D&D 5E Realism and Simulationism in 5e: Is D&D Supposed to be Realistic?

[Mordhau]

You're saying that you can make the call if something is a dissociated mechanic without the judgement call? Sure, but we don't see that with the use of the term.

I've done it in this thread.

 

[Mordhau]

I'm pretty sure a lot of annoyance comes from people not just voicing opinions and preferences and leaving it at that, but frequently coming up with these kind of Alexanadrian psuedo-science arguments to 'prove' that 4e is not an rpg, has nonsensical mechanics, etc.

I'm not a 4e is the best person, but I get pretty annoyed by the amount of this whenever 4e comes up on threads.

A lot of it is that people are still fighting the edition war. You can understand the edition war or you can fight the edition war but you can't do both.

Look there's the uncharitable interpretation which you give above. There's also a more charitable interpretation in that people were being asked why they had bounced off 4e and were trying to describe why in a way that would help people understand. Both are true to some degree.

 

[Mordhau]

That's a contentious claim. For instance, it may be that the only epistemic avenue you have to the thing you're judging is your affective response to it.

But it isn't. I can judge whether something is dissociated mechanics without any particular affective response to the game in question.

A lot of people on this thread seem to have only ever seen the terms used in the context of D&D and the 3.5/4e edition war. I've seen it used to described a range of games in entirely civil discussions that barely mention 4e among people who don't care all that much about D&D in general.

 

[Bacon Bits]

A yellow flag is even worse than a red one.

At sea, a square yellow flag being flown by a ship means "Ship under quarantine. Do not approach."

I'm sorry, in this industry we go fast and turn left.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've done it in this thread.

Interesting. I went back through your posts in the thread. I can't find it. Would you provide the moment you used "disassociated mechanic" in a non-value statement in this thread? Or are you talking about a different term that was used descriptively without value judgement and playing coy?

 

[Mordhau]

Interesting. I went back through your posts in the thread. I can't find it. Would you provide the moment you used "disassociated mechanic" in a non-value statement in this thread? Or are you talking about a different term that was used descriptively without value judgement and playing coy?

You can see the distinction more historically. Compare Iron Heroes from the 3.5 era to 4E martial characters. Mike Mearls worked on both, but you can see in the former the class design ties itself into knots trying to model things that 4e didn't bother with. Even the basic currency in Iron Heroes works very hard to link specifically back into actions in the fiction eg the Archer gains tokens to spend on actions by aiming and he has to use the tokens on the same target he aimed at. I think nowadays most designers would realise that's more trouble than it's worth. But Iron Heroes hadn't yet made the break from the 3.5 paradigm of modelling martial characters that 4e would.

You just need to look at Iron Heroes, as I mentioned earlier to see the difference in approach. In Iron Heroes your currency is specifically based on aiming at a particular target and gaining tokens to use on them to activate cool powers, to the extent that the class didn't really work as designed partly because it was too likely someone else would kill the target before the archer got to use their cool stuff.

A more modern approach would be to say the Archer gains tokens by aiming but gets to use them on anyone because the alternative sucks. If the player stops to ask how that makes sense you can just ask them "well would you rather suck?" and probably most players would be happy with the compromise, but it does mean the game is dissociated in a way Iron Heroes tried not to be (or perhaps more likely, given Mearls subsequent career, because it hadn't occured to him at that point that he could get away with not making the mechanics associated.)

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Mordhau, there it is, thank you. That seems to be making a value judgement, though, in that the alternative given to the dissociated mechanic is to "suck." That the dissociated mechanic is a compromise, a necessary evil to the game to avoid the suckage. I'm not seeing where this is being used in a non-judgmental fashion. It's very clear in this use that an alternative that wasn't dissociative would be considered better.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A lot of it is that people are still fighting the edition war. You can understand the edition war or you can fight the edition war but you can't do both.

Look there's the uncharitable interpretation which you give above. There's also a more charitable interpretation in that people were being asked why they had bounced off 4e and were trying to describe why in a way that would help people understand. Both are true to some degree.

Eh, a lot of edition war critique (and I'm not just talking D&D 4e or even just D&D) tends to get presented as self-evident or objective, and contrary to a prior poster, once you pull up that sort of terminology any fire you get back is entirely deserved.

If something doesn't work for you, yes, you need to frame what you're talking about as applying to you and people like you, and not either as broad dismissals or critique of people who feel differently. If you can't be bothered to do that, you've thrown down the gauntlet out the gate.

 

[Mordhau]

@Mordhau, there it is, thank you. That seems to be making a value judgement, though, in that the alternative given to the dissociated mechanic is to "suck." That the dissociated mechanic is a compromise, a necessary evil to the game to avoid the suckage. I'm not seeing where this is being used in a non-judgmental fashion. It's very clear in this use that an alternative that wasn't dissociative would be considered better.

No. The alternative to specific mechanic that's unable to work effectively as a mechanic is to not suck. In other words the easiest fix to the problems with the mechanic is to make it more flexible but also more dissociated. And that's a compromise with the obvious design priorities that the game was written with.

In the context of the 3.5 paradigm of design for martials it's clear that a lot of the mechanical problems can be addressed by stepping outside of the need to keep mechanics associated. That in itself says nothing about whether associated mechanics are good or bad by virture of their being associated - it just says that if you have competing priorities you may have to choose.

If my preference is to have associated mechanics where possible (and I'm not sure it necessarily is) then that's still not a value judgement, it's a preference.

 

[Azzy]

Eh, a lot of edition war critique (and I'm not just talking D&D 4e or even just D&D) tends to get presented as self-evident or objective, and contrary to a prior poster, once you pull up that sort of terminology any fire you get back is entirely deserved.

Yup. I didn't like 4e (for various reasons), but I dislike the alexandrian and his pretentious dribble even more.