The "Tyranny of Fun" thread mutated into an interesting discussion for awhile, but then a bunch of trolls came in. Recently they've been claiming that the only reason they're trolling the thread is because it has "4e" in the thread title, so I figure let's start a new thread and see what happens.

I'm re-posting my original post in that thread, which is a big meaty discussion about dissociated mechanics. Let's see if we can launch pad a useful discussion before the trolls inevitably come in to destroy things.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;387715

Quote1) I don't think so. We've spoken of this before, thee and I. I still see in-game logic as critical for immersion. The players need to be able to think as their characters, at some level, to immerse at any level.
Metagaming is the opposite. It is thinking of the rules, thinking like the player.

Well, I think players require less handholding than that. I know that there's a strong tendency to think "oh WE roleplay, but nobody else does..not like us" (and you might even believe that its having rules that allows for this to happen.
But the truth is, you don't know if the first condition is even true, and the second one is entirely a matter of opinion.

Immersion, by definition, requires the player to be making decisions as if they were the character. (Debates can certainly be waged over whether there's also a component of emotional identification or even a transubstantiation of consciousness. And, if so, to what degree those need to be established. And, in addition, whether or not that's healthy. But while all of that can provide interesting fodder for discussion, it all rests on the that fundamental foundation: Making decisions as your character.)

Dissociated mechanics, by definition, require the player to be making decisions which are only mechanical in nature -- the mechanics are disconnected from the game world (and, thus, the characters). Since the characters have no functional explanation for a dissociated mechanic, it follows that a decision made regarding a dissociated mechanic cannot be a decision made as if the player were the character.

This isn't a matter of "handholding" or a lack thereof. Nor is it a matter of opinion. This is a fundamental, factual incompatibility: If you're using dissociated mechanics you are, by definition, not immersed in your character.

Going beyond that, I'm willing to make an even more provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can't roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.

I say this is a provocative statement because I'm sure it's going to provoke strong responses. But, frankly, it just looks like common sense to me:  If you are manipulating mechanics which are dissociated from your character -- which have no meaning to your character -- then you are not engaged in the process of playing a role. In that moment, you are doing something else. (It's practically tautological.)

You may be multi-tasking or rapidly switching back-and-forth between roleplaying and not-roleplaying. You may even be using the output from the dissociated mechanics to inform your roleplaying. But when you're actually engaged in the task of using those dissociated mechanics you are not playing a role; you are not roleplaying.

I think the distinction is important because, IMO, it lies at the heart of what defines a roleplaying game. What's the difference between the boardgame Arkham Horror and the roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu? In Arkham Horror each player takes on the role of a specific character; those characters are defined mechanically; the characters have detailed backgrounds; and plenty of people have played in sessions of Arkham Horror where people have talked extensively in character.

I pick Arkham Horror because it exists right on the cusp between being an RPG and a not-RPG. So when people start roleplaying during the game (which they indisputably do when they start talking in character), it raises the provocative question: Does it become a roleplaying game in that moment?

OTOH, I've had that same sort of moment happen while playing Monopoly. For example, there was a game where somebody said, "I'm buying Boardwalk because I'm a shoe. And I like walking." Goofy? Sure. Bizarre? Sure. Roleplaying? Yup.

Let me try to make the distinction clear: When we say "roleplaying game", do we just mean "a game where roleplaying happens"? If so, then I think the term "roleplaying game" becomes so ridiculously broad that it loses all meaning. (Since it includes everything from Monopoly to Super Mario Bros..)

Rather, I think the term "roleplaying game" becomes meaningful when there is a direct connection between the game and the roleplaying. In other words, when the mechanics of the game:

(1) Allow you to input a decision made as the character (in other words, a decision made while playing the role).

(2) Interpret that decision mechanically and provide a result which is also explicable to the character (and, thus, can be used to continue playing the role).

In other words, roleplaying games are specifically defined by the fact that their mechanics are associated with the game world and the character.

Of course, as I wrote in the original essay on dissociated mechanics, all game mechanics are -- to varying degrees -- abstracted  and metagamed. For example, the destructive power of a fireball spell is defined by the number of d6's you roll for damage; and the number of d6's you roll is determined by the caster level of the wizard casting the spell. If you asked a character about d6's of damage or caster levels, they'd have no idea what you're talking about. But they could tell you what a fireball is and they could tell you that casters of greater skill can create more intense flames during the casting of the spell.

So a fireball spell has a direct association to the game world. Which means that when you're making decisions about casting (or avoiding) a fireball spell, you are roleplaying those decisions.

It's very tempting to see this in a purely negative light: As if to say, "associated mechanics don't get in the way of roleplaying".

