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kyoryu
2021-11-17, 11:10 AM
On the subject of immersion:

I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate - as in, it pretty accurately predicts when people won't be immersed, why it matters to some people more than others (usually people that are long-term players). Even why 4e completely shatters immersion for some people while other people are fine with it. And I can completely explain where I think 4e made some serious, serious missteps in their design (even though I disagree with many about what they are).

At a high level, I think:

immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

What's Flow State? Okay, so to explain this I like to start with the four-level model of competence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Short version:

Unconscious Incompetence: We don't know that a skill exists, and can't do it. For instance, someone that had played 1e and started playing 3e would have no idea about optimizing builds for hitting certain prestige classes. They're unaware that it's a thing at all.

Conscious Incompetence: You know that a skill exists, but can't do it. For instance, after seeing a 3e build, the 1e player goes "well, holy shirtballs, I didn't know you could do that. That's cool, but I have no idea how to do that."

Conscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it when you focus on it.

Unconscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it without even thinking about it. In fact, you might have a hard time thinking about it or explaining what you're doing.

Realistically, Unconscious Competence links back to Unconscious Incompetence, as you aren't thinking about what you're doing, and so don't know of the additional things you could do to get better.

Okay, so to hit a Flow State you have to have Unconscious Competence in the game you're playing. It's a requirement. You're thinking about the problem space, not the usage of the tools you have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Chess doesn't hit "immersion" because there's no fiction and no character. In an immersive situation, the rules disappear, you're identifying with your character, and you have a connection to the world.

This leads to a few predictions. Primarily - immersion will be broken when Flow state is broken - essentially when players have to start focusing on the rules and how to apply them. Perhaps even more explicitly, when the general flow and procedures of how things work changes. (Using similar procedures but with different math doesn't seem to impact things as much, observationally).

Personal story. I'm old-school, and I also got into Fate in a big way. And when I started playing Fate, it wasn't immersive. There were lots of things that weren't what I was used to, and I had to think heavily about how to apply them. I had to ask different questions than I was used to, and think about different things. I remember distinctly thinking that it was kind of neat having my character slightly at arm's length.

But then the weirdest thing happened. I played Fate a lot and.... it became immersive. Those weird thought patterns became second nature, and I found Fate to be at least as immersive as most games I had played, if not more so. In terms of the four levels of competence, with Fate I was put back down at the 2nd level of competence, and moved up the levels. And when I hit Unconscious Competence? Immersion was restored. And this was made easier because I went into it knowing that I was going to be doing some learning, and the game was obviously different enough that I wasn't trying to use my existing skills.

So, 4e.

4e is anti-immersive for many people, and I will never in a million years deny that. It's also not (demonstrably) anti-immersive for many others.

So..... why?

Because 4e is a terrible design for players of 3.x. It is the Uncanny Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) of D&D. While Fate was obviously a different game, 4e looks like "standard D&D". Until it doesn't. And that's the problem.

Remember how I said that Fate made me drop to the 2nd level, but it was obvious that it was doing so? 4e doesn't do that. 4e is a different game, with different expectations, and often different procedures.

So if you take a 3x player, throw them at 4e, they're thinking "cool, D&D, but with different math." And that's generally doable. But then.... where is the Knock spell? It's not there! Why do Fighters have daily abilities???? That's wizard stuff! Why is this monster doing so much damage at 1st level, that'll kill a new character!

And so on, and so on. Their expectations are completely violated. Unlike Fate, which said "hey, this is different, you're gonna have to think about it", playing 4e is akin to driving down the freeway and suddenly hitting a brick wall. And then another. And then another. Note that 5e keeps a lot of 4e design, but packages and presents it in a way that is much closer to 3e and prior versions, and has the numbers more "in line" with those versions. And that's enough to prevent that jarring disconnect that happens.

So, why did 4e not bug me, personally? Because I'm not a heavy D&D player. I barely played 3e. I stopped playing 1/2e in the mid 80s, and migrated to other systems. So when I came to start playing 4e again, I wasn't in that state of deep unconscious competence. And so 4e didn't yank me out of it. I had no expectations to be broken.

But for someone deeply into 3.x? Yeah, it's going to slam you out of immersion, HARD, every single time.

Telok
2021-11-17, 01:45 PM
On the subject of immersion:

I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate -

Good post, well explained. I think your model might reasonably cover most of the ground but I believe you conclusion is flawed.

My reasoning follows this line: My current group has run D&Ds 3 to 5, Champions, Traveller, Shadowrun, and Paranoia (and a few others but those are the big ones). Only in D&D 4e after 20 to 30 sessions did we still have basically zero immersion. At the end of a year of playing we still joked about the 'firecube' spell, the issues with horse-cubes, that flying creatures pushed us to have a vertical grid where the halfling's daggers had the same vertical reach as the goliaths greatsword, and other things.

In all the different games there was a period of adjustment, and all of the combat brought the rule structures to the forefront. But only in D&D 4e did we treat all rules interactions like chess rules, excluding the fiction for the sake of following the rules. Champions & Shadowrun arguably have even crunchier combat & some non-combat than 4e, but people were still playing in character when we were using the rules to resolve things. Champions has the PCs relying heavily on prebuilt powers, D&D 3e ToB ran on 'fighter powers', D&D 5e has 'fighter dailies'. But only in 4e did we consider the game rules to actively oppose roleplay.

I think, for us, it was the strict adherence to "square everything" and an implicit "only use rules backed powers/abilities" that 4e pushed* that stopped us. Our characters still felt like a collection of power cards attached to a chess piece even after we had the rules memorized and mastered. So the conclusion that its basically a learning curve plus expectations held over from a specific previous D&D edition doesn't match my experiences, because my group passed the learning curve and at least a couple of us did approach 4e as an entirely new game instead of as a version of 3e.

*re: "only use rules backed powers/abilities"
Our DMs didn't overrule, rewrite, or ditch the DMG. They pretty much followed it to the letter for any rules they knew/remembered. This lead to, as far as I recall, every combat action that wasn't a AEDU power to be a strength check or a dexterity skill check, and nearly every significant non-combat activity to be a skill challenge involving all party members who were present on scene. As we did not always have someone playing a str-fighter or dex-rogue/ranger, and in fact several of us never played any str/dex classes at all, this meant that in-combat level-appropriate DCs were mostly failures and basic opportunity attacks were completely ineffective. This, combined with the final (3rd or 4th version? don't recall) decent skill challenge rules/numbers rewrite coming out 6 months to a year after we stopped playing, meant that any natural choice of activity that wasn't backed up by an AEDU power or "my class is good at this" skill became to be assumed to fail. And I need to stress that we didn't start with that assumption, we ended a year long campaign with it.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-17, 03:34 PM
So, why did 4e not bug me, personally? Because I'm not a heavy D&D player. I barely played 3e. I stopped playing 1/2e in the mid 80s, and migrated to other systems. So when I came to start playing 4e again, I wasn't in that state of deep unconscious competence. And so 4e didn't yank me out of it. I had no expectations to be broken.

But for someone deeply into 3.x? Yeah, it's going to slam you out of immersion, HARD, every single time. That's a very interesting post. Most of my systems mastery was AD&D 1e and BECMI ish, with a bit of 2e and small bits of 3e. I then didn't play D&D for over a decade.

Playing 5e was at first a case of many expectations broken, and it really bugged me. And then I just embraced it as being "a new game" thanks to some advice from other players and worked my way back to comfort. That's when I began to enjoy it. I think your immersion/competence points touch on why I began to enjoy it.

oxybe
2021-11-17, 04:54 PM
This is interesting.

Back when 4e came out, I was heavily into 3.5. I still have a mountain of 3.5 books on my shelves. I also have quite a bit of 2e stuff and my ever-evolving 2e home doc is sitting at a comfortable 22 pages, with more being added in the future because that's how the 2e doc that started it's life ages ago goes: it's a living and evolving document.

4e however, for me, clicked when it released. I haven't really had any immersion problem with the game.

I don't know if it's because for me, I remember the 2e > 3e edition shift, and boy was it a shift. If the internet was as widespread back then as it was when 4e came out, i'm pretty sure we would've been talking about how 4e was in actuality the second great edition war. Not that there was no gnashing of teeth during the 2e>3e shift. out of morbid curiosity i googled to see if one of the old sites was still around decrying 3e and lo and behold, it still exists as a husk, no articles written in the past 3 years, no forum posts in the past year and yet still shambling along on the internet like a directionless zombie.

And it still has a collection of the hottest of takes, fresh from the year 2000.

But going back to 4e, for me it clicked because it offered a different experience then 2e and 3e. I came into the game open and ready and willing to get something new and let myself get absorbed into it. I've already bought into the ideas 4e offered so my mind is more then willing to ignore issues. Dr Who fans may better relate if I call it a Perception Filter (https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Perception_filter) of sorts. My mental state had already primed me to ignore the inconsistencies, even if i was subconsciously aware of them.

Looking at D&D, my top 3 choices in no particular order
2e is my quick and dirty, lethal D&D where backups characters are plentiful and your life expectancy is low
3e is a game where i can fine tune a character to run like a precision sports car and if there's something i want to do, there's probably a rule or sourcebook out there, it's both fiddly and oddly freeing
4e gave me BIG DANG HEROES D&D right out of the starting gate and mixed it with tactical combat i found missing from the previous 2 editions

This is probably why 5e has yet to really grab me.

I wasn't sold on it when it first came out. The system read as not doing anything particularly better then a version of D&D I didn't already own, so I didn't feel compelled to look too deeply into it. Note that we can't say it wasn't due to not having the opportunity to play the game cooling my feelings on it: during 4e's launch I was in the middle of an ongoing 3.5 campaign with my main group and we simply transitioned to pathfinder after that campaign was over. I don't think we ever played ANY 4e in my main group outside of a couple one-shots at most, but I was still hyped for the game and bough it's products out of actual interest in what it offered.

5e cleaned things up for sure. Mechanically I have more issues with the 3 previous versions of D&D then I do with 5e, and while I don't agree with some of the directions the designers chose, like the low bounded accuracy, that's more due to personal taste then me having issues with how it mechanically runs so it gets a pass. But a lot of those issues with older systems, and how I handle them, are part of the game's personality and feel.

I could rant for ages on my problems with 3e, a personal project and fantasy heartbreaker came out of me wanting to see if i could "fix" 4e as a design exercise, and yes 2e can be janky and scuffed at times, but as an example the 2e Mythos Priests are still the best interpretation of the cleric, IMO, and i will fite u if disagree. But nothing about 5e really managed to grab my attention.

with 4e it gave me something new to digest and jump headlong into. something new to explore mechanically while still being thematically D&D. I already slew my edition change bugbears ages ago and learning new systems usually gave me something I might be able to back-port or reverse engineer. it felt exciting learning this game and when i did eventually have the opportunity to play it, it was a blast.

and until a while ago I hadn't really had the opportunity to play 5e proper (my main gaming group is currently playing the 5e derived Adventures in Middle Earth, but that's a different beast of expectations then base 5e). I'll be the first to admit my initial exposure to 5e proper wasn't the best. it was rough.

but we had a post-campaign meetup the week before to decide on what we would play next, and had our session 0 proper yesterday night to discuss characters and more about the setting of the module, where i'll be starting at 1st level this time, this time having the opportunity to give the system a proper college try.

But i'm still missing the same excitement I had for 4e, or even the thought of hacking out some mechanics of other games and dropping them into 2e (i have a rough idea for some overland travel mechanics to spice things up I'm stewing on based off of AiME's Journey rules, using weighted hex flowers for weather and random encounter tables).

Talakeal
2021-11-17, 05:12 PM
I must disagree. I have played a lot of RPGs over the years that aren't D&D but which don't break my immersion the way that 4E does.

Unless you are somehow saying that Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rogue Trader, Deadlands, Skies of Glass, Alternity, Star Wars, Fallout, Lord of the Rings, Rollmaster, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Chronicles of Darkness, Riddle of Steel, Exalted, Hackmaster, GURPS, and many others that I am forgetting at the moment are somehow more "Dungeons and Dragons" than a game which prints Dungeons and Dragons on the cover.

icefractal
2021-11-17, 05:41 PM
I must disagree. I have played a lot of RPGs over the years that aren't D&D but which don't break my immersion the way that 4E does.I think that's the point - because they obviously aren't D&D and you don't expect them to be D&D, you start from the perspective of "known ignorance" and can then learn how to grok them, where-as in 4E it looks familiar enough that your starting point is "X works wrong" rather than "I need to learn how to represent X".

Now whether that's the case, hard to say. I personally haven't experienced a particular lack of immersion in 4E - I have issues with it, but that isn't one of them. For that matter, IME that kind of "in the moment, forgetting that you're just sitting at a table playing an RPG" immersion is rare in any system. More commonly, I look for "Does the decision process OOC feel like it correlates to the character's decision process IC?"

Somewhat tangential:There's another factor that I think makes me unsatisfied with 4E and 5E (and a number of other RPGs) - the idea that you can become a Super-Killer and maybe a Super-Spy, but nothing else - not a Super-Teacher or a Super-Leader or a Super-Builder. That great and mighty spells exist to zap someone into dust (or prevent being zapped), but if you want to improve conditions in a city ... eh, idk, that's too complicated.

And I'm not saying that's anti-immersive, or even unrealistic (given that we're talking about fictional settings here). But I find it depressing.

And no, 3E doesn't support this as intended mechanics either. It's more like how you can use TAS tricks to program Tetris inside Mario. But at least you can do it.

Talakeal
2021-11-17, 08:11 PM
That’s a theory I suppose, but I haven’t had a similar experiance playing other editions of other similar games.

I feel like 4Es breaks from immersion come from a disconnect between the game’s rules and how scenes play out in real life or in fiction.


I have never played Fate, but I likewise find immersion in similar games impossible as they constantly demand I switch between author and actor stance and never let me stay in the head of any one character long enough to become immersed in the first place.

Thrudd
2021-11-17, 08:11 PM
commonly, I look for "Does the decision process OOC feel like it correlates to the character's decision process IC?"


I think this is the most relevant factor for what I define as "immersion" in an RPG. System mastery, what I feel kyoru is describing, does make a difference, but it isn't the whole of it. Understanding of the setting and general expectations goes into this for players, as well. Your OOC decision process will be skewed if you don't understand some aspects of the world and the genre the characters are in. I think the degree to which the mechanics of the game accurately map to the setting and genre of the fiction have a role to play in immersion experience.

Telok
2021-11-17, 08:32 PM
I think that's the point - because they obviously aren't D&D and you don't expect them to be D&D, you start from the perspective of "known ignorance" and can then learn how to grok them, where-as in 4E it looks familiar enough that your starting point is "X works wrong" rather than "I need to learn how to represent X".

Now whether that's the case, hard to say.

I would doubt that. Shadowrun 1e to 3e to 5e made massive changes to the dice rolling and many subsystems changed to be almost completely different. Champions 2e to 5e has several pretty big changes to character builds and several aspects of combat. Several editions of Paranoia are complete mechanics rewrites from others.

In all those cases I didn't have the ongoing dissonance in the game that kills immersion each time the combat or skills rules are invoked like D&D 4e did to me. The theory of expectation doesn't hold with my experience. The shift from AD&D to 3e was completed in like 4 or 5 sessions before the rules stopped being an issue. When I picked up Pendragon for the first time there was immersion killing, but it ended as soon as I understood which version of the Arthurian myth cycle was being emulated which was half way through the first session.

My Pendragon experience is close to the theory, but it stopped being an issue during the first session. Differences in Shadowrun rules tripped me up for a good month or two from 1e to 3e, but it never stopped immersion at all. Theres a Champions edition change that requires rebuilding characters using a different point value and calculations, but not-Hulk still plays & rps as not-Hulk even when its combat move rules changed. None of them felt like chess with power cards and none of the issues lasted longer than mastering the rules.

...Having thought about this more there is one thing... two things that stand out. In D&D 4e everything was square or cubic, there were no natural distances or forms, and we sometimes forgot what we were fighting because everything was a bag of hit points with some attack powers and thats how you interacted with them. In D&D 4e, because all movement is in squares, as soon as we started moving vertically in combat (which we often did, for tactical high ground reasons if nothing else) it invoked a need to use vertical squares instead of feet/meters and reduced all small & medium creatures to having the same functional height & reach. Then, it also felt that all creatures had been reduced to simplified combat blocks. The differences between a huge ooze, huge snake, and huge elephant were just the move speed and a rider on their attack. That may not have been perfectly true, they probably had stats & skills listed, but from the player's perspective they were basically indistinguishable except by the rider on their attack (moderate almost-an-exception for stuff with ranged/area attacks that distinguished them from melee hit point sacks). Then the only way to interact with creatures in combat was with attack powers and the only way to defeat enemies was through hit point attrition. We didn't have charms, holds, trips, sickening clouds, persuasion, intimidation, or walls of stone to use. We had attack powers that did damage with a rider and sometimes the rider might trip, fear, or stun something.

Again, this might not all be perfectly true in an idealized game with an idealized DM who used every optional rule in the DMG or something. But it was how we experienced D&D 4e fir a year long campaign, as a set of rules acted out on a grid that was quite rigid and punishing if you didn't have a character power or skill description explicitly allowing you to do something. It was not something natively condusive to immersion.

icefractal
2021-11-17, 09:49 PM
I'm curious about the Horsecube thing, actually. Because that's also the rule in 3.5 and PF1. Horses are cubes, all creatures are cubes. Fireball might be a (rough) sphere, but a Huge ooze is the same shape on the grid as a Huge snake.

And when vertical movement comes up in combat, all Small-Medium creatures do occupy a single 5' cube and can attack the 5' cube above them (and not the one above that). Exact height comes up in some situations like "how high a Jump check do you need to grab a 10' ledge", but most of the time people and monsters are cubes.

3.0 did have non-cubic spaces, but they were still orthogonal boxes in 5' increments.


Incidentally, I did hate the 1:1 diagonal thing (which is also the underlying rule that creates Firecubes) at first, and thought it would create all kinds of stupid situations.

In practice, those never occurred, and the time savings is significant. So much so that I use it in 3.x now.

Telok
2021-11-18, 12:13 AM
3.0 had 10 foot by 5 foot horses, 3.5 had it that a horse that was fighting controlled a 10 foot by 10 foot area, but in neither case did the horses count as being 10 feet tall under any circumstances. Interestingly height was never constrained to battlemat squares, it was always in feet (or meters depending on where and which language your book was in). The squares were used as convinence by people, but they were purely horizontal and all measurements were in real distances.

But 4e did push you to vertical squares because of the movement and diagonal measurements, and didn't make exceptions for creature height... except I think vertical jumps & grabbing onto terrain to pull yourself up. Thats the only reference to height using feet that I recall. So the creatures did end up turning into cubes with no actual size in feet or anything. And there was some weird jank with mounted combat that I can't recall off the top of my head but we ended up all agreeing to never use mounts in combat. Maybe there was some sentence about it in the DMG or MM, but as players we kept occasionally forgetting what we were fighting because the only differences we saw were the attack riders and sometimes something flew.

Maybe if we'd spent a few hundred on minis it wouldn't have been such a big deal.

Vahnavoi
2021-11-18, 08:08 AM
I do think your basic model of immersion, namely that it relies on the degree to which a skill has been internalized, is correct. Whether the details of how you apply it to explaining pitfalls of 4th edition is correct, I'll leave mostly alone. I will note, however, that the effect you describe is known to occur with various physical skills. A good example is driving. For some reason, there's two to three competing standards for manual gear shift in passenger cars. They mostly differ on just one thing: where they put the reverse gear. Which means that a person with great amount of experience driving one type of car can flawlessly drive the other right up to the point where they have to shift to reverse, at which point they'll unconsciously move the stick to exact opposite direction of where they should.

kyoryu
2021-11-18, 01:01 PM
Unless you are somehow saying that Shadowrun, World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rogue Trader, Deadlands, Skies of Glass, Alternity, Star Wars, Fallout, Lord of the Rings, Rollmaster, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Chronicles of Darkness, Riddle of Steel, Exalted, Hackmaster, GURPS, and many others that I am forgetting at the moment are somehow more "Dungeons and Dragons" than a game which prints Dungeons and Dragons on the cover.

No. I'm saying that they don't trigger your "this should work this way and not that way reflexes the same way.

When we know we're doing something different, we can smoothly shift out of unconscious competence. The more something looks like something we're unconsciously competent at, the easier it is to shift into that mode - and the harder it is when you're quickly and abruptly thrown out of it.



Playing 5e was at first a case of many expectations broken, and it really bugged me. And then I just embraced it as being "a new game" thanks to some advice from other players and worked my way back to comfort. That's when I began to enjoy it. I think your immersion/competence points touch on why I began to enjoy it.

Right. THat's the key. If you accept "it's a new game", you're consciously putting yourself at stage 2 or 3, and so aren't engaging in the "default" behaviors.



In all the different games there was a period of adjustment, and all of the combat brought the rule structures to the forefront. But only in D&D 4e did we treat all rules interactions like chess rules, excluding the fiction for the sake of following the rules....
Our DMs didn't overrule, rewrite, or ditch the DMG. They pretty much followed it to the letter for any rules they knew/remembered. This lead to, as far as I recall, every combat action that wasn't a AEDU power to be a strength check or a dexterity skill check, and nearly every significant non-combat activity to be a skill challenge involving all party members who were present on scene.

Sounds like your GM had a lot to do with, to be honest.


I think that's the point - because they obviously aren't D&D and you don't expect them to be D&D, you start from the perspective of "known ignorance" and can then learn how to grok them, where-as in 4E it looks familiar enough that your starting point is "X works wrong" rather than "I need to learn how to represent X".

Right, and it looks just enough like D&D that you see X and Y and immediately presume Z should be there, but it's not. But when you see A and B, you don't get that reaction.


That’s a theory I suppose, but I haven’t had a similar experiance playing other editions of other similar games.

I feel like 4Es breaks from immersion come from a disconnect between the game’s rules and how scenes play out in real life or in fiction.

Sure, but I think that disconnect exists in LOTS AND LOTS of places in LOTS AND LOTS of games. We've just internalized a lot of them. Hit Points for one, the problem of "blocking someone running in a field" is another.

I had a lot of those issues with D&D, which is why I migrated away from D&D in the '80s.


I have never played Fate, but I likewise find immersion in similar games impossible as they constantly demand I switch between author and actor stance and never let me stay in the head of any one character long enough to become immersed in the first place.

Yeah, for me, I got there in an interesting way. I started playing Fate thinking "this is a different type of game". I was actually surprised when I found it starting to become immersive - and I don't think I could have if I hadn't gone through the "this is different, get rid of my assumptions" stage first.

That really does seem to be the key - being willing to treat something as a different game, or even a different type of game.

Grod_The_Giant
2021-11-18, 01:58 PM
I think kyoryu's hit the nail on the head. The difference between Conscious and Unconscious Competence perfectly encapsulates why I never got quite "immersed" in Exalted--there are so many complicated and interlocking rules elements that even if you're comfortable with the mechanics it's hard not to think in terms of explicit Charms and effects. Mutants and Masterminds, on the other hand, I've always found to be pretty "immersive," less because of simplicity and more because the mechanics generally match up so well with in-game instincts and tropes.


I think, for us, it was the strict adherence to "square everything" and an implicit "only use rules backed powers/abilities" that 4e pushed* that stopped us....Our DMs didn't overrule, rewrite, or ditch the DMG. They pretty much followed it to the letter for any rules they knew/remembered.
This actually maps pretty well with what kyoryu was describing with their gradual embrace of Fate. Part of the process of learning a new system is mapping out the fuzzier boundaries of the rules-- when you don't really need to bother rolling a die, what sort of things you can actually do with a given skill, how much leeway you should give reasonable-but-not-RAW uses of specific abilities. 4e changed a bunch of those assumptions, didn't (iirc) do a good job explaining the new logic, and thus lost people.

On a related note, I'm kind of curious how 4e would go over if it was released now. At the time, D&D culture (at least in its online incarnation as I remember it) was very interested in RAW and simulations--the usual practice was to look at the rules and say "okay, this is what X does, how does that change the in-game world?" When it came to the fuzzier areas of the game, the general instinct was to look at the written rules first. Not in a slavishly devoted way or anything, I'm certainly not trying to make 3e players out to be hyperliteral robots, but many players would start with the written rules and build their way outwards from there, instead of the "fiction first, rules second" approach used in most rules-light games these days.

But you know what else takes a sort of 'fiction first, rules second" approach, and intentionally leaves large fuzzy areas for groups to interpret in ways that work well for them? 5e. There are more non-combat-oriented abilities than I remember in 4e, but they're still a lot rarer and more open-ended than combat ones. And a lot of people still fought back (including myself), for one reason or another... but almost a decade later, we're used to that sort of approach. 4e wouldn't be nearly as much of a conceptual shift nowadays--it would be more like taking the ideas of 5e one step farther than exploring a totally new style of game.

Talakeal
2021-11-18, 02:26 PM
Sure, but I think that disconnect exists in LOTS AND LOTS of places in LOTS AND LOTS of games. We've just internalized a lot of them. Hit Points for one, the problem of "blocking someone running in a field" is another.

I had a lot of those issues with D&D, which is why I migrated away from D&D in the '80s.


Curious what you mean by "blocking someone running in a field," could you explain?

HP is a pretty bad rule, but conceptually it makes sense; if you hit someone they get hurt and if you hurt them enough they die.

Compare that to the utter confusion of my first few minutes playing 4E where if my paladin attacks someone, and that someone attacks anyone (whom I consider an ally), they take radiant damage because....Pelor's Space Lasers? Unless of course I walk away, or if the ranger or the fighter attack them after I did, which cancels my effect, and of course I get yelled at if I attack something after the ranger or the fighter did because now I am cancelling their effect.

