Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5627325" data-attributes="member: 42582">No one has asked you to. I've just asked you to refrain from telling me, whether directly or by implication, that my roleplaying is inadequate, or on a shallower level, when compared to yours.But if your explanation carries as an implication that others aren't playing properly, or adequately, or seriously, I don't think you can complain if they contest an explanation that carries this untoward implication.I've given some actual play examples upthread - the detailed anecdote upthread about the paladin turned to a frog, and the more general sketch I've given upthread of the dwarven halbedeer. Where do you think the "dissociation" is occurring in these examples? Where is the player being "dissociated" from the playing of the PC?As is your prerogative. But your reasons generate implications. Which I reject. Hence I doubt your reasons. In particular, and as chaochou and Crazy Jerome suggested way upthread, I think that you are too readily assuming that the sort of experience or "mindset" that you have when dealing with 4e's mechanics are the same ones that I, or others who enjoy 4e, have.My own view is that this assumption is false. That your experiences are different from the ones that I and my players have. Because you have said that such mechanics force you out of character, force you to "dissociate". Whereas I have actual play experiences - some of which I've recounted upthread - in which the use of metagame mechanics by a player to exercise narrative control reinforces that player's experience of, and engagement with, their PC. That is to say, at my table, the very mechanics that you label "dissociated" did not cause any dissociation!Again, you appear to be positing your experiences as universal.No more work is required at my table to maintain the consistency of my 4e game, than of my Rolemaster game. As I posted upthread in response to Yesway Jose, you seem to be measuring consistency mostly (i) by reference to law-of-nature causation, and how many arrows are remaining in a PC's quiver, under (ii) an assumption that it is the job of the action resolution mechanics to model these things.The sort of consistency that matters to my game is consistency at the level of emotion, value, relationships - if someone measurement of the money remaining in their PC's pouch goes wrong, we'll just go back and fix it - this is not a big deal. If yesterday the NPC mage worshipped Vecna, and today he worships Ioun, that would matter.And the action resolution mechanics don't have to model these things - rather, they should allow this sort of consistency to emerge in play.By the standards of consistency that I care about, my story upthread about my paladin player narrating the ending of an NPC's spell on his PC as the Raven Queen restoring him from frog form enhances consistency, because it keeps the deep emotional, spiritual and magical relationship between that PC and his god at the forefront of play. It increases the consistency of the fiction that recovering from an adverse magical effect, in the case of a character who is so utterly devoted to his god, should be the result of her divine handiwork.If the NPC had turned (let's say) the chaos sorcerer into a toad as well, then when that PC turned back I'm sure something else could be said by way of explanation. And as I said way upthread, what you are calling work in relation to narrating these events, I call playing the game. For me, a principal point of the game is to think about, understand and participate in the creation of the story.Let's leave aside the implication that this generates that 4e play is in some sense non-rational or irrational. And the fact that you seem to be identifying your personal preference as "central to the core of RPGs".There is nothing irrational about a fanatsy world in which a god liberates her paladin from a Baleful Polymorph. No "antecedent/consequence" rationality has been violated in this occuring in the fiction. As best as I can work out, your objection seems to be that the mechanics that produced this outcome don't do it of themselves, without the need for narrative or interpretive intervention by the participants in the game. (That sort of intervention is why we might call the mechanics "metagame" ones or "narrative control" ones.)Which is to say, your objection is that the mechanics are not a certain sort of simulationist mechanics. Which then seems to me to suggest that your conception of the "core of RPGs" is that they are about participating in a model. And that the rationality you are interested in would be - at least ideally - "built into" the workings of the model.No doubt that's one viable sort of RPG. I personally don't feel that D&D is this sort of RPG (as I've explained upthread, I simply can't see how hit points can be reconciled with non-magical human biology under a simulationist approach), but Classic Traveller, Runequest, and (at least played in a certain fashion) Rolemaster all fit the bill. But those are not the only games in town.Agreed on all points. That's why the only way I can make sense of "consitency", "rationality" etc, is under a simulationist reading ie the mechanics are the model that guarantees this, and playing is participating in the working of the model.A quote from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15" target="_blank">Ron Edwards' essay on simulationism</a> seems to capture this approach to play pretty well:Internal Cause is King: Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. The way these elements tie together, as well as how they're Colored, are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to emerge without extra attention. . .  the relationship is supposed to turn out a certain way or set of ways, since what goes on "ought" to go on, based on internal logic instead of intrusive agenda. . . Clearly, System is a major design element here, as the causal anchor among the other elements.I know this post is meant to be conciliatory rather than provocative, but in dividing the thread into two it seems to leave out the bit that I belong to - namely, those who understand what metagame mechanics are, what Actor and Author stance are, etc, who understand why some people don't like playing with them, but don't object to the existence of a game (namely, 4e) that has them.Your diagnosis of a blind spot is in my case, and I think also in the cases of Hussar, chaochou, wrecan, Third Wizard, and Crazy Jerome as well, a misdiagnosis.That is to say, we want a game with metagame mechanics. A game in which players are able to exert narrative control by adopting Author stance or, more often in the case of 4e, Director Stance (as in the case of the player of the paladin in my actual play example above, or of the fighter using Come and Get It). (It may not be the only sort of game we want. But it is a game that we want.)So your attempt to rewrite 4e martial powers as simulationist prophetic powers changes the game in a way that I don't want (on this point, the others I've mentioned can of course speak to their own preferences).Not that I would have any objection to introducing prophetic powers into the game. And I wouldn't even object if the player of a martial PC flavoured his/her powers as prophetic ones, although I would probably prefer some skill training in Religion or Arcana, and/or multi-class into an appropriate class, to help support the flavouring. (Unlike some 4e players, I like to stick to the published flavour for classes (as opposed to powers) fairly closely rather than do a lot of re-flavouring, because of the way the class flavour feeds into my use of the generic 4e setting to run my game. This is a mere preference, but important to my current game.)Everything else being equal, I prefer to play the game as it is written. Apart from a certain irrational aesthetic preference in doing so, it lightens the cognitive load.In the case of martial encounter and daily powers I particular want them to stay as they are, because they are Exhibit A in the clear commitment of the 4e rules (and, by implication, the 4e designers) to producing a good, coherent yet mainstream fantasy RPG that is easy, even trivial, to drift to narrativist play. Every move that they make away from that (eg some featuers of Essentials, the errata to Come and Get It) is reducing the likelihood of material being published that will support the game I want to run.If 4e was just 3E cleaned up a bit, I wouldn't be playing it. I'd probably be trying to get HARP to work for my group instead, or perhaps try to switch them to Burning Wheel.None of the above is any reason that anyone else should take any notice of (unless WotC think I'm an especially valuable customer, or a representative one). I say it really just to elaborate the way in which I think your "blind spot" diagnosis is a misdiagnosis. It is because of its so-called "dissociated" mechanics that I play 4e. (And, as I said above, those mechanics generally do not cause dissociation at my table.)Can't XP you again yet, but that's a good list of reasons. One that I would add - which overlaps with your first three reasons, but that I want to pull out on his own because to me it is very important - is to allow the player to play his/her PC as she envisages it. To player her PC as an exemplar.No. As I have explained above, I am not blind to metagame mechanics or the vagaries of stance. I can see them. And I like them.</blockquote>

Verification