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Guest 85555
Guest
For me the article gets at why the game doesnt work for me. I dont think what alexander describes is universal for everyone, but for a lot of folks, it does describes what doesnt work for us when it comes to 4E.
D&D 5E (2014) "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"
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Obryn
Hero
I don't see how, "You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated mechanics that you’re using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world — and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook" can be read any other way.
And I likewise can't see how "In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that’s entirely accidental" is anything but base edition warring, regardless of how it otherwise describes why 4e doesn't work for you, personally. So it's weird to see you getting upset about some quotes posted on another site while simultaneously praising what's basically ground zero in the edition wars - a blog which doesn't just try to kick 4e out of the D&D club like most other edition warriors do, but steps up to kick it out of the big RPG tent as a whole.
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Guest 85555
Guest
this isnt the part of the essay that resonated with me. Personally I am not that worried about definitions of rpg. But the aspect of this sentiment that does connect with my view is I personally find it very difficult to role play (in the sense of speaking as my character and interacting with the world from his point of view) when there is a disconnect between the game and the world. But I dont imagine everyone has that difficulty.
The oriignal essay was written over four years ago, at the height of the edition wars. In his revised essay he admits it alienated people who are invested in 4E.
Regarding SA, i really dont want to get into that, but I will just say my problem with them isnt that the edition war (edition warring has been almost ubiquitous at points) it is that they single out posters from other sites and make fun of them as "grognards" where people wont defend their posiitons. I also think much of the behavior there goes beyond simple mockery. People got very emotional on all sides when 4E came out and I dont really hold it against people (be it you, JA, or Hussar) if folks still harbor a bit of grudge because it is understandable. But the behavior at SA goes beyond that. It gets intensley personal there.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
credibility
Mismatch
Obryn
Hero
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think that JA COULD have had a point, as [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] explains it there's a fairly reasonable consistent dissociation criteria. I can even buy the definition JA uses for it here. It is all the other screed that goes around it in The Alexandrian that makes it ridiculous edition warring. Had he adopted a more balanced viewpoint and a neutral tone, looked at and analyzed the game in more depth and truly understood it then he might have provided some interesting and useful analysis. IMHO as it is that didn't happen... Luckily I don't have to read other people's blogs though, so overall the only way it bothers me is the sheer number of times I've had to endure bad arguments rehashed here or on other forums in even less coherent forms. I'm glad [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] is around to advance a credible, if not to me entirely compelling, point of view
I suppose its possible he also agrees with JA on other things, but I wouldn't know or even speculate on that!
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Its not assumptions about what balanced means its assumptions about play styles. Balance hinges around play style assumptions the more your balance paradigm makes assumptions the less robust it is. And play styles that fall outside of these assumptions create a break with the balance. In effect by creating a game that makes more assumptions they are making a game which supports fewer play styles.
For instance. Do you assume people will play the same character from level 1 through 20 ... Gygax and the mechanics assumed that they would, but one of the earliest house rules I heard of was starting at higher levels usually level 4 and avoiding the feeling of being lame. (Gygax himself house ruled 0e to start at level 3). The games linear quadratic mismatch may not have even accounted for the highest levels of play as those were created later.
Another instance assume play will involve a certain intensity of action in a game day, this is directly related to daily resources. Essentials assumed 4 to 5 encounters per day. And according to the designers 5e assumes similarly but more accurately breaks it down to 20 intense rounds of activity daily. This was also mirrored in the earlier game but the numbers are less trackable flukey wild.... (insert the 5MWD and wandering monsters which didnt really stop it .. just resulted in an arms race, the game even gave weaponry for the players to engage in this dm vs players conflict)
4e from the get go didn't make those assumptions and play at any level allows characters to contribute approximately the same. And play with any number of encounters per day allows the same approximately equal contribution. However if you didnt have 4 to 5 "significant" resource impacting encounters a game day characters probably wouldn't be highly challenged ... which is a balance between game world and player assumption that is probably unavoidable it has to be some value.... Its also not really the kind of balance most are talking about - mostly we are discussing the sense of contribution in terms of game mechanic granted ability from player to player.
Assuming tables will emphasize pillars approximately equally. 4e wasn't totally successful at making balance such that this emphasis didnt have a significant impact either - so when we are asking for it from 5e we are hoping for something perhaps better than we had. Though at low and medium levels it was probably not bad at all or at least it was fairly easy to fix at low levels - somewhat common house rules in 4e were actually things like opening up all skills to all classes and allowing fighters and hybrid characters the same number of skills, it didn't address the impact rituals could bring to high level play nor the issue of fighters having substantially less valuable primary attributes in at least the interaction arena. (allowing strength to work with intimidation is one I have heard to address that a little).
