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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5640738" data-attributes="member: 42582">I guess unsurprisingly, I don't agree. I'll try and explain - and the point of the explanation isn't to try and prove that everyone would be better off with metagame mechanics, but to try and show how sometimes "associated" (or, a I prefer to say, simulationist) mechanics can hurt.First, you can't embellish simulationist mechanics all you want. They establish parameters.Of course, as I've been saying, metagame mechanics impose parameters as well. But metagame mechanics that have been designed well will put on just the parameters that the participants want, while leaving just the right scope for narration ("embellishment"). Whereas simulationist mechanics, which if they've been well designed will have been designed to efficiently but plausibly model ingame causal processes, may well not establsih the right sort of parameters.To give an example - as far as I know, the only way to stop someone in 3E, using a martial maneouvre, is to grapple them or trip them. Both require making a touch attack. They leave it open to embellishment as to what part of my body I am using to touch my foe. But they don't leave it open to embellish eg that I didn't touch them at all, but wrongfooted them such that they tripped over their own scabbard.To give another example - a simulationist treatment of spell duration, which says that the Baleful Polymorph ends after 6 seconds because that's just how the magic works preclues the end of the duration being negated as a miracle bestowed on a paladin by his god.Second, when it comes to "disconnecting" simulationist mechanics, at least in my experience - and also in many rulebooks that I'm familiar with - it is the GM who has authority over disconnection. Which tends to mean that the idea of "disconnecting" simulationist mechanics brings with it the threat of GM force in action resolution. And GM force in action resolution is, in general, at odds with player protagonism.I think this is particularly an issue with high concept simulationism. Purist-for-system design is generally intended to be "GM-proof" in this way, because part of the point of play is for everyone - GM included - to engage with and enjoy the mechanics. But in high concept simulationism the mechanics are a means to a different end (roughly, a genre experience). So the temptation to disconnect, when the connection won't produce that experience, is high. And so we get the "golden rule", "fudging in the interest of story", etc etc. And I'm a completely orthodox Forge-ite when it comes to this sort of play - I find it very dysfunctional.So if you want to play in the way that I'm interested in playing, "associated" mechanics can (and do, and have) hurt. There's a reason I switched from Rolemaster to 4e, after all!</blockquote>

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