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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5617348" data-attributes="member: 85870">I think we're all pretty familiar with the basic argument of <a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/dissociated-mechanics.html" target="_blank">The Alexandrian's treatise on dissociated mechanics.</a>Namely, that a mechanic is "dissociated" when the character inside the game world--NOT the player rolling the dice and eating Doritos, but the avatar acting within the game construct--has no reasonable explanation for the in-game results of a particular rule mechanic. He gives several examples in the essay, so I don't want to repeat them here, but his presentation of the premise is fairly ironclad--if you create a rule and the characters have no reasonable explanation for how and why it "works" inside the game world, the mechanic is dissociated. (What isn't as ironclad is the effects of dissociated mechanics and whether or not it produces the type of gameplay players enjoy. Let me repeat--what I'm saying is that the theory itself is solid; opinions on the actual effects of dissociated mechanics vary wildly. It's entirely possible for players to ignore the effects of dissociated mechanics and still have a great time playing a game that uses them. And it's entirely possible that some players either don't mind them at all, or actually prefer them over other styles.)I bring this up because in another recent thread, which one I can't exactly recall, several posters were complaining against the theory itself, stating that Justin Alexander's essay was little more than a pot shot at 4e. Let's be clear--Justin Alexander is pretty up front with his opinion that 4e is his least favorite iteration of D&D. But that alone doesn't mean the theory itself is incorrect, or that 4e doesn't make liberal use of dissociated mechanics, as Alexander defines them.The reason I bring this up, however, isn't to elevate The Alexandrian or excoriate 4e. The real point is that I think the theory of dissociated mechanics is important, because it makes apparent the difference between an RPG, and other kinds of games, which is at its core a sense of simulation. We've all heard certain factions of RPG players claiming that RPGs either can't, or shouldn't try to "simulate reality," or that somehow "simulationism" has no place in a world of elves, dwarves, and Boots of Mighty Poopsmithing +7. But here's the thing--if you take away the "R" and the "P" from "RPG," all you have left is a game, an arbitrary system of rules that control a limited set of outcomes. The second you attach "RP" to an existing "G," you are naturally, inherently, and necessarily attaching some form of simulationism to the game. The reason roleplaying works at all is that it's founded in a simulation of human interactivity. When playing an RPG, we inherently accept that the characters in the game world have the ability to make choices, and the choices those characters make will be based on how they--through the function of the RPG rules being interpreted by the player--are able to react to the world around them. You can have a crazy, off-the-wall, messed up world with flying purple dinosaurs, talking screwdrivers, and three-foot-tall shoeless people with hairy feet, but the point of the "RP" in an "RPG" is to simulate how a person/alien/elf/orc/sentient object of nebulous proportions interacts with that world, and to explore the consequences of doing so. If a game doesn't include that element, it's not really a roleplaying game, but a game of some other kind. The Alexandrian's point is that dissociated mechanics can, when used in specific ways, inherently destroy that sense of interactive simulation. Even if your world DOES have flying purple dinosaurs and talking screwdrivers, it's still possible to create rules mechanics that dissociate from that reality. If the rules force exigencies upon the characters and game world that have no connection to the world itself, but are arbitrarily imposed "because the rules say so," you're breaking the simulation of character interactivity. The character--again, via the rules being interpreted by the player--can no longer successfully say, "I see and perceive that consequence X will necessarily follow choice Y." The Theory of Dissociated Mechanics is important for RPGs because it proves that it's never a question of whether an RPG is a "simulation" or not. It's a question of what the simulation is modeling, and how accurately or inaccurately the rules portray that model. As a consequence, complaining that a game is too "simulationist" or too "gamist" is a bit of a misnomer. What people are really saying is either, "I don't like the simulation model you've presented for the game world," or "I don't think the rules model your simulation all that well" (and often both). And at their core, the vast majority of disagreements about RPG rule sets can essentially be boiled down to one of those two things.</blockquote>

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