D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[Neonchameleon]

All I'm saying is that it's associated in the initial player / character decision ("I choose to engage in combat, using the best techniques at my disposal.").

That is emphatically not what I am thinking when I wield a sword. What I am thinking is about what I am actually doing.

But there's no character in chess, only a player. *sigh* Once again, fundamental misunderstanding of the Alexandrian's essay.

Missing the point. I was suggesting that the Grand Master was the character you were roleplaying as.

This might make sense from an association standpoint if there was an element of fortune that determined that the "encounter power" goes active. For example, the player/character scores a critical hit. In this way, the player isn't fundamentally dissociating the use of the power from the character's inexplicable "magical" ability to make the opening happen exactly when he or she wants.

I don't care how far into your enemy's OODA loop you get--sometimes that opening simply isn't there, and when the player DECIDES that it now IS there, there's potential for a dissociated decision from anything the character can make in the game world.

And this I find absolutely ridiculous as an approach. "The mapping isn't perfect and sometimes opportunities aren't there so it is better to pretend that they are either always there or never there than to have a mechanic by which they are sometimes there." This is why I say the Crusader is actually better at association than AEDU - with the Crusader the powers you have access to at any given time are random. (And a crusader-hold-one would be better yet, as would my 13th Age Approach-and-opportunity hack).

 

[innerdude]

I think it's more fair to say, Neonchamelon, that 1e / OSRIC was un-fun, and un-immersive for other reasons (realism, abstraction).

I do have to disagree that dissociation is mapping between player and designer. I can have a completely clear, coherent idea of how a game is designed, and its mechanical effects. And simply not like them for reasons that have nothing to do with association (realism, abstraction, unnecessary time for bookkeeping, lack of elegance).

The Alexandrian's definition is actually fairly narrow--association / dissociation relates to decision mapping between player and character, and nothing else. He's also quick to point out that there dissociated mechanics in every RPG.

One of the last things I said in the old dissociation thread was that no one argues that every RPG has them. It's really just each player / group's tolerance for the nature, degree, kind, and frequency of each system's dissociations that determine if we're willing to work within them or not. This is the same for realism and abstraction. Some of us are willing to sacrifice realism in the name of ease of play, some are willing to work with abstraction, some are not.

Anyway..... thanks for the considered response.

 

[Manbearcat]

Oh, I don't deny that disassociation is a very real thing. On the other hand I'm 99% certain The Alexandrian's analysis of disassociation is superficial and misleading.

As I said, I know that disassociation is a thing people experience because I have experienced it. When I experienced it was playing OSRIC with 1 minute combat rounds. And that is why I not only know it's a thing, I know that Justin Alexander's analysis of it is wrong. I am 99% certain that under Justin Alexander's definition 1e is not disassociated. But for me it is. This is because Justin Alexander has taken a thing that happens (disassociation), found confirmation bias in that each separate game has its own thought patterns and people used to the thought patterns for 3.X aren't used to those for 4e, and decided that his thought patterns not matching 4e are a good excuse to kick the edition wars off.

Disassociation happens when the player's thought processes do not match the designer's. This has absolutely nothing to do with what the character would actually be thinking in the situation and everything to do with what the player is used to. And as I have pointed out repeatedly using the OODA loop, the thought processes of a player of a 4e fighter in combat are closer to those of an actual fighter than in any other edition (with the honourable exception of the 3.5 Crusader which is even better than AEDU - and I have a further improvement to make with my 13th Age hack when I get round to it). But it is undeniably true that if you think how a player of a 3.X fighter thinks is how a fighter thinks then a 4e one is different and may lead to disassociation.

Yup. Absolutely. Those are pretty much my thoughts across the board.

I know you don't want to run this one through the mire @innerdude but if I can ask this one question because I'm wondering how we're so far apart on this wee bit here:

A military operator, lets say a sniper, is in theater. He is in position to carry out an operation. Central Command runs him through his mission protocol and then gives him the green light. He takes out the target (10 % of the mission). The intent is to maintain radio communication throughout the entire process as its standard operating procedure for Central Command to walk field operators through the other 90 % of their missions; navigation of enemy terrain, rendezvous with support, and extraction.

After the successful hit (10 % of the mission), the operator and Centcom lose radio contact. As such, they have neither awareness of nor input on what happens next regarding the operator's navigation of enemy terrain and whether or not, or how, he locates and rendezvous with support and undergoes successful extraction. That is 90 % desynching of perspectives and decisions within the framework of an operation. Is that not an egregious example of dissociation?

I don't think leadership at Centcom would come out of that saying; "Man, that was a gross abstraction of a mission!" I think it more likely that they would come out of that saying; "Our communication infrastructure is fubar! Get us back online so we can Observe our field operators and monitor their progress, Orient them toward mission objectives or away from hazards, aid them (or co-opt their discretion) in Deciding how to handle unforeseen events within the fluid situation before them, and Act together for a successful rest of the mission (navigation, rendezvous, extraction - 90 %)."

 

[Guest 85555]

The Alexandrian's definition is actually fairly narrow--association / dissociation relates to decision mapping between player and character, and nothing else. He's also quick to point out that there dissociated mechanics in every RPG. .

This is my understanding as well. I dont think dissociation being a break between player and designer makes a whole lot of sense.

 

[Guest 85555]

Yup. Absolutely. Those are pretty much my thoughts across the board.

