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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5995031" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why does only one chance arise? Why not more than one?In AD&D you have a finite number of manouevres - no more than one attack per minute.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?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.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.)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 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.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.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.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.Controversial, yes. Shared genre understandings can serve the purpose of establishing a shared fiction just as adequately a process sim, in my experience.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?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.  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.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.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.This fits with my thinking and experience on non-process sim action resolution.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.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.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.)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.</blockquote>

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