Yeah... that tracks as a reasonable abstraction for how combat works in real life or fantasy fiction.

Telok
2021-11-18, 04:00 PM
Sounds like your GM had a lot to do with, to be honest.
Thing is, I can't believe that. We're talking about a DM who ran great games in 3e, 5e, Starfinder and multiple editions of Shadowrun & Warhammer Fantasy. We played 4e for a full calendar year of (nearly) weekly games. We had the rules down pat. Running and playing a game for that long, mastering the written rules, and somehow still being "novice DM" somehow unable to learn the system or use it? It simply fails to make sense.


This actually maps pretty well with what kyoryu was describing with their gradual embrace of Fate. Part of the process of learning a new system is mapping out the fuzzier boundaries of the rules-- when you don't really need to bother rolling a die, what sort of things you can actually do with a given skill, how much leeway you should give reasonable-but-not-RAW uses of specific abilities. 4e changed a bunch of those assumptions, didn't (iirc) do a good job explaining the new logic, and thus lost people.

True, but a long term group of capable, experienced people who can swap through 10+ game systems* and have immersive games in all of them, failing with 4e (and only 4e) for an entire year? Nothing ever took us more than two months to adapt to, except we were all apparently incapable of getting 4e? You understand my issue here, with years of experience across systems & editions the group just can't immerse & rp in one single edition of one single game because... we all can't understand different expectations or assumptions?

Now 4e was decent on the mechanics, a few rough spots but we've played worse. But we played for a year before we dropped it, beacuse it didn't rp with us. Why would we have no problems with immersion across years of different system and editions except D&D 4e if the reason is we couldn't adapt or understand? The opening post's theory is good, and I have experienced it. But it basically says you shouldn't have immersion or rp inability problems once you master the mechanics & rules. But for us 4e, alone of all the games we've played, that never happened.

*yeah, some of us are pushing... no, we are at over 20 years of gaming togather now. Good times, good friends.

icefractal
2021-11-18, 06:07 PM
Compare that to the utter confusion of my first few minutes playing 4E where if my paladin attacks someone, and that someone attacks anyone (whom I consider an ally), they take radiant damage because....Pelor's Space Lasers? Yes, Pelor's Space Lasers. By which I mean "It's divine magic, Paladins are explicitly supernatural, how is this even different from Sanctuary breaking if you attack, or from Mark of Justice smacking people when they break the rule?"

That said, mark exclusivity is weird IC. I can buy the Paladin's mark breaking when someone else gets involved because gods are fickle and you broke the terms of the challenge, but why the hell does the Fighter's mark, which is just "being in your face focused on you" get broken by a Paladin or Swordmage doing something from a distance?

Talakeal
2021-11-18, 06:12 PM
Yes, Pelor's Space Lasers. By which I mean "It's divine magic, Paladins are explicitly supernatural, how is this even different from Sanctuary breaking if you attack, or from Mark of Justice smacking people when they break the rule?"

That said, mark exclusivity is weird IC. I can buy the Paladin's mark breaking when someone else gets involved because gods are fickle and you broke the terms of the challenge, but why the hell does the Fighter's mark, which is just "being in your face focused on you" get broken by a Paladin or Swordmage doing something from a distance?

Mark of Justice makes sense to me as a spell. But yeah, I agree Sanctuary is pretty terrible and immersion breaking*. It just comes up pretty rarely, its an obscure spell that I can only recall being cast once, whereas 4Es immersion breaking mechanics are all over and many are always on display front and center.


*Actually, that might be a part of it. Sanctuary is one of the few spells in the game that has no fluff whatsoever, and it is impossible to tell what is actually happening in the fiction when it is cast.

Grod_The_Giant
2021-11-18, 06:15 PM
True, but a long term group of capable, experienced people who can swap through 10+ game systems* and have immersive games in all of them, failing with 4e (and only 4e) for an entire year? ... But it basically says you shouldn't have immersion or rp inability problems once you master the mechanics & rules. But for us 4e, alone of all the games we've played, that never happened.
Yeah, that's very fair-- I was using your experience more as a launching-off point to talk about the greater community. It's also a very useful thing to remember that everyone has systems that never "click" for them no matter what they do. (In my case... probably Fate, to be honest, I've seen plenty of advice and suggestions and it's just never quite worked for me).

...one of these days I should probably go back and reread the 4e core books.

Also, sorry, I missed:

Somewhat tangential:There's another factor that I think makes me unsatisfied with 4E and 5E (and a number of other RPGs) - the idea that you can become a Super-Killer and maybe a Super-Spy, but nothing else - not a Super-Teacher or a Super-Leader or a Super-Builder. That great and mighty spells exist to zap someone into dust (or prevent being zapped), but if you want to improve conditions in a city ... eh, idk, that's too complicated.
The only rules-heavy game I've seen that does a decent job of this is Exalted, where every skill has its own set of insane superpowers associated with it. Super-Leader? Here, this one lets you get the project done in ten weeks instead of ten months, and that one lets you force your followers to follow moral codes. Super-Teacher? Check out this (explicit) combo that lets you donate xp to your students, then get back more than you spent. Super-Builder?
How about the ability to make your works flat-out immune to anything short of a dragon, or declare "ha-ha, that was a Doombot you just killed" if you die. The system is a ponderous mess in a lot of ways, but it certainly spends more time on non-combat abilities than anything else I can think of.

Waddacku
2021-11-18, 07:10 PM
I think kyoryu's model makes sense, although I don't know that immersion necessarily means the same thing to everyone or manifests the same way.
I don't find thinking about and using rules particularly intrusive, rather I enjoy it as part of the game playing experience, and the kind of engagement and full attention I get when things are rolling along is what I'd call being immersed. The unconscious competence and flow helps a lot in making things roll along, but it's not like I'm not aware I'm thinking about it, it's just an aid in not making things stagnate. That's immersion to me, but the entire... feeling like you're really there, thinking like you're someone else? Not really a thing. Sounds pretty weird to me, honestly. I know the milieu and events aren't real, and simulating a full person is quite clearly impossible. I can know them, though, like I can know any other characters, and get flow in playing the character with their personality, priorities, and quirks. I suspect given a long enough, serious enough game I might even know them as well as I know real people, not that I expect that to ever manifest. Of course, it doesn't work out with every character, though. A lot just never click.


Yes, Pelor's Space Lasers. By which I mean "It's divine magic, Paladins are explicitly supernatural, how is this even different from Sanctuary breaking if you attack, or from Mark of Justice smacking people when they break the rule?"

That said, mark exclusivity is weird IC. I can buy the Paladin's mark breaking when someone else gets involved because gods are fickle and you broke the terms of the challenge, but why the hell does the Fighter's mark, which is just "being in your face focused on you" get broken by a Paladin or Swordmage doing something from a distance?
Yeah, pretty sure the overwriting clause is just in there because it's the simplest solution to an otherwise degenerate situation, and it seems that 4e largely assumes the simplest patch is the least intrusive. YMMV. That said, Fighters choose if they're marking or not and the Paladin's Divine Challenge is a separate ability used with a different action, so those things won't overwrite unless the player chooses to do so. Rangers don't mark, anyway, so it doesn't interfere or get interfered with regardless, and is pretty much always going to be happy for someone else to be marking the enemy.

Actually, this might be part of how 4e doesn't break my immersion but can break somebody else's: I'm fine with the coarse approximations and handwaving a lot of things I perceive as minor if it keeps the game running better, and that's generally what 4e does. The difference in whether a few corner squares are in the AoE or not matters a whole lot less to me than the time and effort saved by just doing simple squares on a square grid. Same thing with diagonal movement: when you're moving on the grid, the scale of map is generally so small there's little appreciable difference (and other methods, like every second diagonal square costing double are of course not actually correct, either, just slightly more accurate approximations). Marked is pretty simple condition, but it has some conditionals involved, so keeping the messiness from getting out of hand seems a reasonable priority to me. If that means that sometimes the Fighter just lets their allies take over bullying an enemy from them instead of ganging up, well, I'm okay with that. It'd be nice if it there was some other elegant solution. The Defender Aura ability in Essentials works better in some ways and less in others, but it still gets a bit weird when you have multiple defenders.

Talakeal
2021-11-18, 07:25 PM
Rangers don't mark, anyway, so it doesn't interfere or get interfered with regardless, and is pretty much always going to be happy for someone else to be marking the enemy.

Apparently this was clarified in errata, but when we were playing it certainly seemed like hunter's quarry marked creatures.

Waddacku
2021-11-18, 07:49 PM
Apparently this was clarified in errata, but when we were playing it certainly seemed like hunter's quarry marked creatures.

I'm pretty sure it always called it designating your quarry. Marked is a specific condition and Hunter's Quarry never referenced it or applied it.
I think there's a paragon path that does add a mark to it, though.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-19, 07:35 AM
the stuff about competence can help, but I don't think it's the main factor.

to me, the most important thing about immersion is to be able to pretend that what's happening is real. and for that, i believe the most important thing is logical consistency.
i work very well with 3.x, because it has some decent underlying logic for how things are supposed to work. fighters can use abilities in a way that you would expect a fighting guy to. wizardry has some basic premises, and spells work according to them.
4e? to quote roy, "you have the ability to alter the past by impressing yourself, but you can't swing your sword the same way twice in a row?" How am I supposed to suspend my disbelief for that?
and i also don't like 5e for some martial abilities that work in a similar way.

before someone mentions it, no, this is not the "guy at the gym fallacy". It's a matter of consistency. I can perfectly accept a superhuman warrior punching through walls, or blocking a sword with his teeth. I can't accept this superhuman warrior being able to do it once per day - you either can punch through walls, or you can't. i can accept a stamina mechanic like dragonage, where physical abilities have a cooldown of sorts. and of course, vancian magic is perfect for explaining once-per-day abilities.

Talakeal
2021-11-19, 11:38 AM
I remember the big problem with paladin marking was that I was playing a charisma based character and the only at will attack I had that used charisma marked foes, which always pissed off the fighter and ranger.


I'm pretty sure it always called it designating your quarry. Marked is a specific condition and Hunter's Quarry never referenced it or applied it.
I think there's a paragon path that does add a mark to it, though.

I no longer have access to our first printing books, but clearly remember us being convinced that hunters quarry marked, and when I google it now I find several people asking the same question and being told it was erratad and fixed in later printings.

Telok
2021-11-19, 12:17 PM
I remember the big problem with paladin marking was that I was playing a charisma based character and the only at will attack I had that used charisma marked foes, which always pissed off the fighter and ranger.

I remember a time the fighter tried to pull the cleric out of an aura with "come and get it" to be denied because pvp wasn't allowed, but it worked fine on a mindless & immobile clockwork thing we fought later.

JNAProductions
2021-11-19, 12:42 PM
I remember a time the fighter tried to pull the cleric out of an aura with "come and get it" to be denied because pvp wasn't allowed, but it worked fine on a mindless & immobile clockwork thing we fought later.

This really does sound like your DM had issues running 4E. Not saying they're a bad GM overall, just that 4E did not gel with their styles at all.

For me, I play the game (be it D&D any edition, M&M, Traveler, or any other TTRPG) to have fun. Immersion certainly helps-I like being able to get into character. But equally, if we're just having a goofy one-off, I don't need to be immersed, I just want to have fun.

I enjoyed 4E a lot.
I enjoy 5E a lot.
I enjoy character-building for 3E and its derivatives, though the actual gameplay is a little... Iffy.
I enjoy M&M.
I enjoy Traveler, and Stars Without Number.

The most important factor, generally speaking for me, is playing with people I can have fun with. I'd rather play FATAL with friends than D&D with enemies. (But, you know-don't play FATAL. Just don't.)

Waddacku
2021-11-19, 12:44 PM
I remember the big problem with paladin marking was that I was playing a charisma based character and the only at will attack I had that used charisma marked foes, which always pissed off the fighter and ranger.

Yeah, there are powers that apply marks unconditionally, like Ardent Strike.



I no longer have access to our first printing books, clearly remember us being convinced that hunters quarry marked, and when I google it mow I find several people asking the same question and being told it was erratad and fixed in later printings.

Huh, I can believe that, but I've never heard of it before. Would explain some confused terminology use I've seen, though. I think that must have been an error they fixed ASAP, I did play a Ranger very early on but I wasn't using a physical source.

Easy e
2021-11-19, 12:54 PM
This is a very strong post, and I enjoyed it greatly.

Not much other to say beyond, "Good work!"

Grod_The_Giant
2021-11-19, 02:19 PM
I'd rather play FATAL with friends than D&D with enemies. (But, you know-don't play FATAL. Just don't.)
With FATAL, I'm not sure the distinction really matters. No matter how close you are to your fellow players when you sit down at the table, you'll end the session surrounded by enemies. And most likely projectile weapons.

Telok
2021-11-19, 03:31 PM
This really does sound like your DM had issues running 4E. Not saying they're a bad GM overall, just that 4E did not gel with their styles at all.

Well thats the thing, "no pvp" is a common table rule and do you remember what "come and get it did"? Its an attack that pulls all enemies in 3 squares up to 3 squares to the fighter who then attacks and marks enemies adjacent to them. Theres no exceptions for direction, size, movement ability, perception, terrain, mindlessness, being unconsious, etc. It didn't have any limits like that in the power text, and if you stated the opinion that maybe it shouldn't work sometimes you got a screaming dogpile of people telling you that you were a bad person doing "guy at the gym" or "martials can't have nice things".

Its weird too that the universal answer to any fault or issue with any edition of D&D that I comment on gets responded to with "your DM is bad or doing it wrong". A DM uses skill checks as written in a 5e module? DM is doing it wrong. Running a weird power by its written rules in 4e? Bad DMing. Issues with a caster PrC in 3e? DM needs to learn how to run the game right. Talk about issues with space combat in Starfinder? Total agreement that the rules are lousy. Ask about a problem with Shadowrun magic? Total agreement its a rules problem. I've had freaking decades of playing lots of great D&D games and some lousy ones. Mention a problem in any game but D&D and it might be the DM, player(s), rules, etc. Mention a problem in a D&D game and I'm told the DM is wrong, bad, or incompetent. Every issue I mention with every edition of D&D cannot be "the DM is wrong" every time for every different DM.

Pauly
2021-11-19, 03:33 PM
A lot of the talk about diagonal movement issues in 4e reminds me of a WW2 wargame I played that had what was commonly called the ‘clown car’ rule. The rule was you could load as many infantry as you wanted onto a single transport vehicle. As one can imagine this rule caused a lot of derision and was held up as an example of the flaws in the game design. When someone finally asked what was the largest number of infantry anyone had loaded onto a single vehicle the answer was 15, which was well in line with historical usage and far fewer than the critics of the rule were painting the problem to be

It turns that the practical problems of exploiting the ‘glitch’ were far greater than any benefit, so the simple one sentence rule did it’s job just as effectively as half a page of text differentiating how many infantry could fit onto different classes of vehicle.

However the fact the rule exists still causes a lot of angst amongst people who complain it ruins ‘realism’ (read as ‘immersion’ in RPGs) because it didn’t map onto their perception of reality.

On the other hand firing smoke was only permitted against acquired targets. People complained that they couldn't fire smoke to mask an approach on a speculative or approximate basis. In their map of reality they felt that firing smoke like that was the ‘realistic’ thing to do.

I posted images from field manuals from The US, Britain and Germany all of which explicitly stated that tactical smoke screens could only be fired against acquired and identified targets, and for Germany and Britain required authorization from higher up the chain of command than the battles depicted on the tabletop. It turned out that smoke rounds were both rare and expensive and even the US army with by far the largest supply of smoke rounds of any combatant couldn't just lob them in against every possible target. Firing smoke on a speculative basis not only wasn’t done, but couldn’t be done.

Despite clear evidence their perception of reality was wrong, and based on modern munitions and supply, so many players complained that the next edition of the rules allowed speculative smoke.

The issue isn’t ‘realism’ or the practical effect of the rules, the issue is how people perceive what ‘immersion’ should be. It doesn’t matter if the perception is wrong or impractical, if enough people believe X should be Y then immersion suffers.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-19, 04:08 PM
The issue isn’t ‘realism’ or the practical effect of the rules, the issue is how people perceive what ‘immersion’ should be. It doesn’t matter if the perception is wrong or impractical, if enough people believe X should be Y then immersion suffers.

This. Immersion, realism, etc--they're all in your head. And frequently perceived immersion-breaking "realism violations" are actually quite in line with reality. Or, from within the fantasy world, are quite in line with the new fantastic physics.

One of the big issues with the Guy at the Gym idiocy is that it limits edge-of-the-humanly-possible characters based on what the DM/player (who rarely are such specimens of humanity) imagine people can do. Same issue with "that map isn't realistic, real <X> don't <Y> like that!" complaints. The world is a weird and wacky place, so much so that it's actually one of the least "realistic" things out there if you stop and look at it. Low probability events happen all the time.

Cluedrew
2021-11-19, 09:45 PM
Is this thread about immersion or the reasons why people don't like 4e? I mean I can tell you why I don't want to play 4e, it is like the other editions of D&D but more so.

For immersion (and immersion in the "in-character" sense) I think that "Conscious Competence" can actually work if the mechanics closely reflect that of what is going on in the world. Like in a rules-heavy survival-focused campaign, if you are working your way through the food and water supply kind of like your character would be, then it is very easy to feel connected to them.


With FATAL, I'm not sure the distinction really matters. No matter how close you are to your fellow players when you sit down at the table, you'll end the session surrounded by enemies. And most likely projectile weapons.FATAL is one of those systems that you shouldn't look up a ruling during the session. Or after the session. Or before. Just sit down with a blank piece of paper and start collecting house rules. ... The blank piece of paper game actually sounds like fun if you had the right group of homebrewers. Work out your core mechanic and basic stats as part of session zero and go from there.


Its weird too that the universal answer to any fault or issue with any edition of D&D that I comment on gets responded to with "your DM is bad or doing it wrong".D&D 4e is a weird case because there is a way to play 4e that avoids many of these issues, but you kind of have to figure out how to do that yourself. Or you can ask people now, people have figured it out. Point is, the rule-book probably will not help you or your GM that much. I'm still not sure where 4e came from, maybe they looked at all the 3.5e optimization talk and figured that is what people wanted or something. I'm not sure if the "right" way to play the game now is even what they intended. But every time I played 4e we were fast and loose with the rules, went with what felt right if that was different from what we were supposed to do and it worked well enough.

To Pauly: Those are some fun stories. I have nothing to add to it, but I enjoyed it.

Grod_The_Giant
2021-11-19, 09:49 PM
Every issue I mention with every edition of D&D cannot be "the DM is wrong" every time for every different DM.
People get really attached to their favorite edition of D&D and don't like hearing that other people don't like their ThingTM. Combine with lingering trauma from edition wars, they're going to favor whatever explanation exonerates their ThingTM. When a problem is brought up, there are three basic ways to respond:

Painfully finicky legalese arguments about how it actually makes perfect sense, and your issue doesn't actually exist. (I remember getting this a lot in early 5e arguments about skills)
An admission that 4e's rules have significant flaws and break down in all sorts of edge cases, and that the game doesn't do a good job of encouraging GMs to adjudicate conflicts with common sense and rule-of-cool mentality. (If I'm remembering correctly, it kind of pointed you in the exact opposite direction)
"Well, my GM makes it work just fine, so the problem must be with you." (Which is sort of the same as point two, but wrapped up in aggressive denial)

Digging out my old 4e Player's Handbook and looking at your specific issue with the "come and get it" aura...oh yeah, there are flaws here. The explanation of the "Target" is painfully rigid compared to the writeup in, say, the 5e PHB, and Keywords are... I don't know why they bother tracking keywords for damage types, since the power descriptions already specify "radiant damage" or whatever, and Effect Types seem woefully underused. Like, the power in question would make a thousand times more sense if it was explicitly labeled with something like "Charm" or "(physical) Force." Seriously, every time I talk about this game I feel like grabbing the designers by the throat and yelling "you were so close!"

So the rules have a flaw. Can the group make the power work anyway? Sure, but that's the Oberani Fallacy (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70174/what-is-the-oberoni-fallacy)--just because you can GM your way around a problem doesn't mean there's not a problem.

It would be one thing if the game knew that this sort of question would come up and gave you advice on how to handle it. Exalted 3e, for instance, is probably the single crunchiest RPG I've ever played, and it opens the main rules chapter by saying "ignore the rules if they're not fun."

The Golden Rule: If you don’t like one of these rules, change it. If a rule is getting in the way of having fun, throw it out. If you have an idea that would work better for your group than one of the rules here, go with that. Nobody knows better than you what you’ll find fun.

The Orichalcum Rule: This is a big game with lots of rules, set in an even bigger and more complex world, and players are endlessly inventive. If you ever find that by following the letter of the rules, you get a result that doesn’t make sense in the course of the story, the rules are wrong, the story is right. If the rules suggest something dumb or nonsensical or just plain not fun, ignore them or change them. Story comes before adherence to the rules.

The Storyteller’s Rule: A lot of the rules in Exalted, especially the combat engine, are heavy abstractions rather than faithful simulations. Storyteller, if it seems to you like a player is using the letter of the rules to muck up the spirit of the game and the fun of the story, then that particular rules loophole doesn’t work. You are explicitly empowered to call shenanigans whenever it seems necessary— the rules can’t account for everything, and any interpretation of a Charm or other mechanic away from its intended function isn’t legal unless you say it is.

It's not a free pass to have flawed rules, but at least it's an acknowledgement that they need to be dealt with. If you want to target an ally with Come and Get It and I say "sure, that seems like something you should be able to do," I'm not only following RAI; I am, technically, still obeying RAW. "Your GM is doing it wrong" is at least sort of a correct answer--if the books say you'll have to use your judgement occasionally and you don't, I think a bit of the blame sticks to you no matter how nonsensical the RAW.

4e, on the other hand? Skimming the likely-looking areas of the PHB and DMG, I don't see anything even resembling "rule zero." Nothing that even hints at the idea that you can ignore rules that aren't working. You can't blame a GM for being rigid when there's literally nothing in the books that say they shouldn't be.



tl;dr: I rambled a lot and got way off topic, sorry. I guess I'm agreeing with Telok and Talakeal after all?


EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.

Cluedrew
2021-11-19, 10:25 PM
So Grod_The_Giant managed to say everything I was trying to say to Telok, except clearer and in more detail (and then some), so go with that.

oxybe
2021-11-20, 12:41 AM
The DMG for 4e has a section that discusses creating and implementing house rules and says you can feel free to change things you don't like if you want or create a new rule because some weird corner case happens.

It's even listed in the table of contents, under the DM's toolbox section on p.189

MoiMagnus
2021-11-20, 06:28 AM
Somewhat tangential:There's another factor that I think makes me unsatisfied with 4E and 5E (and a number of other RPGs) - the idea that you can become a Super-Killer and maybe a Super-Spy, but nothing else - not a Super-Teacher or a Super-Leader or a Super-Builder. That great and mighty spells exist to zap someone into dust (or prevent being zapped), but if you want to improve conditions in a city ... eh, idk, that's too complicated.

And I'm not saying that's anti-immersive, or even unrealistic (given that we're talking about fictional settings here). But I find it depressing.

And no, 3E doesn't support this as intended mechanics either. It's more like how you can use TAS tricks to program Tetris inside Mario. But at least you can do it.

There are few paranoic classes in 3.X, epic destinies in 4e (you can look at the list here:https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Epic_destiny), that have a theme that suppose you become a non-killing-machine but rather an explorer, an old wise sage, a king, or whatever. Disappointingly, the actual powers granted tend to not match those (you're still mechanically getting better at being a killing machine), but a GM could extrapolate additional non-combat abilities from the theme of the class/destiny.

Pauly
2021-11-20, 03:44 PM
EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.

This is an immersion level higher than ‘can you do the rules’ immersion.

For immersion there has to be a believable game world. This includes
- A world you are willing to believe exists (for me this is where D&D falls apart)
- A world that has a coherent logic that can be described by rules.(Soft magic environments such as LotR have to overcome this problem)
- Rules that give an experience consistent with the world as described. It doesn’t have to perfect in every rule, but every discrepancy risks pulling you out of immersion. Small things here and there players are willing to hand wave, but the more it happens the less likely people are going to stay in immersion.

Without these elements immersion never happens. Again this is all based on what players perceptions are.

Quertus
2021-11-20, 09:52 PM
So, all the talk about "Flow State" and "Unconscious Competence"? Dead on. Everyone who cares should learn this stuff.

But "4e is anti-immersive because it's not 3e"? No, that completely misses the mark, at least for me.

Pretty much, I agree with everything @Telok said about 4e. Everything. So much so, I'd have to literally quote everything @Telok said to properly state My agreement. My experiences, and those of my local echo chamber of 4e hate are quite similar.

The thing is, I can tell… well, I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds. And they, or my Evil Overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitutes, can give me reasonable actions for most games. And an intelligent person, savvy in the corresponding fields, can take the actions they, I, Talakeal's players, and a playground Determinator list off, and rate them from best to worst. In most games, there'll be a really strong match between what the expert says, and what a Determinator says for what order to put those ideas in.

But not so with 4e.

IMO, Talakeal said it best:



I feel like 4Es breaks from immersion come from a disconnect between the game’s rules and how scenes play out in real life or in fiction.

It's not that 4e doesn't play like D&D, is that it doesn't play like the fiction that lives inside anyone's head.

Once again, Talakeal for the winning sound bite on this topic:



HP is a pretty bad rule, but conceptually it makes sense; if you hit someone they get hurt and if you hurt them enough they die.

Most RPGs have rules that make sense when you explain them to a 5-year-old. In fact, that's kinda my definition of what makes something an RPG.

4e doesn't have that. It's not



Right. THat's the key. If you accept "it's a new game", you're consciously putting yourself at stage 2 or 3, and so aren't engaging in the "default" behaviors.

