D&D 4E Ron Edwards on D&D 4e

[Cadence]

That's actually one of his posts I find the most disappointing, narrow, and flawed. I find it so because he started with the premise and then went looking for the support, and so engages in special pleading, cherry picking, and false dichotomies to support it. Elsewise he'd have had to skewer hitpoints, saving throws, armor class and a host of other things that pre and post date 4e.

At the end he does admit to things like character creation and advancement being disassociative..

Does this mean that dissociated mechanics simply have no place in a roleplaying game?

Not exactly.

First, dissociated mechanics have always been part of roleplaying games. For example, character generation is almost always dissociated and that’s also true for virtually all character advancement systems, too. It’s also true for a lot of the mechanics that GMs use. (In other words, dissociated mechanics are frequently used – and accepted – in the parts of the game that aren’t about roleplaying your character.)

Second, people often have reasons for playing and enjoying roleplaying games which have nothing to do with playing a role: They might be playing for tactical challenges or to tell a great story or to vicariously enjoy their character doing awesome things. Mechanics that let those players scratch their itches can be great for them, even if it means they have to temporarily stop roleplaying in order to use them. Games don’t need to be rigid in their focus.

An extreme example of this are people who play roleplaying games as storytelling games: Their primary interest isn’t roleplaying at all; it’s the telling of a story. (In my experience, these players are often the ones who are most confused by other people having an extreme dislike for dissociated mechanics. After all, dissociated mechanics don’t interfere with their creative agenda at all. For a lengthier discussion of this issue, check out “Roleplaying Games vs. Storytelling Games”.)

In short, this essay should not be seen as an inherent vilification of dissociated mechanics. But I do think it important for game designers to understand what they’re giving up when they use dissociated mechanics; and to make sure that what they’re gaining in return is worth the price they’re paying.

The hitpoints are certainly played disassociatively by a lot of people who claim to not like those mechanics. (Down to 5 hp you'll charge the monster who does 2d6 because you won't get to -10 and die, but down to 1 or 2 hp you won't.) But is AC usually played disassociatively? Or do the characters just recognize that certain things make one harder to hit and react accordingly?

 

[Ovinomancer]

The Alexandrian also comes off to me as trying to explain something about a narrowly defined group of players

and has a whole section on "fixing the problem". Regardless of the intent, that seems fundamentally different than seemingly labelling everyone who played a lot of the most popular ttrpgs of the time as brain damaged. (Similarly, in his revised post on Disassociated Mechanics he admits the original wasn't great, and it feels to me like the only place I would have revised is to claim it as his definition of roleplaying and not one-true-waying it).

The tone and approach are different, the actual point is the same. They're saying essentially the same things -- those popular RPGs advertised one thing but swapped it for essentially railroaded play and taught a generation of players that this was how you roleplayed great stories. If you strip out the brain damage and abuse wording and read what Edwards is actually saying in those posts, it's the same thing. Like I said, the Alexandrian's post is a much better introduction to the idea because it avoids the bombastic language and also doesn't bring in story games at all, so it's just the core points without the chaff that's often locked onto. It's, by far, the better essay because of this.

 

[Malmuria]

I didn't listen to every second of it, but I didn't find a lot that was very specific about why 4e is a good game in that interview with Edwards, just that he thought it was a good game. Near the end of the first video, he talks about how as characters level up their abilities give them a good degree of cross-party interaction, thought he finds that some of the players at his table "got this" but most did not. In the second video, he talks about how 4e leads to emergent narrative, but I could not understand why he felt this way (though I am not familiar with 4e's mechanics).

I did partially get the sense that he liked 4e as a contrarian, that is, because it was something that broader dnd culture rejected (he also compared dnd culture to an organized religion )

 

[Ovinomancer]

At the end he does admit to things like character creation and advancement being disassociative..



The hitpoints are certainly played disassociatively by a lot of people who claim to not like those mechanics. (Down to 5 hp you'll charge the monster who does 2d6 because you won't get to -10 and die, but down to 1 or 2 hp you won't.) But is AC usually played disassociatively? Or do the characters just recognize that certain things make one harder to hit and react accordingly?