I know you don't want to run this one through the mire @innerdude but if I can ask this one question because I'm wondering how we're so far apart on this wee bit here:

A military operator, lets say a sniper, is in theater. He is in position to carry out an operation. Central Command runs him through his mission protocol and then gives him the green light. He takes out the target (10 % of the mission). The intent is to maintain radio communication throughout the entire process as its standard operating procedure for Central Command to walk field operators through the other 90 % of their missions; navigation of enemy terrain, rendezvous with support, and extraction.

After the successful hit (10 % of the mission), the operator and Centcom lose radio contact. As such, they have neither awareness of nor input on what happens next regarding the operator's navigation of enemy terrain and whether or not, or how, he locates and rendezvous with support and undergoes successful extraction. That is 90 % desynching of perspectives and decisions within the framework of an operation. Is that not an egregious example of dissociation?

I don't think leadership at Centcom would come out of that saying; "Man, that was a gross abstraction of a mission!" I think it more likely that they would come out of that saying; "Our communication infrastructure is fubar! Get us back online so we can Observe our field operators and monitor their progress, Orient them toward mission objectives or away from hazards, aid them (or co-opt their discretion) in Deciding how to handle unforeseen events within the fluid situation before them, and Act together for a successful rest of the mission (navigation, rendezvous, extraction - 90 %)."

That is a communication break down, with a gap in a part of the mission. Dissociation doesnt really make sense in a real world example like that, it is pretty specific to the player-pc relationship in roleplaying games. I think a better analogy, but one that is still imperfect would be if they remained in communcation but when they wanted to hin to shoot a target instead of giving him instructions of who, when and where, they had to do jumping jacks and milk a cow

Dissociation is an interesting concept. I think it does help explain why certain things dont work for a lot of players. Is it perfect? I don't know. I think if anyone wants to understand the concept of it they should read the essay and judge for themselves. This one addresses some of the issues that have come up in this discussion: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer

I happen to like a lot of what the Alexandrian writes. His thoughts on investigative adventure are some of the best on the subject (and I run investigative adventures all the time).

 

[Ahnehnois]

If a GM wanted to "tell a story" I would rather they wrote a book, frankly, but regardless I can see some validity to the "it's just another choice about what to gloss over" argument. I'm still inclined to say that combat is a significant enough occurrence that it should not be glossed over completely, however.

If you're not "telling a story" what are you doing when you're playing D&D? AFAIK D&D is a form of cooperative improvisational storytelling (among other things).

Well, combat is relatively significant; I'm much more inclined to skip the Climb check needed to climb a ladder than I am to skip the ten attack and damage rolls needed to wipe out a group of kobolds. That said, my dream as a DM is to pull a Battlestar Galactica-esque trick where I suddenly advance the timeline by a year and bypass on-screen mechanical resolution for all the events that occurred in that time.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To my mind this reiterates my point upthread - fundamentally different attitudes towards the role of GM force.

Different attitudes definitely. Even your term "DM force" is very slanted. I don't know how a DM could ever be "forcible"; as I understand the concept, the DM controls every character and object and concept that is not directly part of the PCs' character sheet, and also controls how and when actions will be resolved. One could serve an equivalent function without having any game rules at all. AFAIC, the rules are imposing "designer force" on the game (which can be but is not necessarily a good thing, depending on a variety of very subjective factors).

If it's OK to have "taking 20" in combat via GM fiat (and obviously spell casting in D&D has always worked this way), why is the auto-success dimension of CaGI so radically impermissible?

Because that power is a combination of the designers' and the player's will and implicitly circumvents the DM's ability to control the actions of his own characters. In essence, because it's changing what I understand to be the role of the DM.

 

[Guest 85555]

If you're not "telling a story" what are you doing when you're playing D&D? AFAIK D&D is a form of cooperative improvisational storytelling (among other things).

i think you would be surprised how strongly many people feel this is not the case. Not interested in triggering a debate about rpgs and stories but there are definitely plenty of folks who do not see it as cooperative storytelling.

 

[Ahnehnois]

i think you would be surprised how strongly many people feel this is not the case. Not interested in triggering a debate about rpgs and stories but there are definitely plenty of folks who do not see it as cooperative storytelling.

That might be true, but it's a perspective I don't understand. You're describing a series of fictional events that create a narrative. You may not care much about the content of that narrative or record or preserve it in any way, and you may be getting satisfaction out of the experience for reasons that have nothing to do with that narrative, but you are creating a story whether you want to or not.

Personally, I did enjoy storytelling before I had ever heard of D&D so I see rpgs as simply a subset of that art form; I'm sure there are other perspectives but I don't see how any of them could ignore the statement above.

 

[Guest 85555]

That might be true, but it's a perspective I don't understand. You're describing a series of fictional events that create a narrative. You may not care much about the content of that narrative or record or preserve it in any way, and you may be getting satisfaction out of the experience for reasons that have nothing to do with that narrative, but you are creating a story whether you want to or not.

The argument against that is it doesnt become a narrative until after the fact a bit like history. You can compose a narrative of history once it has occured by taking events and giving them structure,but while it is happening it isnt a narrative (and that isnt the purpose of the events themselves). I think people on both sides make too big an issue out of the word story. If you take it to mean, the stuff that is happening in the game, i have no issue with it and think it can be a useful term. If you take it to mean something more (story structure, themes, thesis, etc) then I would disagree and say that isnt what my games involve.