4e is out of ideas

[Username17]

WoF models openings in combat and behaves like openings in combat. If the opening comes up again, you can use the maneuver again.

Which explains why you can't reuse those tricks when you're invisible or the enemy is helpless. Oh wait, it doesn't.

Priceless!

Uh... I don't actually understand where you're going there. Since most WoF versions have a "focus" action or the equivalent that would in fact allow you to reuse a trick when your opponent is helpless.

This thing where you attempt to highlight a "contradiction" in my stance that isn't a contradiction at all doesn't make you look super good. You can go ahead and disagree with my stance, but I didn't say anything inconsistent here.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

I'm tired of reading discussions about "disassociated mechanics". Let me summarize the first week of a class I took on modeling and simulating wargames: this is a model. Our job as game designers is to throw away the vast majority of the situation's complexity to make the simulation run faster. Every mechanic in the entire damn game is "disassociated" because none of them involve grabbing a sword and shanking the other guy. The only argument you can have is the validity of the results of your simulation, that is, if it actually reproduces the more complex system you are modeling. "Reality" here is the outcome of two guys in armor and wizard robes throwing arrows and fireballs at each other. We can define that reality to perfectly fit whatever simulation we want, so arguing over the accuracy of the simulation is pointless.

So, instead of arguing about how well our game reflects reality (answer: it doesn't), let's go back to arguing the important stuff: which people find which games more fun to play, and how can we make our games more fun for more people?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Immersion is an important part of fun, and disassociated mechanics reduce immersion.

[Vebyast]

Because those "disassociated mechanics" are implicitly modeling a reality that players don't agree with, or because it's not accurately modeling the reality that the players are measuring its accuracy against. Again, instead of beating about the bush with discussions about mechanics, go up a level or two and discuss how to make the game fun.

[Yep]

I'm tired of reading discussions about "disassociated mechanics". Let me summarize the first week of a class I took on modeling and simulating wargames: this is a model. Our job as game designers is to throw away the vast majority of the situation's complexity to make the simulation run faster. Every mechanic in the entire damn game is "disassociated" because none of them involve grabbing a sword and shanking the other guy. The only argument you can have is the validity of the results of your simulation, that is, if it actually reproduces the more complex system you are modeling. "Reality" here is the outcome of two guys in armor and wizard robes throwing arrows and fireballs at each other. We can define that reality to perfectly fit whatever simulation we want, so arguing over the accuracy of the simulation is pointless.

So, instead of arguing about how well our game reflects reality (answer: it doesn't), let's go back to arguing the important stuff: which people find which games more fun to play, and how can we make our games more fun for more people?

Hey hey hey get your rational discourse out of here.

Seriously they're not actually arguing about disassociated mechanics; they're trying to justify a dislike using fancier terms than, "I don't like X," because... you know, I have no idea. But the idea that disassociated mechanics are bad is just so laughable because, as you say, every game is made up of disassociated mechanics. The phrase is essentially worthless.

[Swordslinger]

Immersion is an important part of fun, and disassociated mechanics reduce immersion.

I'd say move spam reduces immersion too. I can't picture a guy in a movie doing nothing but repeating the same move every action. Imagine watching a Bruce Lee movie and Bruce did nothing but spam leg sweeps the entire movie. It would suck, and I don't want my adventures to play out like that.

[Red_Rob]

But the idea that disassociated mechanics are bad is just so laughable because, as you say, every game is made up of disassociated mechanics. The phrase is essentially worthless.

Fuck that noise.

Roleplaying takes place entirely in the heads of the participants (with maybe some miniatures or props as an aid to understanding). Anything that makes it harder for me to translate what happens when the dice are rolled into the image in my head makes roleplaying more work and less fun. I seriously don't want to play a game where I have to constantly modify or ignore what I think is going on because the way the rules work doesn't match up with what they are supposed to be representing.

The essence of good RPG rules is that they are fast enough to use at the table, and yet are a close enough match to what is going on in the game that they don't cause a mental disconnect when used. That is why dissociation is a bad thing. Just saying "rules are always dissociated, derp!" leads to shitty games design.

