In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[Hussar]

Those (critical hits and action points - ed.) are abstract, as far as I can tell, not dissociated. If the fighter is using narrative control, as pemerton or others imply, than they are using dissociated mechanics. If they are using an ability which has reasoning that can be learned, explored, or observed in-game, than it's not dissociated.

Really?

How can I learn to make critical hits? What skill am I using to score a critical? At what point can my character choose to make a critical hit?

Or are critical hits entirely guided by the dice mechanic and actually have zero linkage to the in game fiction?

A critical hit in D&D only occurs when the dice say they do. They could happen at any time regardless of the actions of the character.

I would argue that criticals are most certainly disassociated by your definition. They can neither be learned, nor taught, nor can they be initiated by the character at any point in time.

 

[wrecan]

If the rogue can consistently pull off one type of move a set number of times per encounter (or per day), no matter how long the encounter is, and this can be repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that would be the testing I mentioned.

But it can't be tested in that way. A campaign as, at most, 300 encounters. Those encounters are not in the player's control. Many of those encounters won't involve combat. Many of those encounters won't involve situations where the rogue's player would want to use any given encounter power. That rogue may have other ways to slide people, using terrain powers, improvised actions, and other powers in the players arsenal.

The game understands that play is sufficiently limited and not susceptible to controlled testing conditions to have to deal with this. A character is simply highly unlikely to have sufficient numbers of encounters that are so similar that the limited resource mechanic would become apparent.

We only discuss it because we can peer behind the curtain and see the game rules. But the character in-game should not have occasion to suspect such a thing exists.

The problem in my mind is that a pattern can certainly still manifest itself, even though the rogue should have no grasp on the narrative mechanic whatsoever.

I think that's only because you are not considering the context of the game and the duration of a given campaign.

While rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players.

No doubt. But that's true of every abstract mechanic, not just the disassociated ones. It's just that the people alienated by abstract mechanics have already been alienated form the hobby. So we've got the anthropic principle at work here too.

Those of us still playing weren't sufficiently alienated by initiative, hit points, falling damage to stop playing. But every rule change has the potential to alienate someone still playing and those people will search for patterns, because humans have an intrinsic need to find patterns.

But the pattern isn't there. It's just people have an aesthetic disprefrence for a given change. It's taste and emotion, and there's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing objective about it either.

 

[Yesway Jose]

It only happens for those things that are defined that way. If something is built for combat it can also be used outside combat. So it's not "all the time for all things". If you want a power to be used in combat, build it to be used in combat.

Depending in what I think you're stating (not that I honestly care anymore), that's part of the disassocation for me.

No. I'm saying if you build a widget specifically to be bigger than the box, and then complain that it's bigger than the box, and I ask you why didn't you design it fit in the box, you accuse me of "couching this problem in nomenclature with no hint of irony".

If I built a widget that is purposefully bigger than the box, it was to illustrate that the box was not designed with a little extra space to fit some unaccounted-for widgets. I would have, but haven't even been able to get around to showing you the regular-sized widgets yet, because you refuse to allow me to discuss that one widget on its own terms.

Look back at the other pages of this thread and other threads. They are full of hypotheticals from many different people. Please start accusing them of being absurd and half-assed. When you're done, get back to me. EDIT: Actually, don't.

Or perhaps conciliatory posts should not describe people as having blind spots.

He put it in quotes. That was more than I received with half-assed and absurd without the quotes. I "think" you are being "hypocritical", unless you weren't trying to be conciliatory, which is a whole other thing.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

A critical hit in D&D only occurs when the dice say they do. They could happen at any time regardless of the actions of the character.

I would argue that criticals are most certainly disassociated by your definition. They can neither be learned, nor taught, nor can they be initiated by the character at any point in time.

Paradoxically, using the logic of disassociation, criticals would be least disassociated coming from the inexperienced and most disassociated for high level, highly trained characters. A lucky shot that you can't control or explain is fairly common for beginners--and not infrequently the result of the beginner fighting someone who also doesn't much know what they are doing. Give two untrained, stupid 14 year-old boys broadswords, and let them go at it, and I can almost guarantee that you'll see a real-life critical before the police haul you away.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Posit a person with some modest fencing experience, taught in the older style.
<snip>
No one so described would find any 4E combat-related mechanics "disassociated". Not one. Not even Come and Get It, with or without errata. This is because, among other things:

• It is easy for a fencer to make people move. You simply put them into a position where the alternative to not moving is not acceptable to them.