But it's actually more meaningful than that: The act of using an associated mechanic is the act of playing a role. No one's going to give you a Tony Award for it, but that doesn't change the fundamental nature of the act.

(Which doesn't mean you can't add a metagame component to it, of course. For example, "I know I can use my fireball because the DM never hits us with more than three encounters per day.")

At this point, I'd like to head off a couple of likely responses at the pass:

(1) "You're saying that dissociated mechanics are bad!" No, I'm not. I'm saying they're inimical to playing a role. That's not the same thing. There's all kinds of things that dissociated mechanics can be useful for. When playing an RPG, most of us have agendas beyond simply "playing a role". (Telling a good story, for example. Or emulating a particular genre trope.) And dissociated mechanics have been put to all sorts of good use in accomplishing those goals.

This becomes even more true when we consider that many things we call roleplaying games would probably be more accurately described as "storytelling games". (Wushu, for example. White Wolf's Storyteller, on the other hand, is an RPG. Which is why this useful distinction of terminology will probably never prove functional.)

(2) "You're saying that 4th Edition isn't a roleplaying game!" No, I'm not. Large swaths of 4th Edition's mechanics are still clearly associative and I feel perfectly comfortable in describing the result as an RPG.

But it's equally true that the plethora of dissociated mechanics in 4th Edition make the game entirely unsuitable for those of us who, at best, want a very light spicing of situational dissociated mechanics. You can't do much of anything in 4th Edition without having your roleplaying disrupted by dissociated mechanics. (Particularly since the core mechanic of skill challenges are inherently dissociated in their design.)

Which is fine if those dissociated mechanics are serving some function you find valuable. In the case of 4th Edition's dissociated mechanics, I don't find this to be true. In the case of Wushu or 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars, I do. To some extent this is because I'm looking for something very different from D&D than I'm looking for in 3:16. But to a larger extent it's because I feel that everything 4th Edition does with dissociated mechanics could just as easily be done without dissociated mechanics (and more usefully so).

But that's a separate debate.

Well, you might want to re-clarify immersion, just so we don't repeat that 30-page definition furball.  Just say whenever you mean "immersion" you are referring "to being immersive using the criteria of character/setting verisimilitude".

Kind of ridiculous I know since everyone but 5 people know what you mean by immersion, but it might help keep the thread on track.

I was wondering, under the assumption that one would want to make something like 4e's skill challenges more associated, what would you try, in a 'quick and dirty' fashion, to change the structure so that skill challenges would be less disassociated in general?

I'm down with the "associated/disassociated" nomenclature. But people seriously use "immersion" to mean too many things. You really should get that term replaced with one that is less charged.

Quote from: DoomI was wondering, under the assumption that one would want to make something like 4e's skill challenges more associated, what would you try, in a 'quick and dirty' fashion, to change the structure so that skill challenges would be less disassociated in general?

Make individual failures not count against group failure. It's really a weird break with the character's experience that running after a thief can make it more difficult for your faster team mate to catch him. Let's be honest: Mike Merles' best advice for running skill challenges is to pretend you aren't doing it and then spring the fact on the party retroactively - because he knows that the "right" tactics are very different from anything that makes sense in character (everyone leans on their shovels while one dude digs).

If you made personal failures not count against group success, then players wouldn't be encouraged to not participate in order to maximize success. And that would bring character choices much more in line with player tactics.

-Frank

Quote from: Justin Alexander;389975Going beyond that, I'm willing to make an even more provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can't roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.

You could look at it this way, while technically the very moment you are engaging is a dissociated mechanic  you are not roleplaying what you are doing is investing into future immersion; using the mechanics to ensure that the outcome of the action will better reflect your character and the genre conventions and therefore be more immersive in the longterm.

That sounds good to me but, bah, what do I know?

That's a lot of words just to say, "when the rules are abstract, it's harder to feel you're playing a role in this roleplaying game, and this is less fun."

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;389998That's a lot of words just to say, "when the rules are abstract, it's harder to feel you're playing a role in this roleplaying game, and this is less fun."

I disagree, abstract rules can map fairly well to the game world if that was what the designer intended. It's the map well to the game world that matters, not the complexity of the rules.  I don't want to think about what my character is doing in terms of rules much while I'm playing the game. I want to think in terms of what the character is doing in the game world. In some cases, abstract rules actually do this better than detailed rules for me.  

For example, abstract combat where I can just tell the GM what I'm doing in the world (e.g. "I'm moving to the side and will try to attack the orc chieftain with a great blow from my battle axe")  is better for me than detailed rules where I have figure out how to do that in terms of the game rules (move so many squares, etc.). The former allows me to stay in character in the game world where the latter forces me to focus on playing the game rules.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;389990I'm down with the "associated/disassociated" nomenclature. But people seriously use "immersion" to mean too many things. You really should get that term replaced with one that is less charged.



