If as a player I say - I swing my sword and then I roll to see if my sword hits then that is very correlative. I could also say that I attack the enemy oer the course of one minute seeking for a key opening and stab when the chance arises. In either case my player is thinking exactly what my character is thinking.
Why does only one chance arise? Why not more than one?
If I have a finite number of manuevers that are finite for game balance reasons and in reality are finite in the fictional world then I have issue.
In AD&D you have a finite number of manouevres - no more than one attack per minute.
On the other hand - if as a player I say - right now at this moment is when I am going to find an opening in the enemies defenses so I can make my special thrusting attack - then that is dissociative.
What is the difference between "one opening per minute" and "one really good opening per five minutes"? Is it simply that "one opening per minute" is dictated by the general game rules, whereas "one really good opening per five minutes" is in part a function of the player's decision to use the power?
I agree; most of D&D is small-step results-sim.
<snip>
I say small-step result sims as to the simulation is broken down into generally very small chunks to avoid post-hoc narration and separation of mental vision/expectation between the participants.
This is an interesting point, although I think that post-hoc narration can still be required if the details of the events in the fiction are to be filled in. I'm thinking especially of AD&D saving throws (Gygax in the DMG talks about taking cover in a crevice which is clearly being narrated post-hoc, following the successful save having been rolled).
It seems to me that the measure of "small steps" or "post-hoc narration" being
required, is highly group specific. Some groups care about the details of the blow, the armlock, the words spoken in a certain tone at a certain volume, whereas others are happy with "I attack", "I grapple the goblin", "I greet the Duke in a polite fashion". No matter how detailed we go, more detail can be requested and the imagined picture incomplete as it stands.
Hero has the same basic premise -- powers work like this -- all expressions of a powers have the same basic structure.
<snip>
I find this association more tolerable than the pragmatic reskinning of powers to suit any situation that people talk about happening in 4e.
<snip>
This moves the power away from the character (he can do X because of Y) into a resource for the player (this is an ability you can always call on when playing this character; please attach it to the game world when you use it).
Good points. I think that 4e more strongly inclines towards "powers as player resources" than "powers as PC abiltiies" than earlier versions of D&D.
But then there are examples that seem to push the other way: what is an AD&D fighter's 3/2 attack ability, if not a player resource? All it corresponds to in the fiction - given the abstractness of an AD&D melee round - is "skilled melee combatant", and at that level of generality the same description explains the resources that the player of a 4e fighter enjoys. Why does the AD&D ability nevertheless seem to be (near-)universally regarded as less dissociated? It seems to have something to do with the attack roll nevertheless expressing someting about the activities of the PC in the fiction (and so 3/2 attacks corresponds to more of those activites), whereas a 4e power like Come and Get It has an obvious director stance component. (But Rain of Blows, for example, doesn't, and I personally can't see that it is any more dissociated than a 3/2 attack rate.)
you haven't really associated CaGI with the taunt though.
The character can make that taunt every round of the combat.
The creature only runs over to get torn to pieces when the power is used in round 15. From a character's perspective there is no difference between the first unsuccessful 14 taunts and the last one or a taunt in any subsequent round (which can never be as successful since the Daily was used).
What I'm missing: how exactly is this different from the 1x/level rule for locks, and the 1x/campagin rule for bending bars and lifting gates, in AD&D?
I mean, how come the PC had a chance of success the first time, but not the second? Nothing in the gameworld has changed between those two attempts, unless you take the view that what the die roll
really determines is how tough the lock/gate is - but in that case, the die roll is an exercise of director's stance, which is (ex hypothesi) "dissociated".
A similar question: from the point of view of the character, every stab in the minute of combat is indistinguishable. So how come the AD&D player only gets to roll one attack roll?
I think this might support LostSoul's contention that the "dissociation" issue is not really about process-sim at all.
I could be wrong, but maybe the process sim = associated mechanics is a red herring.
When I read the following, I think dissociated mechanics have more to do with fictional positioning and their relationship to action resolution.
<snip>
That, to me, is a question about how players make meaningful decisions in the game, and which kinds of meaningful decisions the game is asking players to make.
I think there may be something to this, but it is hard to work out exactly what is going on.
I mean, take the D&Dnext herbalism skill and healer's kits. Does a PC who expends a hit die falling use of a healer's kit have a bandage or poulstice somewhere on his/her body? And if so, can enemies therefore try to rip the bandage/poulstice off, thereby impeding the PC's performance and/or healing? The rules don't say. Is this an issue of dissociation, then?
