In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[pemerton]

My one reservation on the simulation angle is that, while simulation is often appreciated by people who prefer simulation by process, I'm not sure that is the full scope of what simulation is.

Agreed. Purist-for-system doesn't exhaust the scope of simulationist play, even if we're using "simulationism" as The Forge uses it. "High concept" simulationism is a very important category of simulationist play - where the exploration is genre exploration rather than world/setting/causal exploration.

Call of Cthulhu is, in my view, the poster child for high quality, high concept simulationist play. Sit down to play it and you'll get the experience of sliding into insanity as you confront truths that human beings were not meant to know!

Alignment rules are, in my view, the worst instance of high concept simulatonist priorities creeping into D&D. Part of the problem is that they encourage the GM to use a whole heap of force - in terms of judging behaviour, penalising behaviour, NPC-ifying PCs (at least in many games with a "no evil PCs" clause), etc. Many D&D players have a tendency to try to purist-for-system-ify alignment, though - "moral forces as real parts of the world's causal power" - which I think produces weird outcomes (like angels and devils partying together in Sigil).

The most dysfunctional high concept mechanic, though, is the core mechanic of White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D, namely, the "golden rule" that the GM may suspend the action resolution mechanics willy-nilly "in the interests of story". One great thing about CoC is that, instead of dysfunctional GM force, it offers a robust mechanic to ensure genre outcomes, namely, sanity.

 

[JamesonCourage]

First, let me state that I'm fairly well satisfied in my own mind, thanks to the robust discussion in this thread, about the nature and effects of dissociative mechanics--

1. Dissociation, as I would define it now, is the conscious feeling, sense, or emotional state of being removed, or displaced, from within a fictional construct by an external artifact. It is not wholly the domain of RPGs either; we see this in absurdist movies/theater parodies all the time, where it's called "breaking the fourth wall." It can be related to immersion, in terms of playing a character, but can also be related to other aspects, such as association to world physics, social order, economy, bio-naturalism, and so on.
2. Dissociation is nearly always subjective, based on some agreed-upon point of view, or shared assumptions about the game world, narrative, playstyle, or all of the above. As a result, groups will largely decide what is and is not dissociative for them at their own tables.
3. Almost all potential dissociating artifacts can be resolved through change in narrative, change in inherent property of the milieu, or both, as long as the parties engaged agree to it. The principle behind this type of association is governed by a character's ability to observe, learn, or explore the potentially dissociative effect in game*.
4. All RPGs contain some level of abstractions, meta-game components, and potential dissociations. However, the kind, degree, frequency, and principle of dissociation will, as stated earlier, vary depending on individual preference--the natural expectations and assumptions established by the group, rules mechanics, personal experience, and GM worldbuilding.

[SNIP]

*(thanks to JamesonCourage for this concept)

I like this post (couldn't XP you). I also like your status

I think this thread can still be potentially be pretty informative and productive, but both sides tend to be getting pretty irritable, which has in part caused be to stop posting in it. I'm kind of hoping we can go back to talking about our views and opinions even if they conflict with the opinions of others, and stop trying to disprove someone else's opinion.

At any rate, I liked this post because it seemed to be stating his view in a civil way (and it mentioned me ). As always, play what you like

EDIT: After reading several posts following it, I'm impressed. Nice turn around in tone in the thread. It looks a lot more productive than it did a few pages ago.

 

[Yesway Jose]

If I read a post in which (2) was asserted, I would interpret it this way:

Mechanic X is not likely to support simulationist play, and/or is likely to be unsatisfactory for those whose goal in play is to achieve simulationism. Where, by "simulationism", I mean what The Forge means: ingame causal logic is a high priority, and the mechanics are meant to model this, so that playing the game is simultaneously exploring the gameworld. When I, at the table, am rolliing to hit, at the very same time my PC is swinging his sword.
​

I really, really, really, really... really, really, really don't want to get entanged in semantics like this, except to point out that I think getting caught in rigorous definitions is part of the problem of this entire thread in the first place. The above interpretation may or may not be more narrow than how many people interpret simulationism, I don't know, and I think it's dangerous to go there, because...

