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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6287659" data-attributes="member: 6696971">The problem here is what I attempted to display above.  The character and the player are not even close to making the same decisions.  The resolution of their two respective models of observation > orientation to the observed phenomena going on around them (spatially and temporally at the bare minimum) > decision-making (they can't possibly be making the same decisions) > and finally actions (they aren't remotely committing to the same suite of actions) are of such a vast deviation of resolution that they bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever.  Its like a two box model of the earth's climate system versus an extremely high resolution global climate model.  The two cannot even relate to one another.  If you ask an actual basketball player to assign some sort of singular "basketball check" to abstract out an outcome of an offensive possession, they would look at you like you're deranged.  Its utterly unphysical with respect to the process so the two parties are hopelessly estranged from one another.  I don't disagree here.  You don't need to convince me that mechanics that abstract to facilitate functional play are the best way to proceed if the aim is perpetuation of an enjoyable RPG experience.  Even moreso, you certainly don't need to convince me that players and characters are so estranged from one another in their respective OODA loops that it is inevitable that players will be percieving different things, bear out a different orientation to their perceptions, be making different decisions (based on the preceding different perceptions and orientations + other things such as the concerns of table handling time + ease of use + how best to facilitate genre tropes and well-paced, climactic conflicts), and therefore this necessitates a different bent to their suite of possible actions to be deployed (due to action economy and several other gamist concerns).What I don't agree with is that the theory of dissociative mechanics has any real meaning that transcends preference and/or that it has nothing to do with "what you cannot tolerate because you haven't had enough time/experience to internalize it."  When someone says to me "just abstract a basketball check" and then the character and player are making the same decisions for the same reasons, while simultaneously holding other inconsistent positions on long-term mechanics, I know that something is extremely amiss (either with their experience with martial enterprises generally, basketball specifically, or they haven't fully considered how inconsistent that position is with respect to older mechanics that they have assimilated into their "what I can hand-wave" mental bin where mechanics get a pass.).</blockquote>

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