Given that not every detail of the fiction can be filled in, and fictional positioning is, of necessity, therefore partial, is 4e special in this regard? Or is the point that 4e assumes that, in some situations, the
player enjoys the power to resolve indeterminate positioning questions a certain way (via expenditure of a resource in the form of a power) whereas D&D has traditionally vested that power in the GM? Except that there have always been some player resources, like the 3/2 attacks in AD&D - which give the player the power to specify that, whatever is going on in that minute of melee, it opens up multiple opportunities to get in a good hit.
Anyway, here are some things that "dissociated" mechanics are not:
*Not metagame action resolution mechanics in general (eg action points are OK);
*Not director's stance mechanics (because an encounter power like Rain of Blows is no more director stance than AD&D 3/2 attacks);
*Not absence of process-sim (because D&D in general not process sim);
*Not mechanics that require/empower the player to think in ways that fail to parallel PC thinking (because D&D hit points have always given the player knowledge that the PC lacks, namely, when at low hp, that the next hit will be a bad one).
Which leaves me less certain than ever about what they actually are.
One clear example I can think of that fits with the "fictional positioning" analysis is this: when an ooze is knocked "prone" in 4e, why does it impose a penalty on ranged attacks? After all, it is "off balance" (and hence granting combat advantage until it spends a move action to regain equilibrium) but presumably is no flatter to the ground. But this is a pretty corner case, and doesn't seem to be what those who are worried about "dissociated" mechanics have in mind.
1) is it controversial to suggest that an important purpose of "Simulationist" mechanics is to help keep everyone on the same page within the fiction?
That's not how I think of such mechanics. I think of their function being mostly an aesthetic one, to generate a tight correlation between activity being performed at the gaming table (rolling dice, calling out numbers, writing things down on scratch papers) and events unfolding in the shared fiction. It's not about keeping everyone on the same page, but rather doing so via a particular, distinctive technique.
2) is it controversial to suggest that "Process Sim" mechanics also help keep everyone on the same page (as above)?
No, provided they are good ones. When they are bad ones, they can cause problems. For example, in Rolemaster (i) movement occurs within the initiative sequence and reduces the combat pool, (ii) initiative is rolled every round, and (iii) before initiative is rolled, each player declares his/her PC's actions, including movement and split of combat pool between offence and defence.
What this combination of rules means is that, when two characters are physically separated on the battlefield, your PC can suffer "initiative purge" - you don't declare enough movement to get where you need to get, or you declare movement (costing pool which you could have allocated to defence) when you could have let the opponent move and attacked with a full combat pool. In other words, the rules force a type of discreteness - around round intervals - that is out-of-whack with the continuous nature of events in the fiction.
When this sort of thing happens, the mechanics don't reinforce everyone being on the same page. They cause a hiatus in the shared fiction.
3) is it controversial to suggest that "Process Sim" mechanics also help keep players in actor stance? (ie., the action is resolved by default with the same linear cause-and-effect that the player would experience through the POV of the PC)
My answer to this is a straightforward Yes. Rolemaster has proces-sim, but is easily played in author stance. Tunnels and Trolls seems to assume actor stance as a default approach, but has almost no process sim in its mechanics.
4) is it controversial to suggest that with non
-"Simulationist" and non-"Process Sim" mechanics, players are more frequently
realigning their understanding of the shared fiction as it is shaped throughout the course of game play.
Controversial, yes. Shared genre understandings can serve the purpose of establishing a shared fiction just as adequately a process sim, in my experience.
5) is it controversial to suggest that an abstract mechanic (like hit points) can be pragmatically simulationist (lower case 's') if/whenever all players are on the same page in the way they associate the mechanic to the game world?
Maybe not. I mean, if all the players treat hit point as meat, there won't be an issue. If they treat hit points as luck, though, then what is being simulated?
6) is it controversial to suggest that the quantity and quality of "Immersion" (or "in-character roleplaying") is increased when everyone has the same/similar understanding of the shared fiction (as helped by the rules/mechanics)?
Not sure. I've never really run a game where the content of the shared fiction has been uncertain enough for any extended period of time to be a noticeable factor in impeding in-character roleplaying.
It might be relevant that, in my game, what exactly is going on when a gelatinous cube is knocked "prone" has never come up as relevant to in-character roleplaying. Whereas this tends to be the sort of thing that is the target of the "dissociation" label.