It's not that it's a new game, it's that it's a completely different reality, divorced from all reason our minds are trained to process, far beyond that of the little hoops one must accept from other games, far beyond what one can reasonably explain to a 5-year-old. When you try to view it, not just as a game, but as a role-playing game. When you try to view it in character.

Third time's the charm:



Compare that to the utter confusion of my first few minutes playing 4E where if my paladin attacks someone, and that someone attacks anyone (whom I consider an ally), they take radiant damage because....Pelor's Space Lasers? Unless of course I walk away, or if the ranger or the fighter attack them after I did, which cancels my effect, and of course I get yelled at if I attack something after the ranger or the fighter did because now I am cancelling their effect.

Yeah... that tracks as a reasonable abstraction for how combat works in real life or fantasy fiction.

There is no simple in character flow state.

I can't get a 5-year-old to play 4e competently in character, I can't explain to them how 4e rules work except by saying "a Wizard (of the Coast) did it", except by giving them rules rather than character perspective.

And, afaict, even the Playground, home of many of the best minds, and collectively the best site on RPGs I've found, respond with lots of, "yeah, this stuff doesn't make sense", and no instances of, "here's what makes the game make perfect sense to a 5-year-old".


the stuff about competence can help, but I don't think it's the main factor.

to me, the most important thing about immersion is to be able to pretend that what's happening is real. and for that, i believe the most important thing is logical consistency.
i work very well with 3.x, because it has some decent underlying logic for how things are supposed to work. fighters can use abilities in a way that you would expect a fighting guy to. wizardry has some basic premises, and spells work according to them.
4e? to quote roy, "you have the ability to alter the past by impressing yourself, but you can't swing your sword the same way twice in a row?" How am I supposed to suspend my disbelief for that?
and i also don't like 5e for some martial abilities that work in a similar way.

before someone mentions it, no, this is not the "guy at the gym fallacy". It's a matter of consistency. I can perfectly accept a superhuman warrior punching through walls, or blocking a sword with his teeth. I can't accept this superhuman warrior being able to do it once per day - you either can punch through walls, or you can't. i can accept a stamina mechanic like dragonage, where physical abilities have a cooldown of sorts. and of course, vancian magic is perfect for explaining once-per-day abilities.

Yeah, all this, too.

4e might be fine as a game, but it doesn't make any sense.

3e sacrificed fun in the name of balance. 4e sacrificed reason in the name of game.

Both were bad calls.

EDIT:
EDIT: To get back to the actual point of the thread, one reason for immersion-failure that I don't think we've mentioned enough is "rules contradicting logic." I'm not talking about square cows, but choices where the best thing to do mechanically is different from the best thing to do logically. If you have a Star Wars game where a random stick is a better melee weapon than a lightsaber, or a tactical combat RPG where hiding behind cover is actually more dangerous than standing in the open, all the unconscious comprehension in the world can't save you.

Well put. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same as my "7-year-old" test, but I think it captures a similar concept, that the rules should generally closely match the fiction that lives in our heads.

Quertus
2021-11-22, 08:42 PM
Rereading the OP, I think it deserves a more thorough examination than my post gave it.


On the subject of immersion:

I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate - as in, it pretty accurately predicts when people won't be immersed, why it matters to some people more than others (usually people that are long-term players). Even why 4e completely shatters immersion for some people while other people are fine with it. And I can completely explain where I think 4e made some serious, serious missteps in their design (even though I disagree with many about what they are).

Four claims: accurately predict immersion, why immersion matters more to some than others, why 4e shatters immersion for some, what 4e did wrong.

I only really addressed the 3rd point.

So let's see what all we've got.


At a high level, I think:

immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

What's Flow State? Okay, so to explain this I like to start with the four-level model of competence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Short version:

Unconscious Incompetence: We don't know that a skill exists, and can't do it. For instance, someone that had played 1e and started playing 3e would have no idea about optimizing builds for hitting certain prestige classes. They're unaware that it's a thing at all.

Conscious Incompetence: You know that a skill exists, but can't do it. For instance, after seeing a 3e build, the 1e player goes "well, holy shirtballs, I didn't know you could do that. That's cool, but I have no idea how to do that."

Conscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it when you focus on it.

Unconscious Competence: You know that a skill exists, and you can do it without even thinking about it. In fact, you might have a hard time thinking about it or explaining what you're doing.

Realistically, Unconscious Competence links back to Unconscious Incompetence, as you aren't thinking about what you're doing, and so don't know of the additional things you could do to get better.

Okay, so to hit a Flow State you have to have Unconscious Competence in the game you're playing. It's a requirement. You're thinking about the problem space, not the usage of the tools you have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Yup, good stuff so far. Immersion requires (has as a prerequisite) system Flow State requires system Unconscious Competence.

However, you've failed to make optimal use of your tools. As long as we're talking about "Flow State", let's acknowledge that

Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State

Which means that fiction Unconscious Competence and character Unconscious Competence join system Unconscious Competence as prerequisites for immersion.

There's a reason why I want to play existing characters, a reason why they're more valuable to me than new characters, and that reason is familiarity. Flow. (Well, OK, that's one of the reasons) I want a character's actions to reach Unconscious Competence; everything before that isn't valuable to me.

Fiction Flow State might seem suspect - after all, shouldn't the players have to slow down and actually think about a mystery? But, like I told Talakeal earlier (in another thread), there's a difference between making the game hard, and making a game hard to play. Similarly, there's a difference between making the fiction thought-provoking, and making the fiction inaccessible.


Chess doesn't hit "immersion" because there's no fiction and no character. In an immersive situation, the rules disappear, you're identifying with your character, and you have a connection to the world.

Here, I'm afraid I'm missing something. I just hear "role-playing". What am I actually supposed to hear here?


This leads to a few predictions. Primarily - immersion will be broken when Flow state is broken

Yes. But it's when *any* of the requisite Flow States are broken.


- essentially when players have to start focusing on the rules and how to apply them.

True, that is one cause.

That said, I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds who have never opened an RPG book, who are ignorant of the underlying mechanics, and are simply playing the character.

And I've played RPGs with 7-year-olds who grok standard / move / full round action, 5-foot-step, threatened areas, attack of opportunity, etc.

So there's a number of models of play to run through this idea.

-----

I'll end there for now, because my battery's about to die.

Thoughts so far?

Telok
2021-11-23, 01:06 AM
What the heck fiction was 4e or 3e ToB emulating with its thing were you had to forget how to do a move in order to learn a new one?

I could see learning to chain two moves so quickly a fluidly that they were effectively one move. I can see getting better at a move to be able to pull it off more often or with greater effect. But knowing 'foo parry', 'foo charge', and 'foo smack', then having to never be physically capable of doing one of those ever again in order to learn 'foo disarm'... What the heck was that supposed to represent?

Quertus
2021-11-23, 06:10 AM
What the heck fiction was 4e or 3e ToB emulating with its thing were you had to forget how to do a move in order to learn a new one?

I could see learning to chain two moves so quickly a fluidly that they were effectively one move. I can see getting better at a move to be able to pull it off more often or with greater effect. But knowing 'foo parry', 'foo charge', and 'foo smack', then having to never be physically capable of doing one of those ever again in order to learn 'foo disarm'... What the heck was that supposed to represent?

Actually? That makes sense to me.

Say what?!

Well, sort of.

Imagine some physical activity - it doesn't matter what. Martial arts, dancing, tennis, race car driving.

Imagine you've learned to do it wrong. Or that you've trained your instincts for one particular move, and that that move is getting in the way of learning a new move.

I've experienced that many, many times. Can you think of something like that in your own life, or at least imagine it?

So, in order to learn to "do it right", or to learn the new move, you need to actively suppress your reflexes that have you doing things the old way.

Now, that said, the mechanic is still a silly one, because presumably all of a given school - all of "desert wind" or all of "diamond mind" - is self-compatible. And it makes even less sense for a Sorcerer.

But the basic concept, of not doing a thing in order to learn a new thing, isn't as alien as it sounds.

Hard to explain to a 7-year-old, unless they have experience holding their pencil wrong, or tying their shoes or wrapping presents multiple ways, or some such. But still ostensibly a part of the human experience.

Telok
2021-11-23, 11:35 AM
Actually? That makes sense to me.

Say what?!

Well, sort of.

Imagine some physical activity - it doesn't matter what. Martial arts, dancing, tennis, race car driving.

Imagine you've learned to do it wrong. Or that you've trained your instincts for one particular move, and that that move is getting in the way of learning a new move.

I've experienced that many, many times. Can you think of something like that in your own life, or at least imagine it?

So, in order to learn to "do it right", or to learn the new move, you need to actively suppress your reflexes that have you doing things the old way.

Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.

kyoryu
2021-11-23, 11:49 AM
I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).


Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.

While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.

Talakeal
2021-11-23, 12:16 PM
I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).



While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.

The thing is, in other editions of D&D the times when armor and HP make little sense are weird edge cases that almost never come up in actual play, and do break immersion on the rare occasions that they do. 4E on the other hand, has the craziness front and center at all times.

Telok
2021-11-23, 12:25 PM
While I mostly agree with this, fighting is often reaction-based enough that a part of training is just getting things to happen almost automatically, so there's still some truth there.

I could agree if it was about unlearning bad habits or something. I've had to do that and it isn't easy. But epee & kendo? If I go into HEMA and learn to use a spear will I forget how to lunge or parry with an epee? No.

Skill builds off previous skill. Now, if I go from SQL queries one day to C# programming the next it might take me 15 minutes to shift gears. Hot swapping from one style to another, epee to kendo, kayak to canoe, may hiccup me for a few minutes where I make some errors*. But learning a new thing, like a dance or fencing move, does not make me forget how to do things already learned.

*one of my current pet peeves is that near all programming languages use "==" for equality testing and "=" for assignment, but SQL uses "=" for equality and assignment (just with a keyword before the assignment). If I've been deep in flow of one it takes 3 or 4 mistakes for me to switch gears to the other.

Quertus
2021-11-23, 12:51 PM
Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen.

That would be a "no, you can't relate". Sadness.

So, we got the meme "Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named" from confusion when I referred to him by name vs my account name vs me. I referred to them and all my characters by name because people kept telling me that my experiences were impossible when I spoke more generally.

You've just told me that my IRL experiences are impossible.

Granted, it's slightly different - it's not "forgetting", so much as consciously retaining your reflexes. With conscious effort, you probably could pull off the old moves. Of course, if this was in the middle of a fight, by then, you'd probably be dead.

There's many things that I've done with Unconscious Competence, that I had to lose that, lose the ability to act in Flow State, in order to learn a similar trait / talent. No, I didn't completely forget the old skills, but they were no longer reflex by the time I learned the new skill.

Like… say i was suddenly given my body from 20 years ago. Or my "baby teeth". I used to have reflexes to use those, but I don't any more. Do you? Or did you update and replace those reflexes as your body gradually (or suddenly) changed?

No, not all skills require replacing old ones. So your examples are useless - they don't disprove the point. They merely indicate the things you searched for in your memories.

Some things are brown. You not remembering anything brown doesn't disprove that.

Some things can conflict with existing reflexes. You not remembering such things doesn't disprove that.

But I'll continue to hope that you can remember or imagine that such can be and is the case.

Like… I had to give up my instinctive paddling technique to learn a more efficient way to row. Or I had to give up my instinct to say that people have shirts, and shirts have buttons, in order to grok database programming.

And you really learned multiple dance styles without having to fight your reflexes? Lucky. I've got 3 left feet. :smalltongue:

For me, the most obvious (if trivial) example may well be the location (and configuration) of the gear shift. I really can't hold multiple gear shifts at Unconscious Competence level. I cannot transition smoothly between multiple vehicles, back and forth. At best, I can slowly train my reflexes for which is my current car, or try and be at "Conscious Competence" for multiple / new.

And… this is all alien to you?

-----

Of course, this whole conversation really ties into the topic of what breaks flow state, and, specifically, what breaks flow state in 4e. How new skills don't start out at flow state, and how learning new ones technically can sometimes take you "off your game" for skills you've already mastered.

Quertus
2021-11-23, 02:05 PM
I really don't think that "complies with reality" is really part of it, based on personal experience.

Again, D&D has some real groaners. The way armor works, hit points, etc. There's just a lot of stuff that fails logic if you think about it at all, and try to correlate to the real world (note that most heavy immersion people in 3e that I've seen on this forum basically use the argument "well, the world is actually the way D&D describes it").

Armor? Can have some "harder to hit" aspects, but is inconsistent - lots of things that should impact you if you're armored just.... don't... if the armor protects you. Hit Points work great for two guys hitting each other with swords, but result in illogical results in so many other cases (can't die from falling down a cliff, charging a bunch of people with crossbows makes complete sense and is no danger, lava, etc.).

But we've internalized that, not only through D&D but through all the games that copied D&D's design. We don't think about it, because we think in the terms of how that works, and don't try to correlate it back to reality. And so everything works the way we expect (even though "what we expect" is based on "how D&D works" rather than "how reality works"), and so we don't get dropped out of Unconscious Competence. (Personally in the 80s I never got past those, and so started playing GURPS. I've recently decided I just don't care about that illogical stuff and so don't pay attention to it.... and thus, immersion).

In HP's defence, I'd like to say that there's a difference between the concept of HP, and the implementation. And, further, that even if HP themselves are implemented "right", that doesn't prevent damage from being implemented wrong, allowing creatures to survive bathing in molten rock or molten gold because damage wasn't calibrated appropriately.

Or, yeah, reality just works differently, and that's perfectly reasonable.

Or Mr. Incredible wasn't bathing in lava, it's describing events that way that's the mistake.

But none of those are HP's fault.

Telok
2021-11-23, 03:28 PM
That would be a "no, you can't relate". Sadness.

You've just told me that my IRL experiences are impossible.

Granted, it's slightly different - it's not "forgetting", so much as consciously retaining your reflexes. With conscious effort, you probably could pull off the old moves. Of course, if this was in the middle of a fight, by then, you'd probably be dead.

Ok, I see the break, its definitions.

You're talking honed reflexes and I'm talking learning. Yes, if you fail to practice something it will take more work to use it. If you don't dance for a year or six months then you get rusty and have to think about what you're doing until you get back in the flow.

Now, while I was learning kendo I didn't fence epee. When I went back to epee I was rusty. My parries weren't as fast and my point control wasn't as precise. But at no point was I unable to perform anything that I could do before. Being a fraction of a second slower isn't being completely unable to do something. Not fencing epee while training in kendo didn't make me unable to parry or feint in epee, it just made me slightly worse. Of course if I'd done both at the same time there wouldn't have been any skill rust and I could have learned new things in both styles at the same time.

It's not me saying that your experiences are impossible, we were talking about different things. But 4e and 3e ToB didn't do "skill rust", they did total amnesia of your maneuver. If you traded "jumping stab" or "electric zap" for "whirling slice" or "fire fist" you didn't just get worse or slower at what you traded out, you literally couldn't do the things you did last week no matter how hard you tried or what the circumstances were. And in 4e it applied to noncombat utility powers too.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-23, 03:36 PM
One possibility is that 4e powers were all supposed to represent actually extraordinary++ things. So the comparison to "normal" things isn't apposite--these are powers you can't just train to do on a routine basis, they're effectively slottable superpowers. Now that possibility imposes other immersion/fictional constraints, but not the "forget one to learn another" weirdness people were expressing concern about.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-23, 03:42 PM
Problem: When I took up kendo I didn't have to forget how to fence epee. In fact my epee style became more aggressive and effective after taking kendo classes.

When I learned functional programming and SQL I didn't have to forget anything from any of the other programming or scripting languages I know.

White water kayaking, canoeing, and rafting are all different styles of going down rough sections of rivers. I didn't have to forget how to do a kayak roll in order to learn how to ferry in a two person canoe.

Learning belly dancing didn't make me forget ballroom and when I get to learn tango I'm not going to forget ether of the other dance styles.

Unlearning a bad habit or a consistent mistake you make is one thing. Forgetting a dance step because you learned a new one doesn't happen. *golf clap* nice post.

If I go into HEMA and learn to use a spear will I forget how to lunge or parry with an epee? No. I learned tae kwon do before I learned how to box. I still know how to do both, but I'm old enough, and out of practice enough, that I can't do some of what I used to be able to do. And if I hit something hard enough, I think I may break my own hand (again). :smalleek:

Skill builds off previous skill. This also applies to flying. I learned on fixed wing. Then I became a helicopter pilot. Then I taught new pilots how to fly fixed wing. Each experience unlocked new and better skills. (But you do have to remember what you are flying, since that single engine trainer really can't hover! :smalleek: )

Waddacku
2021-11-23, 06:45 PM
One possibility is that 4e powers were all supposed to represent actually extraordinary++ things. So the comparison to "normal" things isn't apposite--these are powers you can't just train to do on a routine basis, they're effectively slottable superpowers. Now that possibility imposes other immersion/fictional constraints, but not the "forget one to learn another" weirdness people were expressing concern about.

I don't think of it as corresponding to specific "moves" that the PC "knows" in character. Taken holistically, the powers taken make up what kind of maneuvers they're good at, but also more generally what their style of fighting is, what kind of opportunities they spot or take advantage of more often/easily, and even just what kind of things happen when they're fighting. Switching out powers is just the style developing over time and some things that used to be particular strong suits of the PC (compared to their environment) fade into the regular back-and-forth of combat while other strengths come to the forefront. Similarly, the player's judgment of what they can accomplish given the powers they haven't expended yet doesn't correlate to the character having "used up" ways of swinging a sword, but of what they can accomplish given the situation they find themselves in.


The thing is, in other editions of D&D the times when armor and HP make little sense are weird edge cases that almost never come up in actual play, and do break immersion on the rare occasions that they do. 4E on the other hand, has the craziness front and center at all times.

HP rarely breaks immersion in 4e because it's never treated like meat points, so those jarring moments when the meaning of it suddenly changes don't occur.

kyoryu
2021-11-24, 11:21 AM
Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

Which, when you're new to roleplaying, is the same thing. Also, if you're familiar with a game that acts mostly like the new game, but then suddenly acts differently, is the same thing.

But, if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.

Note the "if" statement there. Again, with Fate, for it to become immersive I effectively had to consciously decide not to use my normal-game instincts and accept that is was weird. And then I was surprised to find immersion creeping back in.

As long as you're thinking "it shouldn't work like this", you can't hit Unconscious Competence. You're at Conscious Competence, as you're thinking about what you're doing.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-25, 08:31 AM
Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

But, if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.



This starts on the premise that you'd want to accept the game as it is. No matter how screwed and nonsensical.
Drowning healing? Of course, that's how the game works. The ability to heal people by suffocating them to within a inch of their lives is not a design mistake that breaks immersion; it's part of the game and you'll stop complaining about it once you're used to it.
Soon, you'll see it as natural, and you'll scoff at any game where you cannot heal your friends by sticking their head in a bucket

Satinavian
2021-11-25, 11:05 AM
Note the "if" statement there. Again, with Fate, for it to become immersive I effectively had to consciously decide not to use my normal-game instincts and accept that is was weird. And then I was surprised to find immersion creeping back in.
I won't say that you didn't have such an experience with Fate or that your model does not sound plausible, but looking back on all those systems i have played, i have never seen immersion increase with familiarity. Instead i have felt the opposite : the more system mastery i had and the more the rules faded to the background due to flawless use, the more grating it became to encounter those unintuitive artifact that only exist because rule quirks. What i am willing to overlook when everything is still new and shiny is more eye-catching when the rest is familiar ground.

Tanarii
2021-11-25, 12:12 PM
If the flow state thing was true, the D&D 3e and GURPs would be among the least immersive games I've played. That's true for GURPs but not for 3e. It was immersive long before I learned the rules well enough I didn't have to pause the game to look things up.

Those pauses were always annoying because they reduced the total amount of play time available in a session, and sometimes because they threw off pacing, but they didn't always hurt my or the other players immersion materially.

Edit: I should add, thinking about rules doesn't always seem to impact immersion negatively ... but a battlemat and miniatures always do!

Quertus
2021-11-26, 10:31 AM
So, a quick recap before picking up where we left off,



immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

This leads to a few predictions. Primarily - immersion will be broken when Flow state is broken - essentially when players have to start focusing on the rules and how to apply them.

Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State

And immersion is broken when any of the requisite Flow States are broken.


Perhaps even more explicitly, when the general flow and procedures of how things work changes. (Using similar procedures but with different math doesn't seem to impact things as much, observationally).

I'd contend that, more generally, it's when procedures cannot be matched to the fiction. Consider, "I ask the girl what time it is".

GM responds with…
She tells you the time.
you gain the "knows the current time" trait.
make a reaction check.
roll charisma.
roll sense motive.
roll Small Talk, Seduction, Sense Motive, Bluff, Perception, and Style.
OK, but what's your approach?
you take 12 strength damage and gain 17 karma.


If you don't know the system, some of these might produce a "huh?" disconnect from flow. But if you know the system, most of these make sense, follow logically from your stated action. But at least one of these things is not like the others, does not match up with the fiction that lives in our heads of how these things play out. That's what causes a long-term disconnect from flow state, when the rules cannot be reconciled with the fiction.

Or, more generally, how long a system will keep you from achieving flow state strongly correlates with how long it takes to reconcile / equate the rules with the fiction.



Anyway, my point is really that it's not "realism" or lack thereof that breaks immersion in the long run. It's when there's a break from how you expect things to work.

I think what you're calling "the long run", I think of as a more transient problem, compared to the true long-term issues of irreconcilable differences between the rules and the fiction.

And some rules cannot be reconciled with the fiction. This is what produces a true long term / permanent impediment to Flow State.



looking back on all those systems i have played, i have never seen immersion increase with familiarity. Instead i have felt the opposite : the more system mastery i had and the more the rules faded to the background due to flawless use, the more grating it became to encounter those unintuitive artifact that only exist because rule quirks. What i am willing to overlook when everything is still new and shiny is more eye-catching when the rest is familiar ground.


These rules that, once the system knowledge is sufficient to achieve Flow State mechanically, but still break Flow State at the fiction layer, are what permanently hinder role-playing / immersion, and force one to play the game as a game of rules, not roles, as something other than an RPG.

That said,



This starts on the premise that you'd want to accept the game as it is. No matter how screwed and nonsensical.
Drowning healing? Of course, that's how the game works. The ability to heal people by suffocating them to within a inch of their lives is not a design mistake that breaks immersion; it's part of the game and you'll stop complaining about it once you're used to it.
Soon, you'll see it as natural, and you'll scoff at any game where you cannot heal your friends by sticking their head in a bucket

Drown Healing flows perfectly fine in The Princess Bride. And, in fact, there's no reason why it wouldn't make perfect sense in any world with Healing Surges as a means to initiate such.

Drown Healing is perfectly fine as a part of a world's physics. But that truth does *not* mandate that *all* worlds *must* use Drown Healing else be incoherent.

OTOH, Drown Healing doesn't "flow" so well in systems where health is exclusively "meat points".



if you can stop applying your out-of-game knowledge and just accept the game, after a while it becomes how you expect things to work, and then immersion becomes possible again.

Note the "if" statement there.

As long as you're thinking "it shouldn't work like this", you can't hit Unconscious Competence. You're at Conscious Competence, as you're thinking about what you're doing.

So, yes. *If* you can accept that asking a girl the time logically leads to taking 12 strength damage and gaining 17 karma, *if* you can accept Drown Healing as possible in Princess Bride, *if* you can accept 18 Dex, 3 Str as humanly possible, *if* you can accept "guy at the gym" powers having daily limits, *if* you can accept the unreasonable as reasonable, then, yes, you can once again achieve Flow State.

My measure of an RPG is just how much it asks of you in that regard.

"When you hit things, they get hurt; hit/hurt them enough, and they die"? Yeah, I can handle that. A 7-year-old can tell you that that's reasonable.

"Only let your strongest person lift the weight, and, if they're better at lifting weights than you are at choosing or clearing paths, they'll do better blundering through random overgrown paths than if you try to help"? "You cannot simultaneously find out the time, flirt with the girl, and learn anything about her (let alone use this conversation to blend into the crowd against the people who are searching for you) - choose one"? No, sorry, never gonna happen. Those are rules for games, not for RPGs.


So, 4e.

4e is anti-immersive for many people, and I will never in a million years deny that. It's also not (demonstrably) anti-immersive for many others.

So..... why?

Because 4e is a terrible design for players of 3.x. It is the Uncanny Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) of D&D. While Fate was obviously a different game, 4e looks like "standard D&D". Until it doesn't. And that's the problem.

Remember how I said that Fate made me drop to the 2nd level, but it was obvious that it was doing so? 4e doesn't do that. 4e is a different game, with different expectations, and often different procedures.

So if you take a 3x player, throw them at 4e, they're thinking "cool, D&D, but with different math." And that's generally doable. But then.... where is the Knock spell? It's not there! Why do Fighters have daily abilities???? That's wizard stuff! Why is this monster doing so much damage at 1st level, that'll kill a new character!

And so on, and so on. Their expectations are completely violated. Unlike Fate, which said "hey, this is different, you're gonna have to think about it", playing 4e is akin to driving down the freeway and suddenly hitting a brick wall. And then another. And then another. Note that 5e keeps a lot of 4e design, but packages and presents it in a way that is much closer to 3e and prior versions, and has the numbers more "in line" with those versions. And that's enough to prevent that jarring disconnect that happens.

So, why did 4e not bug me, personally? Because I'm not a heavy D&D player. I barely played 3e. I stopped playing 1/2e in the mid 80s, and migrated to other systems. So when I came to start playing 4e again, I wasn't in that state of deep unconscious competence. And so 4e didn't yank me out of it. I had no expectations to be broken.

But for someone deeply into 3.x? Yeah, it's going to slam you out of immersion, HARD, every single time.