And I think you treatment of (1) and (2) above as equivalent similarly depends upon ignoring that, if a metagame mechanic is used not as a model of the gameworld but as establishing parameters on permissible narration of the gameworld, then there need not be anything in the gameworld that cannot be learned, explored, explained, understood, etc.

This is why I remain wary regarding the topic of non-simulationist play, and what seem to be (mis)characterisations of it, because they are worded in ways that already presuppose simulatoinist priorities (such as mechanics as a model of ingame causal processes).

In the referenced post, I did include the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.

I also mentioned that I think simulationism has not actually been defined for everyone and is just a concept. So when you state that my understanding of simulationism "depends upon ignoring that--" and that you "remain wary" because of "(mis)characterisations" of non-simulationism and (mechanics?) that "presuppose simulatoinist priorities" --- well, there is no objective way of differentiating between simulationism vs non-simulationism with as so-and-so parameters for any one individual. If one sets certain parameters in one's mind for a concept, and other people have different parameters for that concept and do not share the same nuanced definitions and the other seemingly contradictory opinions are characterized as infringing on one's subjective definitions/parameters, I fear that one will forever be wary and never have peace about the topic of simulationism.

 

[pemerton]

I really, really, really, really... really, really, really don't want to get entanged in semantics like this, except to point out that I think getting caught in rigorous definitions is part of the problem of this entire thread in the first place.

<snip>

In the referenced post, I did include the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.

<snip>

there is no objective way of differentiating between simulationism vs non-simulationism with as so-and-so parameters for any one individual. If one sets certain parameters in one's mind for a concept, and other people have different parameters for that concept and do not share the same nuanced definitions and the other seemingly contradictory opinions are characterized as infringing on one's subjective definitions/parameters, I fear that one will forever be wary and never have peace about the topic of simulationism.

As far as I can tell you are trying to be conciliatory in your post(s). Unhappily, though, I read some of your posts as mischaracterising the way I play 4e D&D. What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.

That's not particularly your problem, and there's no particular reason you should care. There's probably no reason why I should care either! But driven by some irrational impulse, I have this continuing desire to try and convey the way I play the game.

For example, you say:

the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.​

What does this exactly mean - that when I read the mechanic in a rulebook, it strike me as a metagame mechanic, but when I play the game I do something to make it feel like it's not a metagame mechanic? I'm not even sure what that means. I may be wrong, but I don't think it's a notion that you've come up with based on actual play experience of someone doing such a thing.

The best sense I can make of it is something like this:

A mechanic is a metagame mechanic. Such a mechanic therefore does not bring all of its ingame consequences with it. So when it is used in play, the participants at the table supply the narration ("fluff") - constrained by whatever parameters the mechanic establishes - in order to determine what is happening in the gameworld.​

For you the difference between these two ways of putting things might be mere semantics. For me, it is the difference between saying something I can't understand (but suggests that narrativist players try to trick themselves, during the course of actual play, into thinking that they're playing sim) and something that I can understand, that reflects how I actually play the game, and is consistent with the generally accepted characterisations of non-simulationist play that I have quoted upthread (from Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker).

Here is another post of yours, from upthread, that I responded to earlier:

Permanent polymorph until dispelled becomes a 6 second duration.

your comment that Baleful Polymorph lasts for only six seconds begs the question against other ways of resolving the mechanic. As I posted upthread, in my game - which is the only actual play report of Baleful Polymorph in this thread - the reason that the polymorph lasted only six seconds is because the PC's god turned him back. This is no different from an outcome in AD&D in which a PC is hit by Polymorph Other, and the player of the PC then makes a successful Divine Intervention roll. Absent that divine intervention, how long would the Baleful Polymorph last in my gameworld? I don't know - it's never come up - and so a fortiori you can't know.

As I said earlier, I don't know, and so you don't know either, whether or not there is permanent Baleful Polymorph in my gameworld. What I do know is that the Raven Queen has the power to turn her paladins, who have been polymorphed into frogs, back into their own forms. I know this because one of my players narrated events in that way, and it went uncontested at the table. What permitted that narration to occur was that the rules mandated that, at a certain point, the polymorphed PC will revert to his/her own form. But the rules left it open why the polymorph comes to an end. The player supplied an ingame explanation.

As far as I can tell, this is the sort of mechanic that The Alexandrian is describing as dissociated.