Regarding the polymorph example, I agree it delivered immersion for the player of the paladin. It doesn't happen to deliver immersion for me the same reason I touched upon before:
the former mechanic (originally dissociated, then associated) could be dissociated yet again if the players start thinking or asking awkward questions about the scope of the Raven Queen's interventions and other polymorph-like spells that end so quickly as the adventure continues.
This seems to me to depend heavily on how many subsequent polymorph spells are usedby enemy NPCs, against which PCs, with what sorts of durations, and supporting what sorts of narrations. That's why I answered, last time, that "This sort of thing is handled through negotiation and give and take at the table - as one aspect of the general implementation of "yes, but . . .". " I mean, the simplest narration would be for the player of the paladin to note that the Raven Queen is helping his friends too! But more complex possibilities are obvious. The narration could be an opportunity for different players, in playing their PCs, to express disagreement about the power of the Raven Queen in the world. I don't think that this would reduce immersion, at least for my group. It would increase it.
But that's not something I feel I could implement to my preferences.
Fair enough. Without really having a sense of what those preferences are, I don't know that I can take this further, except to state that my own preferences, and the immersion of my players, don't require uniformity of narrated explanation for similar mechanical outcomes.
If the "problem" is that Process Sim falls apart "badly" upon scrutiny, then do you apply equal scrutiny to the post-hoc/ad-hoc narration made by players and DM?
Do you or do you not apply the same scrutiny to whenever a player uses a non-process-sim mechanic and narrates something equally ludicrous that falls apart badly under scrutiny?
So you solve the problem of process-sim by not talking about it?
Do you think then that there is a sort of double standard, if you will? That any intense scrutiny applied to a process sim mechanic on paper is not equally applied in your own mind? That you kinda give yourself a free pass, you don't really dig deeply into your own assumptions about the process so much?
Once you drop process-sim mechanics, different techniques are used to avoid ludicrousness. Namely, events are narrated in a fashion that fits with (i) the parameters provided via action resolution mechanics, and (ii) genre constraints. Because there is no universal correlation of action resolution outcome to particular event in the fiction - flexibility with respect to this is part of what it means to use non-process-sim mechanics - there is no
general issue of ludicrous outcomes dictated by non-process-sim mechanics applied in a process-sim fashion.
Specifically, not only is the process part not described verbally, but the system is not taken to be a model or description of the process, either. <snip>
All the system has to do is produce a believable range of outcomes through the game
This fits with my thinking and experience on non-process sim action resolution.
The narration obviously varies from table to table. There are times when my players simply state what power they're using. Some times they describe what their doing. It depends on the mood.
This fits with my play experience. I think, on the whole, my group relies much more heavily on the mechanical outcomes of action resolution, and the difference that these make to the shared fiction, than on colourful descriptions, to develop the shared conception of what is going on in the gameworld.
This largely reflects my experience playing 4E. Most of the role playing seems to happen outside of combat, while in combat we see power announcements with little or no roleplaying. Nothing wrong with it but I can see where it can be perceived to discourage roleplaying.
I think this depends heavily on what you mean by "roleplaying". I don't think the 4e mechanics encourage rich descriptions of what a PC is doing (unless page 42 is in play). But nor do earier editions of D&D. On the other hand, I see much roleplaying in 4e combat in the form of actor stance decisions that are expressed both through actions taken and incharacter statements made: to other PCs; to NPCs and monsters; etc. And I think there are distinct features of 4e - especially the obvious effort to embed many facets of PC build, and most of the monsters, within a conflict-rich csomology - that conduce to this.
The earlier editions could be played either way. 4e could be played one way.
4e can be played in a range of ways, but doesn't lend itself especially well to either Gygaxian exploration-heavy gamism, nor to 2nd ed style GM-fiat-of-mechanics 2nd ed high concept sim. (I think LostSoul and others are right that it can do a form of high concept sim. I think Balesir is right that it can do a form of gamism.)
However, a handful of you guys seem rather hostile towards a certain playstyle (namely, using D&D for sim/immersion purposes) and it feels a whole lot like you're using this armchair academia like a club to beat people on the head.
I don't care what people do with their D&D - live and let live, I say! I do get irritated by being told, without any engagement with my numerous actual play posts, that my D&D is shallow, and a tactical skirmish game linked by occasional freeform improv. When the attribution of shallowness is fleshed out by reference to how much process sim my game is missing, then I'm certainly willing to talk about the relationship between D&D and process sim.