All that this says about 3e to 4e is that, if looked at through a 3e lens, it will take a really long time to achieve flow state in 4e. And I'll not argue that.

My contention is that 4e flow state can only be achieved by treating it as a game, and explicitly *not* as a role-playing game. By abandoning the in-character perspective, and playing the *rules*.

However, bringing up 5e is interesting at this juncture. Because, with 5e Bounded Accuracy and Mother May I, you never know what your character can do. Can they climb that wall? Get that girl to give them the time of day? Who knows?

Ah, but if you play with the same GM long enough, eventually, maybe you will know what DC they'll set for things, and what things they'll bypass rules / rolls altogether for.

So, for some systems, immersion requires Knowledge: GM flow state to be achieved, as well.

Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State + [Knowledge: GM Flow State]

Make any sense? Better than chopped up elephant bits?

MoiMagnus
2021-11-26, 11:14 AM
It's not me saying that your experiences are impossible, we were talking about different things. But 4e and 3e ToB didn't do "skill rust", they did total amnesia of your maneuver. If you traded "jumping stab" or "electric zap" for "whirling slice" or "fire fist" you didn't just get worse or slower at what you traded out, you literally couldn't do the things you did last week no matter how hard you tried or what the circumstances were. And in 4e it applied to noncombat utility powers too.

As far as I'm concerned, if I ever had to GM 4e again (which is unlikely, but you never know), I'd probably allow players to swap at long rest any power for another previously forgotten power, and probably also allow players to swap between encounters an encounter power for a previously forgotten encounter power.

I'm pretty much convinced that the reason for this "amnesia" mechanics is a resource constraint: they don't want PCs to get more daily or encounters powers as it would dilute how much it costs to them. Then they could have added a more complex resource system (where instead of replacing an encounter power by another encounter power, you now get to use one of the two at each encounter) but chose to go with a simple but more restrictive solution.

Pauly
2021-11-26, 03:42 PM
As far as I'm concerned, if I ever had to GM 4e again (which is unlikely, but you never know), I'd probably allow players to swap at long rest any power for another previously forgotten power, and probably also allow players to swap between encounters an encounter power for a previously forgotten encounter power.

I'm pretty much convinced that the reason for this "amnesia" mechanics is a resource constraint: they don't want PCs to get more daily or encounters powers as it would dilute how much it costs to them. Then they could have added a more complex resource system (where instead of replacing an encounter power by another encounter power, you now get to use one of the two at each encounter) but chose to go with a simple but more restrictive solution.

One thing I heard was that allowing the swap out prevented characters petering out if they you picked the wrong skill that they were stuck with. Players had long complained about how you had to map out your high level characters from chargen and this was a way to allow flexibility.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-26, 04:35 PM
One thing I heard was that allowing the swap out prevented characters petering out if they you picked the wrong skill that they were stuck with. Players had long complained about how you had to map out your high level characters from chargen and this was a way to allow flexibility.

And with a "gain a new power at (just about) every level" paradigm, not swapping them out means you'd have this catalog of useless, superseded powers. In large part because the difference between higher level powers and lower level powers was pretty much just numbers. Same basic effects available from 1-30. So in most cases, it was the equivalent of the same gear treadmill that 4e had with gear, just with powers.

Which means you could think of it as powers growing in strength like Pokemon evolutions (ie change the name as well) rather than actually getting completely new ones.

Telok
2021-11-27, 02:35 AM
And with a "gain a new power at (just about) every level" paradigm, not swapping them out means you'd have this catalog of useless, superseded powers. In large part because the difference between higher level powers and lower level powers was pretty much just numbers. Same basic effects available from 1-30. So in most cases, it was the equivalent of the same gear treadmill that 4e had with gear, just with powers.

Which means you could think of it as powers growing in strength like Pokemon evolutions (ie change the name as well) rather than actually getting completely new ones.

Well, it probably depends on the power set. It works for types that can't control which abilities they get (warlock, cleric), and for types that basically do the same sort of thing all along (fighter types), but not real well for the "wizard with spellbook" type or "thief that learns a new dirty trick". I recall wanting to constantly trade out druid utility powers because each on kept turning out to be useless in actual play. Of course I also had a themed & backstoried character rather than just taking the best powers every level.... Does my memory deceive me or was it actually impossible to do something like a fire mage or pure illusionist because there weren't enough powers of the appropriate types available the first few years? I know there were just barely enough druid beast form powers to make going all in on beast form not suck.

Waddacku
2021-11-27, 07:19 AM
Well, it probably depends on the power set. It works for types that can't control which abilities they get (warlock, cleric), and for types that basically do the same sort of thing all along (fighter types), but not real well for the "wizard with spellbook" type or "thief that learns a new dirty trick". I recall wanting to constantly trade out druid utility powers because each on kept turning out to be useless in actual play. Of course I also had a themed & backstoried character rather than just taking the best powers every level.... Does my memory deceive me or was it actually impossible to do something like a fire mage or pure illusionist because there weren't enough powers of the appropriate types available the first few years? I know there were just barely enough druid beast form powers to make going all in on beast form not suck.

Powers in a spellbook don't get replaced, though. PHB1 wizards put two spells in it when they get utility or daily attack spells and prepare from among those. Mages (from Essentials) do so for encounter attacks as well, but don't get rituals as a class feature. There's enough fire wizard spells to pick them every level but yeah, obviously you'd be stronger not locking yourself in like that (later additions do make it more appealing). Druids with just PHB2 is similar, though they get multiple options for beast form powers nearly all the time. A lot of their utility powers are pretty build or party specific, but I don't really know how they can turn out useless unless you pick the ones that, say, rely on ability scores you haven't raised. They mostly look solid with some standout great ones.

EDIT: Correct, making an entirely illusion-focused character from PHB1 only doesn't work, though there are both attacks and utility powers, as well as rituals. It's absolutely one of those things that got massively more supported with time.

Quertus
2021-11-27, 09:58 AM
So, by my read of it, the OP made four claims: accurately predict immersion, why immersion matters more to some than others, why 4e shatters immersion for some, what 4e did wrong.

Having stepped through the post, let's go back and revisit those claims.

Accurately predict immersion

The OP's claim is that

immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

My claim - and/or my expression thereof - has been evolving. My current claim is that immersion requires *all* relevant flow states, including but not limited to

Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State + [Knowledge: GM Flow State] +…

It anything drops out of flow state, you drop out of immersion.

This, of course, is a Sith Lord stance compared to reality? Or there is a threshold of "dropping out of immersion" that must be crossed before it becomes a problem.

For example, one can be "immersed" while reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to a GM narrate, despite having to translate that media to the experience. You may be jotting down notes, or HP of damage, or rolling dice, or looking at minis, without sufficiently breaking immersion. Yet those exact same activities may break immersion for someone else - a fact that i may poke at in more detail at a later date.

But, for the Sith Lord approved base concept, one loses immersion when any component loses Flow.

Why immersion matters more to some than others

Maybe I've misunderstood, but I don't see how anything in the OP or in my evaluation thereof actually address this topic. OP?

Why 4e shatters immersion for some

The OP's claim is that 4e shatters immersion for some because, despite 3e being its immediate predecessor, 4e is a very different game, and cannot be played like it was just 3e with a new name.

While I agree that that may have been the problem for some, that if you take the mental pathways you've developed for 3e and apply them to 4e, it does not produce valid results, that truth does not match (or, perhaps, in no way fully encompasses) my issues with 4e.

My more generalized version of "why do some things shatter immersion" would be simply that anything that requires building new mental pathways breaks Flow. Anything that doesn't map to an existing neutral pathway breaks Flow. In fact, even if it *does* map to an existing procedure, it still can break Flow if it isn't obvious and intuitive that that's the path by which it should be evaluated.

Or, to word it more in keeping with the rest of the text, how long one remains unimmersed is based on how long it takes to map the game to existing pathways, or to create new ones.

Why are those pathways are so difficult to form for 4e? For me, the answer is because you cannot start at the character's perspective and arrive at the system. "Guy at the gym" daily abilities? If the Mouse is better at Diplomacy than Medicine, they're a fool to pull the thorn from the Lion's paw? 4e works as a game, if you start with a "mechanics first" perspective. But it utterly fails as an RPG, as a "character perspective", that can be explained to a 5-year-old.

Or, more concisely, the mechanics of 4e do not match the fiction that lives in anyone's head, and that irreconcilable mismatch causes a permanent block to Flow for those who think fiction-first, character perspective, for those who roleplay rather than play a game.

What 4e did wrong.

I may be stretching here, but I would say that the OP's claim boils down to, "4e claimed to be D&D, while sacrificing too many sacred cows, and changing too much fundamental logic to be playable 'as D&D' by the 3e crowd".

My claim is that 4e mislabeled itself as an RPG, while being substantively unsuitable to being played from a character perspective.

-----

Clear as mud?

JNAProductions
2021-11-27, 10:13 AM
Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?

Tanarii
2021-11-27, 12:40 PM
Druids with just PHB2 is similar, though they get multiple options for beast form powers nearly all the time.
4e Druids were intentionally designed to be best when mixing and matching Beast and non-beast powers, instead of builds that were all one or all the other. The goal was a character class that constantly shifted in and out of beast forms during combat.

------------

What I find funny is the OP and much of the discussion focuses on 4e. It's was not the most immersion breaking edition of D&D. 3e was equally if not more so, but even then it wasn't absolutely terrible about it.

Quertus
2021-11-27, 12:53 PM
Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?

CRPGs have always bothered me as not being RPGs.

I only evaluated 4e because people kept claiming that 4e wasn't D&D. Beyond that, I haven't really bothered checking.

As a simple sniff test, ask yourself, could you, without ever referencing any rules, get a 7-year-old to give you reasonable responses to "what do you do?" prompts? Or would your Evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor call you out for suggesting that "guy at the gym" can only do his "guy at the gym" thing 1/day?

How much disconnect is there between the rules and the fiction, as explained to a 7-year-old? How well can they play the game by playing the role, rather than being forced to play the rules?

I've played numerous games with 7-year-olds without having such disconnects between the character as informed by the fiction, and the rules as viewed by a Determinator, as I've had with 4e.

EDIT:
What I find funny is the OP and much of the discussion focuses on 4e. It's was not the most immersion breaking edition of D&D. 3e was equally if not more so, but even then it wasn't absolutely terrible about it.

No, I've had numerous 7-year-olds play 3e at perfectly acceptable competence levels from a pure fiction standpoint. Just what immersion do you picture 3e breaking, that wasn't obvious to my "test subjects"?

Telok
2021-11-27, 03:10 PM
4e Druids were intentionally designed to be best when mixing and matching Beast and non-beast powers, instead of builds that were all one or all the other. The goal was a character class that constantly shifted in and out of beast forms during combat.

Did the book actually say that? I don't recall. I never looked too hard at wizards because saying 'thing-ball' or 'cone of thing' and then drawing a square or mapping a cube was a hard stop for me to go "hey, thats not a circle, its a square". So I tried to avoid those sorts of powers.

Hmm... I think Starfinder may have presented a similar, although not as 'in your face baboon butt' problem for me. Trying to make fiction/concept first characters that were fun to play after the novelty wore off didn't work. It wasn't untill I made a joke character based on incongrous mechanical elements that I coukd really relax and have fun. And of course we never stopped making jokes that our healer was better at healing npcs than pcs just because they were npcs.

Quertus
2021-11-29, 07:34 AM
Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?


What I find funny is the OP and much of the discussion focuses on 4e. It's was not the most immersion breaking edition of D&D. 3e was equally if not more so, but even then it wasn't absolutely terrible about it.


As a simple sniff test, ask yourself, could you, without ever referencing any rules, get a 7-year-old to give you reasonable responses to "what do you do?" prompts? Or would your Evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor call you out for suggesting that "guy at the gym" can only do his "guy at the gym" thing 1/day?

How much disconnect is there between the rules and the fiction, as explained to a 7-year-old? How well can they play the game by playing the role, rather than being forced to play the rules?

I've played a variety of systems with kids as players, and most that I've tried can pass my sniff test. Most of them, when the children are asked to imagine themselves in that situation, as that character, and asked, "what do you do?", their responses are reasonable, showing only the limitations of their experience, maturity, or creativity, not some massive disconnect between their ideas and what the game demands. The fiction that lives in their heads translates seamlessly into the rules.

Has passed my "is this an RPG?" sniff test

2e D&D
3e D&D
Heroes / Champions
Mutants and Masterminds
Marvel faserip

Is not an RPG

4e D&D

One of these things is not like the others.

Doubtless, there are other games out there masquerading as RPGs, using false pretenses to confuse the issue. It is my simple contention that a role-playing game is a game that is played through role-playing. And some games are simply unsuited to being so played. Regardless of any previous experience with 3e.

Cluedrew
2021-11-29, 08:52 AM
Lancer actually doubled down on a lot of D&D 4e's oddities (although the cube explosions are now hexagonal-prisms) in that combat just operates at a more abstract layer than the rest of the game. In a sense this is exactly what 4e does but Lancer is a lot clearer about it. Have you looked at that one?

I'm going to restate my opinion that D&D 4e is an role-playing game but I have no new ideas to communicate why so I'm not going to go into it in much detail. But yeah, all editions of D&D have had similar levels of immersion issues for me. Mind you all systems have moments like this; even my favourite system had a moment where I started laughing because the skill the character's skill bonuses in a situation where exactly opposite what you might expect. Still D&D has a lot that I don't think people notice because they have mental short-cuts over them now.

kyoryu
2021-11-29, 10:29 AM
So, by my read of it, the OP made four claims: accurately predict immersion, why immersion matters more to some than others, why 4e shatters immersion for some, what 4e did wrong.

Having stepped through the post, let's go back and revisit those claims.

Accurately predict immersion

The OP's claim is that

immersion = Flow State + Focus on the Fiction + Focus on Character

My claim - and/or my expression thereof - has been evolving. My current claim is that immersion requires *all* relevant flow states, including but not limited to

Immersion = system Flow State + fiction Flow State + character Flow State + [Knowledge: GM Flow State] +…

It anything drops out of flow state, you drop out of immersion.

Yes, there's no argument there. You're just expanding on what's required for flow state, even though I think you're overstating a few things.



Why immersion matters more to some than others

Maybe I've misunderstood, but I don't see how anything in the OP or in my evaluation thereof actually address this topic. OP?


I don't think I said that. That's edging into strawman territory. It's also a little "No True Scotsman"-y, as it seems to apply that people that think 4e is immersive don't care about immersion, but more on that later.

What I did say is that some games hinder immersion for some people more than others.


Why 4e shatters immersion for some

The OP's claim is that 4e shatters immersion for some because, despite 3e being its immediate predecessor, 4e is a very different game, and cannot be played like it was just 3e with a new name.

Sort of. It's also the fact that in many ways it looks like it should. And does, until it doesn't.

Also, you're getting straw-manny here. I said that if flow is broken. You're hyper-focusing on rules.


While I agree that that may have been the problem for some, that if you take the mental pathways you've developed for 3e and apply them to 4e, it does not produce valid results, that truth does not match (or, perhaps, in no way fully encompasses) my issues with 4e.

My more generalized version of "why do some things shatter immersion" would be simply that anything that requires building new mental pathways breaks Flow. Anything that doesn't map to an existing neutral pathway breaks Flow. In fact, even if it *does* map to an existing procedure, it still can break Flow if it isn't obvious and intuitive that that's the path by which it should be evaluated.

Agreed. That's kinda the point.


Or, to word it more in keeping with the rest of the text, how long one remains unimmersed is based on how long it takes to map the game to existing pathways, or to create new ones.

Yup, but to expand, once those new ones are created flow is not hindered. This is probably the key point. And I don't think it's necessary for the game to be "realistic", though that can clearly be an impediment to the necessary internalization for some people.


Why are those pathways are so difficult to form for 4e? For me, the answer is because you cannot start at the character's perspective and arrive at the system. "Guy at the gym" daily abilities? If the Mouse is better at Diplomacy than Medicine, they're a fool to pull the thorn from the Lion's paw? 4e works as a game, if you start with a "mechanics first" perspective. But it utterly fails as an RPG, as a "character perspective", that can be explained to a 5-year-old.

Nor can "falling down a cliff won't ever possibly kill you if you're good enough with a sword". Nor does "rushing straight into three people with loaded crossbows pointed right at you has no meaningful danger."

These have zero correlation to reality. Zero. We accept them because we've so internalized the basic ideas of D&D that they seem natural. They are as disconnected from our reality as anything in 4e.

(Frankly, "sword dude can fight all day long with no rest" also matches reality less than "sword dude has some maneuvers he can pull off only once a day", but I digress).


Or, more concisely, the mechanics of 4e do not match the fiction that lives in anyone's head, and that irreconcilable mismatch causes a permanent block to Flow for those who think fiction-first, character perspective, for those who roleplay rather than play a game.

Again, I don't think it matters. You need to build those new mental connections, which normally you do by just forgetting about the fact that it's rather silly for a while, much like D&D of any edition.


What 4e did wrong.

I may be stretching here, but I would say that the OP's claim boils down to, "4e claimed to be D&D, while sacrificing too many sacred cows, and changing too much fundamental logic to be playable 'as D&D' by the 3e crowd".

Nope. It would have been better off in a lot of ways had it been more substantially different. The problem was that it looked a lot like "D&D" until it didn't, and in non-obvious ways. It's like someone took standard car controls and made the shifter actually be the brake pedal.


My claim is that 4e mislabeled itself as an RPG, while being substantively unsuitable to being played from a character perspective.

So, yeah, I get that. And here's the problem.

We have several competing statements. You are saying that you cannot immerse in D&D 4e, because it is not an RPG.

I (and frankly several others), are saying that they DO immerse in 4e, but that clearly it is a problem for some people.

We have several solutions to this paradox.

1) You are correct about you not immersing in 4e, but are wrong about it being a "not RPG", and perhaps at least part of the reason. Others can immerse in 4e.
2) Others don't know what immersion means.
3) Others are lying.

It seems like 1 is the only reasonable path forward, as all it requires is that your reasons for not immersing are subjective, rather than objective.

The others are, frankly, rather insulting.


CRPGs have always bothered me as not being RPGs.

They're not RPGs in the way a TTRPG is an RPG, for sure. They're "called" RPGs, so I can accept that, while accepting that they're a fundamentally different experience.


As a simple sniff test, ask yourself, could you, without ever referencing any rules, get a 7-year-old to give you reasonable responses to "what do you do?" prompts? Or would your Evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor call you out for suggesting that "guy at the gym" can only do his "guy at the gym" thing 1/day?

Seven year olds aren't great judges of reality. They have little world experience and less self-awareness.

There are absolutely things the guy at the gym can only do once per day. 100%. Guaranteed.

There are absolutely things athletes can only attempt a couple of time because of strain/etc. Absolutely.

Athletes cannot perform at full capacity for indefinite periods of time. They just can't. Hockey players get off the ice roughly every minute or so, as even some of the best conditioned athletes in the world can't continue at that level indefinitely - and as the game goes on (especially with overtime), they absolutely tire and start dragging. That's why you don't see back-to-back hockey games on the same day.

Goalies don't do multiple split saves all of the time because it hurts. Whatever the limits of an individual are for "sustained" action, there are certain things that people will do when necessary that go beyond those limits - and they can't keep that up forever. Depending on what it is, how often might change, but there are certain things you just can't do over and over, forever.

AED isn't a great solution to modeling that, and is clearly done as more of a game-first thing (since it's the same power distribution for everyone), but frankly it's not a horrible one for some people as it requires less fiddly tracking and math than a lot of other proposed solutions might. It also clearly doesn't work for you, but that doesn't mean it makes the game objectively "not an RPG".

Telok
2021-11-29, 03:22 PM
Thinking about this... the whole point of this thread is a theory that once the rules of a ttrpg are mastered then a person should be able to play without having the rules "kick them out of character" stop the player from roleplaying the character.

Definitions for this post:
Fictional action: action a character takes, like jumping out of a hayloft with a pitchfork to skewer something or climbing a war elephant to gank the handler.
Game's narrative fiction: the genera of activity the game purports to handle, like high fantasy or horror or soft sci-fi.
Immersion: a player's ability to play the game by putting character driven rp before rules mechanics.

So when the rules in a game are invoked (d&d combat starts, skill checks called for, trap happens, etc.) they can help, hinder, or be unaffected by the fiction that required them to be used. If the rules oppose, hinder, or seriously fail to represent a fictional action or thing that the game's narrative fiction should reasonably include, or they often produce nonsense results even within the game's narrative then those rules can be said to be "non-immersive" or "immersion breaking".

At a certain rate of immersion breaking events a game can be considered "not immersive" as the frequency of those events overwhelms the players ability to rp or engage with the fiction before using a rule mechanic. With the understanding that the types of events and the acceptable limit of rate of immersion breaking events is differet between people.

I played Starfinder for about as long as we played d&d 4e before I got to immersion. But it wasn't any level of rules mastery that did it, it was changing characters. I'd conceived of a character that was a pair of gladitorial sport robots who fought together, which was reasonably supported by the rules. In fact the character concept was drawn from the rules. However there were limits built into SF that, despite the character concept being changed to better fit & be supported by the rules, kept throwing nonsense or fiction violating results.

Abandoning that character for a walrus space pirate with jetpack (used indoors mostly), scoped & bayonetted cold/sonic plasma pistols (damage type sillyness for guns that did half cold/sonic + quarter fire + quarter electric damage), and 'foot' suckers allowing to walk on ceilings, plus the highest 'walking' move speed in the party (I think it was like 55+ or something, compared to d&d standard 30s for others). The character concept was literally "take things that shouldn't match and mush them i to a silly character" and resulted in a 1700 pound walrus with hands (literally, official pics of the species aren't 'human with walrus head' they are exactly 'walrus with hands') wearing a gold helmet, green cape with yellow rubber spikes, utility belt, and pink jetpack, flying around and being some i sane acrobatic & stealth near god-mode character.

So the Starfinder character with fiction & rule support wasn't immersive because the rules didn't actually work for the gamecs narrative fiction as applied to the character, but the silly unplanned "this shouldn't work" character was because ultra high skill bonuses allowing looney cartoon-like stunts to succeed was immersive. Its weird.

Now, back to d&d 4e. Having considered I don't think changing character would have sufficed there. In SF we could change a character's or game's focus away from sections of the rules where they repeatedly and often broke immersion, like just completely jettisoning the entire spaceship & space combat chapters or dumping the money & buying stuff minigame. But my immersion breaks in 4e were with basic aspects of the combat engine that weren't avoidable by character choices, parts of character building/leveling, and some of the issues that the earlier iterations of the skill challenge math had. Unfortunately 4e (as our table experienced it) was pretty much just those three activities.

Hmm. Build/gen character(s) to suit the game with a concept the game provides or supports, then unable to rp due to in-character decisions & actions returning frequent negative results or nonsensical results when those actions are adjucated by the game's rules. Given that the tolerable frequency, cause, and magnitude nonsense results can vary by personal preference, experience, and the table's game rule modifications.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-29, 03:42 PM
I was thinking about this and came to the startling conclusion that I'm not sure I know what immersion[1] feels like. For me, playing or DM'ing any game or participating in any activity is relatively the same. I've had a (very) few instances of slipping into a "flow state" where I lost track of time and just...acted...but those have been just as often in books as in programming, and never in games. I've never hit a point where the rules were jarring against my expectations. I've had ones where the rules just weren't fun or where the rules took too long to apply/look up and left me bored, but that's not the same, I don't think. Maybe my head is too busy with all sorts of other thoughts.

[1] as I understand people in this thread are using that word.

Quertus
2021-11-29, 04:21 PM
@kyoryu - yeah, I figured I had misunderstood something: you're not normally the type to make 4 points, then only address 3. :smallwink:

Really quick, I'm too focused on rules, and you're too focused on reality. That's my 1-sentence takeaway.

I'll try and step through to give a more thorough response later.

(And hopefully you know I'm not intentionally strawmanning you. Sorry it came off that way. That really was my attempt to understand your posts, and restate them in my own words. Reading comprehension continues not to be my strong suit. :smallredface:)

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-29, 04:35 PM
[1] as I understand people in this thread are using that word. One of the most powerfully immersive TTRPGs I experienced was our OD&D Thief game in the City State of the Invincible Overlord game, DM'd by a guy who was a few years ahead of us. Our major aim was to become good enough thieves (4th level) that the Thieves Guild would allow us to join. Or job was to survive that long and have adventures and challenges along the way. The sessions themselves rarely lasted longer than two hours - the DM was running three different small groups at various times as class schedules allowed. The fear of death, and the chance to die, was ever present. No such thing as a level appropriate encounter, finding out how dangerous things were _discovery!_ in this melting pot City State (a most excellent Judges Guild product, I think I still have mine somewhere) was a part of the thrill.

I have had some very good moments of immersion in your game - the fight with the vampire lord in particular - but the on line bit (and me playing in the kitchen rather than hiding away upstairs) results in too many RL disruptions to my attention.
I'd rather it weren't that way, but it's part of why I am allowed this guilty pleasure on a given night. I'm still "there" as far as she's concerned.

Another immersive episode was our first session of Space Quest (RPG) back in the late 70's. We all really got into it, and were running for our lives from the authorities when the session ended.

Tanarii
2021-11-29, 05:28 PM
I was thinking about this and came to the startling conclusion that I'm not sure I know what immersion[1] feels like.
It's definitely the state of pulling you out of the game. Other than that, opinions vary. :smallamused:

I've had board games days so immersive that we opened the sliding glass doors so people could smoke cigs outside while still watching the current player take his turn and comment/discuss. Ditto D&D games, where everyone went out on the balcony, even non-smokers, to talk about the game while the smokers smoked. Conversely, I've had a players and even a DM so drunk that their antics started drawing attention to how drunk they were rather than the funny things their character was doing.

