D&D 5E The Illusion of Experience Points that Everyone Disbelieves

[Emerikol]

Assuming that you mean "mechanics that don't follow an in-world process paralleling route" ("process sim", as it has been labelled sometimes) then I, for one, find many process-paralleling mechanisms impossible to maintain actor/immersive stance with. Take the metronomic weapon swings every 6 seconds apparently envisaged by the D&D combat system (if it is taken to be process-paralleling), as brought up by @pemerton in another thread. I simply could not take actor stance in a game that worked that way - humour and spontaneous ridicule would simply destroy any immersion I might have.

I'd call the bolded part process sim. I like process sim but I don't consider process sim as identical to non-dissociative mechanics. But to address your concerns about sword combat in 6 seconds, I've always (even when it was 1 minute) treated rolling for an attack as that moment when you get the opportunity to do real damage. Parries, thrusts, movement back and forth, are all abstracted. The roll though is for that chance where you do get an opportunity to land a blow. This is why at higher levels getting more attacks makes sense. It's not that you really swing your sword more often it's that when you swing you are more likely to get an opportunity.

On the other hand....
A dissociative mechanic is one that forces you to leave actor stance and enter either author or director stance. That means that the fluff can affect whether a mechanic is dissociative or not. For example if fate points were something really existing in the world because they were handed out by the gods then they could become non-dissociative because the character could know (if the rules allowed for it) about fate points. Whereas as a pure game construct they are dissociative because the character doesn't know and the player does. I dislike things that separate the player from his character. Bennies in Savage Worlds is another one I dislike.

In 4e, you could reflavor the fighter as a magic using class (some kind of mystical totem warrior) and remove the dissociative aspects of it. But without some supernatural explanation there was no way to explain a daily martial resource. (For those that believe there is just stop right now. I don't want to debate it. I'd bet my house you are crazy wrong but lets not get that started.)

I hope that helps clarify all the differences.

 

[Emerikol]

All this is true, but it does not cover all the options. I think the most mainstream alternative to the approach that you (Emerikol) prefer is not one in which powers of authorship are allocated differently, but rather in which the rules that govern PC building, GM scene-framing and action resolution are set up so that the result of play is likely to be a satisfying story even though no one either individually or jointly has to take responsibility for authorship. This is the "subtle style" that Balesir refers to.

Even I create a fascinating world. In fact that would be my hallmark if anything. So if my players create interesting characters and get dropped into a fascinating world, it is inevitable that some interesting stories will emerge. My only point is that I do not "fudge" or "improvise" to make the game fit a story goal. I'm not criticizing other styles either which is why I put those things in quotes.

The reason I say that it is more mainstream than the alternative you mention is because it's allocation of responsibility to the GM is more traditional. Games that fit this description include HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP, and (I think) Fate. And I'm sure plenty of others too.

While I agree that some games may favor one style over another, I also think that a DM and players can use most rpg's in whichever style they want.

(Some of these games do also have mechanics for player co-authorship, but they're not the main focus of play. The main focus of play remains the players engaging the situations the GM has framed via their PCs. It is the PC build mechanics, the scene-framing guidelines and the action resolution mechanics that combine to deliver story in the strong sense of that word.)

True. I simply pointed out that some guys over on the D&D boards were espousing a more radical theory. I agree it's radical. For me, player authorship automatically means you are not in actor stance and that is what I really want out of a roleplaying game. I realize that may put a heavier burden on the DM but since I DM mostly I feel it's worth the effort.

 

[Balesir]

The rules of Chess define a finite set of outcomes based upon the board, the pieces, and the rules for their operation. Thus Chess is a pattern and what people seek to decipher when playing.

Are the outcomes in Chess really finite? Probably, though at a very high level. Regardless, I'll disagree with your second part - I don't think it's possible to "solve" chess in any meaningful sense. There are, very demonstrably, a myriad ways to win and lose at chess. What you might try to do is optimise your game or come to some construct where "only one side can win" or "a stalemate is inevitable" - but since the "value" of each move depends on what preceded it that will be arguably impossible in itself.

In short, there are two things going on. One is the game of chess itself - the board, pieces and rules - that must be understood by the players and has a whole gamut of implications. The second is the fathoming of the implications of those rules, both at the beginning of the game and after each move is made. Part of that fathoming must factor in the thought processes of the other player.

People do not need to be performing those operations for Chess to be played. Computers can perform those operations without the interference of people.

