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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrGrenadine" data-source="post: 5623878" data-attributes="member: 62619">[sblock=Hussar's post][/sblock]Aha!  I see now.  Interesting.  I'm not sure how the concept of "bad calls"  relates to the PC power structure in 4e, but  I'll take a stab at commenting.  Full disclosure--I'm no expert on football or dissociated mechanics, so someone jump in if anything I say doesn't make sense.[sblock=Football the RPG assumptions]Just to make sure we're working under the same assumptions--Football the RPG follows the same rules as American football, in a world with real-world physics, and either each of the 22 players on the field is a PC, or the two PCs are the coaches, and the players are NPC henchmen.  The ref, umpire, head linesman, and various other judges are NPCs.So, in a game with coach PCs, I guess the 4e version would at least involve coaches choosing different plays and defensive set ups (stances?) from a list, and then using the interaction of the choices and die rolls to calculate success/failure resulting in yardage forward/back.  Sounds fun.[/sblock]Early in your post you state "Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic [for bad calls] we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature", and right off the bat I have to disagree.  Even though there's no live ref, (controlled by a player), there is an NPC ref (or seven officials total) on the field, and we can easily assign them qualities that can be used to determine all sorts of actions and reactions.  Also, the first of your examples is associated.[sblock=Your options]1)  Perception/stealth checks.  This seems associated to me, too, although I agree its certainly not an elegant solution.  I can see adding stealth ratings to players, modified by how many others players are adjacent, referee LOS, the type of infraction, how many times the infraction is attempted, etc.2)  Random die rolls to determine if a bad call happens, and charts to determine results.  I see how this is dissociated, since it doesn't have anything to do with whats happening on the field, (or more specifically, what choices the PCs are making on the field).3)  DM fiat.  I also think this is dissociated for the same reason as option 2and a bad choice, since nothing so game changing should be decided by fiat!4)  Player resource.  Dissociated.  As an example, each coach gets a "bad call" card to play which turns a call from "against" to "for".  The card can be used once per game.[/sblock]Given your options, you concluded you would choose option 4, which is dissociated, but would resolve the fastest.And given that, I have to ask--is that what this is all about?  How fast something is resolved in-game?  Because your pref (option 4) is definitely resolved quicker, no argument there, but in terms of 4e (which I play every week) I'm not seeing the dissociated mechanics speeding anything up significantly.  During combat, I'm seeing a lot of searching lists of powers, reading definitions of conditions, marking and re-marking PCs or NPCs, resolving attacks that affect multiple enemies or an area after making sure all modifiers--which may be different for every target--are present and accounted for, etc etc.Fun, it is!  But not elegant or speedy.  I'm sure we can think up some specific dissociated mechanics that are elegant and fast, though, just as I'm sure that we could think of a few quickly resolved associated ones, but although fast resolution is a huge plus to me, too, the issue, as far as I'm concerned, isn't about speed of play.My preference for associated mechanics has more to do with the feel of the game world, and how the characters fit into that world.  As mentioned earlier, I like PC/NPC behavior and the game-world's physical laws to be observable, consistent, and reliable, and there's no reason that a mechanic can't preserve that and be elegant. So in the case of Football the RPG and bad play calls, I would assign each official a bad call rating of some sort, based on the rate that bad calls occur in real football.  If a real football game averages about 120 plays, we have 120 opportunities for a blown call.  Based on 2 bad calls a game, thats about 1.6%.So, if an average official has basically a 2% chance of botching a call, then after every play we roll percent dice to see if the nearest official got the call right.  That seems associated to me.  (This doesn't resolve blatant fouls, or cheating, especially between plays--but I think for those cases you're back to stealth and perception checks.)And if rolling d% after every play is too much, then maybe just roll once for each official per quarter.  A roll of 01 or 02 means that official will botch a call that quarter--and then you'd need some sort of mechanic to figure out which call.  And if you wanted to make it more associated (and complex), you could modify the roll based on distance from the play, how many players are involved, the type of play, etc.In any case, I'm just always going to prefer an associated mechanic based on the official's abilities and the physical laws of the world, over the more gamist "player chooses" mechanic.  Playing a "bad call" card on an opponent's successful game-winning hail mary pass with no time on the clock would be fun, sure--at least for one team--but forcing that to happen when needed, although dramatic, lacks the feel I'm looking for in an RPG.</blockquote>

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