Anyway... balance paradigms based on assumptions that are highly table dependent is failed balance. (you still might not experience it because you are one of the lucky who conform)
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Balesir
Adventurer
In his second run at the topic, JA does, indeed, remove most of the overt ties to 4e, but the agenda is still quite clear and his argument seems to me to have two gaping holes.
What he does in that blog is first set up a supposedly clear "definition" of dissociated mechanics as "decisions by the player that do not map directly to decisions by the character in the game world", and then he insists that such decisions are the definition of "playing a role".
Okay, objection number one: that's not what "playing a role" has ever meant before. The most recognisable meaning in common parlance is when an actor "plays a role"; but in this case they (generally) follow a script, deciding to say things and take actions in order to serve the story being told, rather than deciding to say and do those things for the same reason the character does. Even in improv acting, there is (necessarily) a good deal of "meta" input to the actors' decision making processes. Those wishing to "get closer to the character" sometimes choose "method acting" - but even this is not an excuse to simply ignore the script and director, it is (as I understand it) the process of internalising the decisions mandated by the script to build the character so as to make those decisions his or her own. Quite similar to the way in which some 4e players describe internalising 4e's supposed "dissociated mechanics", in fact.
Objection number two is the idea that there can be a system without dissociative elements. For this I need to break down how character decision making might work, so I need to make a few explanations. First off, there is no such thing as "the character"; they are figments of our imaginations, as indeed is the world they live in. As such, when I say "the character does such-and-such", this is actually shorthand for "we might imagine with plausibility intact that the imaginary character will experience the imaginary world they inhabit in this way". That "imaginary world" could, in principle, work in any way whatsoever, limited only by our imaginations. I have sometimes played with the idea of doing 'Flatland' as an RPG, but the world as perceived by the characters would be almost completely dissimilar to our own experience, making the imaginative leap very hard indeed. Which brings me to the point that RPGs are usually set in worlds superficially quite similar to our own and peopled by characters we might reasonably imagine to have perceptions of their world that are as complex, as nuanced and as instinctive to them as our own perceptions of this world are.
This brings up a problem. The player in a roleplaying game has a proxy for the character's experience of their world conveyed to them via what is, compared to that complex, broad and nuanced perception we enjoy of our own world, a hopelessly restricted bandwidth. As a result, there is a rich palette of limitations and opportunities for the character, the full scope of which the player cannot possibly be aware. This alone makes "taking decisions for reasons that map directly to the character's reasons" problematic. Either the mechanics limit the information upon which a character decision can be made to that tiny subset of information that is also available to the player, or some way must be found to represent the myriad limitations and opportunities that are apparent to the character in the decision making of the player. Neither option allows us to have simultaneously both a plausible character in relation to the world, and player decisions that are based on the same logic as that used by the character. Both are "dissociated"; one has a decision making logic "dissociated" from that which the character uses, the other has character logic that is "dissociated" from what we experience in the real world.
Let's look at JA's "one handed catch" ability as an example. The chances are the receiver will make such a move only once or twice in a game, at most. So, when will they happen? Well, as he runs, the receiver has a whole plethora of sensory input. In the moments before he either tries for, or doesn't try for, the catch these will give him a picture of just how likely such an attempt is to succeed - information the player of this "character" can base only on a few words from the GM or the rough position of some minis on the table. What happens next is key; the receiver either decides not to try the catch, because he doesn't think it's feasible given the circumstances, without expending any effort or time on the "failed attempt", or he goes for the catch with, if he is suitably skilled, a pretty good chance of success. Do the mechanics for this model the "pretty good chance for success"? If so I see a character who catches an infeasibly large number of one handed catches. Or do they model the "mean" chance of success? If so, I see a character inexplicably failing to do anything because they spend their "action" to try a catch at a likelihood no sane receiver would try for - or they simply don't use the ability at all.
I would boil the problem down to one of modelling "skill" in an RPG. Skill is composed of two parts: perception and habitual action (or "knack"). The 'perception' part - instinctively 'seeing' a situation in a way that the unskilled really don't, like a sculptor "seeing" the finished figure inside the wood, or a mechanic sensing what is wrong with an engine based on the sounds and movements it makes, or a wide receiver judging whether a one handed catch is "on" based on sensory information about the field around him and his own body - is extremely hard if not impossible to model in an "associated" way. The habituated physical movement (or even mental activity, thinking of facility with arithmetic and maths) is relatively easy to model - and some seem to believe that, once they have modelled that, they have modelled "skill". But that leaves, at least to my perception, a gaping hole where "skilled perception" should be.
Oh, hey - I have got to pick up an album recorded by those guys!