Quite so. The game of chess is the performance of those operations. The implications of those operations as they pertain to the likely outcome of the chess game are another, separate, layer.

That computer codes, also patterns, based on theories in heuristic computer science may be programmed into computers to allow people to play against them as well means the underlying pattern of Chess remains while a new pattern has taken the place of an opposing player. This second pattern has up until this point in history always been less complex, less difficult to decipher than Chess itself as we have not solved Chess, its underlying code. We do however have the code the programmers use to play against.

But if the rules of chess - the basic form of it - were not known then writing the computer code would be impossible. Two layers, again - the rules that define the game, and the implications that that definition creates.

Rules in RPGs are the patterns players are attempting to decipher and should be hidden behind the screen. Should there be rules all parties know, referees and players, before play begins? I totally agree, but these aren't in the books. However, literally thousands of games in RPG history are game engines defining the operations of a fantasy universe. They do not inform the player what actions a player may take within the game, but rather define the underlying pattern players are their to decipher. They should fundamentally be unknown to players at all times.

So, if I have got this, you want an absolutely minimal ruleset to begin with, because you want the players to play a guessing game of "what is the GM thinking" before they are able to explore the game world in any deeper way? I'm not sure I understand why - I certainly wouldn't want to do it - but if that's what you want fine.

Forge "gamism" is game play; its "narrativism" is story play. These are not the same thing in the way theater doesn't require anyone tells the truth or a lie. The intent is to tell a story. Can you act honestly for yourself? Honestly act to deceive? Act to create something? My go to example is high school wresting. Players follow the rules of wrestling to win, to achieve objectives as defined in the game. They are playing a game, not "gamism".

I don't see your point, here. "Gamism" in Forgespeak is coming to the table wanting to play a game, as opposed to any other agenda (such as "making a story"). That seems to me to be your position? In what way does it misstate your position?

There are no resolution mechanics in D&D because there are no conflicts between varying narratives put forth by different players.

I don't even begin to understand this.

Player: "I hit the orc with my sword"

GM: "OK - roll to hit" (translation: OK, but you might miss - alternative narrative - engage the resolution system to see if you hit or miss)

At the most basic and primitive level, this is two alternative narratives and a resolution system to determine which actually happens in the game world. Even if you are using a diceless system and the GM simply decides whether or not the character's action succeeds, you still have a resolution system - the GM decides is the resolution system.

Chess has a resolution system, albeit an entirely deterministic one. There are some moves (moving a knight diagonally, for instance) that will not work, even though they are alternative narratives.

Resolution mechanics only ever exist for storygames. D&D players learn how to interact with the game through trial and error just like computer gamers.

Most computer games have good manuals that tell you the basics of how it works, at least - and I already know how a computer works (in more depth than is entirely healthy, probably, though in less detail than many others). Are you thinking of games like "Zork" where you type stuff and the computer responds? So you have a fairly pointless initial phase finding out by guesswork what phrases it recognises and acts upon? Even with that there are ground rules, such as (1) Nothing you say at game start causes "game over". (2) The computer tells you what your objective is. (3) You are given copiuos clues about the general topic of the game and they almost always lean on in-jokes and cultural references. And so on.

Should there be shared rules, ones everyone knows when playing D&D for the breadth of conversation referees and players can engage in about the game? I'm okay with that, but the rules of D&D have never been explicitly stated.

Yes, they have - although you could argue that some were not intended for players to see. The "Players' Handbook", however, seems likely to be intended for players to read. Sure, you can ignore those rules - but then I would argue that you are not playing D&D. You are still roleplaying, for sure - and roleplaying with rules known only to the GM is possible. When I tried it I found it unsatisfying, myself, but I'm sure there are those who like it.

They would be rather small indeed, though the suggested rules for referees to use to construct the code behind the screen would be almost every rule printed in our hobby's history until storygames.

Why "until storygames"? Some of the mechanisms suggested there would also be usable in a gamist game, from what I have seen.

They never do, not wholly. Just like Chess, grandmasters of the game may appear to have grasped great knowledge about the game, but never in any single case can they know what their actions mean within the whole scope of the game. They are always limited to their own memories of experience. And yet all the while every new game is fresh and every new player has new insights to offer.