Speaking of jokes and opinions varying, for some players blatantly outside reference jokes break immersion, for others laughing/being in a good mood helps increase immersion. For some players stress break immersion (e.g. difficulty of keeping your character alive), for other it breaks it.

I think the biggest most important difference is this:
For some people being pulled out of the game breaks immersion, for others being pulled out of character break immersion.

Edit: As far as what it feels like, I'd say coming out of immersion gracefully feels like coming up out of a deep dive for air. Having immersion broken feels like an alarm clock going off after 3 hours of sleep.

Quertus
2021-11-29, 05:40 PM
I really want to break one thing off from the larger discussion, and handle it in its own post. And I'm going to dub this notion a "Perfect Rule". (Please suggest better names)

For an example of a Perfect Rule, look at Drown Healing. Or at this:



Nor does "rushing straight into three people with loaded crossbows pointed right at you has no meaningful danger."

These have zero correlation to reality. Zero. We accept them because we've so internalized the basic ideas of D&D that they seem natural. They are as disconnected from our reality as anything in 4e.

So, what is a "Perfect Rule" (other than a thing that needs a better name)?

Well, it's real simple: it's a rule that, if you're role-playing, if you're making decisions in character,
if you don't believe reality works that way, it will never come up;
if you believe reality works that way, reality works that way.

Either way, it never causes a break in Flow. It's a Perfect Rule, because it accommodates multiple visions of reality without causing you to lose immersion, if you are playing from the character's perspective, rather than playing the rules.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named? He would never think to try to Drown Heal anyone - that just doesn't match his perspective on "default" reality (although he does recognize that reality is mutable). Similarly, if he wasn't absolutely certain that his magical defenses would protect him, he would treat 3 thugs with crossbows trained on him as a serious threat. As would numerous 7-year-olds I know.

We can roleplay our characters, and, while a Determinator may shake his head, it doesn't make our characters pants-on-head, nor does it break Flow / immersion.

Armus, OTOH, might charge the 3 thugs, and feel lucky he survived (or thankful that the party came to his rescue), or Fezzik might Drown Heal Inigo, without breaking immersion.

They are rules that allow characters to do what they believe is possible, that don't come up unless someone believes that they are possible, or unless someone is not role-playing.

They are rules whose scope is inherently mindful of Flow.

And, as an added bonus, they explain things like why James Bond villains / the BBEG keep underestimating James Bond / the PCs, if they have a different perspective on how the reality that they live in works.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-29, 05:50 PM
It's definitely the state of pulling you out of the game. Other than that, opinions vary. :smallamused:

I've had board games days so immersive that we opened the sliding glass doors so people could smoke cigs outside while still watching the current player take his turn and comment/discuss. Ditto D&D games, where everyone went out on the balcony, even non-smokers, to talk about the game while the smokers smoked. Conversely, I've had a players and even a DM so drunk that their antics started drawing attention to how drunk they were rather than the funny things their character was doing.

Speaking of jokes and opinions varying, for some players blatantly outside reference jokes break immersion, for others laughing/being in a good mood helps increase immersion. For some players stress break immersion (e.g. difficulty of keeping your character alive), for other it breaks it.

I think the biggest most important difference is this:
For some people being pulled out of the game breaks immersion, for others being pulled out of character break immersion.

Edit: As far as what it feels like, I'd say coming out of immersion gracefully feels like coming up out of a deep dive for air. Having immersion broken feels like an alarm clock going off after 3 hours of sleep.

I guess I've never been in that state at all. My head is always in both places. For just about everything that I do. Heck, I usually read something while watching a movie, because otherwise half of my brain gets bored. The few times I have ever "been into something" like that involved zero distractions, a strongly challenging puzzle (usually code wise) or scenario (for fiction), enough music with words to keep the audio part of my brain engaged but not drawing attention, and no time constraints from anywhere outside of myself. TTRPGs or any group activity aren't immersive like that at all, because it takes a dedicated amount of attention to process and handle what other people are saying so I can respond appropriately. I can't get into the zone if there are other people involved at all. So I guess it just never comes up for me. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy TTRPGs, but it's just a different state of things.

icefractal
2021-11-29, 06:08 PM
For an example of a Perfect Rule, look at Drown Healing.
I'm skeptical of any definition which calls Drown Healing "perfect". :smalltongue:

But more seriously, how does the "you only use it if you expect it" thing work in a group? If I'm playing a game that I think is semi-serious, and another PC (or the GM) uses Drown Healing, that's going to seem dumb AF. And then I guess I'll start using it myself too, and accept that (IC) I live in an absurd universe, because unless I'm playing an intentionally-delusional character, I'm not going to ignore what just happened in front of me. But I'm not likely going to take the game very seriously after that either.

Exception if we're playing a Matrix-esque setting and Drown Healing is an example of a glitch in the system, TBF. But that's something that should actually be part of the premise.


As far as "some dudes with crossbows probably aren't much of a threat" - I'd say that one is part of the premise, for D&D, at least. That premise being "You can take on a dragon, and not just by lucky fluke or narrative contrivance. You can take on a dragon in a fair fight and win." If you accept that, then expecting crossbows to be more threatening than an angry dragon is the part that seems silly.

And yes, I'm aware that a lot of CRPGs do the "Five minutes ago you fought past dozens of elite cyborgs armed with anti-matter cannons, and then punched a god in the face so hard he left for 10,000 years. Now it's a cutscene and you're surrendering because there are like six guys with pistols." thing. IMO, that thing sucks and is a major discontinuity that harms taking the story seriously. So it can stay far away from TTRPGs as far as I'm concerned. If you want guards with crossbows to be a deadly threat, run a low-level game where the PCs don't get that strong.

Tanarii
2021-11-29, 06:28 PM
I guess I've never been in that state at all. My head is always in both places.
Four cups of coffee helps. 😂

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-29, 06:32 PM
Four cups of coffee helps. 😂

I'm pretty sure it would only make things worse. If I drank coffee at all, which I don't (both for religious reasons and because the smell alone is enough to make me :smallyuk:).

It's one reason I like DM'ing--there's enough there to keep all parts of my brain occupied. Sure, it's draining. But at least it's not boring (which is what happens when somebody over there is flipping through his character sheet trying to figure out what he's going to do, even though we know he's just going to walk in and smack them...). It's one reason I strongly prefer snappy actions over drawn-out turn-level optimization. Do something, anything and then let the next person go. Because otherwise my brain will go down a rabbit hole or 10 and I'll lose the thread entirely.

Telok
2021-11-29, 06:44 PM
I think the "deep flow state" thing seems common in programming because the activity tends to take place in a comfortable setting with few distractions and involves a lot of concentration on an unbroken activity loop. You get in the groove and suddenly its 5 hours later, you missed a meeting, and everyone else has gone home for the day. Very productive, but very "hoah, where did the time go".

That unbroken activity loop is probably the biggest thing. In gaming if the shift from non-combat to combat is abrupt and stalls the game then any combat can break the flow. In d&d 4e a minor fight with 3 gobbos stopped your conversations and very unstructured talk-talk-roll-talk loop, cleared off the mat, drew a map, grabbed & set minis, then rolled initative to start the completely different rules for the combat activity loop which was very structured and visual + grid based.

Table size can have a big impact too. Three or four people on the top of their game can run fast combat turns in near any game system and keep a flow going. Crank it up to 7 people, 20+ minis, multiple zones/saves changing what you can do every round, one person who can't remember all their character stuff, another who doesn't decide fast, and one that keeps confusing the minion minis with the brutes... your turn may only take 30 seconds but its 15 minutes between those turns and thats a definite no-flow.

Quertus
2021-11-29, 09:58 PM
But more seriously, how does the "you only use it if you expect it" thing work in a group? If I'm playing a game that I think is semi-serious, and another PC (or the GM) uses Drown Healing, that's going to seem dumb AF. And then I guess I'll start using it myself too, and accept that (IC) I live in an absurd universe, because unless I'm playing an intentionally-delusional character, I'm not going to ignore what just happened in front of me. But I'm not likely going to take the game very seriously after that either.

Sounds like you know how I feel after every idiotic GM call.


As far as "some dudes with crossbows probably aren't much of a threat" - I'd say that one is part of the premise, for D&D, at least. That premise being "You can take on a dragon, and not just by lucky fluke or narrative contrivance. You can take on a dragon in a fair fight and win." If you accept that, then expecting crossbows to be more threatening than an angry dragon is the part that seems silly.

And yes, I'm aware that a lot of CRPGs do the "Five minutes ago you fought past dozens of elite cyborgs armed with anti-matter cannons, and then punched a god in the face so hard he left for 10,000 years. Now it's a cutscene and you're surrendering because there are like six guys with pistols." thing. IMO, that thing sucks and is a major discontinuity that harms taking the story seriously. So it can stay far away from TTRPGs as far as I'm concerned. If you want guards with crossbows to be a deadly threat, run a low-level game where the PCs don't get that strong.

Yes, it's generally best if you make characters that make sense with the setting. And yes it's generally best if everyone is on the same page. And yes consistency is a virtue.

Satinavian
2021-11-30, 06:49 AM
As far as "some dudes with crossbows probably aren't much of a threat" - I'd say that one is part of the premise, for D&D, at least. That premise being "You can take on a dragon, and not just by lucky fluke or narrative contrivance. You can take on a dragon in a fair fight and win." If you accept that, then expecting crossbows to be more threatening than an angry dragon is the part that seems silly.If you can explain ingame how you beat a dragon and why that worked, you could evaluate whether that also helps against crossbowa or not. Having an impenetrable armor sturdy enough to resist claws and teeth ? Should help against bolts. Being fast enough to evade even the breath attacks ? Might be enough for crossbows but is a risk. Having some energy resitance stuff and some dragon bane weapon ? Crossbows remain a danger.

This obviously does not work if you win against the dragons because stupid high hit points and level but are a normal human in fiction. But that would just be bad rules.

Cluedrew
2021-11-30, 08:24 AM
For an example of a Perfect Rule, look at Drown Healing.You are OK with drown healing but even just the modifier distribution of 4e* is out of the question? I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Still I think drawn healing can fail the first rule and come up in destructive way if you have a wounded character fall off a bridge.

* or was it just skill challenges, I'm sure you said something about the modifier range because of the teacher/classroom example.

kyoryu
2021-11-30, 12:23 PM
@kyoryu - yeah, I figured I had misunderstood something: you're not normally the type to make 4 points, then only address 3. :smallwink:

Really quick, I'm too focused on rules, and you're too focused on reality. That's my 1-sentence takeaway.

I'll try and step through to give a more thorough response later.

(And hopefully you know I'm not intentionally strawmanning you. Sorry it came off that way. That really was my attempt to understand your posts, and restate them in my own words. Reading comprehension continues not to be my strong suit. :smallredface:)

My main point is that it's not really the rules or the lack of realism that matter. It's whether or not it's internalized.

Now if some things bug you so much that you can never just gloss over them? You'll probably never internalize them. But again, that's a highly personal thing and nothing objective.


I'm skeptical of any definition which calls Drown Healing "perfect". :smalltongue:

I think what he's saying is that drown healing is something that doesn't come up unless you make it come up. If you don't use it, and never make a decision around it, it doesn't matter... you have to go looking for edge cases for it to be an impact.


As far as "some dudes with crossbows probably aren't much of a threat" - I'd say that one is part of the premise, for D&D, at least. That premise being "You can take on a dragon, and not just by lucky fluke or narrative contrivance. You can take on a dragon in a fair fight and win." If you accept that, then expecting crossbows to be more threatening than an angry dragon is the part that seems silly.

Well depends on how you take on the dragon, of course. But if the argument is "it's immersion breaking because you make decisions that don't map to something someone would actually do", then none of the above work - you have to have internalized the "physics" of D&D enough to say "yes, I can face down five crossbows without any actual risk, and I can face-tank a dragon". A "realistic" plan on the dragon would be "make sure I don't get hit, find its vulnerable locations, and figure out how to get to them without getting smooshed because if he smacks me I'm probably dead."


Sounds like you know how I feel after every idiotic GM call.

I think less things are "idiotic" than we think. Usually "idiotic" calls are not idiotic to the person making them, which means either:

1. They have some context/experience we don't
2. We have some context/experience they don't

Usually I find it's the former. If it's the latter, at least we can usually say "yeah, I can see where that would make sense if you hadn't experienced, but I've seen <this> actually happen."


If you can explain ingame how you beat a dragon and why that worked, you could evaluate whether that also helps against crossbowa or not. Having an impenetrable armor sturdy enough to resist claws and teeth ? Should help against bolts. Being fast enough to evade even the breath attacks ? Might be enough for crossbows but is a risk. Having some energy resitance stuff and some dragon bane weapon ? Crossbows remain a danger.

Right. If the bar is "makes sense in normal world terms" (or normal world + magic/dragons), that's one thing. If it's "make sense because that's how the world described by the mechanics works", then that's another, and further emphasizes how much "you've internalized things" is important.

Again, my point is that "realistic" or "not realistic" matter less than "internalized" or "not internalized". "Realistic" has the advantage of that we've internalized "reality" (at least based on our experiences of reality), while "not-realistic" has a higher hurdle to get internalized.

Also rules internalization seems to matter, but it's process internalization from what I can tell more than the math. IOW, if you have two systems, and the non-math steps you take to resolve something are similar/identical, but they use different math? That doesn't seem to matter much in my experience. But if you use a different process that blows people minds. Like, most games the process is pretty simple: Find your skill, find appropriate modifiers, roll, maybe roll some kind of opposition, get result. That's the case for probably 90% of published games. It's when games diverge from that that they become flow-upsetting.

And of course the worst is when something looks like a process you've used, until all of a sudden it takes a curve.


This obviously does not work if you win against the dragons because stupid high hit points and level but are a normal human in fiction. But that would just be bad rules.

But for the most part humans in D&D are considered, by the fiction, to be "normal humans". Just extremely talented ones. The whole "it's actually fantasy superheroes" is an extrapolation of the rules and a way to make the fiction fit the mechanics, because it doesn't. (This is more true for WotC D&D. While it was somewhat true for TSR D&D, the level scaling wasn't as extreme)

Quertus
2021-11-30, 01:05 PM
Let's take this from the top


Yes, there's no argument there. You're just expanding on what's required for flow state, even though I think you're overstating a few things.

Sounds like "I reserve the right to recall this witness", "we provisionally agree for now" territory.


I don't think I said that. That's edging into strawman territory. It's also a little "No True Scotsman"-y, as it seems to apply that people that think 4e is immersive don't care about immersion, but more on that later.

What I did say is that some games hinder immersion for some people more than others.

Really?

On the subject of immersion:

I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate - as in, it pretty accurately predicts when people won't be immersed, why it matters to some people more than others (usually people that are long-term players). Even why 4e completely shatters immersion for some people while other people are fine with it. And I can completely explain where I think 4e made some serious, serious missteps in their design (even though I disagree with many about what they are).


What did you mean by the bolded bit, then?

I read "it" to apply to "immersion"; thus, "why immersion matters more to some than others".


Sort of. It's also the fact that in many ways it looks like it should. And does, until it doesn't.

Also, you're getting straw-manny here. I said that if flow is broken. You're hyper-focusing on rules.

Fair points. So, 4e killed the sacred cows, sometimes in secret, yet pretended that it was still the same game, largely with the same fiction, in ways that simply don't pan out - is that closer?


Agreed. That's kinda the point.

Hmmm… which part of those two paragraphs was the point? For reference,
While I agree that that may have been the problem for some, that if you take the mental pathways you've developed for 3e and apply them to 4e, it does not produce valid results, that truth does not match (or, perhaps, in no way fully encompasses) my issues with 4e.

My more generalized version of "why do some things shatter immersion" would be simply that anything that requires building new mental pathways breaks Flow. Anything that doesn't map to an existing neutral pathway breaks Flow. In fact, even if it *does* map to an existing procedure, it still can break Flow if it isn't obvious and intuitive that that's the path by which it should be evaluated.


Yup, but to expand, once those new ones are created flow is not hindered. This is probably the key point. And I don't think it's necessary for the game to be "realistic", though that can clearly be an impediment to the necessary internalization for some people.

This might be the big thing. We'll see.

Yes, once you have system mastery, the system no longer impedes Flow. Yes, once you understand the fiction, the fiction no longer impedes Flow. Yes, once you have enough experience with your character, your character no longer impedes Flow.

However, once they no longer impede Flow individually, once you understand them all, the mismatches between them impede Flow.

For example,

I feel like 4Es breaks from immersion come from a disconnect between the game’s rules and how scenes play out in real life or in fiction.
looking back on all those systems i have played, i have never seen immersion increase with familiarity. Instead i have felt the opposite : the more system mastery i had and the more the rules faded to the background due to flawless use, the more grating it became to encounter those unintuitive artifact that only exist because rule quirks. What i am willing to overlook when everything is still new and shiny is more eye-catching when the rest is familiar ground.


Or this much longer bit:

Thinking about this... the whole point of this thread is a theory that once the rules of a ttrpg are mastered then a person should be able to play without having the rules "kick them out of character" stop the player from roleplaying the character.

Definitions for this post:
Fictional action: action a character takes, like jumping out of a hayloft with a pitchfork to skewer something or climbing a war elephant to gank the handler.
Game's narrative fiction: the genera of activity the game purports to handle, like high fantasy or horror or soft sci-fi.
Immersion: a player's ability to play the game by putting character driven rp before rules mechanics.

So when the rules in a game are invoked (d&d combat starts, skill checks called for, trap happens, etc.) they can help, hinder, or be unaffected by the fiction that required them to be used. If the rules oppose, hinder, or seriously fail to represent a fictional action or thing that the game's narrative fiction should reasonably include, or they often produce nonsense results even within the game's narrative then those rules can be said to be "non-immersive" or "immersion breaking".

At a certain rate of immersion breaking events a game can be considered "not immersive" as the frequency of those events overwhelms the players ability to rp or engage with the fiction before using a rule mechanic. With the understanding that the types of events and the acceptable limit of rate of immersion breaking events is differet between people.

I played Starfinder for about as long as we played d&d 4e before I got to immersion. But it wasn't any level of rules mastery that did it, it was changing characters. I'd conceived of a character that was a pair of gladitorial sport robots who fought together, which was reasonably supported by the rules. In fact the character concept was drawn from the rules. However there were limits built into SF that, despite the character concept being changed to better fit & be supported by the rules, kept throwing nonsense or fiction violating results.

Abandoning that character for a walrus space pirate with jetpack (used indoors mostly), scoped & bayonetted cold/sonic plasma pistols (damage type sillyness for guns that did half cold/sonic + quarter fire + quarter electric damage), and 'foot' suckers allowing to walk on ceilings, plus the highest 'walking' move speed in the party (I think it was like 55+ or something, compared to d&d standard 30s for others). The character concept was literally "take things that shouldn't match and mush them i to a silly character" and resulted in a 1700 pound walrus with hands (literally, official pics of the species aren't 'human with walrus head' they are exactly 'walrus with hands') wearing a gold helmet, green cape with yellow rubber spikes, utility belt, and pink jetpack, flying around and being some i sane acrobatic & stealth near god-mode character.

So the Starfinder character with fiction & rule support wasn't immersive because the rules didn't actually work for the gamecs narrative fiction as applied to the character, but the silly unplanned "this shouldn't work" character was because ultra high skill bonuses allowing looney cartoon-like stunts to succeed was immersive. Its weird.

Now, back to d&d 4e. Having considered I don't think changing character would have sufficed there. In SF we could change a character's or game's focus away from sections of the rules where they repeatedly and often broke immersion, like just completely jettisoning the entire spaceship & space combat chapters or dumping the money & buying stuff minigame. But my immersion breaks in 4e were with basic aspects of the combat engine that weren't avoidable by character choices, parts of character building/leveling, and some of the issues that the earlier iterations of the skill challenge math had. Unfortunately 4e (as our table experienced it) was pretty much just those three activities.

Hmm. Build/gen character(s) to suit the game with a concept the game provides or supports, then unable to rp due to in-character decisions & actions returning frequent negative results or nonsensical results when those actions are adjucated by the game's rules. Given that the tolerable frequency, cause, and magnitude nonsense results can vary by personal preference, experience, and the table's game rule modifications.


(And, yeah, talk of "realistic"? While it may be a hindrance for some, and is inherently a (supposedly) existing path, is really a Red Herring here, having nothing to do with anything I'm saying)


Nor can "falling down a cliff won't ever possibly kill you if you're good enough with a sword". Nor does "rushing straight into three people with loaded crossbows pointed right at you has no meaningful danger."

These have zero correlation to reality. Zero. We accept them because we've so internalized the basic ideas of D&D that they seem natural. They are as disconnected from our reality as anything in 4e.

(Frankly, "sword dude can fight all day long with no rest" also matches reality less than "sword dude has some maneuvers he can pull off only once a day", but I digress).

Again, I've repeatedly talked about "matching the fiction that lives inside anyone's head", and my counter-definition includes fiction Flow State; talking about "realism" in relation to my posts is "I rolled a zero" territory, unless you're discussing it in relation to reality hopefully being an existing template to draw from (however unrealistic that expectation may be :smalltongue:).

But, yes, there are numerous things that most audiences can grok, either through being near ubiquitous (HP bars, action hero wounds, wrecked cars explode) and/or through being so simple that a 7-year-old can grok them ("if you hit sometime, they get hurt; hurt them enough, and they may die").

And other things that are "perfect rules", that only come up if someone believes in their reality, unless people aren't role-playing.


Again, I don't think it matters. You need to build those new mental connections, which normally you do by just forgetting about the fact that it's rather silly for a while, much like D&D of any edition.

We probably disagree here. What's the context?
Or, more concisely, the mechanics of 4e do not match the fiction that lives in anyone's head, and that irreconcilable mismatch causes a permanent block to Flow for those who think fiction-first, character perspective, for those who roleplay rather than play a game.

Yeah, this would be a pretty fundamental disagreement.

Best I can figure, when we encounter, "asking the girl the time results in 12 strength damage and gaining 17 karma", your response is to say, "because that's the rules, simply accept them until they make sense", whereas I'm in the "that's nonsense" camp.

I'm fine with accepting or rejecting Drown Healing based on how one pictures the universe working, whereas I read you to say that Flow demands you build your fiction to accept Drown Healing as reasonable.

The problem with that is, that's why I claim 4e isn't an RPG in the first place: because no one has explained a fiction, accessible to 7-year-olds, whereby 4e makes sense. Quite the opposite, in fact: people keep saying that 4e's rules are gamey, and *don't* make sense.

So are you *really* saying that incoherence doesn't matter?

But, fine, let's not be Sith Lords. Let's see if there's something other than absolutes that's worth discussing.

… I don't think that there is, in this case. At least, nothing related that's as important as the absolutes.

There's certainly questions of how long it might take to form new pathways for a given rule set, from a given baseline (your "4e is hard from a 3e perspective"). But I don't think that that's nearly as important, I don't think that that matters nearly as much to long-term immersion, as whether it's humanly possible to envision a consistent, coherent society wherein asking a girl the time naturally results in taking 12 strength damage and gaining 17 karma, or where (insert examples (from other threads?) here).

I think that game incoherence *does* matter to discussions of immersion.


Nope. It would have been better off in a lot of ways had it been more substantially different. The problem was that it looked a lot like "D&D" until it didn't, and in non-obvious ways. It's like someone took standard car controls and made the shifter actually be the brake pedal.

Lol. Great visual.


So, yeah, I get that. And here's the problem.

We have several competing statements. You are saying that you cannot immerse in D&D 4e, because it is not an RPG.

I (and frankly several others), are saying that they DO immerse in 4e, but that clearly it is a problem for some people.

We have several solutions to this paradox.

1) You are correct about you not immersing in 4e, but are wrong about it being a "not RPG", and perhaps at least part of the reason. Others can immerse in 4e.
2) Others don't know what immersion means.
3) Others are lying.

It seems like 1 is the only reasonable path forward, as all it requires is that your reasons for not immersing are subjective, rather than objective.

The others are, frankly, rather insulting.

We've got some language issues here.

As others have said, one can be "immersed" in software development. Software development is not an RPG. Therefore, immersion does not require, is not exclusive to RPGs.

One can be immersed solely in the rules of a game.

My contention is that those who are "immersed" in incoherent mismatches between rules and fiction are not wrong - it's not that they aren't immersed, is that they aren't role-playing.

You can't take actions that are nonsensical from the character's perspective while playing the game from the character's perspective. But, just as one doesn't inherently lose immersion while jotting down mana spent, or filling in a damage track, or rolling dice, people don't automatically lose immersion the moment that they drop out of character and access the rules.

People getting conditioned to do things without noticing them is such a known fact of the human condition, there's even a My Little Pony episode about it. If people choose to get offended by my claiming the possibility of that explanation of events, especially when all evidence points in that direction, that's on them.

My contention is that people are choosing their actions based on rules rather than on character perspective.. That anyone who maintains immersion during an inherently incoherent decision step must, definitionally, have either created a fiction that matches the rules, or not be role-playing in making that decision.

It is my belief that those who are immersed in 4e are in the latter category. That 4e is not conducive to crafting a fiction that allows the game to be played in character. That 4e cannot be played in role-playing stance, that making decisions forces evaluation of rules, not roles. That 4e is not an RPG.

This belief is fairly easily disproved, if false: one need only explain the fiction by which one might make 4e decisions. My standards aren't high - I'm advocating Drown Healing as reasonable, for peat moss's sake. Just something to pass my sniff test, to let a 7-year-old play their character by playing their character, rather than by playing the game.


They're not RPGs in the way a TTRPG is an RPG, for sure. They're "called" RPGs, so I can accept that, while accepting that they're a fundamentally different experience.

Nothing to add here.


Seven year olds aren't great judges of reality. They have little world experience and less self-awareness.

