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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6004164" data-attributes="member: 42582">You post these things as if they're not controversial. Yet in the "With Respect to the Door" thread <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5990601-post602.html" target="_blank">I gave examples</a> of so-called "dissociative" mechanics facilitating immersion in character.Here is is again, in case you missed it the first time:Rolemaster, classic Runequest and classic Traveller are the most process games I know, and are very frequently played in author stance: players make choices for their PCs because the player thinks it would be a cool or worthwhile thing to have the PC do whatever is chosen; and then retroactively narrates the appropriate motivation on the PC's part. Agreeing to join the party would be just one example of this (given that all 3 RPGs are generally intended to be used in a party-based style). Conversely, orthodox 2nd ed AD&D seems aimed at actor-stance play (immerse yourself in character and make decisions from that point of view) even though it has very many non-process mechanics: saving throws; XP and levels; hit points; 1 minute attack rounds; etc. <snip> My agenda, in participating in this discussion of metagame mechanics and stances, is not to deny the obvious features of 4e. Rather, it is to contest a view expressed by some posters (not innerdude) that, because they find certain mechanics jarring or disruptive of immersion, others must likewise; or that those who don't mind them must therefore be playing in some shallow or superficial ("boardgame", "beer and pretzels") fashion. This is why I brought up the paladin-polymorph example in the earlier thread, and restated it in this thread. That example shows a player, in the course of playing his PC in the first person, casually slipping into the director stance permitted by the metagame duration mechanic and bringing the gameworld into conformity with the religious convictions possessed by his PC. He did not lose immersion, or cease to inhabit his PC: in fact, the player's declaration, in character, that the gameworld was as his PC's religious conviction dictated that it must be reinforced immersion and inhabitation of the PC. And the mechanics of the game did not present any obstacle to this expression, by the player, of the PC's character. Rather, they permitted it in a way that process mechanics would not have. I don't want to head too far towards territory that the board rules forbid, but I'm not 100% sure how you could have a more immersive experience of playing a PC with religious conviction if you lacked the director stance powers that this player exercised, and therefore were always hostage - in professing your PC's faith - to the possibility that the GM sees the gameworld differently. Of course, this alternative set up for play could facilitate the playing of religous doubt: I've played PCs in such a fashion, exploiting my lack of director stance powers, as a player, to help reinforce my in character doubts about the reality of divine providence I want to develop this thought via a hypothetical example: the player of a religious PC, who rolls a natural 20 on an attack or check, in a game that permits director stance around metagame mechanics can always narrate that good fortune as divine providence, and the mechanics will not prohibit that or tell him/her that the PC's faith and conviction are in fact mistaken. Whereas a game that treats the d20 roll as some sort of process simulation, and that prohibits director-stance declarations by players, seems to mean that any time a PC forms the view that good luck (as mechanically achieved via the player's lucky die roll) is a gift from the gods is in fact mistaken - deluded even - because the good luck was simply a function of the ingame causal process, in which no god was a participant, modelled or abstracted by the d20 roll. How can you immerse in a religious PC when the mechanics you are using for every PC action tell you (on a process-simulation interpretation) that the world is a godless causal system dictated by cold Lovecraftian logic plus mere chance? (When I played my religious doubt PC, it was ambiguous whether the dice were a process mechanic or not - hence the room for doubt between confident director-stance divine providence, and unarguable process-simulation lifeless causality.)Your play exeprience are what they are, but I don't know why you feel they generalise to any significant degree any more than mine (or others') do.</blockquote>

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