Grandmasters (and everyone else) are not "limited to their own memories of experience", though - that is the very point of having rules! In fact, the reason "every new game is fresh and every new player has new insights to offer" is that deducing the implications of the rules is possible - because all the players know the rules. In chess, you are not limited to what you have seen before - you can imagine what would happen if you made a possible move based on what is possible under the rules of chess. This, for me at least, is the very essence of "gaming". If I make a move in a game with no knowledge of what will result from that move, I am just pushing random buttons. An empty activity. If, on the other hand, there are clear rules - that are known to me - about what implications my move will have, then all of a sudden the game has meaning and purpose. Even if the outcome is "I find out what happens when I do X", that still requires rules (i.e. that X has the same outcome each time I do it - that the world does in fact have some rules that are testable; that's a rule).

Players tell the referee what they want their character to do and the referee tells them the results based upon the rules hidden behind the screen. That's the basic operation of D&D. There is an outside and an inside. It cannot be played solo though hundreds of CRPGs have substituted computers in the referee's place. And yes, the code the referee uses behind the screen must definitely be fixed prior to playing an instance of the game, the campaign. But that code actually grows through play due to player descriptions. And all printed rules are only suggestions to the effect of possible versions for a referee to run.

Well, each to their own. If the rules "behind the screen" are fixed, then they are testable (by the player). The player will thus figure out what they are after a guessing game so that they can get on with exploring the game world and overcoming the challenges it poses. I'm left wondering "why bother with the first bit?"

A dissociative mechanic is one that forces you to leave actor stance and enter either author or director stance.

Huh? There is no such thing as a mechanic that *forces* you to leave actor stance. Leaving actor stance is something you do by choice. If you mean immersive stance, I might see some point, but literally nothing can "force" anyone out of actor stance.

That means that the fluff can affect whether a mechanic is dissociative or not. For example if fate points were something really existing in the world because they were handed out by the gods then they could become non-dissociative because the character could know (if the rules allowed for it) about fate points. Whereas as a pure game construct they are dissociative because the character doesn't know and the player does. I dislike things that separate the player from his character. Bennies in Savage Worlds is another one I dislike.

So why not see them that way? If your character feeling the "presence" of a fate point or a bennie as a result of the favour of a god(dess) "makes sense" to you, why not just envision it that way and get on with the game? What, in the rules, dictates that the character is ignorant of the existence of such "special favour"? What, exactly, is stopping you from imagining your character's inner world of hunches and feelings exactly as you want to?

I take it as obvious that, for any RPG rule at all, each player will want to settle upon a way to imagine the events in the game based on what the mechanics determine as outcomes. To suggest, however, that there is only one way that the players may do that - or even that they must all do so in the same way - seems wilfully obstructive.

In 4e, you could reflavor the fighter as a magic using class (some kind of mystical totem warrior) and remove the dissociative aspects of it. But without some supernatural explanation there was no way to explain a daily martial resource. (For those that believe there is just stop right now. I don't want to debate it. I'd bet my house you are crazy wrong but lets not get that started.)

Leaving aside that (a) I don't think any explanation need necessarily be _supernatural_, (b) there is a huge array of possibilities for what we might envisage "supernatural" to be and (c) there is even a massive degree of misunderstanding of what exactly "martial" is, why not imagine the fighter as imbued with a "heroic" energy and puissance? What, in the rules, says that you are not permitted, in a fantasy world, to imagine that heroic and "supernatural" elements imbue every hero who sets out on the path of adventure?

 

[howandwhy99]

Are the outcomes in Chess really finite? Probably, though at a very high level. Regardless, I'll disagree with your second part - I don't think it's possible to "solve" chess in any meaningful sense. There are, very demonstrably, a myriad ways to win and lose at chess. What you might try to do is optimise your game or come to some construct where "only one side can win" or "a stalemate is inevitable" - but since the "value" of each move depends on what preceded it that will be arguably impossible in itself.

In short, there are two things going on. One is the game of chess itself - the board, pieces and rules - that must be understood by the players and has a whole gamut of implications. The second is the fathoming of the implications of those rules, both at the beginning of the game and after each move is made. Part of that fathoming must factor in the thought processes of the other player.

Chess is solvable like Checkers was solved back in '97. You are trying to separate the the board, pieces, and rules from the total number of game states like someone trying to separate hard drives and programs from the operating implicatons of them. A game is the whole of the possibilities within its operation. They are all one and the same.

I don't see your point, here. "Gamism" in Forgespeak is coming to the table wanting to play a game, as opposed to any other agenda (such as "making a story"). That seems to me to be your position? In what way does it misstate your position?