[Vebyast]

Anything that makes it harder for me to translate what happens when the dice are rolled into the image in my head

Yet again: discussing your model without knowing what you're modeling is a path to arguments. This entire "disassociated mechanics" argument is simple. Every one of you is working from a different reality, and none of your models are very accurate, even when compared to the reality that they're modeling. Finally, the players all have yet another set of realities, which are only vaguely defined or understood.

So, start talking about what your reality is, why you've chosen that that reality, how fun that reality is, how you're getting that reality into the player's head, and how accurately you're modeling that reality.

[Username17]

It's actually very simple: if the player is making a decision while playing their character, it should be a decision that the character is making. Yes it's going to be abstract and shit, but the player should be able to describe what they are deciding to do in character or it breaks immersion. 4e Martial powers do not map to character choices, and that's a bad thing for the major decision points of the game.

Note to head off rambling bullshit from hogarth that this wouldn't apply to a WoF setup, because the act of drawing cards or rolling dice is not the choice. The choice is to use the dragon uppercut or the fire fist that the WoF setup offered you - a choice which the player and the character both have given their hand of cards or opening in combat respectively.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm tired of reading discussions about "disassociated mechanics".

At this point, I myself am pretty thoroughly convinced "disassociated mechanics" is dog-whistle argument code for: "the writer of this post does not like 4e D&D, but has neither the guts to say so outright, nor the insight to point out any of the numerous actual flaws in the system. "

See if that one works for you.

[DSMatticus]

First off:

dog-whistle argument code for: "the writer of this post does not like 4e D&D, but has neither the guts to say so outright, nor the insight to point out any of the numerous actual flaws in the system. "

4e blows. For flaws, see every 4e thread we've had. I also didn't respond to you to start an dissociation rules/sucks argument, I responded because the words you were using did not mean the things you said they did. Which is somewhat understandable, because the usage was invented by a dude on the internet a few years ago and has almost no widespread usage. But the thing the word is describing actually exists as a valid concept that can be discussed, whether you want to call it dissociation or flamingo-ness.

Every mechanic in the entire damn game is "disassociated" because none of them involve grabbing a sword and shanking the other guy.

No surprises here: the word doesn't mean what you think it does either. Abstraction is when you use something to represent something else, usually because that thing is simpler. Rules in TTRPG's are obviously all abstractions. An associated mechanic is when the abstraction imitates the thing being represented, and dissociation when it fucking doesn't, and that's the end of the story and it's really that simple.

When you use BAB to represent fighting ability, players can tell by a number who is the better fighter. And characters can too, except they don't see the number, they swing swords at eachother and figure out which one is the one with the higher BAB! The results of the mechanic are describing verifiable facts about the world they're representing.

When you use cooldown timers to represent fighting openings, the mechanics are not describing verifiable facts about the world they're representing anymore! Because anytime you could concievably imagine an opening, the power may or may not actually be available to you. There is a disconnect between the abstraction and the thing you're trying to represent.

So when you say this...

The only argument you can have is the validity of the results of your simulation, that is, if it actually reproduces the more complex system you are modeling.

You are dangerously close to flat-out defining dissociation in your explanation for why dissociation doesn't exist. Kind of funny.

Now, why is dissociation an important consideration? Well, how many times have you heard someone bitching about roleplaying vs rollplaying, and thought to yourself "that is not a fucking thing. Roleplaying your character and system mastery are not two opposite sides of the same coin!" With dissociation, they actually fucking are, because a dissociated mechanic prevents you from playing the game with the character's knowledge. After all, he doesn't understand the mechanic and it isn't represented in his world at all.

Dissociation directly conflicts with immersion to an individual character. So if being able to roleplay one dude immersively is a design goal, dissociation conflicts with that. Now, being able to roleplay one dude immersively isn't always a design goal. It isn't for strategy games or wargames. But roleplaying game has it right in the title, and while part of that's just legacy, sometimes it isn't and things that force you to stop roleplaying and make strictly metagame decisions actually are bad.