As far as I can tell, this is the sort of mechanic that innerdude has been discussing, over the past 200 or so posts, as requiring "narrativist" interpretation which, for some participants at least, might "break the fourth wall".

As far as I can tell, this is the sort of play - whether in the context of polymorph durations, or the movement of enemies when Come and Get It is used, or in narrating second wind, or in using a daily power like Trick Strike - that is what many of those who don't like 4e don't like about it.

Namely, the mechanics don't bring with them, ready made and pre-determined, their ingame content/interpretation. That is what I mean, and what I think many others mean, when I say that they are not good mechanics for simulationist play.

Using these mechanics does not involve "fluffing things to make them feel simulationist in gamelplay". The point of narration isn't to resolve some issue with the mechanics. It's to resolve some issue that arises from the fiction, and is compelling for the participants. The function of the mechanics is to set parameters on that. Not more. Not less.

Here are the most relevant passages from Edwards and Baker:

RE: Fortune-in-the-Middle . . . preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. . . It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.

VB: My goal as a gamer . . . is to push both invention and meaning as much as possible into actual play.​

When the player of the paladin in my game said, in character, "Ah, but the Raven Queen turned me back" that was invention - world building, narration, establishing the content of the fiction, whatever exactly you want to call it - and meaning - faith, loyalty, hope, dependence, all the meaning that accompanies blind devotion - taking place during actual play.

This isn't achieved by starting with metagame mechanics but then pretending, in play, that they're simuationist. Simulationist mechanics predetermine invention and meaning. That's why I don't use them.

 

[Yesway Jose]

As far as I can tell you are trying to be conciliatory in your post(s).

Yes. But I'm not being conciliatory in the sense that I used to be against you and then retraced to meet you halfway. I am trying to meet halfway by insisting that semantics and attitudes are preventing two parallel opinions from happily co-existing.

Unhappily, though, I read some of your posts as mischaracterising the way I play 4e D&D.

That, and the implication that I'd think that non-simulationism is not roleplaying, is what baffles me. To be totally honest, I don't care about how you play your game, thus I have no interest in characterising it for you. I may see you eating vanilla, and I think that I prefer chocolate, but that doesn't mean I would think for one second of taking your vanilla ice cream away from you or demanding why you don't like chocolate.

What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.

Which, for me, is still semantics.

That's not particularly your problem, and there's no particular reason you should care.

Agreed, except when threads that should be about fun conversation devolve into the wrong kinds of arguments.

There's probably no reason why I should care either!

To faciliate discussion and increase your enjoyment of such threads?

But driven by some irrational impulse, I have this continuing desire to try and convey the way I play the game.

Me too, but from the other perspective. The key, as I keep attempting (and I guess failing) to articulate, is that one person's impulse to be understood does not invalidate another's.

For example, you say:

the clarification that a mechanic could subjectively be viewed as simulationist if "a person in Actor/Author stance may feel mechanic X is metagame-y as read but fluffs it to make it feel simulationist in gameplay". I think that covers part of your concern above.
​

What does this exactly mean - that when I read the mechanic in a rulebook, it strike me as a metagame mechanic, but when I play the game I do something to make it feel like it's not a metagame mechanic? I'm not even sure what that means. I may be wrong, but I don't think it's a notion that you've come up with based on actual play experience of someone doing such a thing.

It's basically regarding use of Author stance defined in the Big Model as "The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions based on the person's priorities, independently of the character's knowledge and perceptions. Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions. When it lacks this feature, it is called Pawn Stance".

So a player applies a metagame-y mechanic, and then retroactively motivates the character so that the effect of the mechanic ends up being simulationist after all.

The best sense I can make of it is something like this:

A mechanic is a metagame mechanic. Such a mechanic therefore does not bring all of its ingame consequences with it. So when it is used in play, the participants at the table supply the narration ("fluff") - constrained by whatever parameters the mechanic establishes - in order to determine what is happening in the gameworld.
​

Yes, exactly!

For you the difference between these two ways of putting things might be mere semantics.

I agree!

For me, it is the difference between saying something I can't understand (but suggests that narrativist players try to trick themselves, during the course of actual play, into thinking that they're playing sim) and something that I can understand, that reflects how I actually play the game, and is consistent with the generally accepted characterisations of non-simulationist play that I have quoted upthread (from Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker).