Role playing isn't creating a story. It isn't "creating" anything. It's engaging in the performance of a pattern of behavior contained within a society, playing a social role. There can be no objective within a game of "to tell a story" as it is not an achievable objective. The same way WWE wrestlers aren't actually wrestling (it's fake) when they use the rules of wrestling to tell a story, shifting D&D to do so can only end in bad games and poor stories.

I don't even begin to understand this.

Player: "I hit the orc with my sword"

GM: "OK - roll to hit" (translation: OK, but you might miss - alternative narrative - engage the resolution system to see if you hit or miss)

At the most basic and primitive level, this is two alternative narratives and a resolution system to determine which actually happens in the game world. Even if you are using a diceless system and the GM simply decides whether or not the character's action succeeds, you still have a resolution system - the GM decides is the resolution system.

Chess has a resolution system, albeit an entirely deterministic one. There are some moves (moving a knight diagonally, for instance) that will not work, even though they are alternative narratives.

No games have resolution systems (as storygames aren't really games). There are no two or more people desiring to express different stories in a game. And no shared narrative is ever created. Every game already contains every possible game state. The players are taking different paths across the whole. The dice in games are expressions of probability already in the game. They are rolled when those paths are taken. The outcome is out of anyone's hands. A referee has no story to tell of his or her own and is never to make decisions within a game.

Think differently. The Forge model was designed by an ideologue to remove even the ability to think like a game designer. It contains only its own answers which it traps its readers within. Until you reject it, you're not going to find anything but its answers in games. Again, there are no resolution mechanics in games and mechanics do not resolve conflicting player narratives.

They would be rather small indeed, though the suggested rules for referees to use to construct the code behind the screen would be almost every rule printed in our hobby's history until storygames.

Why "until storygames"? Some of the mechanisms suggested there would also be usable in a gamist game, from what I have seen.

A small handful of game mechanics have been deemed "acceptable" within the Big Model. Saying those actual game mechanics could be used for gamism (actual games) is a given.

Grandmasters (and everyone else) are not "limited to their own memories of experience", though - that is the very point of having rules! In fact, the reason "every new game is fresh and every new player has new insights to offer" is that deducing the implications of the rules is possible - because all the players know the rules. In chess, you are not limited to what you have seen before - you can imagine what would happen if you made a possible move based on what is possible under the rules of chess. This, for me at least, is the very essence of "gaming". If I make a move in a game with no knowledge of what will result from that move, I am just pushing random buttons. An empty activity. If, on the other hand, there are clear rules - that are known to me - about what implications my move will have, then all of a sudden the game has meaning and purpose. Even if the outcome is "I find out what happens when I do X", that still requires rules (i.e. that X has the same outcome each time I do it - that the world does in fact have some rules that are testable; that's a rule).

The game is not the rules, but the total possible number of game states the rules construct. All players are engaged in remembering it. Going down the paths of the game means performing the operations as defined within the rules, but the whole game is never the operations themselves. Otherwise we get WWE as real and not fake.

I'm glad you feel that deducing the resulting consequence of game rules within the imagination is "the very essence of gaming". To me that means you're looking for what games like old school D&D and Chess offer.

Well, each to their own. If the rules "behind the screen" are fixed, then they are testable (by the player). The player will thus figure out what they are after a guessing game so that they can get on with exploring the game world and overcoming the challenges it poses. I'm left wondering "why bother with the first bit?"

This is important. They are not two, but one. There is no difference between the whole of possible game states and the code behind the screen in a game of D&D.

 

[Emerikol]

Huh? There is no such thing as a mechanic that *forces* you to leave actor stance. Leaving actor stance is something you do by choice. If you mean immersive stance, I might see some point, but literally nothing can "force" anyone out of actor stance.

Let's say the DM just up and said to you the player - "Hey I'm going to kill your character but it's going to be heroic. Is that okay?"

The second you hear and react to that question you are out of character. There are a zillion things that can knock you out of actor stance. Actor stance is purely seeing everything through your characters eyes and responding as your character for character reasons.

So why not see them that way? If your character feeling the "presence" of a fate point or a bennie as a result of the favour of a god(dess) "makes sense" to you, why not just envision it that way and get on with the game? What, in the rules, dictates that the character is ignorant of the existence of such "special favour"? What, exactly, is stopping you from imagining your character's inner world of hunches and feelings exactly as you want to?

If you wanted to design a world where those points were in fact divine points of approval that would be one thing. If I'm playing a game where the DM has not laid that out as a given that the world works that way then it is dissociative.

