In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[LostSoul]

If the avatar doesn't "know", then why doesn't the avatar attempt things that would be extremely effective, if successful, and which the avatar has no reason to believe will not be successful?

This is, AFAICT, the root of what is being called "disassociative mechanics" -- the player must disassociate from the avatar's POV in order to make effective choices in the game milieu. From the avatar's POV, tactic X makes sense, but from the player's POV, tactic X can no longer be used.

Ah, that makes sense! I was having trouble understanding The Alexandrian's essay as I was looking at it through my own biases. This clears it up for me. Thanks, RC.

In my own words: Dissociated mechanics aren't about the fact that what's happening in the game world doesn't necessarily have an influence over resolution; they are about associating player choice with character choice.

The idea I had in my head was that Power Attack was "dissociated" - what your character is actually doing in the game world doesn't matter, as long as you meet the rules requirements listed in the Feat. This is similar to the Slide Effect of Trick Strike; what your character is doing to move his foe isn't important.

The difference between Power Attack and Trick Strike is that Power Attack is a choice that you, as a player, can make, as well as a choice that your character can make in the game world. You want to trade BAB for Damage, while your character wants to trade precision for power. The player's decision and the character's decision are related - or associated. Trick Strike, being a Daily power, is a choice a player can make but the character cannot. The character will want to use Trick Strike as often as possible but is prohibited from doing so more than once per Extended Rest.

(I've been playing 3.5 lately, using Power Attack a lot, so it's on my mind. Wraithstrike is a powerful spell. )

Hmm... I'm not sure I understand it yet. Let me keep on rambling.

From the PC's point of view, he's trying to feint and get in a really good hit each time he attacks. From the player's point of view, he's trying to knock the NPC's hit points to 0 and manipulate the NPC's position on the field of battle. The dissociation comes from the fact that the player can activate a Daily power to achieve this goal while the character, from his point of view, cannot.

With Power Attack, the player can decide to trade BAB for Damage, while the PC can decide to trade precision for power. But what happens when a character without the Power Attack Feat attempts the same action? He cannot trade precision for power - it's not just that he's less effective at it, it's impossible for him. The player knows this - but why should the character? Trading precision for power seems like a plausible action for a character to take.

Is it then the case that Power Attack is a dissociated mechanic? Contrast it to Combat Expertise - you don't need the Feat to be able to fight defensively, it's just better if you have it. A character and a player can make the same choice - "I want to fight defensively" - it's just that Combat Expertise makes that choice a better one. A character without Power Attack cannot take the completely plausible and sensible action of trading precision for power. Nor can a character without Spring Attack even attempt to strike at a hydra before it can respond with a bite from all of its heads, though to me that seems like a plausible action by a D&D character, even if you have to suffer a quick strike because you haven't learned to properly protect yourself yet.

What have I misunderstood here?

I am not at all certain that this disassociation was necessary in order to meet 4e's design goals. It is my understanding that Essentials takes steps to remove a level of disassociation, as does LostSoul's hack, and The Jester's (AFAICT).

I think it's pretty clear that I don't understand what is meant by dissociated mechanics! That's why I'm not sure that I removed any dissociation from my hack. I left Martial Daily Exploits in, for example; I just tied them more closely to Quests (and renamed them "Determined Exploits"). I also have a section in the player's guide that tells players to draw on their player knowledge, not just character knowledge, when making decisions!

What I was trying to do was manipulate the player's decision-making process in a way that makes success more likely if the player pays attention to the game world. I attempted to do this by including details of the game world as a relevant factor in action resolution - which is a long-winded way of saying how your character makes his "to-hit roll" is important to the "game" part of the RPG.

 

[pawsplay]

You're quite right that saving throws and hit points are abstracted. The same mechanic can refer to a number of quite different properties of the game world. But isn't this very rules feature what TA is complaining about when he talks about the war devil's besieged foe ability?

Well, since you asked, no. Not in the slightest.

Hit points can represent a lot of things, but in all cases, "I am low on hit points," is equivalent to, "I can't take much more of being attacked or I will die." In all cases, having lost hit points is equivalent to having been somewhat injured, even if superficially. Whether or not your hit points, in this particular instance, reflect more in the way of luck, divine favor, toughness, or artful dodging, if you've been hit, you want cure light wounds.

Hit points are abstract and yet completely associated to the game world. Big, more dangerous weapons do more damage. Injured characters are more hurt. Wounded characters should think about fleeing. Etc. They are basically the antithesis of a dissociated mechanic.

Tell me if I've made sense to you. I'm really having a hard time understanding how you came up with the statement I quoted.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Good point... not to mention that at certain levels you can be too exhausted to use one particular daily... but have no problem doing a different (but arguably just as strenuous) daily power.

Yeah, that is a problem. A better, or supplementary, justification is that opponents only position themselves in such a way that the power can be used every so often. There is only the occasional opening for the rogue to exploit. Such openings could be a result of a series of feints on the rogue's part.

This makes the mechanic abstract certainly, and one could raise the issue that it's become more a player power than a character power - by using the power, the player is actually dictating the actions of NPCs.

However I think that player and character experience and control of the game have always been quite distinct, for example the ability of the player to choose a PC's race while the character, ofc, cannot.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm not sure how far you can take simulation before it becomes unwieldy. How accurately should you calculate bow ranges indoors, for example? How exacting should the grapple rules be?

I think simulation is a fine thing... to a point. But I think also that it probably reaches a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly.