4e is a tactical turn-based strategy game, and a mediocre one at that. But it genuinely hardcore fails as a roleplaying game.

[Vebyast]

The only argument you can have is the validity of the results of your simulation, that is, if it actually reproduces the more complex system you are modeling.

You are dangerously close to flat-out defining dissociation in your explanation for why dissociation doesn't exist. Kind of funny.

Remember talking about abstraction? Disassociation is a specific form of inaccuracy that directly results in your choice of actions being different than it would be in the original system. There are several forms of disassociation; Frank's problem with 4e is that you cannot act as a character would in the target system, while rollplaying vs. roleplaying means that you choose to act differently based on knowledge the character couldn't possibly have. Inaccuracies which are not particularly disassociative because they do not primarily or directly change the way you act:
[*] Players and designers think they're playing different games. You almost never see this, because it gets ironed out well before the game is released, but it does happen. For example, Halo originally started as a team tactical game, but that got changed when early playtesters thought they were in an FPS.
[*] The game is modeling a real-world system. For example, in the 1981 and 1982 Traveller TCS challenges, an AI won so much it was accused of ruining the game. It did so with waves of what amounted to suicide bombers. It won because the other players were thinking like real naval admirals, but the game was different enough that their intuition didn't work quite right.
[*] Bugs in computer games; for example, Bethesda never intended Morrowind's alchemy system to have a positive feedback loop that gave you arbitrarily large alchemy buffs.
As I said above, these are rare in games, because when you have inaccuracies it's easy to redefine the target system to match (for example, we're changing the setting in Asymmetric Threat so that we can reasonably have light mecha).

And, yes, 4e blows. It was almost as boring as some of the flash games I've played recently.

[Ice9]

WoF models openings in combat and behaves like openings in combat. If the opening comes up again, you can use the maneuver again.

Which explains why you can't reuse those tricks when you're invisible or the enemy is helpless. Oh wait, it doesn't.

Priceless!

Uh... I don't actually understand where you're going there. Since most WoF versions have a "focus" action or the equivalent that would in fact allow you to reuse a trick when your opponent is helpless.

This thing where you attempt to highlight a "contradiction" in my stance that isn't a contradiction at all doesn't make you look super good. You can go ahead and disagree with my stance, but I didn't say anything inconsistent here.

-Username17

Actually, how does Focus help there? In all the implementations I've seen, Focus took your action. So yeah, if they're actually unconscious, you can do whatever you want. But if they're just paralyzed for a round (or you're invisible), then Focus does nothing. WoF has the same issue as ToB there - "they were/weren't on guard for it"is an unreliable abstraction. "Other people got in the way" has the same issue - sometimes it fits fine, other times it's blatantly stupid.

Honestly though, D&D has never handled helplessness that well - it reveals the gaps in the combat abstractions. For example, in 3E/4E, everyone should really get free AoOs on helpless targets. And in prior editions where rounds were a minute long, people should get like 10+ attacks/round on a helpless target, since the "you swung a lot, only some connected" explanation doesn't apply.

Personally, I would rather have an explanation that actually fit the mechanics, whether or not it fits the typical fantasy story. A WoF using warrior who enters a fighting trance where instinct / ancestors / totem spirits partially control what they can do is ok by me. Pretending that control doesn't exist feels shoddy and sometimes absurd.

[A Man In Black]

I'd say move spam reduces immersion too. I can't picture a guy in a movie doing nothing but repeating the same move every action. Imagine watching a Bruce Lee movie and Bruce did nothing but spam leg sweeps the entire movie. It would suck, and I don't want my adventures to play out like that.

Would you have a problem with a game where Bruce Lee spams Jeet Kune Do or Martial Arts or Melee every turn? If so, you're bitching about the spam for reasons unrelated to immersion.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yeah, the question of what even counts as 'spam' is kind of open. A lot of people are totally fine with taking the vanilla 'attack' action over and over, spicing it up with some improv flavor description for a small bonus.

