"Stumbling Around in My Head" - The Feeling of Dissociation as a Player

[innerdude]

....the very essence of an RPG is that some bit of narration introduced only for colour is liable to getting picked up on by someone else as an anchor for action resolution

Which isn't one of dissociation's strengths. Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road.

So which is it? This is one of The Alexandrian's big things too--if your chosen "flavor" for a given resolution is then "picked up by someone else as an anchor for action resolution," as a player you've either A) just created a house rule on the spot, or B) altered the fictional state of the world. In either case, the GM is losing control of some aspect of their game / session / milieu that they don't necessarily want to lose.

And that's fine, I suppose, if both player and GM are okay with such give-and-take in terms of narrative control. The problem is, for those of us who prefer actor stance / process resolution, this kind of resolution makes it more difficult to "stay in character," because our character loses the ability to perceive / correlate one particular action resolution from scene to scene.

(Side note before all of the "The character is really just in your head" critics jump in: If you don't find actor-stance playstyle to be your thing, that's fine; but for some of us, it's one of the high points of RPG play.)

 

[GreyICE]

Yes, narrativism does kind of fly in the face of "The DM is God, the players are his worshipers and peons" model of gaming. It heavily encourages a more even-handed method of gaming for creating the narrative, by giving players control over the flow of events. DMG2 even describes allowing players creative control over aspects of your world on the fly, something that had previously been foreign to D&D (even if it was a staple of many other games).

 

[pemerton]

Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road.

That's true, but not relevant to my point.

The fact that (say) Come and Get It is narrated on this occasion as deft polearm work does not preclude it being narrated, next time, as enemies rushing in Jackie Chan-style.

My point was that, when you narrate the enemies rushing in Jackie Chan-style, even if you intended it to be mere colour, you have established something in the fiction, and that is something (as I said) that is liable to getting picked up on by someone else as an anchor for action resolution. For example, following the Jackie Chan-style narration, if another player forms the view that the NPCs in question are gullible, or headstrong, they might try to leverage that in some way by making a Bluff check to manipulate them into doing something else against their interests.

That's why I don't agree that the narration of a "dissociated" mechanic is never relevant to action resolution. Because from time to time even mere colour will get picked up on by someone else at the table.

(And it has just occured to me that this is really just a version of an old, old point. It was common in old advice articles in Dragon and White Dwarf to read things like "Don't narrate a room with diamond-studded walls, because you can never guarantee that the players won't find a way to have their PCs harvest the diamonds and thereby become so rich that they break the game". That warning rests on the same idea: that in an RPG "mere colour" is always liable to be leveraged into something more by clever and/or ambitious participants.)

One thing I also find strange is that there seems to be an implication (not necessarily by Pem) that abstract mechanics somehow promote drama via genre tropes or something similar. I do not find a problem with that except for that there also seems to be an implication that less abstract mechanics necessarily get in the way of drama.

For me, it depends where the less abstract mechanics direct my focus, in play.

If the mechanics direct my focus towards tracking the passage of time, the usage of rations, iron spikes etc, and/or very complex mechanical implementations of attacks, damage and other aspects of action resolution, that can tend to dull the drama, for me at least.

Some contrasting examples, both from Rolemaster:

Rolemaster crits enhance drama, becaue the effects are generally concussion hit loss (which takes you directly closer to unconsciousness), bleeding (which equates to periodic hit loss plus a penalty to all actions), stun and similar action denial (which has an immediate effect just as it does in 4e or many other action-economy-based games), penalties to actions (which have an immediate and obvious significance), and/or descriptive effects like "knocked back 10'", "leg severed", "arm and shoulder shattered", etc. Any of these effects gives you an immediate sense of the threat to your PC, and the way that is changing the dynamics of the fight. 4e is the only version of D&D I have played that can give the same visceral feel, with its robust rules for conditions, ongoing damage, etc as well as hit point attrition.