If you build up rules detail by detail and then fit them together, then you'll certainly get a very complex set of rules, and you'll certainly get a set of rules that can't take into account every possible factor. So the answer isn't to say that simulation is hard, it's to take a different approach to resolving situations. You can tyake the focus outwards. Your goal when you shoot the bow is to have an effect on the fight. The range and the height of the ceiling complicate your ability to have an effect, so you have to overcome that difficulty before you can get involved. Discard your 'out of melee range' advantage, and you can claim that you've moved closer and can fire effectively, but you're now not immune to melee attacks. Make a successful tactics check to find an 'advantageous position' and you cna ignore the complication without making yourself vulnerable. Or fire into the melee, accepting a different complication like 'friendly fire'. Disregard the idea of resolving your actions in isolation and treat them as part of the fight as a whole, and let your actions affect the overall result of this rounds action or even the whole fight.

I repeat, as far as I'm concerned it's getting 'accurate' results from the situation that marks out a simulation, not how those results are arrived at. Building things up from the details is not the only way to do it.

Note, I may be explaining this badly. Some of the concepts come from Heroquest 2, various Fate based games, and even tabletop wargames (which have been through exactly this evolution). I'm not even sure I can explain it, though I know what I am trying to explain.

 

[Imaro]

However I think that player and character experience and control of the game have always been quite distinct, for example the ability of the player to choose a PC's race while the character, ofc, cannot.

Eh, I don't see these as the same... in one you are making decisions before play begins, thus there is no character and no in-game world and thus you can't interact with the world through your character... however the minute play begins you now have those things and interaction with the game world through one's character begins. I guess I considered pre-game prep and in-game play within D&D two very different phases of play. Though other rpg's definitely blur the line, D&D by RAW really doesn't.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Hit points can represent a lot of things, but in all cases, "I am low on hit points," is equivalent to, "I can't take much more of being attacked or I will die." In all cases, having lost hit points is equivalent to having been somewhat injured, even if superficially. Whether or not your hit points, in this particular instance, reflect more in the way of luck, divine favor, toughness, or artful dodging, if you've been hit, you want cure light wounds.

Hit points are abstract and yet completely associated to the game world. Big, more dangerous weapons do more damage. Injured characters are more hurt. Wounded characters should think about fleeing. Etc. They are basically the antithesis of a dissociated mechanic.

Tell me if I've made sense to you. I'm really having a hard time understanding how you came up with the statement I quoted.

The issue is that The Alexandrian uses multiple definitions of dissociated mechanic. There's the one he uses at the top of the article - "These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations" - for which he has Trick Strike as an example. But then he talks about the besieged foe ability being dissociated even though he himself provides several game world explanations. Here his definition seems to be a mechanic for which the rules don't provide a gameworld justification, hence leaving such a justification up to the participants. He then talks at length about the problems he believes are caused by such multiple interpretations in the passage I quoted above. Hit points, saving throws and xp for gold are all like besieged foe in this respect.

I believe I detected a third definition later in the article - non-simulationist mechanic.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I repeat, as far as I'm concerned it's getting 'accurate' results from the situation that marks out a simulation, not how those results are arrived at. Building things up from the details is not the only way to do it.

You're saying it's quite possible to have an abstract simulation? That's an interesting idea, as most, if not all, rpgs generally regarded as simulationist are very detailed.

 

[Bluenose]

You're saying it's quite possible to have an abstract simulation? That's an interesting idea, as most, if not all, rpgs generally regarded as simulationist are very detailed.

Then I think it's about time someone tried to get the simulationist results without the obsession with details. It's been done outside RPGs for a couple of decades. I've got tabletop wargames rules from the 70s and 80s where there are several pages listing and explaining the modifiers that affect a combat resolution, and similar for various other parts of the game like morale checks and movement modifiers. And I've got more recent ones where the whole section on combat resolution is two or three pages, which might have been enough to list and explain the modifiers in some of the older sets. And if there's a difference in how accurately they simulate the history, there's no trend for the complex sets being better than the simple ones.

 

[Dunnagin]

It seems that "The Alexendrian's" terminology and method are in question here, so I will describe my personal experience in my own words, perhaps clarifying the position of several other as well.

If my primary language is Greek... then Japanese is completely "disassociated" to me. The characters and pronunciations are totally foreign to me, and I have a hard time communicating (if at all) in that language.

4e was not a completely foreign language to me, but it was a language that contained a lot of slang and concepts I did not identify with (if that states it clearly enough)... therefore it was not an ideal system for myself, or my players.

This does not make the system bad... but it does make it "bad for me".
I could learn this new language eventually perhaps... but my players and I are fluent in our native tongue... so why would we do this?

Does that make sense?

 

[pawsplay]

The issue is that The Alexandrian uses multiple definitions of dissociated mechanic. There's the one he uses at the top of the article - "These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations" - for which he has Trick Strike as an example. But then he talks about the besieged foe ability being dissociated even though he himself provides several game world explanations. Here his definition seems to be a mechanic for which the rules don't provide a gameworld justification, hence leaving such a justification up to the participants. He then talks at length about the problems he believes are caused by such multiple interpretations in the passage I quoted above. Hit points, saving throws and xp for gold are all like besieged foe in this respect.

Those aren't different definitions. As he clearly spells out in the article, he considers Trick Strike to be dissociated, and re-associating it means house-ruling the ability every time it is used. He does not claim it is now and forever dissociated.

I believe I detected a third definition later in the article - non-simulationist mechanic.

Not by my reading of the article, or even the most broadest definitions of simulationist I can think of. It simply means non-immersive. In Forge Terms, the whole question is creative-agendra neutral. Certainly, a dissociated mechanic is anti-Simulationist, in that it makes simulation harder, but it also impedes any form of play in which you are working from Actor Stance.