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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5628277" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my case, add a degree of ignorance about combat to a fondness for Jacki Chan and Jet Li martial arts films. (Those films certainly inform my sense of what is happening, in game, when our dwarf uses his polearm. And I'm pretty sure that that is the case for the player too, given that he is the one who introduced me to those films back in the day.)Which is just to reinforce your point that genre expectations also matter.Not quite. I denied that there was any wedge - any dissociation - in the actual play example that I gave (of the player of the paladin narrating the end of an enemy's effect on his PC as his PC's god turning back from a toad to a person).It's no part of my agenda to tell other people when they may or may not be being wedged, or become "dissociated" from the fiction. My agenda is simply to show that the mechanics that produce this result, for those people, do not have some inherent tendency to produce that result. And I am showing that by instancing counterexamples to any such alleged tendency.And my view is that, with the notion of such a tendency refuted, the theory of "dissociated mechanics", as stated by The Alexandrian and defended in the title of this thread, is dead. All that's left is some stuff that was already well-known before Justin Alexander put finger to keyboard - namely, that some players have simulationist priorities in RPGing, and that some metagame mechanics can disrupt those priorities.Well I was more defending the paladin example than the fencing example - which I see as a complement to my example - mine is about character, the fencing example is about situation.And why is there no wedge in the actual play example that I gave? Well, I was there, and I'm faithfully reporting it (obviously you have to trust me on that, if the example is to have any force for you). And it happened as I said. To recount, with just a little more mechanical detail:The paladin was subject to an effect from a human transmuter (MV, I believe) - turned into a frog and therefore unable to attack or use powers until the end of the transmuter's next turn. The player of the paladin therefore missed a turn in the combat - he didn't want his frog-paladin to move - and muttered about not liking it very much while the rest of the table made jokes about not stepping on the frog as the other PCs moved in to confront the transmuter and her flunkies. The transmuter's next turn duly ended, and the paladin was the next character in the turn sequence. I told the player of the paladin that his PC turned from a frog back to himself. The player then declared his action, which was to move into melee range with the transmuter. And he said, in character, something to the effect that the transmuter was now going to get it (while laying down a Divine Challenge as a minor action). The transmuter replied something along the lines of "I don't think so - after all, I turned you into a frog!". And without pausing, the player of the paladin responded (in character), "Ah - but the Raven Queen turned me back." And the paladin then proceeded to beat up the transmuter.This is, to my mind, a clear example of a player "inhabiting" his/her PC. There is in character dialogue. The player is thinking in terms of his PC - "I move here, I challenge her, I say this and that and the other, I attack her". The conviction in the power of the Raven Queen is stated by the PC and reflects the experience that the PC is undergoing in having transformed out of frog form back to tiefling form.This example has marking - which we've been told by The Alexandrian, and by innderdude upthread, is dissociated. It's got a player treating an "end of next turn" duration as an opportunity to narrate his PC's god's miraculous intervention on the PC's behalf - as analysed by The Alexandrian, not only is this a dissociated mechanic, but it's pernicious houseruling being required to try and "reassociate" the mechanic. And innerdude, upthread, has described this sort of thing as overturning rationality and antecedent/consequence causation.The example has all these allegededly roleplaying destroying, immersion destroying, wedge-driving mechanics and practices going on. And yet roleplaying has not been destroyed. The player has inhabited his PC the whole time. He is as immersed as I've even seen a player be immersed - the player in question, of all my players, is the one most inclined to what might be described as an immersive style of play - really trying to inhabit his PC and feel, and express via his play, his PC's emotional responses. And the anecdote I've recounted is an example of just this.Again, to try and be crystal clear: I'm not saying that what I saw happen, at my table, with my player, is a universal template for how playing 4e will work out for others. But to refute the theory of dissociated mechanics I don't need to do that. All I need to do is show that the mechanics that are said, by that theory, to induce "dissociation" either of necessity, or by generalisation of tendency, in fact need not.The other example I've referred to a bit upthread is of the dwarven polearm fighter. I've even pointed out how sometimes Come and Get It, for that player, is Actor stance - "My clever polearm work wrongfoots them" - and sometimes is Director stance - "They all charge me". The Director stance occasions are at odds with immersion, in so far as they require the player to engage with the fiction beyond the confines of his PC's own experiences and emotions, but (in my experience) they still don't dissociated the player from the fictional situation. Which is to say, the state of affairs resembles more closely the one that Crazy Jerome is describing via his fencing example.If I recall correctly, I'm the one who introduced page 42 into the thread.The point I was trying to make is that, if players are interested in using page 42 - and mine certainly are - then they will be engaging with the fiction - both passively (ie trying to understand what it contains) and actively (ie trying to shape it, through the descriptions that they give when they deploy the action resolution mechanics).I think this "resolves 'dissociation' issues" to the extent that it is another reason to think (i) that using metagame action resolution mechanics won't of necessity tend to drive a wedge between participants and the fiction, and (ii) that participants in the game can be expected to add narrative interpretation to metagame mechanics during the course of play not as some extra burdensome chore of the sort that innerdude and The Alexandrian imply,  but as just another ordinary element of play.As with what I've said above about Come and Get It in Director's stance, this goes more to "dissociation" from the fictional situation than to "dissociation" from the fictional character, although in some cases thinking about page 42 possibilities might also help (rather than hinder) the player's "inhabitation" and expression of his/her PC. An actual play example I have in mind here is when the same player of the same paladin PC used Religion skill to speak a curse from the Raven Queen against a wight he was fighting. Mechanically, this was resolved as a Religion check against a moderate DC staking one turn of combat advantage against a modest amount of damage (either psychic or necrotic, but I can't remember). It reinforced the player's "inhabitation" of his PC by letting him engage the fictional situation in a way that fitted with his conception of how his PC would act in it - that is, at all times to rely upon the might of the Raven Queen, particularly when confronted with something as blasphemous as a wight.</blockquote>

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