Quote from: LordVreeg;466336Speak for yourself.
My pc's only get experience in the skills they use.  They don't choose advancement, they become through what they do in the game...

Yeah that's not how I do it that's the default implied by most books.

When I do it it's more of a group decision. Everyone decides what the Character has learned. Bit fairer that way.

BSJ, I can see some of what Baker is talking about as relating to my comments, but his article gets more complicated than I feel like trying to decipher.

Quote from: silva;466350The dice pool system Im most familiar with is the one from 2e/3e Shadowrun, where you have to distribute dice for attacking, defending or saving for some unexpected event. So, there is this "mini-game" of dice alocation involved, managed only by the player, and not directly relatable to the character in-game. Thus, the "dissociation". (or not? :confused: )

I don't know SR at all. Do you assign the dice before or after rolling?

I'm just trying to provide a rule of thumb or clarify the concept, not give a hard definition. There are degrees, too; something can be more or less dissociated. If SR just asks you to assign dice before rolling, it's not much of a game; there's little complex interaction, it's just resource allocation. A GM might have a pretty good idea how to distribute your dice for you based on a description of your stance. With DitV you can say "I blast him point-blank with my shotgun--2d4 for 2." This is a pathetic attack. Now, I suppose the player could adjust the description to the dice ("I shoot wildly and desperately"), but in order to play coherently you still have to know what dice you've got and plan from there. I.e., you have to be aware of how "strong" your position is at the moment. But that strength doesn't translate easily from mechanics to description--you don't just have a bunch of points to allocate but a variable number of dice of different sizes, with different actual numbers showing.

An important dividing line for me is whether the decisions I make as player can be based on my character's point-of-view.  

For a dice pool, if it is splitting between offense and defense, I can make that choice on the basis of how aggressive the character wants to be.  I can make the decision to push harder if I risk exhaustion.  However, I generally can't make the decision to spend a hero point or use a daily power on the basis of what the character thinks.

Yes, that's it. With more finicky mechanics like distributing offense/defense, you might not be able to communicate an exact "setting" without referring to the mechanics, but describing what the pc is trying to do will be able to guide an interpretation fairly consistently.

Ok, I agree the dice alocation in dice pool systems can be translated as agressive/defensive stances.

And "Daily powers" feels no more artificial/immersion-breaker to me than "fire-and-forget spells".(actually, I have no problem with it on a Dying Earth´s derived setting, but when I see it used on a wide range of totally different settings, its becomes clear to me that it is there for "pure-game" reasons, not setting ones, and this really bothers me.)

Quote from: silva;466413Ok, I agree the dice alocation in dice pool systems can be translated as agressive/defensive stances.

And "Daily powers" feels no more artificial/immersion-breaker to me than "fire-and-forget spells".(actually, I have no problem with it on a Dying Earth´s derived setting, but when I see it used on a wide range of totally different settings, its becomes clear to me that it is there for "pure-game" reasons, not setting ones, and this really bothers me.)

I think everyone has a different breaking point when it comes to mechanics, immersion and dissociation. Personally i found the 4e powers system very jarring because-to me- they seemed to suggest things other than what my character was doing were limiting his actions (it just seemed very gamey to me). My businedd partner on the other hand had no such difficulty, and immersion is just as important to him as it is to me. He found it easy to bridge the mechanic and the flavor, while i found it a challenge.

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI think everyone has a different breaking point when it comes to mechanics, immersion and dissociation.

Yup. Very true.

Quote from: Ian Warner;466369Yeah that's not how I do it that's the default implied by most books.

When I do it it's more of a group decision. Everyone decides what the Character has learned. Bit fairer that way.

I did not look at the terms dissociative or associative 26+ years ago when I created these rules;however, in retrospect, that's what was going on in my head.  I wanted my system to reflect getting better at what characters did.

But it is obvious to me now that one system goal was to create a game that rewarded character actions by making them better at what they did.  Creating the character growth through their actions.

