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

[ExploderWizard]

Arguably, such a fighter shouldn't pick come and get it as a power, in much the same way that he shouldn't suddenly break out into eloquence when he has to talk to the Duke. Funny how one is disassociative and the other is bad roleplaying ... or good roleplaying, depending on who you ask.

Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.

 

[FireLance]

Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.

Unless they are quantum mechanics, in which case they only seem to have little to do with anything.

(What? The set-up was just begging for a quantum mechanics joke. )

I take the somewhat more nuanced view that mechanics can inform role-playing, and a character's abilities, as defined by the mechanics, can be an expression of role-playing.

As a player, you can try to portray a character with below-average Charisma and no training in Bluff or Diplomacy as a charming smooth-talker, but depending on the table, that might seem rather dissonant to the other players. Tables who have no problem with substituing player ability for character ability when it comes to NPC interactions probably would not bat an eyelid when a Charisma 8 character is played as very persuasive. However, at other tables, the same character might come across as someone who only thinks he is a charming smooth-talker, or who is trying to be one (and succeeding only through luck).

 

[GreyICE]

Except that in matters of roleplaying, mechanics have little to do with anything.

Actually, mechanics can do a lot to encourage or discourage roleplaying, and CERTAINLY can do a lot to inhibit certain storylines.

 

[Libramarian]

@S'mon : I actually think the DMG was very clear that you were playing in a narrativist space. It didn't say "narrativist" of course - the DMG was actually very careful to avoid gamer jargon and other traps and always defined terms before it used them - but it was clearly a narrativist space nevertheless. One of the first things it does is lay out player personalities - Actors, Explorers, Instigators, Power Gamers, Slayers, Storytellers, and Thinkers. And it discusses how to engage each of them, and elements of a story that will disengage each of them.

This, like the rest of the 4e DMG says High Concept Simulationism/Participationism to me, rather than Narrativism.

It's all about how to please the players, about how to craft plot hooks that allow them the Right to Dream. By accepting your plot hooks they grant you the reins over the story.

There's no advice in there about how to "introduce events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player" (Ron Edwards' definition of a Bang). That's what would say narrativist to me.

Your definition of narrativism is really bad. "A story space where everyone is engaged." Or rather, yeah I guess that is a fundamental concept of narrativist play...because it's a fundamental concept of any sort of RPG play. Ron Edwards' definition of narrativism is "Commitment to Addressing (producing, heightening, and resolving) Premise through play itself."

Frankly, it's obvious that you are using these terms without knowing what they mean. You should read these essays, and the Forge glossary:

The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now
The Forge :: Gamism: Step On Up
The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream
The Forge :: The Provisional Glossary

 

[JustinAlexander]

Disassociative has a use for describing something mostly subjective.

I'd have to agree. It does. But that's not the sense in which the word "dissociated" was being used when I coined the term "dissociated mechanics". The dissociation of a dissociated mechanic is not describing some "feeling" or psychological condition that a person has while using the mechanic. It is the dissociation between the mechanic and the game world.

Such mechanics might create a particular "feeling" for certain people using them, but the feeling should be not be treated as definitional.

Often I find in these discussions that people want to define a "dissociated mechanic" as meaning something other than what I defined it to mean. Then they'll argue against their definition. Which would be fine, I guess. But then they'll claim that they've actually said something meaningful about the concept of "dissociated mechanics" as I originally defined it. But all they've really done is construct a strawman.

Oh and by the way? Dissociated mechanics exist along the N <-> S axis of Narrativist/Simulationist/Gamist. Gamism is mute on the subject.

This is fundamentally inaccurate on multiple points.

First, dissociated mechanics can be used to accomplish all kinds of things. Narrative control mechanics are one thing they can do, but it's not the only thing. For example, the mechanics of Monopoly are dissociated, but you're not going to find many storygamers getting all hot 'n bothered about the narrative glories of Monopoly.

Second, dissociated mechanics can be used to achieve simulationist agendas, too. This is particularly true with the late-stage GNS interpretation of the term (emulating a given set of source material).

So really, once you boil it down, you realize that all three points on the GNS model are mute on this subject.

Of more use for this line of inquiry would be the Big Theory concept of "stances".

I suspect there's a certain mass of dissociated rules -- like hit points -- that should and would give immersion-sensitive players pause more often, except that we learn these rules very early in the learning curve.

The topic of hit points in these discussions is usually more misleading than enlightening: Prior to 4E, there was an interpretation of hit points (supported by most editions of D&D) which was associated but heavily abstracted. (And that abstraction was possessed of variable flaws depending on which edition we're talking about.)

Many people, however, didn't play with that interpretation of hit points. Instead, they played with an understanding that could be roughly described as "only the last few hit points count". This interpretation is dissociated. It also served as the foundation for 4E's approach to hit points, which rendered it even more dissociated.

So someone who used the first interpretation says "hit points aren't dissociated", and then somebody who endorses the second interpretation says "no they weren't", and pointless bickering and confusion results.

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]: I actually think the DMG was very clear that you were playing in a narrativist space...

I don't think it's at all clear from the DMG what kind of game 4e is supposed to be, or how it differs from prior editions of D&D. I'm not at all sure the designers themselves had a clear idea. Traditionally D&D's 'incoherence' worked to its advantage, it could be drifted successfully into a wide variety of play forms, but that is less true of 4e, and I think that's the source of much of the problem.

I could tell from reading the DMG that it wasn't very friendly to the sort of world-simulation I traditionally did in my games - where were the notes on setting demographics? Encounter tables? Social ranks? Military structures? Hireling costs? But it wasn't at all clear to me what it *was* going for.