I take it as obvious that, for any RPG rule at all, each player will want to settle upon a way to imagine the events in the game based on what the mechanics determine as outcomes. To suggest, however, that there is only one way that the players may do that - or even that they must all do so in the same way - seems wilfully obstructive.

What I'm saying is that the game and DM have to present the world that way. You can't just make it up in your own mind and forget the rest of the players are doing something different.

Leaving aside that (a) I don't think any explanation need necessarily be _supernatural_, (b) there is a huge array of possibilities for what we might envisage "supernatural" to be and (c) there is even a massive degree of misunderstanding of what exactly "martial" is, why not imagine the fighter as imbued with a "heroic" energy and puissance? What, in the rules, says that you are not permitted, in a fantasy world, to imagine that heroic and "supernatural" elements imbue every hero who sets out on the path of adventure?

[/QUOTE]
Well in my fantasy world that is not true. I don't think all fighters in my world are magic or supernatural. It's just not the flavor of game I want. YMMV.


I can sense your disdain for my playstyle in your answers. I'm sorry you feel the way you do. For a lot of us though we love our playstyle and don't want to rip it to shreds trying to fit a game to it. We just pick games that are easy to fit to our approach. I like the living breathing world approach where the rules are physics of the world and magic is magic and mundane is mundane. That is just my preference. I realize that the way you think about gaming is so radically different than mine that you have a hard time empathizing. It's like we are talking through the wall and missing every other word. Just try to be a bit more empathetic. I am totally aware and accepting that other people prefer other types of games. I just like what I like and I don't think there is anything wrong with it.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

There can be no objective within a game of "to tell a story" as it is not an achievable objective. The same way WWE wrestlers aren't actually wrestling (it's fake) when they use the rules of wrestling to tell a story, shifting D&D to do so can only end in bad games and poor stories.

Here you go with absolutisms again. It's like you don't even want people to meaningfully discuss this with you.

Every game already contains every possible game state.

By this limited definition you posit no RPG is a game then. Because every one I've played has an open-ended game state. There is no finite number of moves in real life, just as there aren't when playing oin character in an RPG.

Think differently. The Forge model was designed by an ideologue to remove even the ability to think like a game designer. It contains only its own answers which it traps its readers within. Until you reject it, you're not going to find anything but its answers in games. Again, there are no resolution mechanics in games and mechanics do not resolve conflicting player narratives.

I haven't seen anyone here saying they are adhering to Forgespeak (or whatever it's called). You are the one attributing that adherance to others and then claiming they need to reject it.

 

[howandwhy99]

Here you go with absolutisms again. It's like you don't even want people to meaningfully discuss this with you.

By this limited definition you posit no RPG is a game then. Because every one I've played has an open-ended game state. There is no finite number of moves in real life, just as there aren't when playing oin character in an RPG.

I haven't seen anyone here saying they are adhering to Forgespeak (or whatever it's called). You are the one attributing that adherance to others and then claiming they need to reject it.

Of course there are RPGs that are games, but a player "playing in character" is neither roleplaying or related to RPGs.

And I apologize if you see me as attributing some common assumptions as coming from one source rather than from the posters here. There are a lot of mistaken assumptions about games and role playing that don't track well through course of the hobby.

 

[Balesir]

Chess is solvable like Checkers was solved back in '97. You are trying to separate the the board, pieces, and rules from the total number of game states like someone trying to separate hard drives and programs from the operating implicatons of them. A game is the whole of the possibilities within its operation. They are all one and the same.

OK, so what you mean by "solved" is "map every path and analyse for optimal path outcomes". Doubtless that would show that key branches can be selected by both players always to give stalemate. In a sense, then, chess was "solved" the instant its rules were written; all that was and is lacking is sufficient computing power (combination of time and logic device, the last potentially being a brain).

If one views the genius of RPGs as having no finite number of "paths" I can see the point, but given that the rules for unanticipated paths must be generated by a GM, whose brain is itself finite, I think that any specific RPG will be a lot more finite than one might hope.

Role playing isn't creating a story.

Oh, balderdash - this, again? Really? Living life creates stories. Playing games, since they are part of life, generates stories. It's like saying that fusion reactions create light - it doesn't have to be what you perform the activity for, but the activity has the effect anyway. It's a by-product, if you like - but the only way to stop it happening is to stop the generating activity, which is to say any activity at all.