Rolemaster healing, on the other hand, does not enhance drama at all. Magical healing is based around a very large group of spells that look to the details and severity of injury (healing cartilage is different from healing a tendon, for example; and healing a merely broken leg is different from healing a shattered leg); and there are reasonably complex recovery times to track. Natural healing is similarly detailed. The contrast between this and 4e D&D is very marked - the only time natural healing in 4e involves more than just changing a couple of numbers on the character sheet is the disease track, and that is dramatic! And in-combat healing, via magic or inspiration/determination, enhances rather than detracts from the drama.

For me, there is something of a tendency for "reaslistic" mechanics to suffer from the Rolemaster healing problem. But as Rolemaster crits show, the tendency need not be universal.

 

[S'mon]

D&D 3E simulates fire. It does 1d6 damage a round, reflex to negate. Potentially lethal to level 1 characters. At level 12 or so when you have some fire resist, laughable. If we assume Xena is a ~level 15 Warblade then she's got just about nothing to fear from nonmagical fire.

I have no idea what Warblades powers are - do they have fire immunity or regeneration? Neither sounds Xena-ish.

Anyway, leave the barn to burn for an hour - that's 600 rounds, or 30 rolls of '1' on your reflex save (why not Fort?) - 30d6 damage.

Once the barn has burned to the ground, you go in - and a slightly singed Xena probably pops up from the hole she dug in the floor of the barn and starts killing your men, but at least you can now see what's going on!

I think it probably bugged me so much because I once listened to some Norse revenge sagas on Radio 4 - Njal's Saga/The Tree of Strife, I think - the Norsemen very often had to deal with the problem of a superior lone warrior holed up in a building, able to kill anyone who came through the door, so burning down the building became S.O.P.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which isn't one of dissociation's strengths. Dissociation, as generally exhibited in 4e, essentially says (and I'm pretty sure you've said some version of this in other posts) that no one narrative instance of a mechanic may have any bearing on another instance down the road.

No. No it does not. It says that no one narrative instance of a mechanic must have a bearing on another instance. Huge difference. It says that you can do a judo throw even if the mechanic is called trip rather than that a judo throw is entirely undefined in the rules even when there is a monk class. It says There Is More Than One Way To Do It - which doesn't mean that things can't be done the same way twice. It merely means that things need not be done the same way twice. And if they are done the same way twice then the instances have a huge bearing on each other.

And that's fine, I suppose, if both player and GM are okay with such give-and-take in terms of narrative control. The problem is, for those of us who prefer actor stance / process resolution, this kind of resolution makes it more difficult to "stay in character," because our character loses the ability to perceive / correlate one particular action resolution from scene to scene.

I'm not just fine with give and take in terms of narrative control. I actively prefer it. DMing for me is at its most exhillarating when I am having to keep up with the players just as much as they are with me.

And for those of us who prefer actor stance / narrative resolution, non-disassocated mechanics make things much harder to stay in character because there are vast swathes of obvious things that are undefined and that I therefore have no clue will work or not even if my character ought to. If you look at the word "trip" and restrict trip attacks to that (as fully associated rules would mandate) then you literally can't judo throw someone under the rules. To me, play like this is crippling and immersion shattering. By restricting the game to a process-sim then outside the very limited number of processes being simulated I'm entirely in the realm of DM fiat and working almost blindly for things I should understand easily. Unless the game allows it explicitely I don't know if I can do it and I certainly don't know how hard it will be.

I have no idea what Warblades powers are - do they have fire immunity or regeneration? Neither sounds Xena-ish.

I really should lend you both Sharn and the Book of 9 Swords at some point. And Warblades have one "true grit" power that they can take at level 9 that allows them some measure of self healing if they are below half hit points. (They also have one incredibly badly written "true grit" power they can take at level 5 that would allow them to put the barn out automatically under the rules as written but wouldn't allow them to throw off paralysis or domination).

Anyway, leave the barn to burn for an hour - that's 600 rounds, or 30 rolls of '1' on your reflex save (why not Fort?) - 30d6 damage.

so burning down the building became S.O.P.

I don't think the Evil Overlord List is the fault of cinematic RP mechanics. Merely bad writing...

