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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5622782" data-attributes="member: 85870">Having  read through most of the thread, and the Alexandrian's essay again, I'm  just as firmly convinced as to the general premise and conclusion  posited--that dissociated mechanics are bad, if they're used in the  place of non-dissociated mechanics without any benefit in utility or  substance (i.e., transfer of narrative control). But  the importance of that concept continues to grow in my mind, and it's  based on something that struck me as I was writing my 2nd post on page 6  of the thread--namely that in order for roleplaying games to work at  all, they have to represent a form of human rationality as it comes to dealing with other sentient, rational entities.In  other words, beyond any mechanical representations or resolutions, a  player has to assume that their actions inside the game world will at  some point receive a response. That other rational entities (read:  people) are evaluating the character's actions, and formulating  appropriate responses, based on the game world's structure, cultural and  racial norms, the individual entities' circumstances, etc. as defined  by the GM.This,  in my mind, is the heart of roleplaying. Whatever class and skills a  character possesses, whatever race, whatever "level" or proficiency a  character has, all of that is merely a vehicle for the player to present  themselves as a particular rational entity, and that the game world is  expected to respond, act, and react to what is presented. Character  backbround matters because of this reality. I've seen a lot of people  say in essence that no character needs a background any more specific  than "I grew up with an adventuring spirit."But  if you're approaching roleplaying as a form of experiencing vicarious  human interaction, that's insufficient, because the character's  background naturally forms the character's own internal sense of  rationality. A character with no background is literally its own  dissociation--it's a mechanical construct of numbers with no basis for  the point of reality it inhabits within the game world.Now  some might say that no outside observer can know personal intention  anyway. That if a player wants to act randomly, it's their prerogative,  and the GM, or "game world," or "mileu" be damned. "It's my character, I  choose to act the way I want. It's the GM's job to figure out how it  'fits' their vision."That's  fine and good, to a point; clearly no one plays RPGs to be told how to  play their character. But more often than not, it leads to natural  breaks within the rationality of the character--i.e., the substance of  the character within the game world. The player rarely or never  associates character actions with the logical extension of rational  outcomes.Now  some may say that this doesn't matter, that such a play style can be rationalized by "The character just doesn't care what other people think."  Yet the circumstances of your typical RPG adventurer precludes this basic premise. Getting good at adventuring takes waaaay too much  effort to "not care." A fighter who goes around killing  stuff, wenching, and drinking ale all the time isn't passively "not  caring," he's actively constructing an essence so that his worldview of  "not caring" can flourish. People who truly "don't care" aren't  adventurers--they're lazy sacks of crap (or if they are adventurers,  they're probably not very good ones).An  action/adventure RPG, regardless of system, has to assume some level of  this rationality--that the characters within it consider the results of  their actions within the mileu. It's part of what makes RPGs great, and  a much different experience than playing Settlers of Catan, Dominion,  or even the Castle Ravenloft board game.I'm rambling a bit here I realize, but the question comes back to, what does this have to do with dissociative mechanics?The  answer is this: I don't play roleplaying games, at least for those  designed from the "Actor" perspective like D&D is, to "dissociate"  my character's rationality.Dissociative  mechanics in general are just one more layer of abstraction, one more  set of arbitrary barriers to the type of roleplaying I enjoy, which is  entirely character associative. I want to play in roleplaying games that  push character association, because I enjoy exploring the sense of  human rationality that such association provides.And  as I re-read the Alexandrian's essay, I was even more convinced that  dissociative mechanics are inherently at odds with this paradigm.</blockquote>

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