I may be missing a key point here, but what if the fencer (above) was facing an opponent with full plate and shield and a reach weapon that is longer then the fencing blade. In reality, is it equally easy for that fencer to make that opponent move? If not, and if D&D is full of opponents in full plate and shield and reach weapons, then would the fencer find any 4E combat-related mechanics to now be disassociated (compared to your analogy in which all other opponents are also fencers like him/her). If yes, then doesn't go to prove that the fictional context is important? I believe you are illustrating that the players' expectations and preferences are an important part of the equation, and I don't disagree, but it seems to me that the other (perhaps equally) important part of the equation is the context.

 

[pemerton]

Well, you have quoted my direct response to a comment about 3E characters throwing themselves off cliffs and you are somehow making that be about events in your 4E game.

Maybe that was a bit cheeky - if so, I apologise for it. I was just trying to make the point, by showing rather than just saying, that the same sorts of table conventions or understandings that can preserve immersion or simulation for those who want it, can make narrativist play smoothly for those who want it.

But if you look at the patterns that surface due to the mechanics, then the validity falls away. And because we are playing a game and know the mechanics are there, that pattern surfaces on the very first use.

When I read this, I feel that you are confusing the "we" of the participant/audience and the "we" of the fictional protagonists. When you say it, I imagine you don't feel that there is a confusion of the sort I feel when reading it.

If I'm right about the difference of your feelings from mine on that particular point, that may explain (in part, to some extent) why we have different preferences in RPGs.

But the events that happen along that path will be informed by the mechanics, rather than the mechanics being informed by the story. Yes, you can come up with virtually limitless ways to rationalize why the narrative works out in a way that matches the powers system.

<snip>

Adjusting the plot to meet the mechanics is as fundamental to 4E as putting shapes in squares is to tic tac toe.

I think you intend this to have a force that I'm not feeling. Which is not to say that you've forgotten something, or mispoken, or made a mistake. But something is resonating for you that is not resonating for me.

To try to explain, as best I can from my side (which, of course, may not resonate with you!): when you talk about the plot adjusting to meet the mechanics, my first thought is "In a game of AD&D, or 3E, or Rolemaster, or Traveller, an important part of the plot might be whether a PC lives or dies in a fight, or has his/her pocket picked by a street urchin. And these questions will be determined mechanically - by rolling attack and damage rolls in combat, by rolling a Pick Pockets check for the urchin."

Generalising that thought - part of the point of action resolution mechanics, in an RPG, is to structure or guide or help settle the question of "what happens next", "does this attempted action succeed or fail". And the answers to those questions give us the plot (either directly, or as a sort of substrate on which richer stuff supervenes).

So when you talk about the mechanics driving the story, rather than vice versa, I feel that there must be something more you have in mind some manner in which the mechanics drive the story. The topic of this thread naturally makes metagame mechanics come to mind, but (without going back upthread to check) I think you said earlier that you use some metagame mechanics (hero or action points of some sort?).

The point of this post isn't to trap or trick or twist words. But I do want to try to convey that there is some experience which is important to you in RPGing which I'm not quite able to discern from your post, although I can hazard some general guesses about the significance to you of immersion, and therefore probably Actor Stance (although if that's right, I'd find it interesting for you to say how hero/action points work within Actor Stance, because my default assumption is that they are a metagame thing - do you envisage them as the PC making an extra, heroic effort?) and also simulationist priorities along the lines I quoted upthread from Ron Edwards.

An easy relaxing fun experience is commendable.

<snip>

if you want to compare fan bases as a whole, then 4E would take a serious hit if it lost the "save me from the hard" portion.

<snip>

As I said, no novelist anywhere would preconceive that a character has a set of capabilities that work once a day and never more regardless of circumstances, much less have all major characters, regardless of their individual nature, have this same encounter/daily metric on their behavior.

So, if you want to produce a game experience that exactly feels like being inside a natural story then the encounter/daily system is "wrong". Explaining to me how you can take individual events out of context and justify them is both completely accepted and also fully futile in changing the point.

<snip>

They may play 4E and feel exactly like they are in a novel. I accept that. But, if they are then they are either ignoring or unaware of the differences. And since they are having fun that is all that matters. But they are not achieving the same feeling I am talking about. There is a different standard for that.