[Winnah]

Would you have a problem with a game where Bruce Lee spams Jeet Kune Do or Martial Arts or Melee every turn? If so, you're bitching about the spam for reasons unrelated to immersion.

I know a guy that would say...

"Jeet Kune Do is a product, not a process."

Needless to say, a maneuver is not a style. It may not even be unique to a style. Realistically, using the same maneuver over and over makes your attacks predicatable and potentially easier to counter.

Some people think that a parade of goons walking into Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick is entertaining. I am, in all ways, better than those people.

[A Man In Black]

I know a guy that would say... words

You didn't answer that question at all, you just said a bunch of smug bullshit.

The question is, "Do you mind that Bruce Lee is spamming attacks in a way that doesn't properly replicate the way he performs in movies, or do you mind using the same attack over and over and over again?" Because it's perfectly possible to have combat that simulates real life or whatever work of fiction you want but still involves attack spam, as in the case of an abstract system or a very boring combat style (for example, firing a belt-fed machine gun).

[Finkin]

I hate watching boxers spam jab all day. Why don't they all just throw nonstop power punches?

[Winnah]

edit: double post

[Winnah]

You didn't answer that question at all, you just said a bunch of smug bullshit.

I answered the question. You did not like the answer. That is not the same as not answering.

The question is, "Do you mind that Bruce Lee is spamming attacks in a way that doesn't properly replicate the way he performs in movies, or do you mind using the same attack over and over and over again?"

That is a different question. Don't pretend otherwise, as you would have asked this question if that was your intent.

In short. If I want to watch Bruce Lee, I will rent a DVD. Second, in order to be engaged in a game, I like to have meaningful choices.

Because it's perfectly possible to have combat that simulates real life or whatever work of fiction you want but still involves attack spam, as in the case of an abstract system or a very boring combat style (for example, firing a belt-fed machine gun).

So is this machine gun mounted on a bipod? Tripod? Is some Crunchie using his shoulder as a support? Is it using an improvised support? Vehicle mounted? What type of vehicle? What is the firing arc? Cover? Penetration? What caliber? What ammunition is it designed to fire? What 'can it fire? Ball? Incendiary? Tracer? Light Tracer? AP? AA? HE? HEIT?

To continue with your moronic analogy, there is more to firing a machine gun than pulling the trigger. Some games take this into consideration. Others utilise some level of abstraction. Abstraction can pose issues to vermisilutide if taken too far, especially when coupled with limited options.

I hate watching boxers spam jab all day. Why don't they all just throw nonstop power punches?

Boxing is a sport. Options are deliberately limited. The moment you ignore those limitations, the referee and judges will probably penalise you.

Combat on the other hand, is not a sport...Unless you are subnormal.

[Swordslinger]

In short. If I want to watch Bruce Lee, I will rent a DVD. Second, in order to be engaged in a game, I like to have meaningful choices.

Exactly.

This is more about making a better game and all at-will powers is boring as shit, because you just find the best one and you keep using that.

I could really care less about dissociative rules if it's just being used as a justification to limit fighters to having no options. The drawback of the dissociation just isn't that big.

The fighter not being able to use covering strike twice in a battle just means that he does something else as far as the story's concerned. And I have not really thought in a movie "Why doesn't he do that spinning sword slash thing again." You just assume that the characters pick the best moves for what they can do and from a story point of view it's rarely questioned because it's something that doesn't happen and there's really no indication that the strike wouldn't have gotten blocked had he used it.

On the other hand, the bard playing a lute in combat is seriously a dude playing a lute in the middle of a battle while an orc is trying to chop his head off. That makes the story outright silly. Really, I feel that allowing stupid crap like bards in the game is probably more detrimental to the story than martial encounter or dailies ever will be.

I just don't see the big deal.

[Dog Quixote]

In short. If I want to watch Bruce Lee, I will rent a DVD. Second, in order to be engaged in a game, I like to have meaningful choices.

Exactly.

This is more about making a better game and all at-will powers is boring as shit, because you just find the best one and you keep using that.

I could really care less about dissociative rules if it's just being used as a justification to limit fighters to having no options. The drawback of the dissociation just isn't that big.