 

[Argyle King]

And for those of us who prefer actor stance / narrative resolution, non-disassocated mechanics make things much harder to stay in character because there are vast swathes of obvious things that are undefined and that I therefore have no clue will work or not even if my character ought to. If you look at the word "trip" and restrict trip attacks to that (as fully associated rules would mandate) then you literally can't judo throw someone under the rules. To me, play like this is crippling and immersion shattering. By restricting the game to a process-sim then outside the very limited number of processes being simulated I'm entirely in the realm of DM fiat and working almost blindly for things I should understand easily. Unless the game allows it explicitely I don't know if I can do it and I certainly don't know how hard it will be.

Why must a trip and a throw be defined the same way?

Does it hurt the narrative (or the story) if trip and throw are two different options which each have strengths and weaknesses? Does it hurt the narrative if fireball and lightning bolt behave differently?

 

[prosfilaes]

D&D 4E lets you set narrative damage for fire. Want people to be panicking? Go to page 42 chart, pick a moderate or high damage type, make that the environmental damage for being in the firefield.

One tries to simulate fire. One gives you the tools to make a narrative of fighting in a burning building.

How does that work? I've played hundreds of hours of Prime Time Adventures; I know how to play a narrative-based RPG, at least some types. But you start throwing numbers at me like 102 HP and 24 AC and +12 Fort save, I expect to get to use them to interact with a simulationist world. I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round. If when I'm trying to make a wild jump onto a departing ship to escape authorities, ala Conan in Queen of the Black Coast, you make me roll an Athletics check and divide it by 10 and that's the number of squares I cross, then no, you don't get to just "make a narrative of fighting in a burning building" if the rules say my character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Why must a trip and a throw be defined the same way?

Does it hurt the narrative (or the story) if trip and throw are two different options which each have strengths and weaknesses? Does it hurt the narrative if fireball and lightning bolt behave differently?

No they don't have to be the same. If trips and throws were defined differently then you could work this (I'd argue that it was overcomplicating but this is a matter of taste). However if you are going for process-sim then obvious options such as throws need to be defined. Especially if one of the classes is called "Fighter" and one is called "Monk" (and based on Shao Lin monks). You're playing an unarmed martial artist and have no rules for most of what is done in real life Aikido and about half of Judo. Techniques that make up the backbone of combat for many unarmed martial artists don't even have a vague approximation until the Book of 9 Swords despite having had a class specialising in them and that can trip since 3.0 was first published.

If you use the same mechanics to trip and throw this works. If you use separate mechanics to trip and throw, this also works. What does not work is not having mechanics to represent throws.

(Or you could go the AD&D route and cut the conditions entirely and say that a throw does hit point damage in the same way as anything else).

 

[GreyICE]

How does that work? I've played hundreds of hours of Prime Time Adventures; I know how to play a narrative-based RPG, at least some types. But you start throwing numbers at me like 102 HP and 24 AC and +12 Fort save, I expect to get to use them to interact with a simulationist world. I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round. If when I'm trying to make a wild jump onto a departing ship to escape authorities, ala Conan in Queen of the Black Coast, you make me roll an Athletics check and divide it by 10 and that's the number of squares I cross, then no, you don't get to just "make a narrative of fighting in a burning building" if the rules say my character is virtually immune to non-magical fire.

The rules don't say your character is virtually immune to non-magical fire. The rules say nothing at all about what's a good damage value. Why should they? HP are an abstraction, it's up to the DM to decide how dangerous the fire is to the characters.

And people said 4E had entitled players. "NO YOU CAN'T SET THE SCENE IN A BURNING BUILDING! MY CHARACTER SHOULD BE VIRTUALLY IMMUNE TO NON-MAGICAL FIRE." Can too. Can drop beams from the building as it starts to collapse too, they do really good damage and it's an attack versus reflex.

If you, as a player, ask what this is simulating, I'm gonna look at you and deadpan "fire bad."

 

[Neonchameleon]

I expect non-magical fire to be a certain number of d6 a round.

And here's where I get confused. I do not expect the heat of a candle flame to do the same amount of damage as a magnesium fire. I expect a fire in an empty wooden house to do a lot less damage than one full of straw and with barrels of pitch stored in the corner.

And I expect the DM to set stakes (or as DM I set the stakes myself) such that the fire is a threat to PCs without instantly killing them.