To put it more succinctly than it deserves, I think the only difference is your vs mine subjective expectations, and this has been touched upon numerous times, but no bridge-building there for some reason?

As I said earlier, I don't know, and so you don't know either, whether or not there is permanent Baleful Polymorph in my gameworld. What I do know is that the Raven Queen has the power to turn her paladins, who have been polymorphed into frogs, back into their own forms. I know this because one of my players narrated events in that way, and it went uncontested at the table. What permitted that narration to occur was that the rules mandated that, at a certain point, the polymorphed PC will revert to his/her own form. But the rules left it open why the polymorph comes to an end. The player supplied an ingame explanation.
<snip>
As far as I can tell, this is the sort of mechanic that innerdude has been discussing, over the past 200 or so posts, as requiring "narrativist" interpretation which, for some participants at least, might "break the fourth wall".

I acknowledge that you've repeatedly brought this up and I've repeatedly ignored it, mostly because I think it adds an extra layer of complexity.

Discussions often are based on whether somebody can subjectively satisfactorily find an objective in-game reason for a mechanic that can be observed, learned or explored in the fiction. I emphasize "objective" as in there's one single in-game explanation for it (whereas the adequacy of the in-game explanation is subjective to the player).

I find the Polymorph to be extra tricky, because while you insist that it was the objective in-game explanation, I perceive that it *could*, if it happened in my game or any other, be *subjective* to the paladin PC, and that since the polymorph spell would have ended anyway, that *not every player at the table* can be guaranteed to conclude which was true (raven queen ended the spell vs paladin thought the raven queen ended the spell and it would have ended anyway). Since it cannot be guaranteed which way every player at any one gaming table would approach that, I have studiously avoided the topic -- especially after it blew up out of proportion and became tangential to the thread topic.

Namely, the mechanics don't bring with them, ready made and pre-determined, their ingame content/interpretation. That is what I mean, and what I think many others mean, when I say that they are not good mechanics for simulationist play.

Using these mechanics does not involve "fluffing things to make them feel simulationist in gamelplay". The point of narration isn't to resolve some issue with the mechanics. It's to resolve some issue that arises from the fiction, and is compelling for the participants. The function of the mechanics is to set parameters on that. Not more. Not less.
<snip>
This isn't achieved by starting with metagame mechanics but then pretending, in play, that they're simuationist. Simulationist mechanics predetermine invention and meaning. That's why I don't use them.

This deserves a more careful reading and articulated response then I'm able to provide at the moment. I'm not sure, though, how it relates to the core issue that what you think of as simulationist may or may not be what other people think is simulationist and that's OK.

 

[pemerton]

I am trying to meet halfway by insisting that semantics and attitudes are preventing two parallel opinions from happily co-existing.

The issue for me is that, unless I've badly misunderstood, they're two parallel opinions about what is happening in my game.

I don't care about how you play your game, thus I have no interest in characterising it for you. I may see you eating vanilla, and I think that I prefer chocolate, but that doesn't mean I would think for one second of taking your vanilla ice cream away from you or demanding why you don't like chocolate.

I don't for a second think that you care how I play my game. My concern is that, as far as I can tell, you don't really understand how I play my game. And so are misdescribing it.

I may be wrong about this, but what makes me reach this belief is that you keep posting characterisation of 4e play, of "dissociation", of metagame mechanics, etc, that don't resemble my own experiences of play. And are at odds with the actual play I have described in this thread.

For me, to borrow your ice cream analogy, it's as if I'm sitting here happily gobbling down my vanilla and you pass by and say "Hey, don't mind me, keep eating your chocolate!" I don't get the impression that you want to police me. I do get the impression that you've misunderstood what I'm doing.

What is for you mere "semantics" is for me a key question of adequacy of description.

Which, for me, is still semantics.

If I'm eating vanilla, and you're telling me I'm eating chocolate, to me that is more than semantics. It's inadequate, mistaken description.

Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.

<snip>

So a player applies a metagame-y mechanic, and then retroactively motivates the character so that the effect of the mechanic ends up being simulationist after all.

OK, this is where I quite strongly disagree. And this is where I'm trying to work out whether you're basing your descriptions of what is going on your own play experience, or on theory, or as an attempt to interpret how others have described their play experience, or . . . ?