The fighter not being able to use covering strike twice in a battle just means that he does something else as far as the story's concerned. And I have not really thought in a movie "Why doesn't he do that spinning sword slash thing again." You just assume that the characters pick the best moves for what they can do and from a story point of view it's rarely questioned because it's something that doesn't happen and there's really no indication that the strike wouldn't have gotten blocked had he used it.
.

I don't think it's a question of Either/Or. What would be better would be if the fighter in the game could repeat most of the same actions but doesn't because the game offers enough meaningful tactical options to make it wiser tactically to vary.

And I don't actually feel that 4E's combat engine isn't far off making that possible. The AEDU power structure is an unnecessary straight-jacket.

My Battlemind could spam the same actions every round if he wanted to. And he had one Augmentable at Will, (Forceful Reply) which was clearly better than his others, and, all things being equal he would save his power points for. But I frequently didn't do that, because I'd chosen my other powers to respond to other situational needs and there were encounters where knocking people prone, or mass forced movement, or a pull three, was situationally more tactically useful.

It was a lot more fun than my Barbarian who would just cycle through the same encounter powers regardless of circumstance and had very little opportunity to respond dynamically to encounter situations.

Variety in power use is great. Enforcing variety through hardwiring is not variety.

4E's character generation and power system is generally the most disappointing part of the game for me. I love the combat engine, I love the monsters. I hate the fact that most of the time, the best response to a tactical situation a character is unable to handle is by taking a feat or power, or picking up an item that will neutralize the problem some time over the next few levels.

And I can't really fathom they would create a system that allows for such concrete realization of combats and then give us such ridiculously abstract powers.

The thing about Come and Get It, is that it could have been designed so that it worked concretely the way it is described. There's a barbarian level 13 power that attacks will and causes enemies to move willingly. The new bard martial healing shows how ridiculously easy it is to not have martial healing work by waking people from unconscious by shouting at them. It's as if there's some kind of ideological blindness in early 4E stuff, (which the designers have since in many ways moved away from) which led to these unnecessary abstractions.

[DSMatticus]

Winnah, I have no fucking idea what you think you're reading, but are you sure it's this thread?

Let's trace this back.

I'd say move spam reduces immersion too.

Would you have a problem with a game where Bruce Lee spams Jeet Kune Do or Martial Arts or Melee every turn? If so, you're bitching about the spam for reasons unrelated to immersion.

Read this a few more times, really, really carefully.

AMiB is saying move spam is not unimmersive because combat systems exist where moves are abstract representations of very different maneuvers. For example, the D&D 3.5e fighter has an immersive attack option, even though it's literally just the same fucking move over and over, because that move is actually every possible concievable way you could swing your weapon that would hit the opponent. If Bruce Lee's standard attack is "Martial Arts," and he spams that, that represents every movie he's ever done! Because martial arts does not represent one distinct maneuver, it is an abstract collection of many different maneuvers.

And, completely failing to understand this, you went on to say a bunch of stupid, irrelevant shit I won't respond to, but you said one thing worthwhile that I want to point out because it'll help clear up further misunderstandings:

Second, in order to be engaged in a game, I like to have meaningful choices.

So, in the context of the discussion above, where we're talking about abstraction to represent broad collections of moves, and how that relates to player choices, let's look at Hero 6e, since I've been tinkering around with that lately.

They have a truly impressive number of attack options, and I'm going to list three generic ones right here: defensive strike, martial strike, and offensive strike. These all have varying accuracy, defense, and damage bonuses/penalties. These are all super broad abilities that represent a huge variety of different attacks abstractly; martial strike, for example, occurs six different times in the sample martial arts styles, and it is called a slash (fencing), a cross (boxing), a punch (dirty infighting/kung fu), a strike (jujutsu), and a snap kick (karate). Each martial art stlye has 4-10 different options inside of it.

So, uhh, yeah. Hero 6e offers both abstract options and lots of options. Everything you've said has been totally wrong on every level; you can have lots of abstract, immersive, mechanically meaningful choices. None of those things are in anyway incompatible.