It isn't "creating" anything. It's engaging in the performance of a pattern of behavior contained within a society, playing a social role. There can be no objective within a game of "to tell a story" as it is not an achievable objective.

And yet people tell stories all the time - a miracle! The "unachievable" has been achieved!

All behaviour in society generates a story. It's not its purpose, it's just something it does, like generating heat and increasing entropy. Stories are inherent to the way humans understand sets of events and circumstances. Like it or not, they make life, decisions and communication possible. All of which are needed to play a game.

The same way WWE wrestlers aren't actually wrestling (it's fake) when they use the rules of wrestling to tell a story, shifting D&D to do so can only end in bad games and poor stories.

They do not follow the rules of wrestling when they perform a "scripted" bout. Why not? Because part of the (implicit) rules of wrestling is that what each wrestler will do is determined by their own decision at the time of the bout, not by a prewritten script. By following a prewritten script, they are no longer really "wrestling" as it is understood as a game. They are playing another game - a "fool the audience to excite them" game. Usually to get money.

Using prewritten scripts in roleplaying games is very similar. It doesn't follow the rules of roleplaying (which include that participants make decisions during the game that are not predetermined), and I agree that they tend to lead to poor games and poor stories. All this has absolutely nothing to do with the styles of play supported best by "storygames" or D&D (any edition).

No games have resolution systems (as storygames aren't really games). There are no two or more people desiring to express different stories in a game. And no shared narrative is ever created. Every game already contains every possible game state. The players are taking different paths across the whole.

And the path they take is decided by what, fairies?

Roleplaying games can indeed be viewed as "every possible thing that could happen in them, ever" - the classic cone starting at "now" and expanding into the future but all visible now. But for any instance of play, the game group will follow only one thread through that "pattern". And which thread they follow is resolved (note the word) using a set of rules. Typical rules are: (1) players decide what actions their characters take, (2) the GM decides the nature of the world around them, and (3) impersonal but uncertain choices of path are decided by random chance. A fair bit more elaboration is usually given. These are resolution rules: they resolve questions of "which path do we take?"

The dice in games are expressions of probability already in the game. They are rolled when those paths are taken. The outcome is out of anyone's hands.

Of course the outcome of a random roll is out of anyone's hands - assuming they are not cheating. But the random roll still resolves which of two (or more) possible paths are taken from that point. Both paths could be seen as "written in the pattern" - but the roll actually made resolves which path is actually used. The same thing (with a different resolution method) happens whenever anyone makes a decision.

A referee has no story to tell of his or her own and is never to make decisions within a game.

What I think you mean, here, is that the GM will have no pre-decided "story" that determines the path taken - which I agree is a desirable feature. Pre-decided stories lead to the wrestling situation discussed above, and make for poor games and poor stories.

The GM is, however, bound to generate stories after the fact. If they do not, then communicating what has happened to the players will be impossible. This is especially true if the "rules" are hidden from the players, as a technical description with no context will mean nothing to them.

Think differently. The Forge model was designed by an ideologue to remove even the ability to think like a game designer. It contains only its own answers which it traps its readers within. Until you reject it, you're not going to find anything but its answers in games. Again, there are no resolution mechanics in games and mechanics do not resolve conflicting player narratives.

A small handful of game mechanics have been deemed "acceptable" within the Big Model. Saying those actual game mechanics could be used for gamism (actual games) is a given.

All the sense I get out of this is to wonder whether the "Big Model" you read was even related to the one I read. The one I read makes no prescriptions on game mechanics at all. I can see that you might object to the "shared imagined space" if you play in a very strict pawn stance, but even then play will generate stories (as a byproduct) and even then there will be a shared imaginary pattern (given by the rules - just as there is in chess, otherwise you could not discuss alternative possible moves).

The game is not the rules, but the total possible number of game states the rules construct. All players are engaged in remembering it. Going down the paths of the game means performing the operations as defined within the rules, but the whole game is never the operations themselves. Otherwise we get WWE as real and not fake.

The "total number of game states" is defined and determined by the rules. You could, in theory, perform an analysis determining every possible game state in chess using only the rules of chess (and a huge computer or a ridiculous amount of time). That is what distinguishes the "rules" from the "pattern". "Playing the game" consists of manipulating your position in the pattern (which is a shared, imagined construct, by the way) by making decisions based on an understanding of the rules.

WWF "wrestling" does not fit this paradigm, since the "players" are not making decisions based on their knowledge of the rules (in the wider sense - i.e. including their own capabilities and so on) - they are following a script. Following a script is against the rules of all games, at least some of the time (i.e. the rules might demand following a script sometimes, but unless there are resolution points, too, it's not a game).