It is true that author stance (as opposed to pawn stance) involves retroactively imputing a motivation - ie cauastion - to the PC. It is equally true that director stance (which may be in play when a power like Come and Get It is used, or when a saving throw is made in AD&D and this is explained as the fates intervening at the last moment to protect the PC) involves imputing causation into the gameworld.

But there is no simulationism here. The mechanic does not suddenly become simulationist. It was a metagame mechanic. It permitted, or perhaps mandated, some narration. The narration took place. The narration established some ingame causal connections. Nothing in the mechanic corresponds to, or models, those ingame causal connections. So we have a mechanic, that is metagame. We have some narration, that is coherent, consistent, genre-preserving, verisimilitudinous, etc. But we don't have any simulation.

To put it more succinctly than it deserves, I think the only difference is your vs mine subjective expectations, and this has been touched upon numerous times, but no bridge-building there for some reason?

I'm not sure what subjective expectations you're referring to. The difference that I see is that you are asserting that some simulation takes place, whereas I am denying that.

You may regard this as mere semantics, but I don't think that it is. It is a fundamental difference in how RPGing can be approached, that Vincent Baker refers to in the quotes I've posted upthread. Of course Baker is describing matters from his side of the divide in approaches - BryonD upthread describes the view from the other side. The issue is this: is the content of the gameworld, the way it works, the way events will unfold, etc determined PRIOR TO PLAY, by the logic of the mechanics, or determined IN PLAY, by the narrative choices of the participants (using the mechanics to establish constraints)?

If you play the first way, then the ingame duration of Baleful Polymorph is determined in advance by the mechanics (eg as per AD&D and 3E, this might be "until dispelled"). And any divine intervention to shorten that duration has to be determined according to the divine intervention mechanics, which take into account considerations like piety, frequency of previous calls for intervention, etc, etc (it's a while since I've read that part of the AD&D DMG).

If you play the second way, then the mechanics might tell you that, after a round, the target of Baleful Polymorph returns to his/her original form. But why that happened in the gameworld is left as something to be worked out by the participants in the game as part of playing the game. If they want to tell a story about divine intervention, they can. If they want to tell a story about an apprenctice magician with the barest of control over his magic, they can. If they decide that, in this gameworld, Baleful Polymorph is per se a very short transformation, they can go that way instead. The mechanics don't, on their own, answer the question.

These are very big differences in playstyle. They're not just differences in subjective experience. If you sit down to play at the second sort of table (playing, say, HeroWars/Quest) and all your experience has been at the first sort of table (playing, say, Runequest) then you'll find it hard to work out what's going on. Hard to play the game. And vice versa. There are objectively different things going on at these tables. And in my view this is obscured rather than illuminated by saying that the second table is really simulationist too. Yes, the people at the second table have a coherent story going on - they're roleplayers, not boardgamers, and they try to avoid contradiction in their narration. But the mechanics they use aren't simulating anything.

(4e is not as metagamey as HeroWars/Quest. 3E and AD&D are obviously not as simulationist as Runequest. At some of these tables, then, the contrast may not be so markd. But if the 3E player is feeling "dissociated" by 4e, then I think that is sufficient to mark some relevant degree of difference.)

I find the Polymorph to be extra tricky

<snip>

since the polymorph spell would have ended anyway

This, right here, is why I get the impression that you don't understand non-simulationist play. Your description of this mechanic, and its implications for gameplay, runs together metagame and gameworld in a way that only makes sense if simulationism is assumed.

It's true that the mechanics required that, in the fiction, the paladin turn back from a frog to himself, but this is not a fact about the gameworld. It is a fact about the gameplay - ie the rules required that, as from this point in the course of play, everyone at the table must agree that, in the fiction, the paladin is no longer a frog.

But why that should be so, in the fiction, is up for grabs. As far as anyone in the gameworld is concerned, the polymorph would have continued but for the divine intervention. As far as the gameworld is concerned, it is just not true that the polymorph spell would have ended anyway.

This deserves a more careful reading and articulated response then I'm able to provide at the moment. I'm not sure, though, how it relates to the core issue that what you think of as simulationist may or may not be what other people think is simulationist and that's OK.