Again with "reality". :smalltongue:

Because children do not have system mastery / unconscious competence / flow state with reality, they are better suited to (use as lab rats to) test the incoherence in systems. That is, it's a lower bar to cross, to get them up to "their competence" in a new system.


There are absolutely things the guy at the gym can only do once per day. 100%. Guaranteed.

There are absolutely things athletes can only attempt a couple of time because of strain/etc. Absolutely.

Athletes cannot perform at full capacity for indefinite periods of time. They just can't. Hockey players get off the ice roughly every minute or so, as even some of the best conditioned athletes in the world can't continue at that level indefinitely - and as the game goes on (especially with overtime), they absolutely tire and start dragging. That's why you don't see back-to-back hockey games on the same day.

Goalies don't do multiple split saves all of the time because it hurts. Whatever the limits of an individual are for "sustained" action, there are certain things that people will do when necessary that go beyond those limits - and they can't keep that up forever. Depending on what it is, how often might change, but there are certain things you just can't do over and over, forever.

AED isn't a great solution to modeling that, and is clearly done as more of a game-first thing (since it's the same power distribution for everyone), but frankly it's not a horrible one for some people as it requires less fiddly tracking and math than a lot of other proposed solutions might. It also clearly doesn't work for you, but that doesn't mean it makes the game objectively "not an RPG".

Again with reality… this time, however, it's apt. Fourth time's the charm.

First off, kudos, you've come up with great example(s) to compare to "4e guy at the gym daily powers". Unlike anything I've seen previously, this is actually… compelling? Probably the wrong word.

You're right, just simply the existence of muggle daily abilities is not sufficient by itself to declare something "not an RPG".

However, *what* those abilities are, *how often* they come up, *how incoherent* they are not just with reality but with the game's fiction, *how well* "when you can use them" flies with an Evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor? Those criteria could make such abilities suffice.

And 4e has a lot more going against it than just "guy at the gym daily" errors.

I think AED is a perfectly fine system, BTW. A tad gamey, perhaps, but an easy oversimplification to use. It's 4e's implementation of that system that produces such incoherence between the fiction and the rules.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-30, 05:11 PM
But for the most part humans in D&D are considered, by the fiction, to be "normal humans". Just extremely talented ones. The whole "it's actually fantasy superheroes" is an extrapolation of the rules and a way to make the fiction fit the mechanics, because it doesn't.
(This is more true for WotC D&D. While it was somewhat true for TSR D&D, the level scaling wasn't as extreme) FWIW, in TSR D&D a lot of extra power, IME, came from various magical items as one grew in level, survived and found various stuff.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-30, 07:00 PM
But for the most part humans in D&D are considered, by the fiction, to be "normal humans". Just extremely talented ones.

Disagree on this, at least if we mean by "normal humans" normal earth humans. The whole "background magic as part of the physics" (which is canon) kinda forbids that. They're similar (on the surface) to normal earth humans, but under the hood--they're explicitly not the same. And even in setting, they're not normal in any sort of way. In 5e, for instance, characters are by default well above the curve, with explicitly supernatural abilities not accessible to others in the setting no matter how they study. Adventurers aren't just Normal Guy++, especially high level ones. They're explicitly super heroic.

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-30, 07:08 PM
They're explicitly super heroic. They are explicitly potentially super heroic. They can also die before that potential is realized. :smallcool: That super heroism is an outcome of overcoming increasingly more dangerous and fantastical challenges in the main. They really don't know, in world, how far they can go - the ever increasing scope and scale of difficulty is what helps them


unlock their potential to be superheroes
or die trying,
or retire at some point where they don't feel like taking it any further.



That said, I mostly agree with your post.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-30, 07:16 PM
They are explicitly potentially super heroic. They can also die before that potential is realized. :smallcool: That super heroism is an outcome of overcoming increasingly more dangerous and fantastical challenges in the main. They really don't know, in world, how far they can go - the ever increasing scope and scale of difficulty is what helps them


unlock their potential to be superheroes
or die trying,
or retire at some point where they don't feel like taking it any further.



That said, I mostly agree with your post.

I'd say that even level 1 PCs are "superheroic", if only on the scale of a Action Hero (ie a bit more durable and more skilled than is normal)--a level 1 barbarian has (by explicit PHB text) "superhuman strength and resilience" while raging. And even the NPC versions of priests and wizards don't have all the features of a PC wizard, and few NPC priests are actually clerics.

So the progression goes from "street-level superheroes" to "mid-rank Marvel heroes" (they never get to the high end of a Golden Age Superman or a Dr Strange, but they're somewhere in the mushy middle).

KorvinStarmast
2021-11-30, 08:18 PM
So the progression goes from "street-level superheroes" to "mid-rank Marvel heroes" (they never get to the high end of a Golden Age Superman or a Dr Strange, but they're somewhere in the mushy middle). I can wrap my arms around that.

Tanarii
2021-11-30, 08:54 PM
So the progression goes from "street-level superheroes" to "mid-rank Marvel heroes" (they never get to the high end of a Golden Age Superman or a Dr Strange, but they're somewhere in the mushy middle).They're not that heroic to start. A few Orcs can be a challenge at level one and easily result in a death and it doesn't take much to turn into a TPK. They're just a bit better than guards.

And at the top most levels, they're easily more than most superheroes.

IMO they go from skilled guards/hirelings to effectively demigods.

dafrca
2021-11-30, 08:56 PM
On the subject of immersion:

I have a model of immersion that I think is pretty accurate -

kyoryu, I finally had a moment to really read your original post. I really liked it and think you are onto at least how immersion is for me. Thank You for a great post. :smallsmile:

PhoenixPhyre
2021-11-30, 09:08 PM
They're not that heroic to start. A few Orcs can be a challenge at level one and easily result in a death and it doesn't take much to turn into a TPK. They're just a bit better than guards.

And at the top most levels, they're easily more than most superheroes.

IMO they go from skilled guards/hirelings to effectively demigods.

A level 1 fighter is significantly better than a guard in every way. A level 1 barbarian is also better. A level 1 wizard is better than an apprentice wizard. A level 1 cleric is significantly better than an acolyte. Etc.

And they're only more than most superheroes at level 20 if you take a cramped view. Compared to the Avengers, for instance, they're not anywhere close unless you're seriously abusing optimization or have a giving DM who gives wiggle room to spells. And then only the wizards.

Quertus
2021-11-30, 09:16 PM
You are OK with drown healing but even just the modifier distribution of 4e* is out of the question? I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Still I think drawn healing can fail the first rule and come up in destructive way if you have a wounded character fall off a bridge.

* or was it just skill challenges, I'm sure you said something about the modifier range because of the teacher/classroom example.

Lol. Why is it that the example of Drown Healing failing the "Perfect Rule" test is also the one that makes the most sense? "You were knocked unconscious by your injuries, but awoke from the shock of hitting the water."

I'm not a fan of Drown Healing. It's just both a current topic, and an example of a perfect rule. (Or it was…)


My main point is that it's not really the rules or the lack of realism that matter. It's whether or not it's internalized.

Now if some things bug you so much that you can never just gloss over them? You'll probably never internalize them. But again, that's a highly personal thing and nothing objective.

So many responses competing for head space here, but I think I'll stick with the important one: why should I hear this as anything other than, "eventually, you become immersed with the rules, and don't even notice that you're not role-playing, because you still feel immersed"? Why should I view this as anything other than a clear statement of the problem?


I think what he's saying is that drown healing is something that doesn't come up unless you make it come up. If you don't use it, and never make a decision around it, it doesn't matter... you have to go looking for edge cases for it to be an impact.

Sounds like you've got it.


I think less things are "idiotic" than we think. Usually "idiotic" calls are not idiotic to the person making them, which means either:

1. They have some context/experience we don't
2. We have some context/experience they don't

Usually I find it's the former. If it's the latter, at least we can usually say "yeah, I can see where that would make sense if you hadn't experienced, but I've seen <this> actually happen."

Well, again, this is a matter of terminology. IMO, "idiotic calls" are always the latter.

But, no, my experience with GMs, even with your definition, it's more often the latter. And not in a, "I can see why you'd be that dumb" kind of way, but a "dear Lord, how are you not a Darwin award winner already" and "I've got some 7-year-olds that I'd like you to listen to regarding how reality and consistency and logic work" kind of way.

I've had a lot of bad GMs.


Also rules internalization seems to matter, but it's process internalization from what I can tell more than the math. IOW, if you have two systems, and the non-math steps you take to resolve something are similar/identical, but they use different math? That doesn't seem to matter much in my experience. But if you use a different process that blows people minds. Like, most games the process is pretty simple: Find your skill, find appropriate modifiers, roll, maybe roll some kind of opposition, get result. That's the case for probably 90% of published games. It's when games diverge from that that they become flow-upsetting.

And of course the worst is when something looks like a process you've used, until all of a sudden it takes a curve.

"Process", eh?

"I ask the girl the time"
that's what you're asking, what are you offering?
what is your intent, action, and tool?
what is your approach?


Those are definitely different from "make a Charisma check", "Diplomacy DC 5", "charisma + Small Talk, difficulty 4".

Yes, changing process is harder than following a familiar process. And having a seemingly familiar process jump up and bite you is rougher yet.

Cluedrew
2021-11-30, 09:28 PM
The problem with that is, that's why I claim 4e isn't an RPG in the first place: because no one has explained a fiction, accessible to 7-year-olds, whereby 4e makes sense. Quite the opposite, in fact: people keep saying that 4e's rules are gamey, and *don't* make sense.But this is true of every edition of D&D. 4th edition is just gamy even compared to the other editions. Does that make cross some fundamental line? I don't think so.

I think even a 7 year old might find it odd you have not recovered a single spell after 7 hours and 59 minutes of rest. Have you read any D&D books? I've read a lot of the novels set in the official setting and it doesn't really look like D&D the game. People don't out-level mundane threats, you don't forget spells and so on. I don't think D&D has ever reflected a proper fictional world.

Telok
2021-11-30, 11:58 PM
But this is true of every edition of D&D. 4th edition is just gamy even compared to the other editions. Does that make cross some fundamental line? I don't think so.

I think even a 7 year old might find it odd you have not recovered a single spell after 7 hours and 59 minutes of rest. Have you read any D&D books? I've read a lot of the novels set in the official setting and it doesn't really look like D&D the game. People don't out-level mundane threats, you don't forget spells and so on. I don't think D&D has ever reflected a proper fictional world.

I dunno. Ever tried to tell a kid a square is a circle? Explain how two 10'x10' rooms on a map can be the same "size" but one is bigger because its not aligned with a grid? Tried to put a comprehensible fiction to "come and get it" being a strength vs ac melee attack burst 3 that pulls stunned/held people up out of 10' deep pits? That a character can only attempt a trick shot with a crossbow once a day? They look at you like you're an idiot (assuming we're talking about 6-8 year olds and not say, a 3 year old who is still learning to count to 3).

Talakeal
2021-12-01, 12:52 AM
I dunno. Ever tried to tell a kid a square is a circle? Explain how two 10'x10' rooms on a map can be the same "size" but one is bigger because its not aligned with a grid? Tried to put a comprehensible fiction to "come and get it" being a strength vs ac melee attack burst 3 that pulls stunned/held people up out of 10' deep pits? That a character can only attempt a trick shot with a crossbow once a day? They look at you like you're an idiot (assuming we're talking about 6-8 year olds and not say, a 3 year old who is still learning to count to 3).

The circle as a square one is pretty easy, just say that partial hits count as hits and you are golden. Works fine in warhammer.

Telok
2021-12-01, 02:29 AM
The circle as a square one is pretty easy, just say that partial hits count as hits and you are golden. Works fine in warhammer.

News to me, we always used templates. And it breaks after 15' radius if you're doing a 5' square. Even the 15' is iffy since the diagonal of two 5' squares is about 14' 2". Can we use the "but my sword reaches 11 inches into his square so i can still hit him" argument?

Satinavian
2021-12-01, 03:16 AM
But for the most part humans in D&D are considered, by the fiction, to be "normal humans". Just extremely talented ones. The whole "it's actually fantasy superheroes" is an extrapolation of the rules and a way to make the fiction fit the mechanics, because it doesn't. (This is more true for WotC D&D. While it was somewhat true for TSR D&D, the level scaling wasn't as extreme)Yes. I basically said here that all D&D versions with their linearly escalating hit points are bad rules in this regard, correct. There are reasons why by far most other system don't do that. Sure, you could do the "HP are not really meat" dance to get fiction and rules to match, but that was never really satisfying. Better to have a health/wound system that doesn't challenge your suspension that much in the first place.

And i have been annoyed at D&Ds (and similar games) escalating HPs and seen others react similar. That didn't happen with newcomers or starting the system. It happened after internalizing the rules so much that people knew what they could survive or not. Only then came the problem that acting based on what their PC could do did not match the intended fiction of skilled but essentially normal humans (or very human like nonhumans). Or how certain environmental hazards would be utterly deadly for low level people and pretty harmless for higher level ones and the correct strategy would be to treat people very differently based on their level even if "level" and "hit dice" are not actually things that the decision makers you are playing can know.

When the rules don't match the fiction, you will always encounter situations where you have to decide whether you follow the fiction (and ignore the rules or try to rationalize the stupid outcomes ) or the rules (which means giving up on/drastically change the fiction). Internalization or familiarity does not help you with this at all. What it can do is, once such a decision is made, allow you to apply the same to similar situations again and again.

Quertus
2021-12-01, 07:13 AM
But this is true of every edition of D&D. 4th edition is just gamy even compared to the other editions. Does that make cross some fundamental line? I don't think so.

I think even a 7 year old might find it odd you have not recovered a single spell after 7 hours and 59 minutes of rest. Have you read any D&D books? I've read a lot of the novels set in the official setting and it doesn't really look like D&D the game. People don't out-level mundane threats, you don't forget spells and so on. I don't think D&D has ever reflected a proper fictional world.

Deep breaths.

All right, let's see if we can untangle all these knots.

The fiction that lives inside the heads of the morons writing RPG novels (or, at least, D&D novels) matches the game's fiction less well then a 7-year-old's understanding of reality. Drizzt dodged a Magic Missile? People don't exterminate Kender with a genocidal furiously to make a Nazi blush? And don't get me started on Ed Greenwood's disconnection from reality.

No, most D&D novels I've read match the fiction about as poorly as 4e does.

From our previous discussions, where one draws the line *may* be arbitrary, but even most 7-year-olds can comprehend the concept that a line must be drawn *somewhere*. The concept of "sandboxy" is generally more advanced than the concept of "sandbox"; 7-year-olds are generally more comfortable with firm if arbitrary concepts than with dealing with spectra, IME. So, no, "7 hours and 59 minutes" doesn't get the pushback you seem to expect.

4e crosses a lot of lines that many other games - including other editions of D&D - do not. This includes my line for "is this an RPG?", and the 7-year-old "sniff test" line.


I dunno. Ever tried to tell a kid a square is a circle? Explain how two 10'x10' rooms on a map can be the same "size" but one is bigger because its not aligned with a grid? Tried to put a comprehensible fiction to "come and get it" being a strength vs ac melee attack burst 3 that pulls stunned/held people up out of 10' deep pits? That a character can only attempt a trick shot with a crossbow once a day? They look at you like you're an idiot (assuming we're talking about 6-8 year olds and not say, a 3 year old who is still learning to count to 3).

The designers of 4e can stand in line next to the would-be evil overlords and many of my old GMs to get their court-ordered 5-year-old advisors.

Now I am totally visualizing WotC halls filled with kids hand in hand with adults, and the kids telling the adults in meetings or at their workstations "this is dumb" and "you're an idiot". :smallbiggrin:


When the rules don't match the fiction, you will always encounter situations where you have to decide whether you follow the fiction (and ignore the rules or try to rationalize the stupid outcomes ) or the rules (which means giving up on/drastically change the fiction). Internalization or familiarity does not help you with this at all. What it can do is, once such a decision is made, allow you to apply the same to similar situations again and again.

Pretty much, yeah. Although the fiction needn't *always* change drastically for *all* rule accommodations.

And maybe it's just an extension of that, rather than its own thing, but, sometimes, it is not the spoon that bends, it is ourselves. Sometimes, it's just, "oh, HP aren't meat points, and the shock of hitting the water wakes you up, so Drown Healing isn't quite so incompatible with the fiction that lives in my head after all?".

Cluedrew
2021-12-01, 08:49 AM
To Quertus: I'll meet you at "D&D books tend to be pulpy" but they are the official works of fiction set in D&D's setting. But also, regardless of how badly they are written, there is still the issue that D&D's rules still don't make sense if you try to map them exactly onto any living world. People just don't notice because they are used to them, not because they are not there.

In short, still waiting for that objective measure that can be used to definitely grade exactly how bad a system matches fiction.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-01, 10:53 AM
To Quertus: I'll meet you at "D&D books tend to be pulpy" but they are the official works of fiction set in D&D's setting. But also, regardless of how badly they are written, there is still the issue that D&D's rules still don't make sense if you try to map them exactly onto any living world. People just don't notice because they are used to them, not because they are not there.

In short, still waiting for that objective measure that can be used to definitely grade exactly how bad a system matches fiction.

The needs of written fiction are different from the needs of a game. I'd find a system that did play like a movie or book to be inherently bad for not recognizing that. That's why the "based on a game" movies and books uniformly fail hard, especially if they lean into the more mechanical elements.

The mechanics of the game should not be treated as the world's physics. They're an abstraction, just like the UI of a FPS or a RTS game is an abstraction. The scale is all wrong (no, a Starcraft marine is not most of the same size as a battlecruiser), the idea of cooldowns and abilities, etc. Game systems are UI layers, there to translate the fiction into something we can use for a game and to translate our commands into the fiction of the world. That's all.

Telok
2021-12-01, 01:47 PM
The mechanics of the game should not be treated as the world's physics. They're an abstraction

So if I write a game that accidentally lets you carry lava around in wood buckets* and toss it as people to set them on fire, thrn despite the fact that many many players carry permanently molten rock in wood buckets its not actually happening in the fiction because the UI is an abstraction?

The players will end up generally treating the rules as the settings physics because the rules dictate the available actions and results. Just as real physics determines what you can do & the results of that the game rules determine what the characters can do and the results. In an idealized abstract game development way your "game rules == conceptual ui != game physics" can be true. But at the table, in play, the game rules effectively define game physics when not directly overriden by house rules.

Do the rules say arrows travel in straight lines and stop at a certain distance? Ever seen players try indirect fire or seeking to shoot bwyond max range? They don't because the rules say they can't. Now, the DM can overrule & homebrew something, but until the DM does that the vast vast majority of players won't try it because the rules say they can't.

Its the reason you see mid/high-level d&d characters jumping off towers & cliffs because its faster than taking the stairs. The rules say they can't die and won't suffer stuff like broken bones.

This is especially true with magic systems. Many games like d&d don't put an actual coherent fiction with limits & laws behind the magic mechanics. Therefore we often don't have an understanding of what the magic can or can't do, what's easy or hard to magic. All we have is spell mechanics, so we use those mechanics as written as though they were the physics of magic because that's all we see as players. If the rules say "magic uses spell slots and characters can only have this list of spells" then unless the DM is making new rules theres no reason to perform a community weather changing ritual or sacrifice for a good harvest because nothing ever happens they aren't the spell slot spells that affect the characters or their world.

So ideally the game mechanics may not intentionally be the game physics. Then some DMs may sometimes override or change rules to implement that ideal. But untill the DM does so the game rules are functionally the game physics for the players because those rules dictate what the characters can attempt and what the out comes are. And that is how the players are going to act untill the DM tells them what the underlying fiction is and that the DM will break, ignore, or change the rules.

*lava in wood buckets in s game with a user interface: easy to do on accident, you just set the "fill bucket" action to work on anything liquid, without further checks, not have containers be affected by their contents every cycle (saves potentially huge amounts of processing time), and don't modify the contents of the container every cycle (more processing time) untill they're removed from the container.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-01, 02:08 PM
You must have more mechanically minded and less fictionally-minded players than I do. 5e D&D makes no rules about what you can carry in a bucket (or similar things). Yet my players still don't do that, because it breaks the fiction. So I don't see that at all. Except from people who come from 3e D&D, for some reason, where it seems that they've been trained out of the "describe what you want to do, DM decides how it resolves, using rules if necessary" idea and are locked into the "there must be a rule that says I can do X and describes exactly how it happens" mode.

The mechanics are there as a scaffolded UI. The set of "mechanically allowed actions" is not the set of actually allowed actions, it's just the ones there are helper functions for. The default is not board game, it's free form. In computer terms, you can always drop to the root console and directly poke things, the UI just provides some helpful interaction tools. Characters aren't actually locked into a grid or taking turns in 6-second intervals, that fireball isn't actually a cube, etc.

That mechanics-first mindset is, in my experience, horrible for play. If I wanted that mindset, I'd play a video game or a board game. TTRPGs have one big advantage over those--the idea that the rules don't...rule. That more is possible than is outlined in the mechanics. That there is a shared fiction in which many things are possible, limited only by table agreement.

Quertus
2021-12-01, 06:19 PM
To Quertus: I'll meet you at "D&D books tend to be pulpy" but they are the official works of fiction set in D&D's setting. But also, regardless of how badly they are written, there is still the issue that D&D's rules still don't make sense if you try to map them exactly onto any living world. People just don't notice because they are used to them, not because they are not there.

In short, still waiting for that objective measure that can be used to definitely grade exactly how bad a system matches fiction.

Lol. Well, we both know how bad I am at communicating; unfortunately, this time, you still can't hear me. So I'm definitely gonna do what I was considering before your post, and just focus on the first claim of the OP, the concept of "immersion", ignoring the other 3 claims for a while (unless I get a solid answer on what the second claim was supposed to be).

Maybe eventually I'll say enough on that side that you'll be able to hear me on the other side?

More importantly, it's the fallacy of four parts to confuse D&D novels with "the fiction layer" or "the fiction that lives in players' heads". Sure, one may influence the other, but they are still different objects, which can and should be evaluated independently, not conflated with or substituted for one another

Tanarii
2021-12-01, 07:00 PM
But this is true of every edition of D&D. 4th edition is just gamy even compared to the other editions. Does that make cross some fundamental line? I don't think so.
3e was just as immersion breaking IMX as 4e, if not more. Both were designed for battlemat play. Both had tons of weird rules edge-cases that make DMs and Players pause and wonder wtf is up with the rules.

It may be the reason I think 3e is potentially more immersion breaking is I knew of far more of the latter for 3e than 4e. OTOH I spent lots of time on the Wizards forums talking about the 3e ones. I didn't do that for 4e. But I did play both extensively, and part of the reason I spent so much time on the forums back then was trying to figure out answers to the rules wtf moments that came up in play. It felt like the 4e rules were far more ... designed ... from the ground up, so they fit together as a whole far better, pulling you out of the game to wonder wtf far less often.

icefractal
2021-12-01, 07:38 PM
I will say, 4E went both more effect-based and more obviously gamist than 3E, and I can see why those are anti-immersive for some people. But IMO it's only a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

And also, some of these complaints are things that apply to lots of games besides 4E. Diagonal rooms act weird on a grid? Yeah, they've always been like that, all the way back to OD&D if you used a grid for it. I mean in 3E RAW, four Halflings can block a 20' wide hallway, so that even an invisible person they're totally unaware of is unable to slip past them unless said spy has the Tumble skill (because Overrun would break invisibility, and the skill is trained-only). Oh, unless the hallway is diagonal to the grid - then it takes five of them.

Also, some things are being taken as more gamist than they really are. Encounter powers do not rely on a metagame definition of "encounter". They are in fact "rest for five minutes to recover them" powers. Same as ToB but with a somewhat longer recovery time.

4E milestones (action point recovery) do work that way, but since action points are either a metagame thing already or represent some kind of "blessing of destiny", then requiring "meaningful" fights to recover them fits reasonably well. I don't like the fact that some magic items recover at milestones though, for that reason.

Something that does rely on OOC logic, and that I do find anti-immersive, is the resting mechanics in 13A. You can only rest after a certain number of encounters, which have to be "real" ones against real foes. If you rest early, the villains make progress against you - independent of how much time has passed IC or anything else IC. To me, quite jarring.

Cluedrew
2021-12-01, 08:56 PM
The needs of written fiction are different from the needs of a game. I'd find a system that did play like a movie or book to be inherently bad for not recognizing that. That's why the "based on a game" movies and books uniformly fail hard, especially if they lean into the more mechanical elements.Have you heard of a comic called The Order of the Stick? It does a pretty good job of doing a "based on a game" story while often explicitly referencing the mechanics of the game throughout. Or how about the All Guardsman Party? This one does hide the mechanics of the game but is an actual campaign log so reuses not just the setting but the story beats as well. So although the medium mismatch is an impediment it is not impossible to overcome and I think


Maybe eventually I'll say enough on that side that you'll be able to hear me on the other side?I think I hear you, and in fact I think I understand you. I just disagree because you are stating "facts" that do not match my experience. I have had the same amount of trouble matching fiction to narrative or gaining immersion or whatever in 4e as other editions of D&D. Actually, there is a misunderstanding because I think that just proves that you are wrong but you said you have a long version that explains it and I am waiting for you to write that. Could you go do that?


3e was just as immersion breaking IMX as 4e, if not more. Both were designed for battlemat play. Both had tons of weird rules edge-cases that make DMs and Players pause and wonder wtf is up with the rules.Agreed. But there are other people who disagree and that is fine. In fact that is my point: It is subjective, it depends on the subject.

Quertus
2021-12-02, 01:10 AM
Something that does rely on OOC logic, and that I do find anti-immersive, is the resting mechanics in 13A. You can only rest after a certain number of encounters, which have to be "real" ones against real foes. If you rest early, the villains make progress against you - independent of how much time has passed IC or anything else IC. To me, quite jarring.