[ModelCitizen]

On the other hand, the bard playing a lute in combat is seriously a dude playing a lute in the middle of a battle while an orc is trying to chop his head off. That makes the story outright silly. Really, I feel that allowing stupid crap like bards in the game is probably more detrimental to the story than martial encounter or dailies ever will be.

I just don't see the big deal.

The frequency of dissociated mechanics matters more than any individual example. The Inspire Courage shtick is dumb and I completely agree it's damaging to the game, but it's one thing. It's not enough by itself to make most players disengage from the story.

The more often players have to rationalize or ignore a mechanic to maintain immersion, the more likely they are to give up. Eventually the answer to everything becomes "fuck it, it doesn't matter." If your game has dissociated mechanics A, B, and C, that doesn't mean you might as well add D. That means D is even more potentially damaging because players' suspension of disbelief has already been worn down by A, B, and C.

[Winnah]

Winnah, I have no fucking idea what you think you're reading, but are you sure it's this thread?

I read all kinds of things. I probably even read this thread.

AMiB is saying move spam is not unimmersive because combat systems exist where moves are abstract representations of very different maneuvers.

Is that so? I mean, I know other games exist, but I am not sure I agree with the rest of of this premise, namely that spamming an action is not unimmersive.

All RPG's require the player to suspend disbelief. A certain amount of abstraction is neccesary. That does not immediately equate to immersion.

Action spam in relation to the player typically means you wait your turn so that you can repeat the same sequence of actions with your character, injecting relevant flavour text (or not), in order to keep yourself occupied while you roll dice, calculate results, then wait until your next turn. Repeat until challenge is over.

Unlike a video game, you don't get to mash buttons. Events are not progressing in real time. Depending on turn length, which relates to number of players and the complexity of actions, immersion can quite easily be lost as players get bored or otherwise distracted between turns. There is a difference between planning your next cool move and planning the next piece of descriptive text to tack on to your mundane, abstract attack.

For example, the D&D 3.5e fighter has an immersive attack option, even though it's literally just the same fucking move over and over, because that move is actually every possible concievable way you could swing your weapon that would hit the opponent.

So a bland, heavily abstracted attack action is immersive because...why is that now? You never explained this subtle point.

The idea of Jeet Kune Do'ing or Martial Arting an opponent until they fall over is patently ridiculous. Especially in the context of a reactive martial arts form. You've just taken a bland, unimmersive attack action and given it a fancy name.

And, completely failing to understand this,

It's immersive because it's immersive? Or because 3.5 did it? You had better explain this.

you went on to say a bunch of stupid, irrelevant shit I won't respond to, but you said one thing worthwhile that I want to point out because it'll help clear up further misunderstandings:

Second, in order to be engaged in a game, I like to have meaningful choices.

So, in the context of the discussion above, where we're talking about abstraction to represent broad collections of moves, and how that relates to player choices, let's look at Hero 6e, since I've been tinkering around with that lately.

They have a truly impressive number of attack options, and I'm going to list three generic ones right here: defensive strike, martial strike, and offensive strike. These all have varying accuracy, defense, and damage bonuses/penalties. These are all super broad abilities that represent a huge variety of different attacks abstractly; martial strike, for example, occurs six different times in the sample martial arts styles, and it is called a slash (fencing), a cross (boxing), a punch (dirty infighting/kung fu), a strike (jujutsu), and a snap kick (karate). Each martial art stlye has 4-10 different options inside of it.

So, uhh, yeah. Hero 6e offers both abstract options and lots of options. Everything you've said has been totally wrong on every level; you can have lots of abstract, immersive, mechanically meaningful choices. None of those things are in anyway incompatible.

I'm unfamiliar with this system. You'll forgive me if I don't take your word for how good a system it may be. No matter, I'll see if I can find a copy of the ruleset to read myself.

How this conflicts with my comment about "High abstraction and limited choices causing issue with vermisilitude", is beyond me.

There are things you can do to try and keep repetition interesting and relevant to games and players. More abstraction is not the way to go about it.