Hussar
Legend
Ok, here's a few questions for folks, which I think goes hand in hand with what Balesir is saying.
At your table, what would your reaction be to any of the following:
Situation 1
Player: I go down on one knee, exposing myself to attack. When the bad guys come forward, I spring up and attack all of them.
Situation 2
Player: Taking a two handed grip, I smash my sword down on the bad guy. ((Rolls dice)) I rolled a 17 (plus bonuses).
DM: You hit.
Player: I do triple damage because of my description.
Situation 3
Player: Whirling and dancing, I strike at the closest orc, use my momentum to flow past him and strike the second orc and then, on the rebound, hit the third one. ((Mechanically, I take a 5 foot step between each opponent)).
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Now, as a DM, would you allow any or all of these? If the answer is "no" or even "maybe", then that's why we need some sort of power system for martial characters. Because, none of these actions are terribly out of line for a skilled swordsman to execute in 6 seconds. Yet, I know that I would never have allowed any of those in any pre-4e game I've ever run and I would certainly have a pretty strong talking to with the players for even trying to dictate results like that.
But, that's what a power system does. Leaving it up to the DM doesn't work. We've had almost 30 years of D&D to prove that. Fighters get to do what the system allows them to do and very rarely anything else. We've all been trained not to let players do this. So, how do we allow martial characters to do cool things, if we don't tell DM's that they can do cool things.
At your table, what would your reaction be to any of the following:
Situation 1
Player: I go down on one knee, exposing myself to attack. When the bad guys come forward, I spring up and attack all of them.
Situation 2
Player: Taking a two handed grip, I smash my sword down on the bad guy. ((Rolls dice)) I rolled a 17 (plus bonuses).
DM: You hit.
Player: I do triple damage because of my description.
Situation 3
Player: Whirling and dancing, I strike at the closest orc, use my momentum to flow past him and strike the second orc and then, on the rebound, hit the third one. ((Mechanically, I take a 5 foot step between each opponent)).
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Now, as a DM, would you allow any or all of these? If the answer is "no" or even "maybe", then that's why we need some sort of power system for martial characters. Because, none of these actions are terribly out of line for a skilled swordsman to execute in 6 seconds. Yet, I know that I would never have allowed any of those in any pre-4e game I've ever run and I would certainly have a pretty strong talking to with the players for even trying to dictate results like that.
But, that's what a power system does. Leaving it up to the DM doesn't work. We've had almost 30 years of D&D to prove that. Fighters get to do what the system allows them to do and very rarely anything else. We've all been trained not to let players do this. So, how do we allow martial characters to do cool things, if we don't tell DM's that they can do cool things.
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Guest 85555
Guest
I think that JA COULD have had a point, as @Bedrockgames explains it there's a fairly reasonable consistent dissociation criteria. I can even buy the definition JA uses for it here. It is all the other screed that goes around it in The Alexandrian that makes it ridiculous edition warring. Had he adopted a more balanced viewpoint and a neutral tone, looked at and analyzed the game in more depth and truly understood it then he might have provided some interesting and useful analysis. IMHO as it is that didn't happen... Luckily I don't have to read other people's blogs though, so overall the only way it bothers me is the sheer number of times I've had to endure bad arguments rehashed here or on other forums in even less coherent forms. I'm glad @Bedrockgames is around to advance a credible, if not to me entirely compelling, point of view
I think if you read JA's blog regularly you would see he contributes a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with edition warring. I think we have all engaged in it at some point, and I do think he made a real effort to adopt a new approach in the revised essay. Still this is a subject people have very strong feelings about. I know in the past I wasnt always as generous as I could be to the other side, and I often stated my opinion in a way that came across as dismissing other points of view (largely because I failed to qualify statements). Heck, on this thread there has been plenty of edition warring from the other side (stating that 3E is objectively broken to me sounds like edition warring and isnt much different, in terms of tone, than saying 4E is objectively dissociative).
I don't know what other things you are concerned I might agree with JA on, but I do find for the most part I am close to his point of view. I definitely agree more with his approach to investigative adventures than Laws approach (though I do respect Laws alot). In terms of definitino of what rp is and what rpgs are, I am probably more moderate than JA but I do share some of his thoughts. For example, while dont believe you can define rpg around rp, I have always viewed role play (in the context o f an rpg)to mean what he states in means in his article (going back to the late 80s for me at least). However I get that there are different uses of the word and that for some people rp just means controling a character. I dont think it is helpful to talk about people who dont approach rp the way I do as not roleplaying (because I think it is a word that has about two to three definitinos depending on contexts) and I am always wary of definition-based arguments. But I do think I see things in a very similar lit to JA.
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