I think the "easy" part may be a red herring, because it may be that, at least for some, the problem with 3E isn't that it is hard, but that it is needlessly complex. Many people make that criticism of Rolemaster, for example. (And as someone who GMed Rolemaster for many many years, I can see why someone might think that. On the other hand, my pretty entrenched lack of interest in 3E isn't because I see it as needlessly complext. It's because I don't see it as offering me anything in a fantasy game that I can't get from Rolemaster or HARP.)

Equally, it may not be a red herring - at least as far as marketing 4e is concerned. It's not personally how I would market the game, but then I don't have any experience in trying to market commercial cultural products. Even if it's important to marketing, though, it's not necessarily at the centre of analysing how the game plays.

Anyway, moving on, I think the bit about being inside a novel is probably central. But complicated. I sketched the character sheet for a dwarf fighter PC in my game upthread. There is no salient ability that that PC can perform only once per encounter or once per day, even though the player's mechanical access to those abilities is mediated via the power mechanics. So, at least in relation to that PC, I feel that your comments about the power system are themselves decontextualised and therefore missing the point.

But when playing that PC I think the player probably has some sense of himself as author as well as protagonist. To that extent, then, maybe he doesn't feel like he's in a novel - presumably the protagonists of novels don't experince themselves as authors also.

But even if this is right - and as I've said upthread, "immersion" isn't a category that I use very much - I'm certainly not prepared to concede the language of "standards" or (not used by you, but by innerdude) of "levels". I don't concede that merely being a protagonist is "higher" roleplaying, in some sense, than authoring one's PC's protagonism. (What are the relevant qualities that would determine this? Purity of experience? Sophistication? Actor stance perhaps, in a formal sense at least, is more pure. But strikes me, again at least in a formal sense, as less sophisticated. And I use the qualifier "formal" because when we look at the substance it's going to be very variable. For example, I personally don't feel that the "pure" experience of being a flying thief tied to a rope grind-scouting the Tomb of Horrors has much aesthetic value at all. It strikes me as rather tedious.)

 

[wrecan]

If I built a widget that is purposefully bigger than the box, it was to illustrate that the box was not designed with a little extra space to fit some unaccounted-for widgets.

But it doesn't serve that purpose. It's just showing me you can construct a hypothetical from your conclusion. I don't mean this to be insulting, but most analogies aren't actually illustrative. They are most often emotional arguments. Someone feels "X" about something. Someone else doesn't feel "X". So they makke an analogy of "X" to "Y" because they feel the same way about "Y" as "X". But if the other person doesn't feel the same way about "X" and "Y", the analogy will resonate even less. And then you end up debating about the accuracy of the analogy, and you're not even discussing "X" anymore.

It's most helpful to simply state what you mean.

you refuse to allow me to discuss that one widget on its own terms.

Then this analogy isn't serving the purpose for which it is intended. Because now we're discussing widgets and not the game. Soon we won't be able to trace back what the widget was originally intended to represent.

I am sorry about the "half-assed" and "absurd" comment. It was born of a frustration that when I try to explain things politely I find you don't respond to it, but you will respond to something that is tinged with sarcasm. That was wrong and I will try not to do that in the future.

 

[pemerton]

Those people who were put off by the disassociation required in prior editions have already left the hobby.

Or switched to other systems, like RQ, C&S, Rolemaster etc.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I may be missing a key point here, but what if the fencer (above) was facing an opponent with full plate and shield and a reach weapon that is longer then the fencing blade. In reality, is it equally easy for that fencer to make that opponent move? If not, and if D&D is full of opponents in full plate and shield and reach weapons, then would the fencer find any 4E combat-related mechanics to now be disassociated (compared to your analogy in which all other opponents are also fencers like him/her). If yes, then doesn't go to prove that the fictional context is important? I believe you are illustrating that the players' expectations and preferences are an important part of the equation, and I don't disagree, but it seems to me that the other (perhaps equally) important part of the equation is the context.

Yep, context is going to be immensely important. For example:

The fencer (with rapier and dagger) meets the knight with full plate, shield, and long sword--or knight with full plate and halberd (much scarier). Not sure how you get shield and reach weapon, but the full plate and halberd is bad enough.

If the meeting is on a featureless, level, non-slick plain (make up any fantasy environment that has those qualities), and the fencer is not of greater skill than the knight--then any sane fencer is getting the hell out of there--to some environment where things are more to his liking. This is the rational, realistic course of action. However, assuming our fencer is a hero, and doesn't want to abandon some friends, he engages.