Well, for me the core issue is the one I keep coming back to with the polymorph example. You consistently say "The spell would have ended anyway". But this is a statement only about the mechanics, namely, that they mandate a narration of the paladin as having retransformed. The further inference that you make, from the mechanics to the gameworld - that in the gameworld he would have turned back anyway - is sound only if a simulationist reading of the mechanics is taken for granted. My table didn't read the mechanic in that way. So it's simply not true that, absent the divine intervention, the paladin would have turned back. (It's true that, absent a narration about divine intervention, some other story would have been told about why the paladin turned back. But this isn't a truth within the fiction. This is a truth about how me and my friends in the real world would have played the game.)

This is exactly what it means to use the mechanics to set parameters on the narration of what is happening in the gameworld, rather than to treat them as a model of what is happening in the gameworld. The other stuff - about invention and meaning happening in play rather than before play - is the reason why I like using metagame rather than simulationist mechanics.

 

[Yesway Jose]

The issue for me is that, unless I've badly misunderstood, they're two parallel opinions about what is happening in my game.

This thread isn't called "In Defense of Pemetron's Game". Is it fair for you to internalize every topic as to how infringes or meshes with your game? With all due respect, that's a big egocentric, no?

For me, to borrow your ice cream analogy, it's as if I'm sitting here happily gobbling down my vanilla and you pass by and say "Hey, don't mind me, keep eating your chocolate!" I don't get the impression that you want to police me. I do get the impression that you've misunderstood what I'm doing.

We're all eating different flavors of ice cream in the same ice cream parlor. You have the right to those impressions but I question the objectivity of them. EDIT: I misread the 2nd sentence. You're correct, I don't always know what you're doing, except I don't think you're eating chocolate instead of vanilla, I understand you're eating another flavor but I just don't like the taste of it. Sometimes I empathize with a point, sometimes I only understand it rationally, sometimes the information is a bit too dense for me to absorb even rationally.

It is true that author stance (as opposed to pawn stance) involves retroactively imputing a motivation - ie cauastion - to the PC. It is equally true that director stance (which may be in play when a power like Come and Get It is used, or when a saving throw is made in AD&D and this is explained as the fates intervening at the last moment to protect the PC) involves imputing causation into the gameworld.

But there is no simulationism here. The mechanic does not suddenly become simulationist. It was a metagame mechanic.

Is this one of those "inherent" semantics?

My original post stated "Mechanic X is non-simulationist, subjectively".

That's not a statement about the inherent properties of the mechanic. It's a statement about the relationship between the mechanic and the simulationism (or lack thereof) to fiction Y.

I've insisted before that mechanics are "dumb" things uncognizant of the fiction, and thus cannot have any inherent properties like that.

The above seem to the main sticking points. I think only after both sides can agree how to discuss, can anyone actually have a meaningful discussion about complex topics like this.

 

[pemerton]

My original post stated "Mechanic X is non-simulationist, subjectively".

That's not a statement about the inherent properties of the mechanic. It's a statement about the relationship between the mechanic and the simulationism (or lack thereof) to fiction Y.

What does this mean.? What do you mean by "simulation"?

Here is an extract from the rules for a free online RPG by Paul Czege, The World, The Flesh and The Devil:

Begin by writing a two or three sentence description of a problem. . .

The next step is to underline significant words or phrases . . . and to annotate them with a sentence or two each . . . The Annotations are what make it personal to the character. . .

The final step is to take a blank six-sider and allocate sides to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, creating your character's W/F/D die. . .

The game also requires that the GM have a set of five dice with different allocations of plus and minus symbols on them . . . in black and red . . .

When a player has stated intent for the character to do something where the outcome is in question, the GM will give the player one of the conflict resolution dice with the plus and minus symbols on them. . .

The player rolls both his W/F/D die and the one the GM gave him. If the result is a Devil+, it means the victory was one in which the character transcended some aspect of the Devil, and the player narrates the outcome. If the result is Flesh-, it's a failure of the flesh and the player narrates the outcome. . .

If a player isn't satisfied with his dice throw, he can use an Annotation to give himself a re-roll. . .

And regardless of whether the result is a failure or a success, the player must incorporate some aspect of the Annotation he used for the re-roll in his narration of the outcome. . .