Hit points only go up by getting hit and being in combat.  Casters get better in the casting skills they use.  Social skills get better by interaction and clever application of social skills.

Not the only way to play...just the game I wanted to create, and di not know that the growth system might be called more 'associative' decades later.

Quote from: LordVreeg;465958Most Chargen is dissociative, period, and make poor examples.

Justin's point, and one I ascribe to, is that a dissociative mechanic is one that encourages/requires metagaming.   That is the litmus test.

Some are worse than others (which means that I agree there is a continuum here), some are 'in-game', while others are more 'GM-specific', but rules that promote 'out-of character' thinking are, in fact, the opposite of roleplaying.

I mean, technically, this is true.  Roleplaying, as a concept, existed before these games.  And the idea is to get into character, to assume a role, whether we are talking about the theraputic use, the acting use, or the gaming use.   (immersion is the term we like).

Rules that require the player to think out of character/out of game to use reduce the roleplaying component of a game.  Doesn't make it less fun by definintion, doesn't make it a better or worse game by definition, doesn't make it a better or worse match by definition.  
It does make it more or less of a roleplaying/in-character experience.  Or That is what I perceive, right or wrong.

Oh, you're 100% right.  

Quote from: silva;466289Dont know.. you see, "Classes and Levels" and "Armor Class" and "XP for Kills" are Tac/mini/war-game mechanics for me. And they exist since OD&D.

I wouldn't agree. I have games that classes and levels that don't otherwise include any rules for running combat using minis and a board. I also know of tac mini games that dont use class/level. Seems they are not tac mini mechanics to me.

Quote from: Omnifray;465761Strictly speaking they are not stating their character's intentions nor what their character is trying to do. The players are stating the players' choices for their characters.

The ref could always overrule them and say - "sorry, the mind control effect means that your character does NOT wish to attack the Lich King". I'm not saying that that ought to be a regular occurrence.

But the players are not TELLING the story. They are merely in effect suggesting possible elements for it.

Also the PURPOSE of the player choosing his character's actions is not to NARRATE their outcome but simply to CHOOSE the actions - it's doing-by-speaking or an illocutionary act (which was discussed at great length on this forum a while back). In that sense too the players are not TELLING the story (narrating it). They are certainly INFLUENCING the story, but that's not the central purpose of what they are doing, which is simply to play the role of their characters.

I don't think the GM is telling the story. The GM is engaging in resolution. "I attack the Liche King" - "You fail." But the GM cannot tell the player what the story is. Every person is going to interpret the game differently. The GM is not privileged to intepret for everyone else. Maybe at the end of the day, the story is, "My heroic character tried so seek his fortune, but this annoying and mysterious wizard appeared from time to time and saved his bacon, demonstrating that he is a spectator in his own life," which might be a different story entirely than the Epic Battle of Good and Evil that exists in the GM's mind.

In my view, narration and resolution are inseparable activities, but they are not the same activities.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;466349Based on what I've read, the Godlike system, I forget the generic term for the family, strikes me as fairly dissociative. You can't just say what you're doing and then see how it comes out, you have to match pairs and triples or whatever and decide how to assign them, which bears very little structural resemblance to the in-game stuff. A GM would have to lay out all the options to the player using natural language; it would get very messy.

Just as a side note, Godlike is not intended to be dissociative. The "height" of your roll (that is, the highest number you roll) is quality and the "width" is the strength of the action and typically is speed. So at least in its basic form, you should be able to declare an action, roll the dice, and (if you are familiar with the system) the results of your action should jump out at you.

Head shot, but not much width. My character popped one off. Let's see if he gets lucky.

* GM rolls *

Uh, oh. Looks like the other guy outdrew me, and winged me, ruining my shot.

If so, then I got it wrong, but your explanation of why I got it wrong shows we're on the same wavelength re: the underlying concept.

I originally read the details of ORE (One-Roll Engine, that's the name of the system) in Nemesis. Dunno if it had different details from Godlike or if I just misremembered.