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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5622828" data-attributes="member: 42582">Knowing that I can jump over a 200' cliff and survive isn't just about knowing precise numbers as a player, which the PC doesn't know. Likewise about knowing that one more blow will kill me.These are about the player being in a cognitive state, which (i) almost certainly affects the way s/he plays his or her PC, and (ii) is a cognitive state that that PC could not possibly be in.So, for example, the player who knows that the 200' fall can't kill his/her PC decides that her PC will jump. What can the PC possibly be thinking that allows him/her to make the jump with the same degree of insouciance? All I can think of is "I have a lucky feeling about this!" But if that's enough to make hit points "associated", why can't it do the job for 4e's metagame powers?Similarly for the player who has his PC charge a bevy of archers because s/he knows that the damage from the arrows can't add up to a fatal total. What is the PC thinking? Again, all I can think of is "I feel lucky!".And now consider the player who decides that his/her PC will jump, and the PC does so - and the PC, in a bizzare coincidence, takes maximum damage, and therefore (let's suppose) has 1 hit point left. The very same PC, who just seconds before had a lucky feeling, now will act as cautiously as possible, because any weapon attack has a chance of killing him or her. What is the PC feeling? Not that every bone is broken - s/he gets up and walks away. Not that s/he can't dodge - her movement speed and Tumbling checks are unimpeded. She's feeling unlucky. Like the gods have deserted her. All her divine favour has been used up. Anyway, however you "associate" that, do the same when you play 4e!TL;DR - there're are reasons that generations of RPGers have rejected D&D hit points for other, different, damage mechanics. One of those reasons is that hit points produce decision-making that has no correlation to the actual decisions that people who don't have cognitive access to their future luckiness are able to make.This mischaracterised what I said.It's obvious to anyone who can read that Justin Alexander doesn't say that dissociated mechanics in general promote tactical skirmishing, given that he praises their role in Wushu. But I think it's equally obvious that I haven't imputed this view to him.When I say "that's the point of the mechanic", and then say that it doesn't follow from that point that it (ie the mechanic in question) undermines roleplaying and promotes tactical skirmishing, I am not talking about so-called dissociated mechanics in general. I'm talking about a particular mechanic - namely, a rogue using Trick Strike  - which is the the target of Justin Alexander's attack. (And to the extent that I'm generalising by way of implication, the implied generalisation is obviously to other martial daily and encounter powers in 4e.)Anyway, here are the bits of the essay that I particularly had in mind when making those above interpretive remarks:Of course, When the characters' relationship to the game world is stripped away, they are no longer roles to be played. They have become nothing more than mechanical artifacts that are manipulated with other mechanical artifacts. You might have a very good improv session that is vaguely based on the dissociated you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game. mechanics that you're using, but there has been a fundamental disconnect between the game and the world -- and when that happens, it stop being a roleplaying game. You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook. In short, you can simply accept that 4th Edition is being designed primarily as a tactical miniatures game. And if it happens to still end up looking vaguely like a roleplaying game, that's entirely accidental. . . [D]issociated mechanics can also be quite useful for roleplaying games. It's all a question of what you do with them. Specifically, dissociated mechanics can be useful if the reason they're dissociated from the game world is because they're modeling the narrative. . . Traditional roleplaying games, like D&D, are based around the idea of players as actors: Each player takes on the role of a particular character and the entirety of play is defined around the player thinking of themselves as the character and asking the question, "What am I going to do?" . . . But there is another option: Instead of determining the outcome of a particular action, scene-based resolution mechanics determine the outcome of entire scenes. . . Clearly, a scene-based resolution mechanic is dissociated from the game world. The game world, after all, knows nothing about the "scene". . . The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world). . . There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project. . . In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game. . . [T]he easiest comeback would be to say that it's all a matter of personal taste: I like telling stories and I like playing a role, but I don't like the tactical wargaming. That's an easy comeback, but it doesn't quite ring true. One of things I like about 3rd Edition is the tactical combat system. And I generally prefer games with lots of mechanically interesting rules. I like the game of roleplaying games. My problem with the trade-offs of 4th Edition is that I also like the roleplaying of roleplaying games. It comes back to something I said before: Simulationist mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the game world. Narrative mechanics allow me to engage with the character through the story. . . There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn't actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you're playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes. To put it another way: I can understand why you need to accept the disadvantages of dissociated mechanics in order to embrace the advantages of narrative-based mechanics. But I don't think it's necessary to embrace dissociated mechanics in order to create a mechanically interesting game.  . . In other words, I don't think the trade-offs in 4th Edition are necessary. They're sacrificing value and utility where value and utility didn't need to be lost.So the reason I think that Alexander's essay appears to presuppose that combat resolution mechanics that are complex and have a signficant metagame component are at odds with, or at best orthogonal, to player control over the narrative, is because the essay discusses such mechanics (namely, 4e martial dailies) at some length, and concludes that they are not giving players control over the narrative, and rather are supporting a tactical skirmish game, in relation to which any fiction would be "dramatic improv" of no relevance to action resolution.And the reason I say that Alexander's essay claims that 4e's martial daily powers undermine roleplaying and promote tactical skirmishing is that he says "In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game".To be honest, I'm surprised that my reading of the essay - which is manifestly an attack upon 4e for being a tactical skirmish game, with the martial dailes picked out as exhibit A in the case for 4e's sacrificing of roleplaying to tactical skirmish play - is at all controversial.I mean, the remark (that falls under a heading "Accepting Your Fate") that "you can sidestep all these issues with house rules if you just embrace the design ethos of 4th Edition: There is no explanation for the besieged foe ability. It is a mechanical manipulation with no corresponding reality in the game world whatsoever. At that point, however, you're no longer playing a roleplaying game" is pretty unambiguous.This seems to me to make much the same presupposition as does Justin Alexander's essay.Why is the player of a rogue, who chooses to use Trick Strike on a given occasion against a given foe - thereby bringing it about that, in the fiction, his/her PC shines in that particular duel against that particular foe - not exercising narrative control?Here is Justin Alexander's characterisation of narrative control mechanics (from the same essay):Second, you can create a story. In this approach you are focusing on the creation of a compelling narrative. . . . The dice you're rolling have little or no connection to the game world -- they're modeling a purely narrative property (control of the scene). . . [This] gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. For example, in the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences . . .In what way is the player of a rogue, who has his/her PC use Trick Strike, not (i) using a mechanic that has little or no connection to the game world but rather models a purely narrative property (namely, of being a singularly impressive duelist), (ii) which is under the control of the player (because the player gets to decide when to use the power), (iii) in an advantageous way (namely, to create what the player regards as a compelling story about his/her clever, swashbuckling rogue).Besides being narrative control mechanics in the sense suggested in the essay, 4e's daily powers are intended to play another obvious role in relation to the production of a compelling narrative, namely, of producing without effort a certain sort of pacing in the resolution of combat.(And in case anyone things being a singularly impressive duelist doesn't count as a "compelling narrative", here is Alexander's example of a compelling narrative from Wushu (again, this is from the same essay):Since it's just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is . . .I think being John Woo in a modern action adventure RPG is about as compelling as being D'Artagnan in a fantasy adventure RPG - ie probably reasonably entertaining for the participants in the game, although fairly prosaic by overall standards of artistic quality. In any event, Alexander is not setting the bar for "compelling narrative" so high that a 4e game obviously lacks the capacity to clear it.)This isn't the only, or self-evident, definition of roleplaying in relation to RPGs. For example, it renders author stance not roleplaying by definition, whereas a good chunk of pretty classic D&D play takes place in author stance - I, the player, decide what would be a clever thing to do - perhaps in conversation with my fellow playes, perhaps not - and then retroactively impute the relevant reasons and motivations to my PC.It's also unclear how this notion of "roleplaying around dissociated mechanics" - ie adopting actor stance when you're not in author or director stance - relates to Alexander's claim that, if you do this in relation to 4e, "You could just as easily be playing a game of Chess while improvising a vaguely related story about a royal coup starring your character named Rook."</blockquote>

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