Edit: Phone pushed through my post LONG before I was ready to post it. Will fix it.
Yeah, and? Most theories start out naive and develop nuance over time.
Would be far less of a problem if there were meaningful appetite for such nuance or less pushback against criticism of its current state.
Still, it may be possible to develop a framework around it, and develop more descriptive terms than "suspension of disbelief" or "verisimilitude" which people tend to dismiss out-of-hand.
TBH I find that a very remote possibility at best, because it looks a hell of a lot like a euphemism treadmill: repeatedly trying to revive the same flawed argument over and over with new coats of paint. "Dissociated" mechanics plus the tacit requirement of physical real-world intuition exactly reproduces the demand that non-magical things must feel (not
be, just
feel) "realistic" while magic things are allowed to be whatever the author says they are.
I don't think it's useful or practical to only use tools that are reliable. Perfect tools are nice, but perfect tools are not common. Heuristics exist because unreliable tools are extremely useful and often more potent than the alternatives because they better fit the real world.
I guess I just expect more out of tools than "eh, sometimes it works and sometimes it actively distracts."
Code smell is something that comes up quite a bit with programming, for example. The presence of certain patterns doesn't mean that code
is poor, but it does suggest where code might be poor or might have issues in the future. It's called code smell precisely because it's an imprecise and even sometimes wholly subjective measure largely based on experience.
Yeah this....doesn't do anything to increase my appreciation of the idea. It sounds like impenetrable, dismissive "I know it when I see it" talk, obscuring actual improvement behind (to use an Orwellian term) "bellyfeel." "I can't tell you
why it's bad, I just know
that it's bad" is worse than useless as far as I'm concerned. And as soon as you can actually say why it's bad...why would you not say so, rather than resorting to a vague and nonproductive criticism?
Well, that's the whole problem with magic, isn't it? Narratively it can always make sense because magic can do anything it wants to. That doesn't mean that fighter doesn't need to make sense, though. If anything, it suggests only that wizard (or magic) need a harder system to work within to define it's limits. Given the open-ended nature of the game world in TTRPGs (as opposed to board games or CRPGs) I don't really think that's practical. Although some open-ended magic systems do exist, they're more pain than they're worth, IMX.
I refuse to believe that magic, as a whole, cannot be part of a balanced game with non-magic. Which is part of why I have such a strong commitment on this issue.
On a wider angle, no, I don't think Vancian casting like 5e particularly makes much sense.
Would you then say that all (pseudo)vancian casting is necessarily "dissociated"? (Also: if it makes sense to others but not to you, does that not weaken the claim that being "dissociated" is an innate aspect of the mechanic itself, and instead indicate that it is a feeling individual players may or may not have about it?)
I find that it's better to assume that, absent the literal presence of some deductive or inductive proof or citation of the same, any claim of "objectivity" is merely a rhetorical device to express the conviction of the author's beliefs rather than any soundness of the reasoning. That's a safe assumption in virtually all scenarios. Very, very few things are ever objectively anything at all, especially when it comes to something as foundationally subjective as game theory in TTRPGs.
While the articles did not explicitly use the word "objective" or the like, it was very clear to me from context that the whole purpose, reiterated in both the introduction and the conclusion, was to reify dislike of 4e, to make it "this is not a feeling I have about something, it is an innate characteristic of something."
Perhaps instead the labels might want to be "necessary" and "unnecessary", given as some of these mechanics are rather necessary for a game to be and remain playable while others are unnecessary and can - without diminishing anything else about the game - be amended so as to have greater degrees of "association" or excised entirely.
These suffer equally serious problems. Nothing is "necessary" in the sense most people want it to mean, that is, absolutely and objectively indispensable, such that no change, no matter how insignificant, could be permitted.
Also, as I have argued many a time, the standards of "it's playable" or "you can have fun/enjoy playing it" are not useful. That is, any game which is somehow
literally impossible to play, or which somehow genuinely prevents literally anyone from enjoying playing it, is axiomatically so horrible it should never have even made it to the page, let alone the gaming table. Even the absolute worst, most offensive pieces of game design around almost always clear these bars. E.g. there are folks, exceedingly few but they DO exist, who have somehow played
and enjoyed FATAL; if that isn't a thorough repudiation of "it's playable"/"it can be enjoyed," I don't know what is. (Note, though, that there is a difference between these and "it plays
well" or "it's fun
for almost everyone," but both of those statements are dramatically more difficult to prove than the aforementioned ones...and necessarily much more subjective.)
If my preference is to have associated mechanics where possible (and I'm not sure it necessarily is) then that's still not a value judgement, it's a preference.
Preferences are value judgments. By definition. Prefer, "to like better or
value more highly."
Option 4: have between 6 and 8 encounters between long rests and look at the averages. Doesn't hurt to accept that DPR isn't the only number that matters. It's always balanced out reasonably well for my groups and I've been playing since 5E was released.
Ah yes, because non-spellcasters have ever so much to contribute when fighting is ignored and you can play in their wide open lack of non-generic features for non-combat.
Pull the other one.
Yup. I like X better than Y, and don't want a D&D where Y is prominent.
Okay. Why should your preferences get top billing?
Sure. Unfortunately, people tend to bend terminology toward their own purposes, and its hard to stop (see any topic ever using the term "immersion").
And my argument is that "dissociation" plus the unspoken requirement of "this must reflect my intuitions about the real world" is literally exactly "immersion" operating with new trade dress. It's the argument equivalent of a corporate rebranding because the old name and logo carry too much negative baggage. But because the core, the logic of it, remains unchanged, such superficial changes merely let the argument trundle forward without having to address the issues that led to the bad reputation in the first place.
Yes we did, and my assessment was not based on familiarity. I've played more 4e than 5e. I didn't bother to argue with you further, as historically that has not been particularly good use of my time. Nor I have great desire to participate in some proxy edition wars which this seems to have become.
If people continue to invoke an argument
explicitly constructed for reifying dislike of 4e, they should expect fans of 4e to not like it.
Shame, as the original topic of the thread was rather interesting.
Really? We've rehashed the "realism" question at least a couple times a year on this forum. What made this topic different?
Well, yes. That's the whole point: where there's an equal choice, go with the associated mechanic every time.
Why?
Obviously, and again that's the point: don't use dissociated mechanics unless you have to, in full knowledge that those "have to" times are going to arise.
(Emphasis added.) Why not?