I'm glad you feel that deducing the resulting consequence of game rules within the imagination is "the very essence of gaming". To me that means you're looking for what games like old school D&D and Chess offer.

First of all, I am not "looking for" any single thing in my gaming, any more than I want to eat nothing but steak for the rest of my life. I like steak, but I like variety more.

Secondly, although I like gaming very much - boardgames, wargames, roleplaying games and computer strategy games, mostly - I find that 4E D&D works far better for it than earlier editions for the simple reason that it has coherent rules for the players to use and with which the GM can construct an interesting world.

But thanks for your concern.

This is important. They are not two, but one. There is no difference between the whole of possible game states and the code behind the screen in a game of D&D.

If either rules or pattern are missing entirely there can be no game. The rules allow the players to make decisions and communicate with (and about) the pattern. The pattern takes away complete determinism and makes the resolutions in the game meaningful; if there was only one path, there would be no decisions to make. So D&D, just like all other games, requires both.

Let's say the DM just up and said to you the player - "Hey I'm going to kill your character but it's going to be heroic. Is that okay?"

So my character just received a premonition of impending doom - cool! I'll answer with my (in-character) actions.

What's your point?

The second you hear and react to that question you are out of character. There are a zillion things that can knock you out of actor stance. Actor stance is purely seeing everything through your characters eyes and responding as your character for character reasons.

Yep - and nothing, nothing at all, can force you out of that stance. It can maybe mess with the make-believe in your head, but then seeing and breathing and going to the bathroom can do that, so let's not think it's unusual.

If you wanted to design a world where those points were in fact divine points of approval that would be one thing. If I'm playing a game where the DM has not laid that out as a given that the world works that way then it is dissociative.

Has the DM laid out how often your character goes to the bathroom? Has the DM ever said how many lumens are typically provided by the daytime sky in the game world? Does the DM give minute-by-minute updates on what the weather is doing? Does the DM specify the colour and texture of every surface in the game world?

I'm going to take a leap and say the answer to at least some of these questions is "no".

So why on earth should what you imagine in this particular aspect of the game world be limited to what the DM says? Why should the default - for when the GM simply doesn't specify - be the one you don't like? It seems that you are deliberately selecting an option that doesn't work for you because nobody has told you not to. That seems daft, to me.

What I'm saying is that the game and DM have to present the world that way. You can't just make it up in your own mind and forget the rest of the players are doing something different.

Why not? As a matter of "possibility" I can assure you that you can. In fact, in respect of at least *some* of the aspects I mention above (bathroom breaks, daytime brightness, detailed weather, surface colours and textures) I'll bet that you already do.

As an aside, I think that this is an important feature of the role of rules in RPGs. They determine what the "facts" of the current position are. They form the point of reference for the (different) imagined situations that the players hold in their heads. You can imagine the game-situation any way you please - in fact, you can even imagine it as no more than plastic or metal minis on a board, if you want to - provided that whatever you imagine fits with the situation as defined by the rules. As long as you do this, and with a coherent set of rules, then whetever you imagine will fit just fine with what others may do - however they imagine the in-game situation, provided that they follow the same rule.

Well in my fantasy world that is not true. I don't think all fighters in my world are magic or supernatural. It's just not the flavor of game I want. YMMV.

Right - which brings us full circle. It's the flavour you want. This is fine - you can like whatever you like!

The problem comes when you start to try to justify what you like with false generalisations and distinctions. No mechanic can "force you out of actor stance". There is no logical difference in "unbelievability" between hit points and levels and Come and Get It or martial healing. You just like some of them and not others. That's fine - but to claim that there is something specific and vilifiable about the stuff you don't like is factually incorrect and categorically insulting.

I can sense your disdain for my playstyle in your answers. I'm sorry you feel the way you do. For a lot of us though we love our playstyle and don't want to rip it to shreds trying to fit a game to it. We just pick games that are easy to fit to our approach. I like the living breathing world approach where the rules are physics of the world and magic is magic and mundane is mundane. That is just my preference. I realize that the way you think about gaming is so radically different than mine that you have a hard time empathizing. It's like we are talking through the wall and missing every other word. Just try to be a bit more empathetic. I am totally aware and accepting that other people prefer other types of games. I just like what I like and I don't think there is anything wrong with it.