That is an excellent example of a Gamist rule that is sketchy to include in an RPG.


I think I hear you, and in fact I think I understand you. I just disagree because you are stating "facts" that do not match my experience. I have had the same amount of trouble matching fiction to narrative or gaining immersion or whatever in 4e as other editions of D&D. Actually, there is a misunderstanding because I think that just proves that you are wrong but you said you have a long version that explains it and I am waiting for you to write that. Could you go do that?

Agreed. But there are other people who disagree and that is fine. In fact that is my point: It is subjective, it depends on the subject.

The parable of colour

"Red is pretty."

"Not to everyone."

"So that's subjective."

"Yes."

"So colour is subjective."

"No."

"Well, yes, in that we have no idea what anyone else sees."

"Except that, because of language, we do know *something* about what other people see."

"Not enough to know that, when they say 'red', they aren't perceiving what I call 'green'."

"No, but enough to know that they see a spectrum of related colours with similar relationships, similar concepts of shade and texture. What others see may be completely different, yet it still holds the same relationship map."

OK, Quertus, have you completely lost your mind? Well, yes, probably, but that's not exactly anything new. :smalltongue::smallwink:

@Cluedrew, there is one particular thing I want you to see. Think of it as a particular path in a maze.

Any time you hear "subjective", know that that's not a part of what I want to communicate to you. Arbitrary? Sure. Subjective? Right out.

Yes, there are tangents and branches that involve concepts that are subjective. Just like how the entire notion of "pretty" is predicated upon sight and colour, yet that doesn't make such things inherently subjective.

But, again, I plan on starting over at the basics, of what "immersion" means.

See if you can connect the dots that don't involve anything subjective, and see the elephant / legless table / whatever amidst the surrounding, supporting details - some of which, like the notion of "pretty", may be subjective, and therefore not part of what I want you to hear.

Telok
2021-12-02, 04:06 AM
You must have more mechanically minded and less fictionally-minded players than I do. 5e D&D makes no rules about what you can carry in a bucket (or similar things). Yet my players still don't do that, because it breaks the fiction.

Might want to check that post again. I never said anything about lava buckets in d&d or d&d 5e.

My point isn't that you can't imagine any fiction you want. Its that as a practical matter the rules the players have to follow effectively are the physics of the game world because they define what the characters can do and what the results are. You assume that everyone agrees to overrule the books when they want to have a fiction that doesn't fit the rules. But people don't do that, especially people who are less fiction-first by nature or experience/inexperience.

Getting more distance on a bow shot from height doesn't happen in d&d because the rules tell the player they can't. Characters don't try home run slides for a bit of extra distance because the rules tell them they can't. They (in d&d) jump off 80' cliffs because they know the character can't suffer actual injuries like broken legs. And in the end its the rules as played at the table that are the "physics" of the game world. You can say "the square is a circle in the fiction" as much as you want, but if you make the player lay down a square aligned on a grid then thats the actual physics the characters live and die by and its a square.

Again, you may regularly override the rules at your game in matters like certain bow shots or how jumping & movement rules interact in a particular game system. But recognize that the vast majority of games are played basically by the rules. In those games the rule that says max bow shot range is X yards is the physics because nobody shoots bows past X yards. You can change it in your game but no amount of saying that the rules aren't the game world physics changes that for most games not DMed by you they are the effective physics.

kyoryu
2021-12-02, 08:30 AM
Sorry I haven't posted on this in a bit, been crazy busy at home and work. I've got some points I want to respond to :D

Cluedrew
2021-12-02, 08:46 AM
Have you heard of a comic called The Order of the Stick? It does a pretty good job of doing a "based on a game" story while often explicitly referencing the mechanics of the game throughout. Or how about the All Guardsman Party? This one does hide the mechanics of the game but is an actual campaign log so reuses not just the setting but the story beats as well. So although the medium mismatch is an impediment it is not impossible to overcome and I think(Woops, forgot part of this post.) the reason so few works based on games are successful is more complex than that.

Now if you are expecting me to say that there isn't an impediment, no there definitely is. And in fact I would go further and say the needs of a story in a game and the game-play are often at odds with each other. Which is why I think some mismatch between the games mechanics and story is... not quite invadable but if you stop at "good enough" I don't blame you. Although I may disagree with your view on good enough.


@Cluedrew, there is one particular thing I want you to see. Think of it as a particular path in a maze.Yeah, and I don't think you are going to be able to explain it without doing the dedicated thread and full explanation. Plus there is the whole issues of: Please don't add a third meaning for role-playing game/RPG, two is already more than I would like but that is too late due to historical reasons. So yeah, I disagree with your new definition both in that it is a group we can formally define and that the group is role-playing games, but the first part is just waiting on a proper formal definition of the group (and I know you have tried, they are insufficient). Then we just need to come up with a new term for it.

kyoryu
2021-12-02, 10:09 AM
I think there is one interesting idea - is the decision-making based upon information available to the players, or the characters, in a pure sense?

Daily abilities are. For whatever the reason, they're abilities that can be used "actually" once per day. A person in the world could test this, even if it's ludicrously precise. The information needed to make the decision (do I have the ability? Is it a once per day ability? Have I used it today?) is all available to the character.

OTOH, per-session abilities are not. Nor are things like some levels of GURPS Luck that are based on clock time. An ability based on seating position at the table would not be, either. Generally, luck/meta abilities are not - Savage Worlds bennies, for instance, are explicitly granted for non-game related things (making the GM laugh, for instance).

This is a fairly rigorous and objective definition - it also explicitly doesn't get into how realistic something is - just whether or not it relies upon information from outside the "model" of the game.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-02, 10:22 AM
there is still the issue that D&D's rules still don't make sense if you try to map them exactly onto any living world...In short, still waiting for that objective measure that can be used to definitely grade exactly how bad a system matches fiction. Those two things are not the same.
Rules have to balance between verisimilitude/realism and playability. You are establishing a pointless level of perfection as a standard. (And I'll suggest also, an economically unrealistic one). As a data point: Historically based miniatures war games is a place that this really comes out - the balance between playability and realism - and is where D&D came from way back, though the RPG hobby has expanded a lot, thankfully, since then).

5e D&D makes no rules about what you can carry in a bucket (or similar things). Yet my players still don't do that, because it breaks the fiction. So I don't see that at all. The lack of vertically challenged refugees from Oz in our group is nice. :smallsmile:


Characters aren't actually locked into a grid or taking turns in 6-second intervals, that fireball isn't actually a cube, etc. The grid is there as an aid to playability.

That mechanics-first mindset is, in my experience, horrible for play. Also contra to the basic premise of the game. (Particularly the Original game, where the "scaffolding" as you call it seemed to miss a few parts at times). :smalleek: So we filled in the blanks and it worked since the 80% solution was, at that time, sufficient. The bar has since been raised.

Have you heard of a comic called The Order of the Stick? It does a pretty good job of doing a "based on a game" story while often explicitly referencing the mechanics of the game throughout. I disagree. It's pretty good at setting up and delivering jokes, and it grew into (the tale grew in telling, indeed!) a passable graphic novel informed by D&D 3.5 assumptions.

It is subjective, it depends on the subject. Yes. Many times yes.

Cluedrew
2021-12-02, 08:29 PM
Rules have to balance between verisimilitude/realism and playability. You are establishing a pointless level of perfection as a standard.It got split across two posts but that is actually my point: Actually modeling reality exactly is silly and most people don't even try.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-03, 06:55 AM
It got split across two posts but that is actually my point: Actually modeling reality exactly is silly and most people don't even try.

Exactly modeling reality is silly; modeling reality to some degree that allows for teaching or learning something about reality, is done daily at schools all around the world. It was the point of the military wargames that served as important precursors to modern wargames and roleplaying games both. Hobbyists who do things for self-indulgent amusement may frequently neglect that angle, but the world at large doesn't.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-03, 10:52 AM
Exactly modeling reality is silly; modeling reality to some degree that allows for teaching or learning something about reality, is done daily at schools all around the world. It was the point of the military wargames that served as important precursors to modern wargames and roleplaying games both. Hobbyists who do things for self-indulgent amusement may frequently neglect that angle, but the world at large doesn't. Having been involved in no few military war games and exercises at various levels during my career, + many. :smallcool: In major Joint exercises the "white cell" is what they called a group of referees/GMs.

Satinavian
2021-12-03, 11:49 AM
I think there is one interesting idea - is the decision-making based upon information available to the players, or the characters, in a pure sense?

Daily abilities are. For whatever the reason, they're abilities that can be used "actually" once per day. A person in the world could test this, even if it's ludicrously precise. The information needed to make the decision (do I have the ability? Is it a once per day ability? Have I used it today?) is all available to the character.

OTOH, per-session abilities are not. Nor are things like some levels of GURPS Luck that are based on clock time. An ability based on seating position at the table would not be, either. Generally, luck/meta abilities are not - Savage Worlds bennies, for instance, are explicitly granted for non-game related things (making the GM laugh, for instance).

This is a fairly rigorous and objective definition - it also explicitly doesn't get into how realistic something is - just whether or not it relies upon information from outside the "model" of the game.
Yes, that is really important.

I honestly feel horrible having my character act based on information they can't access. A system that regularly asked me to do so is not a system i would want to play.

Quertus
2021-12-07, 11:13 AM
So, let's talk about immersion.

Immersion requires Flow State, which requires Unconscious Competence. Which means you're just doing, without having to consciously think about it.

Immersion in a role-playing game requires immersion / Flow State in all of its components: the setting, the fiction, the character, the GM, the rules.

When you get to a place where two components - say, the rules and the fiction - don't match, you can't be in Flow State for both. Therefore, when there's a mismatch, you must lose immersion, right? Well, no, it's not *quite* that simple.

Some rules are Perfect Rules - they accept the fiction without forcing you out of Flow State. (Let's pretend Drown Healing qualifies, eh? That, whether you believe in it or not, there isn't anything you can do in character that will pull you out of immersion in that fiction.)

Some fictions are Perfect Fictions - they accept the rules, even if they don't match, without forcing you out of Flow State. "Armus is just 'some guy', who wins by (insert Talakeal's desired archetype of 'guts and nerve' or whatever)" is such a Perfect Fiction. Armus plays Combat as War, and gathers every advantage, until "some guy" / "guy at the gym" could succeed. Armus succeeding under those conditions doesn't break Flow, regardless of whether or not Armus actually is just "some guy", and then that really rare time when Armus *doesn't* manage to sufficiently stack the odds, and occasionally wins "through luck and grit" follows action hero / Talakeal Flow, and makes Armus feel even cooler. Whether the rules measure Armus as just "some guy" or not, his story doesn't take you out of immersive flow of his fiction of being "just some guy".

There's plenty of things that aren't realistic. Nobody envisions "reality" working such that you can't rest until you get in enough fights, or things moving at the speed of plot. You may have skill at taking advantage of openings that opponents give you, but that doesn't make sense to be a "daily" power, let alone being able to *choose* when your opponents give you such an opening. Getting damaged hurts, and damaged things don't always work at 100% efficiency. "Guy at the gym" can't bathe in lava.

Of course, applying the logic of reality to an action movie, or to a superhero setting, is just silly. That's not respecting the setting.

However, sometimes, the fiction of the setting itself just doesn't match the rules. Maybe a D&D GM has injured slaves work less efficiently, and complain about the pain, taking all the fun out of whipping them into shape. Maybe Exalted is built for the blindfolded, earplugged Charisma monster to be king of debates by screaming their opinion while being unable to perceive the arguments of others.

When there is a mismatch between two components (not necessarily just "rules" and "fiction"), you simply cannot be in Flow State for both.

So, what can you do?

You can lose immersion. Yeah, that's one option. But it's not the only one.

You can change the rules. See also GMs with pages of house rules (most of which are written by GMs with less concept of what makes sense than the designers, IME).

You can change the fiction. "No, those slaves aren't less efficient for being in pain." "Yes, being blind and deaf is OP, and Helen Keller secretly runs the world."

You can ignore the rules. (Insert catchy example, like, "Bang! You're dead!" "No I'm not!")

You can ignore the fiction.

But wait - "the fiction" is the character's perspective on things. It's what makes the game an RPG. Surely you can't just ignore the fiction in an RPG - and, if you did, you'd have to drop out of immersion, right?

Well, no. Immersion isn't unique to role-playing. One can be immersed in programming, for example.

So you need to be able to reach Flow State in the rules in order to achieve immersion. But, once you have achieved rules Flow State, you can break from role-playing to playing the rules - to playing the game rather than playing the character - without breaking immersion, without even noticing. Like most immersed people do when they roll dice, or jot down some notes.

Immersion - unconscious competence - is defined by being able to do without conscious thought on what you're doing. As explained in the OP, this makes those who are immersed generally less aware. It takes a certain mindset, training and dedication, to be able to keep immersion, yet still notice when the *type* of immersion changes. When you stop role-playing to play the game.

Dropping to the rules to handle action resolution is fine. Role-playing is making decisions for your character. Making the decisions in character, then dropping to the rules to handle action resolution is a fine thing for an RPG to do.

However, it's when you have to drop to the rules *to make decisions*, when the rules you use to make decisions don't match the fiction, that you've moved outside of role-playing game territory.

But it's hard for people to notice, especially when they mistake immersion for role-playing.

-----

Some people aren't bothered by certain levels or types of mismatch. Some people accept that the rules will be mildly "unrealistic" (unversimilitudinal) to make the game easier to play. They accept dealing with spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane.

Others find certain activities less conducive to their immersion: rolling dice, listening to the viking male's deep voice talk in character for their little pixie girl (N)PC, looking at minis vs theater of mind, rolling dice to represent talking, etc.

-----

There's lots of things that can take us out of immersion that aren't really related to role-playing. And one can be immersed without role-playing. With this level of false positives and false negatives, does that mean that immersion is a useless tool for evaluating an RPG?

Well, no. It means that humans are poor sources of evidence - claims of, "I did / did not feel immersed" or "I was / was not role-playing" are suspect at best. Very few individuals are properly trained to make such evaluations meaningfully.

However, the tools one uses to measure and anticipate immersion do a wonderful job of evaluating a game's suitability to be played as an RPG. Simply evaluate the places where the rules and the fiction diverge, the differences between the results of pure Rule Flow State, and pure Fiction Flow State. How often and how far those diverge will tell you how often the game demands that you drop out of role-playing immersion and enter pure rules immersion in order to continue to play the game reasonably, how often the game cannot be played as a role-playing game.

Not how often someone notices they are different, not how often someone cares that they're different, but how often they actually are different, as viewed through the highest level, simplest of lenses. As you would explain it to a 7-year-old: "when you hit people, they get hurt; hurt them enough, they may die."

And it's important that is viewed with the simple purity of a 7-year-old's perspective, unburdened by excessive preconceptions from their "knowledge" of "reality". Important that they be able to accept the inability to fire speculative smoke rather than claiming that the rule is "unrealistic". Able to accept that generations can pass between the invention of the tin can and the can opener. Able to accept that "injury" doesn't cause pain - or, at least, not debilitating pain. Able to accept physics of reality other than just those already living in their head as reasonable fiction with which to determine their character's actions.

It's much more commonly done to imagine the fiction that comes from following the rules: the king being surprised to see a giant turtle sitting down next to him for tea, and the turtle explaining that immunity to surprise is exactly why they're a turtle; Helen Keller ruling the world of Exalted; etc. It's much more rare for people to evaluate the opposite, what happens when you follow the fiction, and look at how the rules grade your performance. But measuring a game from role-playing stance is what's required to measure how suitable a game is to be played from role-playing stance.

Cluedrew
2021-12-07, 08:47 PM
OK, so this might seem woefully basic at this point in the thread but: What is immersion?

I tried looking it up but it is just "to be immersed" or the physical definition. From context I thought it was something like engagement (giving the game attention and interest, interacting with it) but either stronger, like you are submerged in it, or particularly relating to the fiction, don't know why but that seems to be how it is used. Are either of those how other people are using the word here?

Quertus
2021-12-08, 02:06 AM
OK, so this might seem woefully basic at this point in the thread but: What is immersion?

I tried looking it up but it is just "to be immersed" or the physical definition. From context I thought it was something like engagement (giving the game attention and interest, interacting with it) but either stronger, like you are submerged in it, or particularly relating to the fiction, don't know why but that seems to be how it is used. Are either of those how other people are using the word here?

Synonym of "engrossed", perhaps?

Imagine reading a good book, where you're so into it, that space and time and the rest of the world fall away from your conscious mind. You scarcely register the motion of your eyes or turning the page, let alone your physical needs like your growing hunger. Until, suddenly, something snaps you out of it… and you realize you were supposed to be at the airport to pick up your Mom 10 minutes ago!

I mean, I think it's best defined in terms of "Unconscious Competence" and "Flow State", because, like mistaking immersion for role-playing, anything else risks mistaking other states for immersion. Although, even so, one could mistake immersion in slowly translating a book with immersion reading the book. So it's a no-win scenario - humans are just optimized for making errors! :smalltongue:

But, to try to word it as it's own thing, stealing the words from Unconscious Competence and Flow State, "immersion" would be… when your skill / familiarity allows you to make good choices without even thinking about why you are making those choices? EDIT: or, colloquially, when you're "in the groove".

Thus, as the OP pointed out, learning something new forces you out of immersion, forces you to question, "what is a good choice here, and why?".

The noob asking, "what do I roll here? Do I want high or low?"? They're an example of someone for whom Flow State is broken when they move to action resolution.

Which is why I said that immersion requires Flow State in all the relative components - having to stop and think about *any* of the components forces you out of Flow.

Like, if I'm typing this reply, and I have to stop and think, "how do I spell that word?" Or "what's a good example to use here?" Or "was it actually this thread where 'Flow' was defined?" Then I fall out of immersion.

Clear as mud?

Thrudd
2021-12-08, 07:49 PM
I think defining "immersion" depends on the context. In the context of TTRPGs, which is really all that matters here, it means being "immersed" in the fiction, making decisions from the character's pov. The less one needs to think about the rules and mechanics, the more you can pretend you are making the decisions a person would make in the fictional world. Hence, achieving the "flow state" with the system helps achieve this. Of course, some systems require a lot more mastery than others to achieve that state. And some systems have mechanics which lend themselves more to in-character decision making than others. For instance, when you have mechanics that normally create common sense outcomes in a given situation vs one where the mechanics can produce counterintuitive results, or where the mechanics seem to disallow actions that would be reasonable. That problem can be mitigated with a healthy dose of GM fiat, but this isn't a solution everyone is happy with. Some people propose mastering any given game system, ie 4e D&D, and then transposing whatever outcomes the system gives as the "common sense" of the fictional world. Others are saying that some systems (4e), can generate results too nonsensical to accept as a world they can imagine living in, thereby making immersion impossible or very difficult.

Quertus
2021-12-09, 10:06 AM
I think defining "immersion" depends on the context. In the context of TTRPGs, which is really all that matters here, it means being "immersed" in the fiction, making decisions from the character's pov. The less one needs to think about the rules and mechanics, the more you can pretend you are making the decisions a person would make in the fictional world. Hence, achieving the "flow state" with the system helps achieve this. Of course, some systems require a lot more mastery than others to achieve that state. And some systems have mechanics which lend themselves more to in-character decision making than others. For instance, when you have mechanics that normally create common sense outcomes in a given situation vs one where the mechanics can produce counterintuitive results, or where the mechanics seem to disallow actions that would be reasonable. That problem can be mitigated with a healthy dose of GM fiat, but this isn't a solution everyone is happy with. Some people propose mastering any given game system, ie 4e D&D, and then transposing whatever outcomes the system gives as the "common sense" of the fictional world. Others are saying that some systems (4e), can generate results too nonsensical to accept as a world they can imagine living in, thereby making immersion impossible or very difficult.

I find it interesting that you manage to come to the same conclusions from the opposite direction. :smallbiggrin:

Although I would love if "role-playing" were the only type of immersion that occurs when people try to play something as an RPG, part of my point is that those who retain immersion inherently are immersed in non-role-playing activities (most trivially, when they roll dice, make notes, or translate the GM's words / voice / description into their mental image of the world, but also, yes, when they play games that *can't* be played from role-playing stance (at least, not without changing the fiction)).

But, yes, I think that is a very good summary of the rest of the relevant points.

Although… I'd be initiated in hearing more about your "GM fiat" solution. I understand "rule 0 let's the GM make rulings where the rules don't cover a particular scenario", but I feel that you intend noticeably more here.

Easy e
2021-12-09, 11:34 AM
Just for fun, Star Wars uses "Drown Healing". You get into a tank of Bacta (whatever that is) and you get better!

I do not know why I randomly thought of this and decided to add it as relevant, but maybe looking at an IP that actually uses "Drown Healing" helps illustrate how "Drown Healing" is not as ridiculous as it first looks and could be used an not break immersion. <Is that a pun?>

I await the bevy of folks to tell me how wrong I am about how Star Wars Bacta Tanks work.

Thrudd
2021-12-09, 11:38 AM
I find it interesting that you manage to come to the same conclusions from the opposite direction. :smallbiggrin:

Although I would love if "role-playing" were the only type of immersion that occurs when people try to play something as an RPG, part of my point is that those who retain immersion inherently are immersed in non-role-playing activities (most trivially, when they roll dice, make notes, or translate the GM's words / voice / description into their mental image of the world, but also, yes, when they play games that *can't* be played from role-playing stance (at least, not without changing the fiction)).

But, yes, I think that is a very good summary of the rest of the relevant points.

Although… I'd be initiated in hearing more about your "GM fiat" solution. I understand "rule 0 let's the GM make rulings where the rules don't cover a particular scenario", but I feel that you intend noticeably more here.

I wouldn't label the non-roleplaying activities as immersion, in the context of the post and how people usually mean it around here. In-character Immersion is partly (or totally) broken whenever those activities take place- which is why minimizing the time and thought dedicated to them increases the immersion. 100% immersion is never possible, there's always a game component. The best you can do is make a game with rules that will quickly become intuitive, so as little thought can be applied to them during play as possible (if in-character immersion is a goal at all).

By GM fiat, I mean a range of things. Coming up with fictional explanations that attempt to make sense of nonsense results (like, why can I only do this fighter ability once a day? GM says it's actually a magical power that recharges with the sunrise, even though the book describes it as a very skilled sword slash), or making an executive declaration that a specific die result is void and making up a result that makes sense instead, on a case-by-case basis, or even houseruling out egregious examples of nonsense altogether.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-09, 11:55 AM
100% immersion is never possible, there's always a game component. The best you can do is make a game with rules that will quickly become intuitive, so as little thought can be applied to them during play as possible (if in-character immersion is a goal at all). That's a great goal, getting to the 80% solution on that strikes me as success for any game that can do that, given that immersion is something that (like motivation) grows from within. Some people both like it more than others, but also have a willingness to seek it more than others. You can't hard code that into game rules.

Thrudd
2021-12-09, 06:20 PM
I'd like to clarify that by "In-character immersion", I don't mean adopting a personality or doing performative acting. I mean the player is absorbing the GM's descriptions of the game world and making choices from that perspective, it's irrelevant whether they adopt a fictional personality. So another component to immersion, probably even more important than the effect of the game rules, is the ability of the GM to describe the fictional world and make it come alive for the players. You need the rules not to conflict with what the GM is describing.

Cluedrew
2021-12-09, 10:00 PM
I'm going to go with "immersion ~= engaged with the fiction layer" as the definition to use. And honestly, I'm going to set a much lower bar than some other people have (because I think people are overthinking it). All you need for immersion is A) an understanding of what is happening in the fiction layer and B) interest in it. Now B just to get you from you can engage to you are engaging with it. Pretty simple.

Other things might help, but to be able to engage with the fiction layer all you really need is to be able to understand it. The information to process what is going on and make decisions in the fictional layer.

Quertus
2021-12-10, 02:33 AM
I'm going to go with "immersion ~= engaged with the fiction layer" as the definition to use. And honestly, I'm going to set a much lower bar than some other people have (because I think people are overthinking it). All you need for immersion is A) an understanding of what is happening in the fiction layer and B) interest in it. Now B just to get you from you can engage to you are engaging with it. Pretty simple.

Other things might help, but to be able to engage with the fiction layer all you really need is to be able to understand it. The information to process what is going on and make decisions in the fictional layer.

I think you’re under thinking it. That *might* work as an alternate definition of immersion out of context, but in the context of this thread, it clearly falls short.

The whole point of the OP was explaining how, when in Flow State, one is ill-equipped to properly evaluate, and how unfamiliarity, dropping to Conscious Incompetence, has value.

Whereas I’ve trained to break Flow State, to metagame like a bleeping dolphin, in order to be aware of the effects of my (character’s) actions on the fun of the game. And those of others.

So any definition of immersion that doesn’t cover that concept, of being “in the groove”, is clearly not what is under discussion.

Being able to be engaged with the fiction layer through an adequate understanding of and interest in the fiction layer? That could be accomplished with just Conscious Competence.

No, the level of immersion under discussion is a deeper immersion, one where, like breathing or chewing food or walking (for most people most of the time) you no longer need to think about it - and, in fact, thinking about it is kinda weird. Like, just how much force *do* I want to apply at what angle, and just where does my tongue go?

Now, can you play the game at “Conscious Competence” level? Sure. You could play the game at any of the four levels. But as anyone who is familiar with programming (or, really, anything) will tell you, Flow State is better. Being “in the groove” beats consciously thinking “right foot forward, shift weight, we got this”.

When I “forgot” an important detail from Armus’ background, I still roleplayed him consistently with that fact, because his personality had reached Unconscious Competence, had reached Flow State. His behaviors had already been informed by the facts of his backstory, and no longer required conscious thought.

