesn't generalise though.
As I've just tried to show, for my players
no energy is spent coupling these abilities to the fiction. They are just playing their PCs, making decisions from within the headspace of their PCs, and their abilities on their PC sheets shape those decisions
just as, for the PCs in the gameworld, the circumstances around them and known to them shape their decisions.
They are not "wasting time" in a way that reduces their enjoyment. They are
playing their PCs. In particular, they are playing their PCs' competences: combat prowess, in the case of the fighter; intellectual prowess, in the case of the sage of ages. The player of the fighter would feel
less competent, and hence less in the head of hi PC, if he didn't have a suite of resources to draw on to influence and optimse his choices,
just as his character has a whole suite of polearm techniques in which he is trained. The player of the sage would feel less competent if every answer he provided to fellow party-member's questions in fact had to come from me as GM.
