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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6288052" data-attributes="member: 87792">This is not so.  D&D magic started out, like the rest of D&D, as a hacked tabletop wargame.  And wizards getting to cast each spell once per battle was just the way the wargame worked - neither more nor less.  It got called Vancian because Jack Vance's magic looks a little like it on a bad day if you squint a bit - but in practice Vance's actual magic (in which the greatest archmages might know half a dozen spells and negotiated with genies to do the rest of the work) is much better represented by 4e daily powers than older editions of D&D where you got a lot more spells when you could call yourself an archmage.As I have noticed ever since The Alexandrian wrote about disassociative mechanics, disassociative mechanics are a mix of strawmen and people not understanding what is going on in the system - or not wanting certain factors to be modelled.If we look at the "associated" version of the rules you present, they are incredibly boring.  It's a simple roll-off for what was planned to be something climactic but instead comes down to the roll of 1d20.  To me that's no fun - if we are going to have an epic basketball showdown I want an epic basketball showdown.  Not spamming a basketball skill and having a simple roll-off.On the other hand the disassociated system, assuming that you get that system design has come on since Marvel FASERIP was written thirty years ago, is starting to get more interesting.  You're not just taking ball handling skill into account.  You've also got a morale factor - even in your example where the morale came from the fact that the person had rescued people earlier that week meaning that they were on a high and their self image was high enough that they would not give up to fatigue and defeat.  But had the match been a friendly one without stakes they would have not spent the karma.  They'd have taken the loss.Even in your strawman disassociated system the decision made by the player ("Do I push myself hard enough that I might injure myself and will certainly give up a non-renewable resource that might save my life in a literal life or death struggle?") is much, much more interesting than the decision made by the player in the associated system ("What's my basketball skill?")  And the question about how big a risk to take by going flat out at risk of hurting yourself (i.e. not having the Karma to spend when you need it) is one that is being made strictly in character.And as I have shown the actual decision being made when the rubber meets the road ("Do I push myself flat out here at risk of minor injury and exhausting myself rather than play as if it was a friendly game?") is much closer to one that is being asked at the time than the one in the supposedly associated system (what can my player roll).  What is not being checked at the time is where that Karma came from so it is irrelevant.And if that worked then the team with the biggest bank balance would always win the league.  But assuming there is rough parity (I'm not beating Michael Jordan in a basketball game unless he's asleep or dead) then factors like teamwork and how well the team meshes as a unit, morale, rest, whether this is where the players go flat out because this is the big one or whether they are saving themselves for a bigger match later in the week, and other things all have a pretty big contributory factor.  And even using your example the karma example took account of morale and whether the characters were pacing themselves or going flat out - and the supposedly associated one did not. The question is whether the designers care about modelling things beyond an objective reality and actually want to get into the psychological reality of the individual concerned - something that is inherently subjective.  If the individual's motivation and morale do not matter then modelling objective reality is sufficient for the purpose and you can rely exclusively on associated mechanics.  If you care about motivation, morale, and how much people are willing to risk then strictly objective factors have ceased to be the determining ones and you need some subjective factors that are left up to the individual player to associate because different characters are associated differently.Your appeal to wargames is, in fact, an appeal to wargames without morale rules.  (Normally morale on a wide scale is handled statistically - but the narrower your zoom gets the worse an approximation this becomes).</blockquote>

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