So now, am I, as a person who understands fencing, feeling that things are a little "disassociated"? Well, I might. But if I do, it still won't be movement powers or the like. You know, the things that people have labeled as inherently disassociated. No, I'm feeling that perhaps the unlikelihood of a rapier wielder meeting a fully armoned knight is bad enough, but the system that says that given roughly equal skill, that rapier is going to be removing hit points reasonably fast is the biggie. Fortunatley, I've long ago gotten over my issues with Armor as AC and how hit points broadly work. So I manage to associate this with actions. But I'm still cheesed at the DM for setting up such a boring location!

Now, if that same fight happens in a more interesting spot, then we are back to the fencer using trees, chairs, beams, windmills -- to take advantage of his superior mobility. And thus movement--which remember is about how you move and how you make the opponent want to move--is back in play in the fiction.

If you want to claim that boring locations will lead to more disassociation, as edge cases in the mechanics are shown to be there--then not only will you get no argument from me, I'll even remind of the earlier mentioned, proverbial "fighter in an empty room, chained to the floor, making a Reflex save to avoid a fireball that fills the room" situation.

 

[pemerton]

It means that when the player activates the meta ability attached to the PC, the PC then goes on to use the power -sliding a creature one square, or the like. While the daily power is narrative in use, the character "uses" it not by activating the ability (that's what the player does), but by actually sliding the creature one square.

OK. But this is the point where, as I said, the inhabitants of the fiction can't tell the difference between that sliding (which in the typical case is an abstraction, let's say, of some sort of fancy footwork and swordplay by the rogue) and any other sliding (whether from another rogue power, or permitted by a leader power - The rogue's fencing really shines when his comrade's need him! - etc).

Which takes me to this:

Testing would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers. Testing in a vacuum would consist of looking at patterns to the narrative produced by using the powers without outside aid (from a leader, for example). If the rogue can consistently pull off one type of move a set number of times per encounter (or per day), no matter how long the encounter is, and this can be repeated dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, that would be the testing I mentioned.

At this stage, I can't help but feel that wrecan's point upthread is apposite - this testing can't take place, because after fewer than 300 encounters the rogue has reached 30th level and has achieved immortality.

Not to mention that I find the notion of a fictional character trying to explore the boundaries of the genre conceits that an author has imposed on him/her - which is something like what is being described here - fairly odd.

But actual testing probably isn't the issue, as (it seems to me) you bring out here:

The problem in my mind is that a pattern can certainly still manifest itself, even though the rogue should have no grasp on the narrative mechanic whatsoever. That would mean that the mechanic could potentially be observed in-game, but the reasoning could not be learned, explored, or observed in-game. That would make the mechanic dissociated to anyone that it caused to lose focus on their role (lose immersion).

While rigorous testing need not be applied, just knowing that a mechanic works in such a way can be dissociating in an of itself to certain players. I accept that it doesn't happen to you, your group, others in this thread, others on this board, maybe even others at large.

And once we get to the problem not being the actualy testing, but the possibility, in principle (if we disregard wrecan's point) of the testing, then what I see is those with simulationist priorities (as per my quote from Ron Edwards upthread) disliking mechanics that impede simulationist play. (Because they are not mechanics that model ingame causal processes.)

I'm not seeing anything else. (And you've been very clear in your post! So I don't think that there's something else there that I might have missed.)

Which is part of why I don't feel the need for a new "theory" (of "dissociation") to describe a playstyle preference that's already fairly well known.

Did your player explore the 'Raven Queen is my guide and savior' philosophy throughout the campaign?

Yes. As I indicated in the post, the PC is a paladin of the Raven Queen. His paragon path is Questing Knight.

I posted the anecdote partially to illustrate, from actual experience rather than imagined hypotheticals, how 4e's metagame mechanics actually get used in play - including in ways that I as GM (and perhaps the designers? who knows?) didn't anticipate.

But I posted the anecdote also to contest the claim that so-called dissociated mechanics, of necessity or even by some generalisation of tendency, drive a wedge between players and their engagement with their PCs or with the fiction. It is an actual play example of a player using a metagame mechanic - without any pause or hesitation in terms of the actual back-and-forth of dialogue and description between player and GM - to reinforce his PC's pesona, and spiritual/metaphysical/moral place within the fiction, and relationship to a revered patron god.

I'm not seeing the dissociation of player from PC role.