The DMG2 has a stronger stance, I think, probably due to Robin Laws. It seems to be encouraging '90s White Wolf style gaming, which I think is what the Forgeites call "High Concept Simulationism", but often seems to boil down to pre-written 'Dragonlance' type stories that players passively experience at the behest of a servant-GM concerned to tickle all their pleasure-buttons. Any time I see advice about "getting them back on track" I reach for my (virtual) revolver...
However 4e doesn't have to be used for these linear railroads, and I know from reading the disastrous GMing accounts of the GMs on Critical Hits and elsewhere (Chatty GM, Vanir, The ID DM etc) a lot of the pitfalls to avoid.
More clued-up GMs like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] on ENW, and to some extent Chris Perkins of WoTC, use 4e successfully as a group story-creation exercise, Dramatist* play in the useful GDS model.

*Forgeites may call this High Concept Sim too, but it's definitely not helpful to conflate pre-written-story with create-story-in-play. Nor is it helpful to posit Narrativist premise-based play as the only valid sort of story-creation play. A pastiche movie like Expendables II has no Narrativist premise, but if you created the story of that movie in play it would probably still be a satisfying Dramatist experience.

 

[S'mon]

The topic of hit points in these discussions is usually more misleading than enlightening: Prior to 4E, there was an interpretation of hit points (supported by most editions of D&D) which was associated but heavily abstracted. (And that abstraction was possessed of variable flaws depending on which edition we're talking about.)

Many people, however, didn't play with that interpretation of hit points. Instead, they played with an understanding that could be roughly described as "only the last few hit points count". This interpretation is dissociated. It also served as the foundation for 4E's approach to hit points, which rendered it even more dissociated.

Yeah - my brain sticks with the associated 'meat' version of hp, despite designer efforts. Then I get that sinking feeling in my gut when a 'dying' 4e PC, who's maybe one death save from croaking, is then up and fighting again after an encouraging Martial word from his warlord buddy.

 

[GreyICE]

[MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION]: Yeah, I've read your reasonably long-winded essays. But to summarize an awful lot of text, you could simply say essential difference between simulationism and narrativism is that simulationism says "Here is a world. Live in it" and narrativism says "Here is your story. Tell it." (Gamism is, of course "Here is a game. Play it.")

Focusing on the sorts of stories that the players want to play is the core concept of narrativism. Is simulationism completely incapable of this? For 1 player? No. For 5 players? Unless they all share very common interests, generally, yes.

 

[pemerton]

I suspect there's a certain mass of dissociated rules -- like hit points -- that should and would give immersion-sensitive players pause more often, except that we learn these rules very early in the learning curve.

I don't know if I'm "immersion-sensitive" or not, but I know that I find hit points annoying in every version of D&D except 4e, because only 4e takes them to their logical conclusion as luck, divine favour and plot protection.

Hit points and AC are the two biggies here. Are they really a great way of representing what they're trying to abstract? Eh, not so much, but we've either worked out in our minds before hand a reasonable explanation, or we've just grown numb to the particulars of its effects.

Or we switched to different systems, like Runequest, Rolemaster, HERO etc that don't have the same problem!

Because I might as well sit back, turn on the TV, and press play to find out what happened. There is very little I can do that's other than either routine or cosmetic until the hurly burly's done, and the battle's been lost and won. And that's several minutes away. In 3e and 4e I can actually react to a changing situation rather than simply watch it unfold.

For me, this ability to actually make meaningful decisions in the course of the conflict's resolution is pretty central to engaging play.

4e doesn't have to be used for these linear railroads

<snip>

More clued-up GMs like pemerton on ENW, and to some extent Chris Perkins of WoTC, use 4e successfully as a group story-creation exercise, Dramatist* play in the useful GDS model.

*Forgeites may call this High Concept Sim too, but it's definitely not helpful to conflate pre-written-story with create-story-in-play. Nor is it helpful to posit Narrativist premise-based play as the only valid sort of story-creation play.

I think of it as light narrativism, and as fitting with Ron Edwards actual deployment of the term "narrativism", which is more expansive than his formal defintion. For example, he characterises The Dying Earth as narrativist because it produces cycnical and satirical humour of a Vancian kind - but that is "addressing an engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence " only in a fairly attenuated sense:

The Dying Earth facilitates Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players.​

My 4e game serves up fantasy-trope-filled situations that are loaded with the requirement for straight-laced, judgemental input on the part of the players. Less witty than The Dying Earth, but not too po-faced!, and hence, I think, best described as narrativist within the Forge vocabulary.

The reason I say that it is not high concept sim is because it lacks this feature:

In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world​

Whereas one of the most important aspects of GMing, for me, is to create situations that invite the players to impose their own morality - What is worth doing to free the slaves? Is a promise given to a priestess of Torog binding, even when given by one's interrogator's without one's own knowledge simply in order to extract information? Should chaos be embraced or repudiated?

All pretty standard fantasy stuff: but when the players are answering these questions through their play, its narrativist, not high concept sim.

 

[pemerton]

On hit points: in no version of D&D are these simply abstract and not "dissociated".

You are playing Basic D&D. Your 3rd level fighter has 20 hit points. Your PC is confronted by a bandit, 20' away, armed with a bow. An arrow does 1d6, so maximum damage is 6 - or 7, on the off chance that the bandit has +1 arrows. So your PC cannot be killed by a bowshot while closing with the bandit.

When playing your PC, you know this. In fact, knowing this is pretty crucial to mainstream D&D play, as it is what makes the combat-heavy nature of D&D viable. But your PC cannot know this. No fighter, no matter how good a swordmaster (to use the 3rd level title), knows for certain that an arrow shot from 20' away will not kill him or her.

And the contrast, in play, between the bow-scene in D&D, and the same scene in Rolemaster or Runequest, is obvious. In RM or RQ you know that a crit could kill you, and so you will be cautious about letting the bandit take a shot for free.