I don't "disdain" your preferred play mode at all. I'm not going to - nor would I ever want to - dress up in a ninja suit and come round and force you to play anything you don't want to. Your play preferences are your own and I have no wish to insult them or to dissuade you from indulging them. That is not my point.

What happens next, though, is that you start labelling stuff that you don't like. You don't label the stuff you do like - that's just "normal", so it doesn't need labelling - just the stuff you don't like. Then you can say "the problem with X is..."

To confound matters, the labelling does not have any really distinct definition. It is, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says, just "stuff you don't like". You could treat the stuff you don't like just the same as you do the stuff you do like (see above), and the supposed "failings" of the stuff you don't like would go away. You could just say "I could treat them the same, but I don't want to". That's a perfectly good reason for not wanting something - you just don't like it. There is no rational reason - just as there is no rational reason I like strawberry icecream better than blackcurrant. I don't try to argue that blackcurrant icecream has some sort of inherent flaw due to the places backcurrants grow (or whatever). I just prefer strawberry icecream, so I will eat it in preference to blackcurrant most of the time. It's not rational - it's just human.

 

[Emerikol]

Balesir, you are wrong about actor stance.

You are thrown out of actor stance when the player does something that affects the game and which the character is unaware how it happened. When the player goes to the bathroom, I'm assuming his character is frozen. The character never ever needs to know the player went to the bathroom. If the player though decides to use a fate point, that affects the game but the character did not make that decision. The character may or may not be aware of the effect. So the game for me is about my character making decisions. I do that as the player using actor stance. If I am forced to make decisions that are not actor stance then I am not making them as my character.

A dissociative mechanic is one where the use of the mechanic is controlled by the player but not by the character. In some instances that means the fluff really will dictate whether something is dissociative or not. Because the fluff may determine what the character knows and can act upon. Assuming martial dailies are not a magical resource, the player has to intervene to determine when to use that resource. Swinging a sword is not limited to once per day.

I get that the way you view the game is so far from mine that you have a hard time empathizing. Please be assured that the things are describe are very important to a lot of people. There is a distinction for them. We cannot just handwave away these concerns because they are important to us. Just making up stuff on the fly that is not even part of the DM's world is not going to work for us.

The term dissocative mechanic describes a mechanic in a certain context. That is it. It doesn't describe how it makes you feel when using it. Because how it makes people feel is subjective. The fact that the mechanic in that context separates the player and character is undeniable. You can dispute a specific example and debate the fluff but given the context you cannot deny it.

Given
A mechanic in the game can only be utilized and controlled by the player and the character is unaware of it.
Then
That choice is dissociative.

That is a hard cold fact. You can deny it until you are blue in the face. There is a definition of dissociative mechanic. It describes a mechanical state of affairs. We can argue if it bothers you. We can't argue that the mechanic fits the definition. It might even be unfortunate that some people mistook the name as referring to a subjective feeling. That doesn't change the fact that the real definition is indisputable given the givens.

 

[Emerikol]

To confound matters, the labelling does not have any really distinct definition.

Here is where we vehemently disagree.

There are TONS of things I dislike. I do not like inspirational healing. I don't consider it dissociative on it's face. Obviously other mechanics related to it could be dissociative but the entire concept is not. I don't like DoaM but I don't consider that a dissociative issues. It's a process sim issue and maybe it touches on the idea of hit points.

There are tons of areas where I have likes and dislikes. I don't like dissociative mechanics though and they are a specific thing. The term is the definition of a specific thing. That is the only purpose the term serves. To identify a class of mechanics that have common properties. The reason there is some confusion is that you and others have been making fundamental assumptions about the game for years that the rest of us have not been making. If we had made those assumptions that you've made we likely would have abandoned D&D a long time ago. We've always played that PCs know hit points and AC. So those things are not dissociative in any game we'd run. The character knows those things. It honestly never occurred to me to think differently until I came online. You can disagree on that belief but we are consistent.

You might even argue that what we accept or don't accept as character knowledge is convenient to our likes and dislikes. I would disagree but you could make that claim. You can't though make the claim the definition is not sound given a mechanic and it's context. If you do you are being irrational and illogical.

The only reason the term was invented was so that I could communicate some information to another person without a lengthy description of why I dislike it. That is why we create terms. I'm sure I could lock two people who agree on the term and think it describes something discernible and give them a hundred examples half of which are dissociative and they are both going to pick them out. I think if you were intellectually honest about the definition you could pick them out.