Make individual failures not count against group failure. It's really a weird break with the character's experience that running after a thief can make it more difficult for your faster team mate to catch him. Let's be honest: Mike Merles' best advice for running skill challenges is to pretend you aren't doing it and then spring the fact on the party retroactively - because he knows that the "right" tactics are very different from anything that makes sense in character (everyone leans on their shovels while one dude digs).

If you made personal failures not count against group success, then players wouldn't be encouraged to not participate in order to maximize success. And that would bring character choices much more in line with player tactics.

-Frank

The way a group check in a skill challenge is structured is that "more than half of the group must succeed" for it to count as a success. That way you can do a stealth check and not simply use the lowest score.

Okay... a little bit of background: I'm writing a game.

I want to run something by you and see if you think it's dissociative.

The core mechanic in my game is that players try rolling xd10 under their skill to succeed, where x is the difficulty of the task.

In combat, players choose how many dice to roll. If they roll many dice, they can deal much more damage at the expense of accuracy (damage is the roll total plus a weapon bonus... dealing lots of damage is good because people have massive damage thresholds, and if you deal lots of damage in one shot you inflict a random wound). If they roll fewer dice, they will be much more accurate but will not deal as much damage (which is good because there's an active defense mechanic... if you're flanking someone, one of you will hit for sure and you can whittle the guy down over time).

Is the choice to use more or fewer dice in this situation dissociative? There's sort of an in-game "I'll poke at him" vs "I'm gonna rip his goddamn face off" decision. But for some people, the mechanic may not directly map to that.

If it is dissociative, does it stay dissociative if players just pick up the number of dice that feels appropriate to the situation without much thought. Like "This guy's pissing me off" *grabs big old handful of dice*

Just a thought: Some mechanics have varying degrees of mapping with reality, and some only require a minimum of thought to implement. Like how people only ever think about their AC at character generation.

Quote from: beejazz;390031O
Is the choice to use more or fewer dice in this situation dissociative? There's sort of an in-game "I'll poke at him" vs "I'm gonna rip his goddamn face off" decision. But for some people, the mechanic may not directly map to that.

If the player believe realistically there is a trade off between more accuracy vs more damage then your mechanic will work well. If the player doesn't then no mechanics is going make it work.

In GURPS combat there is a trade off between Accuracy and Time. The more time you have the more likely you are to hit particularly for missile weapons. A rush into combat is a wild swing with at most a 9 or less to hit on 3d6. However a step and attack is at full skill. However you hit you are going to whack them pretty good.

That seems to me a more common sense way to go. But I admit it is a separate debate.

Careful though with buttloads of dice. You need to work out the probabilities of outcomes carefully.
Here, use this.

About Immersion:

Quote from: RPG TalkImmersion can be described as the sense of a virtual reality experienced in a role-playing game. It includes such experiences as empathizing with a character, responding to narrative elements, and making decisions in-game rather than using meta-game  thinking. For the player, immersion generally means geetting into their character and imagining something of their experience. For the gamemaster, immersion can be trickier to describe, but might involve imagining the world, reacting to the PCs as characters, and treating NPCs as entities with their own motivations and rationales for existence. [Source]

Or to put it simply:

Quote from: LordVreeg;387949Immersion is quite simply the experience of being able to think, feel, and be the character, not the player.

The GM, then, is immersed when experiencing the game-world itself, feeling its ambiance, seeing it in a vivid, first-hand manner in his mind's eye, which leads to an interpretation of NPCs, groups and the environment of the game-world in a matter-of-fact, instinctive and natural fashion.

Quote from: Benoist;390045Careful though with buttloads of dice. You need to work out the probabilities of outcomes carefully.
Here, use this.

I've seen similar calculators elsewhere, but this one's pretty cool. Thanks.

Well, like I said in the previous thread, I think the definition provided for immersion sucks, and excludes vast swaths of immersive experience. It's almost as if the definition was created entirely to lend some value to the associative/dissociative divide!


Ben, it's interesting that you grab a much more nuanced and inclusive description of immersion, but then immediately reinterpret it through a very narrow focus from LV.

Quote from: two_fishes;390074Well, like I said in the previous thread, I think the definition provided for immersion sucks, and excludes vast swaths of immersive experience. It's almost as if the definition was created entirely to lend some value to the associative/dissociative divide!


Ben, it's interesting that you grab a much more nuanced and inclusive description of immersion, but then immediately reinterpret it through a very narrow focus from LV.

Hi, welcome to the Forge's entire discourse on the imaginary topic of "narrativism" and "story" ca 1998-2005.