There are no opposed rolls, and the GM never rolls. However, if a player rolls a red plus or red minus it means the GM narrates the outcome, rather than the player. This give the GM power to introduce bittersweet victories and dramatic, crippling failures.

And if a red plus or minus comes up when a player has used an Annotation to trigger a re-roll, it's the GM that references the Annotation in his narration of the outcome.​

Can you explain what it might mean, or be like, to play this game in a fashion that was "subjectively simulationist"?

I personally can't make sense of this. It strikes me as very obvious that, in this game, rolling the dice isn't modelling anything in the world. It's assigning narration rights, and establishing parameters on that narration.

4e's mechanics obviously aren't identical to this. Apart from anything else, they establish narrative parameters in a much more finegrained and nitty-gritty way. But many of them are as much like this as they are like Runequest.

(This also has nothing much to do with Actor or Author stance, it seems to me. I can imagine playing The World, the Flesh and the Devil predominantly in Actor stance.)

 

[Yesway Jose]

What does this mean.? What do you mean by "simulation"?

As I said before a few times, I'm really, really, really, really, really, really not interested in that, and like Neonchamelon, I'm also going to bow out of this thread due to frustration. I'll give you the courtesy of explaining why:
- I'm disheartened that after 65 pages, plus how may other threads, that we're still stuck at that baseline. Obviously, there is something very wrong here
- the thread inevitably gets caught up in the kinds of semantics that I don't enjoy. There was the anthropic principle before, and you said how much agree with it, but how do you know that people who play 4E and continue to play 4E who don't believe that 4E is "special" or "unique" for generating "disassociation" aren't also self-selected to say so? The problem is getting caught up in these logic and semantic games which can be twisted one way or another tangential to what I want to talk about. I don't want to be unfair, because I know you were putting out an olive branch, so I suppose it's my fault for having a low tolerance for that
- if we don't have a shared even vague understanding of "simulation" by this point then it's pretty much hopeless, but perhaps someone else is more willing than I to explain
- I realized how much time I have wasted here

 

[tomBitonti]

I don't know. Personally, when I buy what they produce I am relying on them having thought harder than me about how the game will work and what it will deliver in play.

I'm not sure what you mean here by "interpretation".

Sorry to put out an undefined term.

Here is an example:

In 3E, an actor may have a state, either of "erect" or "prone". While a coarse model (can one take a singe knee, or crouch?), the two terms do actually model a state of real people and creatures.

Then "trip" is used as a special attack which changes the targets state from "erect" to "prone".

There have been various discussions about what does it mean to trip a, say, a flying creature, or a snake.

My understanding is that trip when used against a flying creature, puts them into a stall, and I have heard either that some creatures should be considered untrippable, or (I think more officially) that even a snake can be tripped, and it just means something different (I'm not sure what) for a snake.

For some creatures, say, a gelatenous cube, being tripped doesn't make sense to me, and I would rule that a gelatenous cube just cannot be tripped. The same for various oozes. If you animated a bean-bag chair, that would seem to be untrippable.

The actual mechanics of the trip are largely unstated: Did you hook their legs? Push them over a small obstruction?

Trip is made as an unarmed attack, or with special weapons (flail, guisarme, gnome hooked hammer, kama, sickle, whip). That certain weapons are usable for tripping (generally, they can be used to "hook" or, in the case of the whip, "grab and pull"), that provides a space to have a creature natural attack be used for trips, if the natural attack has these properties.

The effectiveness of trip is varied in several ways: It's harder to trip someone larger than you, or stronger than you, or that is more stable, say, because of an innate property (Dwarf) or because of having more legs.

Trip is also more effect for someone who has put in an extra effort to train and practice.

All of these details provide a process by which a player and GM can understand a trip attack. That process includes a step where the trip attack is mapped to an imagined action, and the result is viewed as a mapping back of the imagined result to game terms.

That is to say, the mapping to an imagined action and the mapping back to the result are a part of the resolution process.

For many cases, the actual mapping is not done: The rules provide a guarantee to the player of a result for normal cases. However, the mapping is still there for unusual cases.

I could say, for example, that turtles should have dwarven stability, and the rules provide some justification for this ruling.

The point here is that the player and GM have a presence in the space where the stated action is envisioned, and that this presence may be used to adjust the result of unusual cases relative to the usual result.

TomBitonti