You make an attack roll against a target and fail to hit it's AC -- what happened? We make up a story to cover it post resolution. This is exactly what he says shouldn't be happening for an associated mechanic. You missed because they got their shield up, or turned to catch the blow on the strongest piece of armor, or just dodged. The reality is that the mechanic of the attack role vs AC doesn't provide any association to the fictional result -- that's entirely post hoc justification for the result. Same with hitpoints. Same with saving throws.

These get a pass due to the cherry picking and special pleading that exempts the familiar parts and only tries to focus on things like daily powers being limited use for post-hoc justified reasons. Turns out, most of the game is this way.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I didn't listen to every second of it, but I didn't find a lot that was very specific about why 4e is a good game in that interview with Edwards, just that he thought it was a good game. Near the end of the first video, he talks about how as characters level up their abilities give them a good degree of cross-party interaction, thought he finds that some of the players at his table "got this" but most did not. In the second video, he talks about how 4e leads to emergent narrative, but I could not understand why he felt this way (though I am not familiar with 4e's mechanics).

I did partially get the sense that he liked 4e as a contrarian, that is, because it was something that broader dnd culture rejected (he also compared dnd culture to an organized religion )

I don't necessarily disagree with the latter. There's a strong sense of dogma and heretic hunting that occurs in a lot of circles of D&D culture. You see it often here.

 

[Ovinomancer]

At the end he does admit to things like character creation and advancement being disassociative..



The hitpoints are certainly played disassociatively by a lot of people who claim to not like those mechanics. (Down to 5 hp you'll charge the monster who does 2d6 because you won't get to -10 and die, but down to 1 or 2 hp you won't.) But is AC usually played disassociatively? Or do the characters just recognize that certain things make one harder to hit and react accordingly?

Just to come back to this, your selected quote goes to another of the seriously flawed posts from the Alexandrian about there being a difference between roleplaying games and story games. This is one of his larger category errors and is more an attempt to cast one as badwrong and the other as goodright. The thinking there is even worse than in the disassociated mechanics post.

Still, I will read the Alexandrian despite this, because he still does have interesting things to say. I actually find both of these essays interesting, even as I disagree with them very strongly.

 

[niklinna]

I did partially get the sense that he liked 4e as a contrarian, that is, because it was something that broader dnd culture rejected (he also compared dnd culture to an organized religion )

It seemed to me he compared it to folk religion, in a more anthropological sense of how people organize in community. (And, given the centralized nature of publishing official material, you could definitely say D&D culture is more organized in some regards.) There were some other offhand remarks he made about using the proper words to express one's opinions, presumably as a way of signaling in-group status (or outsider status). That was all kind of meta to their discussion of 4e (and Gamma World, oddly enough—I hadn't even known there was an edition of GW based of D&D 4e!).

 

[Cadence]

You make an attack roll against a target and fail to hit it's AC -- what happened? We make up a story to cover it post resolution. This is exactly what he says shouldn't be happening for an associated mechanic. You missed because they got their shield up, or turned to catch the blow on the strongest piece of armor, or just dodged. The reality is that the mechanic of the attack role vs AC doesn't provide any association to the fictional result -- that's entirely post hoc justification for the result. Same with hitpoints. Same with saving throws.

Is his version of associative based on how the characters would come to make the choice to swing or not, and not how the outcome of the swing is described?

 

[pemerton]

I mean, saying D&D causes brain damage is probably a good reason to dismiss him.

He never said that. He was referring to Vampire and post-Vampire type games.

EDIT: Here is his take on D&D c 20 years ago: The Forge :: A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons

 

[Cadence]

He never said that. He was referring to Vampire and post-Vampire type games.

I don't know how to read this bit from him a few posts into the thread explaining the original brain damage remark.

"We are all familiar with this state of mind - it is precisely the profile of those individuals committed to storytelling role-playing as presented by White Wolf games and many similar others that preceded them or came afterwards. Its origins in terms of game texts are probably traceable to AD&D2, for content, and to some applications of Champions, for rules."

It sure sounds like 2e is getting drug into it on first read.

EDIT: And following up the link you provide on D&D, it looks like he separates things pre-2e and 2e-on pretty strongly... and is quite negative about the later.