When roleplaying Quertus, I don’t consciously think, “OK, he’s an academia mage, so therefore … in Serini’s lab … with the captive Paladins … he should … where’s my Flow chart of priorities …”

Which is related to why it’s important to know when the GM’s description should be relegated to Flow, and when it requires conscious attention.

I’m rambling,

Point is, if you understand the fiction of chess as “war”, you won’t exactly win the game by killing your opponent. Playing the game requires more than just understanding the fiction. Being in Flow State playing the game may not even require comprehending the fiction at all. Ask yourself what’s required for Flow State in an RPG, not merely in its fiction.

Thrudd
2021-12-10, 04:16 AM
I think you’re under thinking it. That *might* work as an alternate definition of immersion out of context, but in the context of this thread, it clearly falls short.

The whole point of the OP was explaining how, when in Flow State, one is ill-equipped to properly evaluate, and how unfamiliarity, dropping to Conscious Incompetence, has value.

Whereas I’ve trained to break Flow State, to metagame like a bleeping dolphin, in order to be aware of the effects of my (character’s) actions on the fun of the game. And those of others.

So any definition of immersion that doesn’t cover that concept, of being “in the groove”, is clearly not what is under discussion.

Being able to be engaged with the fiction layer through an adequate understanding of and interest in the fiction layer? That could be accomplished with just Conscious Competence.

No, the level of immersion under discussion is a deeper immersion, one where, like breathing or chewing food or walking (for most people most of the time) you no longer need to think about it - and, in fact, thinking about it is kinda weird. Like, just how much force *do* I want to apply at what angle, and just where does my tongue go?

Now, can you play the game at “Conscious Competence” level? Sure. You could play the game at any of the four levels. But as anyone who is familiar with programming (or, really, anything) will tell you, Flow State is better. Being “in the groove” beats consciously thinking “right foot forward, shift weight, we got this”.

When I “forgot” an important detail from Armus’ background, I still roleplayed him consistently with that fact, because his personality had reached Unconscious Competence, had reached Flow State. His behaviors had already been informed by the facts of his backstory, and no longer required conscious thought.

When roleplaying Quertus, I don’t consciously think, “OK, he’s an academia mage, so therefore … in Serini’s lab … with the captive Paladins … he should … where’s my Flow chart of priorities …”

Which is related to why it’s important to know when the GM’s description should be relegated to Flow, and when it requires conscious attention.

I’m rambling,

Point is, if you understand the fiction of chess as “war”, you won’t exactly win the game by killing your opponent. Playing the game requires more than just understanding the fiction. Being in Flow State playing the game may not even require comprehending the fiction at all. Ask yourself what’s required for Flow State in an RPG, not merely in its fiction.

I think the point is, we disagree that what you are saying is actually the same "immersion" we mean in reference to RPGs. I mean immersed mentally in the fictional world, period. What's required for that is good GM descriptions of a consistent and conceivable setting, players paying attention and understanding the setting, and rules that don't contradict the fiction and what the GM is saying. Having mastery of the rules helps with immersion because it means you don't need to keep stopping to look at your character sheet or the book to decide how to adjudicate things.

Good rpg rules should make choosing good game moves and choosing good actions based on the fiction alone nearly identical. Winning the battle in the rpg should require the type of tactics and strategies on your part that would also be effective in a real battle (if the fictional world/genre of the game and all the magic and tech that come with it were real), so you don't need to wonder whether a common-sense maneuver will actually be an effective move in the game. Yes, the game rules might also inform you about what does and doesn't work in the fictional setting, since not everyone actually knows what will and wont be a good move in a real battle, and obviously magic and sci-fi stuff need to be explained. If it's a genre where people take unrealistic amounts of damage, like super heroes, the rules need to tell you that, so your mental image of those characters and their world is accurate. This is why the game design is very important, you want the rules to reflect the reality of the setting as closely as possible, to a playable degree of abstraction. If they don't, it doesn't matter what level of conscious or unconscious competence you have with them- immersion will be lessened.

For the GM, the absolute most important factors in helping the players' immersion is knowing your setting backwards and forwards and being good at concise descriptions. After that, it's system mastery and ability to improvise, so you don't need to hesitate when resolving actions and can keep the game flowing. With system mastery comes the awareness of what parts of the rules will break immersion in the setting, and being able to mitigate or change those rules both on the fly and in formal house rules. Finding enough rules that need fixing, however, should probably suggest you need a different system or an extensive homebrew.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-10, 09:16 AM
I think the point is, we disagree that what you are saying is actually the same "immersion" we mean in reference to RPGs. I mean immersed mentally in the fictional world, period. That's a good way to bound it. It's still dependent on the player's basic willingness to do that. Give me six different players and I'll show you six different levels/cases of immersion tolerance/desire/depth. :smallsmile:

Quertus
2021-12-10, 09:38 AM
I think the point is, we disagree

Good rpg rules should make choosing good game moves and choosing good actions based on the fiction alone nearly identical..

Nope, that's my main point, couldn't agree more. :smallbiggrin:


that what you are saying is actually the same "immersion" we mean in reference to RPGs.


I mean immersed mentally in the fictional world, period.

If you're using a different definition of "immersion" than the one given in the OP, then there's a lot that's not going to make sense to you (like how the OP detailed how "immersed" people are less aware, and how losing immersion can be beneficial). And you'd be objectively wrong to boot, like if this thread was about "and" (meaning "plus"), and I explained "2 and 2 makes 4", but you said that, with your definition of "and", two and two was twenty-two. That alternate definition of "and" that isn't "plus" is simply wrong in this context. It's not the version of the word we're taking about.

So, at best, explaining that you were using a different, inapplicable definition of the term would be followed by, "and that's why we didn't understand what you were saying".

Alternately, it could be followed by, "and that's why this is confusing - can we use another term?". That's valid, and I think "Flow State" works just fine, even if it's less accessible, and, like with, uh, the mathematician in Foundation, it means extra, unnecessary steps to explain things. But @Kyoryu should probably make that determination, of whether just discussing "Flow" actually addresses the intended point of this thread.

Or I could be completely confused, barking up the wrong tree.

So… are you talking about a definition of immersion that hails from Flow State and Unconscious Competence, or one that is not germane to this thread? If the latter, why? If the former, what was the intended point of your post?

Thrudd
2021-12-10, 10:23 AM
I guess the reason to be hung up on the definition of "immersion" in this case is that the thread is titled "a model of immersion". Any time I've ever referred to "immersion" in context of RPGs, on other posts or in life, I meant immersed in the fictional world, the character's pov, only. I think a lot of other people mean that, as well.

Ditching the term altogether, I think we can all agree that achieving mastery with the rules is one thing that helps with staying focused on the character's pov.

The only real disagreement is about how certain types of rules disrupt our suspension of disbelief enough to force a choice between following rules or being in character pov, when you can't picture how your character or the setting could produce the results the rules suggest. OP implies that this problem goes away if you just internalize the rules, any rules, enough. And people's prior expectations of rules get in the way of allowing them to internalize new rule sets. Many of us are disagreeing with that premise- there are, indeed, some types of rules that just don't make sense in the fiction layer for us, and mastering those systems won't help us stay in character pov. You need both rules mastery AND rules that sufficiently mirror the fiction layer. And the GM needs some particular skills.
So- I agree flow state has impact on immersion, but it isn't great enough to overcome some problematic rules. And someone will always disagree about exactly which rules ruin immersion for them.

What was left out of the OP immersion equation is the GM skills component- good GMing aids immersion for players immensely, as much or more than flow state with the rules.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-10, 11:06 AM
You need both rules mastery AND rules that sufficiently mirror the fiction layer. And the GM needs some particular skills.
So- I agree flow state has impact on immersion, but it isn't great enough to overcome some problematic rules. And someone will always disagree about exactly which rules ruin immersion for them.

What was left out of the OP immersion equation is the GM skills component- good GMing aids immersion for players immensely, as much or more than flow state with the rules. Nice and concise, and fits my mental model of the topic. And double down on the italics part, I've seen the difference at the table.

Easy e
2021-12-10, 12:14 PM
GM skills. That is a Great point Thrudd!

Tanarii
2021-12-10, 12:52 PM
OK, so this might seem woefully basic at this point in the thread but: What is immersion?
Immersion is the state of being engrossed in the game. Other than that, opinions vary.

e.g. some people the add a qualifier that its being engrossed in the character or the world or the story or the resolution of declared tasks or the tactical situation. They narrow it down to certain aspects of the game.

Personally I consider two levels of immersion breaking: the big one is non-game distractions. The smaller one is things that make you see it as playing a third-person playing piece instead of you 'being' your character. Which is why I don't agree with the flow-state analysis or resolution rules to be an issue for breaking immersion, as they do neither. But don't allow electronic devices at the table, and consider battlemats to automatically break immersion. It's also one reason why I don't like the player-character separation myth, I think it encourages lower immersion.

Talakeal
2021-12-10, 02:07 PM
.

Nope, that's my main point, couldn't agree more. :smallbiggrin:





If you're using a different definition of "immersion" than the one given in the OP, then there's a lot that's not going to make sense to you (like how the OP detailed how "immersed" people are less aware, and how losing immersion can be beneficial). And you'd be objectively wrong to boot, like if this thread was about "and" (meaning "plus"), and I explained "2 and 2 makes 4", but you said that, with your definition of "and", two and two was twenty-two. That alternate definition of "and" that isn't "plus" is simply wrong in this context. It's not the version of the word we're taking about.

So, at best, explaining that you were using a different, inapplicable definition of the term would be followed by, "and that's why we didn't understand what you were saying".

Alternately, it could be followed by, "and that's why this is confusing - can we use another term?". That's valid, and I think "Flow State" works just fine, even if it's less accessible, and, like with, uh, the mathematician in Foundation, it means extra, unnecessary steps to explain things. But @Kyoryu should probably make that determination, of whether just discussing "Flow" actually addresses the intended point of this thread.

Or I could be completely confused, barking up the wrong tree.

So… are you talking about a definition of immersion that hails from Flow State and Unconscious Competence, or one that is not germane to this thread? If the latter, why? If the former, what was the intended point of your post?

If the OP is using a different definition of immersion than 4E's detractors are, that means this whole thread is nothing but an overgrown strawman.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-10, 02:47 PM
It's also one reason why I don't like the player-character separation myth, I think it encourages lower immersion. Feel similarly.

If the OP is using a different definition of immersion than 4E's detractors are, that means this whole thread is nothing but an overgrown strawman. Hardly. It's a discussion piece, throwing an idea out there and seeing where the holes are. Of note a core hole is the GM role in immersion (see Thrudd's posts) in terms of setting an environment.

Talakeal
2021-12-10, 03:11 PM
Hardly. It's a discussion piece, throwing an idea out there and seeing where the holes are. Of note a core hole is the GM role in immersion (see Thrudd's posts) in terms of setting an environment.

Fair enough, I just wonder how productive a discussion can be if people haven't agreed to a definition of the terms being discussed.

Quertus
2021-12-10, 03:37 PM
I guess the reason to be hung up on the definition of "immersion" in this case is that the thread is titled "a model of immersion". Any time I've ever referred to "immersion" in context of RPGs, on other posts or in life, I meant immersed in the fictional world, the character's pov, only. I think a lot of other people mean that, as well.

Ditching the term altogether, I think we can all agree that achieving mastery with the rules is one thing that helps with staying focused on the character's pov.

The only real disagreement is about how certain types of rules disrupt our suspension of disbelief enough to force a choice between following rules or being in character pov, when you can't picture how your character or the setting could produce the results the rules suggest. OP implies that this problem goes away if you just internalize the rules, any rules, enough. And people's prior expectations of rules get in the way of allowing them to internalize new rule sets. Many of us are disagreeing with that premise- there are, indeed, some types of rules that just don't make sense in the fiction layer for us, and mastering those systems won't help us stay in character pov. You need both rules mastery AND rules that sufficiently mirror the fiction layer. And the GM needs some particular skills.
So- I agree flow state has impact on immersion, but it isn't great enough to overcome some problematic rules. And someone will always disagree about exactly which rules ruin immersion for them.

What was left out of the OP immersion equation is the GM skills component- good GMing aids immersion for players immensely, as much or more than flow state with the rules.

Hmmm… a lot of good stuff, but also stuff that adds unnecessary complexity to address. OK.

Yes, the OP implies that internalizing the rules (for seemingly any arbitrary rules) will allow immersion. My counter-claim is that it allows flow state immersion… but in the game, rather than in the character. And that, by definition, humans are ill equipped to differentiate forms of flow state immersion.

Although I generally agree with your stance, @Thrudd, your claims about GMs changing rules muddies the waters, and means we would have to actually address, "My GM is so skilled, I'm perfectly immersed in my character, and that's how I know that Chess is an RPG". It's one more reason that humans are terrible witnesses. :smallfrown:

Which is why I'm advocating, not looking at play experience (which can be tainted by flow state immersion, and by GM skill), but at the rules, and at the fiction, to evaluate how well a game is *actually* suited to being played as an RPG.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-10, 03:50 PM
Fair enough, I just wonder how productive a discussion can be if people haven't agreed to a definition of the terms being discussed. It can be at least partly productive
(I give way less of a hoot about the definition wrangling than some and I've gotten something out of the thread)
if people choose to engage in good faith rather than get wrapped up in semantic arguments.

Thrudd
2021-12-10, 06:46 PM
Which is why I'm advocating, not looking at play experience (which can be tainted by flow state immersion, and by GM skill), but at the rules, and at the fiction, to evaluate how well a game is *actually* suited to being played as an RPG.

I agree. We can totally evaluate the likelihood of a game's rules to contribute or detract from immersion in the fiction the game itself proposes to emulate. If the game says it's supposed to be dramatic historical fantasy, but the rules create characters that have super human resilience and strength, we can say that it is a bad game for creating believable historical environments.

Another case is a game that claims "this game can create any kind of fantasy world you want!" It is fair to evaluate that claim, and criticize the game's designers for their use of hyperbole or lack of vision regarding the vast variety of possible fantasy genres people might want to emulate.

So we can evaluate specific claims of a game's ability to immerse you in a specific fictional genre. Is player immersion in a fictional genre/setting absolutely necessary for a game to call itself an rpg? I'm not sure. It sure is what I want in an RPG, but any game that emulates a fictional setting in which players take on roles within that setting, I think, could reasonably call itself an rpg, regardless of quality or believability. Yes, there could even be an rpg that uses chess as a resolution mechanic, and we could call it an rpg so long as it establishes a fictional genre and has the players controlling individual people within that world. It probably wouldn't be called "Chess:the RPG", though. Jenga itself isn't an rpg, but it is used as a major component of a game everyone pretty much agrees counts as an RPG. No one names their RPG "Minis and Dice", because the resolution mechanics aren't the whole of the game, even if you spend the majority of session time moving minis around the table and rolling dice.

Can someone take a game that is poor at emulating the fiction it claims to emulate, evaluate what sort of fiction it would actually emulate, and then use it to good effect in a properly tailored setting? Absolutely. Now it comes down to GM skills. How good are you at describing and explaining this setting to the players so they can understand it enough to get immersed? (Of course, no amount of skill can be expected to overcome all personal preferences. Some people just can't take some things seriously enough to suspend disbelief even for a second.)

Cluedrew
2021-12-10, 10:11 PM
The whole point of the OP was explaining how, when in Flow State, one is ill-equipped to properly evaluate, and how unfamiliarity, dropping to Conscious Incompetence, has value.Do you know the saying, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." I think the model in the original post is good for explaining why people found 4e so jarring (or at least one of the factors) I'm not so sure it as good in general.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite been able to put my finger on why which is why I have been silent. Best I got so far is that you can "flow" in and out of dealing with the fiction. Maybe something about a mapping between the fiction and rules. If you are used to it something as absurd as HP* can seem completely natural. But try to take a mapping and change out either the fiction or rules and you will have problems. That's it so far.

* OK, HP is hardly the worst example. But it is far weirder than most people seem to admit.


If the OP is using a different definition of immersion than 4E's detractors are, that means this whole thread is nothing but an overgrown strawman.How so? Besides the fact no 4e detractors or this thread have precisely defined immersion, I think the general idea of a kind of uncanny valley effect does hold. Not that it explains every problem with the system.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-10, 11:12 PM
* OK, HP is hardly the worst example. But it is far weirder than most people seem to andmit. Opinion, not fact. It is fit for purpose. Is it perfectly elegant? Probably not

HP will not break immersion, and in particular, if you have the correct trust environment at the table, when the DM or the Co DM tracks HP and the players never see them during play. I've played a number of D&D games like that (yeah, it was a long time ago) - it's great, but it's a version of old school that, apparently, nobody in this community is familiar with it.

Which is too bad. It led to some of the most immersive exploration and combat scenes I was ever in.

(But that key ingredient, the trust relationship, is necessary for this to work well). What I see too often on these forums is an unspoken assumption that player DM trust is assumed to be not present.

Cluedrew
2021-12-11, 10:38 AM
Opinion, not fact. It is fit for purpose. Is it perfectly elegant? Probably notI think you misunderstand what I meant by "weird", so let me actually try to explain.

HP is not how injury works (in real life or in most fiction). You do not take damage, unhindered, until you collapse. Now multiple injuries are worse than one, and more damage is worse than less, but I don't think you can actually get tough enough to just shrug off a blow that would kill someone else. There is some "pain threshold" stuff but I really don't think it applies to being stabbed in the stomach.

Yet, I completely agree with you that "It is fit for purpose." People know how to map it onto the fiction, even though it is far from a perfect match. Not everyone likes that particular mapping, and it has its weird moments, but over all yeah it works out. And the At-Will, Encounter and Daily system is a similar abstraction, where your ability to do something is mapped on a similar yes/no. But people seem to have more trouble with it, why is that?

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-11, 11:15 AM
But people seem to have more trouble with it, why is that?

I'm coming to the conclusion that it's because it was (relatively) new. HP is long-standing and in just about every video game property and lots of popular culture. And the idea of taking massive hits and keeping fighting with no (apparent at the time) impairment is actually a staple of Action Hero and Super Hero movies and media--the scale changes, but the idea is constant. And that's an idea that ties into HP.

AEDU was a major change for D&D from 3e, and the "who moved my cheese" phenomenon kicked in hard.

Talakeal
2021-12-11, 11:38 AM
I'm coming to the conclusion that it's because it was (relatively) new. HP is long-standing and in just about every video game property and lots of popular culture. And the idea of taking massive hits and keeping fighting with no (apparent at the time) impairment is actually a staple of Action Hero and Super Hero movies and media--the scale changes, but the idea is constant. And that's an idea that ties into HP.

AEDU was a major change for D&D from 3e, and the "who moved my cheese" phenomenon kicked in hard.

I personally found the idea of wizards "forgetting" their spells after casting them to be pretty damn immersion breaking back in the 90s, but can excuse it because "magic". They even changed the fluff in 3E onwards so you aren't forgetting spells, but rather completing a ritual you prepared earlier.

Forgetting martial powers makes no sense whatsoever. It was bad in ToB, it was bad in 4E, and its bad for battle-masters, even though the implementation has changed over the years.

IMO HP works as an abstract, forgetting powers does not. They could build in an exhaustion system that was similar to HP in execution and abstraction and that would probably work well enough to limit martials, although I personally don't really need it from either a fluff or a game balance perspective, but I guess game designers just gotta guy at the gym.

Tanarii
2021-12-11, 12:03 PM
I'm coming to the conclusion that it's because it was (relatively) new. HP is long-standing and in just about every video game property and lots of popular culture. And the idea of taking massive hits and keeping fighting with no (apparent at the time) impairment is actually a staple of Action Hero and Super Hero movies and media--the scale changes, but the idea is constant. And that's an idea that ties into HP.

AEDU was a major change for D&D from 3e, and the "who moved my cheese" phenomenon kicked in hard.
It's sad too, because it was a genuine flash of genius break-through for martial and other formerly "I attack" classes to get AEDU powers.

5e retained a vestige of that. One Fighter subclass (Battlemaster) and one class (Monks) inherited the feeling with their Encounter 'Powers'. And There's a reason EKs/ATs are hugely popular fighter and rogue (respectively) subclasses. They open up new and exciting at-will and daily 'Powers'. Also Paladins and Rangers are generally liked for their daily 'Powers' (although Rangers get bashed for other reasons). Even Barbarians have daily Rage resources. 5e pulled it off, but it just doesn't feel the same. Mainly, all those classes are playable because combat was so simplified that it's lightning fast in comparison, and also designated to work with the fog-of-war / imprecision of Theatre of the Mind, so genuine battlemat style tactical play isn't particularly important.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-11, 12:23 PM
I personally found the idea of wizards "forgetting" their spells after casting them to be pretty damn immersion breaking back in the 90s, but can excuse it because "magic". They even changed the fluff in 3E onwards so you aren't forgetting spells, but rather completing a ritual you prepared earlier.

Forgetting martial powers makes no sense whatsoever. It was bad in ToB, it was bad in 4E, and its bad for battle-masters, even though the implementation has changed over the years.

IMO HP works as an abstract, forgetting powers does not. They could build in an exhaustion system that was similar to HP in execution and abstraction and that would probably work well enough to limit martials, although I personally don't really need it from either a fluff or a game balance perspective, but I guess game designers just gotta guy at the gym.

I think of the forgetting powers thing as more like upgrading powers. Yeah, you don't use the old ones, but that's because they've evolved, pokemon style. Is it a perfect description? No. But it's a decent step.

That, plus just a game convention to not overwhelm the player with options. Your character knows the powers, but your game interface only shows a few of them, for sanity sake. And generally, I found that 4e powers were generally linear upgrades. There's very few times I'd want to use a low-level power when I had a higher level power.

Tanarii
2021-12-11, 01:06 PM
That, plus just a game convention to not overwhelm the player with options. Your character knows the powers, but your game interface only shows a few of them, for sanity sake. And generally, I found that 4e powers were generally linear upgrades. There's very few times I'd want to use a low-level power when I had a higher level power.
Especially if your at-wills get a nice bump to keep them relevant.

13th age did a good job on the idea of proving 'upcasting' for old powers as an alternative to choosing new ones. And obviously 5e did a good job of keeping cantrips relevant. What it fell down on a bit was slot overload of low level spells for full spellcasting casters causing overload. By middle of Tier 2 it is obviously a bit much for typical players to manage IMX.

Quertus
2021-12-11, 04:51 PM
So, we’ve seen how flow state immersion and GM skill can muddy the waters, taint perception. That it’s only a matter of how well the rules and the fiction actually match up, and not players’ experience, that determines how suited to being played as an RPG a game actually is.

So that’s why 4e isn’t an RPG, because the difference between the fiction and the rules makes it particularly unsuited to be an RPG, right? Seems obvious, lots of disconnect, case closed. Right?

Well, at the risk of more claims of over complicating and overthinking things, I’m going to claim that it’s more complicated than that. Fortunately for my appearance of sanity, others have already laid some of the groundwork.

As has already been stated, it’s a matter of GM skill to make coherent the incoherent. Well, just as one could play a game entirely in fiction Flow State, entirely in roleplaying stance, and evaluate how well the rules judge that course of action, one could also evaluate other variables, like how much GM skill it takes to square the circle during the session, or how much one needs to change the fiction or the rules for things to make sense.

If just one simple change, like HP are / aren’t “meat points”, or “6.24 damage” is a typo, makes the game make sense, then it’s… suboptimal… to only consider the game as written, or the fiction as understood.

That is, it’s optional to measure the path of least resistance, the *minimum* distance to coherence.

Thus, my claim isn’t just the (much simpler) “how well do the rules and the fiction match”, but “what is the total effort of the simplest path, evaluating all options, including (but not limited to) changing the rules, changing the fiction, and just dealing with the incoherence of spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane”.

Or we could just measure the simpler, “if you play the fiction, how often and how badly do the rules say you failed?” for a simple estimate of a game’s suitability to be played as an RPG.

Quertus
2021-12-11, 05:43 PM
I think you misunderstand what I meant by "weird", so let me actually try to explain.

HP is not how injury works (in real life or in most fiction). You do not take damage, unhindered, until you collapse. Now multiple injuries are worse than one, and more damage is worse than less, but I don't think you can actually get tough enough to just shrug off a blow that would kill someone else. There is some "pain threshold" stuff but I really don't think it applies to being stabbed in the stomach.

Yet, I completely agree with you that "It is fit for purpose." People know how to map it onto the fiction, even though it is far from a perfect match. Not everyone likes that particular mapping, and it has its weird moments, but over all yeah it works out. And the At-Will, Encounter and Daily system is a similar abstraction, where your ability to do something is mapped on a similar yes/no. But people seem to have more trouble with it, why is that?


I'm coming to the conclusion that it's because it was (relatively) new. HP is long-standing and in just about every video game property and lots of popular culture. And the idea of taking massive hits and keeping fighting with no (apparent at the time) impairment is actually a staple of Action Hero and Super Hero movies and media--the scale changes, but the idea is constant. And that's an idea that ties into HP.

AEDU was a major change for D&D from 3e, and the "who moved my cheese" phenomenon kicked in hard.

Neither HP nor AED really bother me as systems, but i agree that HP are ubiquitous, that every 7-year-old who wasn't raised by wolves (and even most that were) can get the idea with little effort.

Does "injury without disability" match this world? Well, no… and yes. That is, injury (even *fatal* injuries) don't always cause an immediate noticeable decline in performance, so systems that force such really "guy at the gym" characters. Thus, to me, neither matches the world IRL, either is an equally (un)acceptable abstraction.

But it doesn't matter - the question isn't how well it matches this world, but how well it matches the fiction.

And "HP aren't meat points" actually matches the fiction that lives in my head for *this world*, let alone for an action movie, fantasy world, or other genre of fiction, amazingly well.

AED, conceptually, isn't bad. And isn't *entirely* new, either, even if it isn't as ubiquitous as HP. What abilities one chooses to put in what categories, and why, though, can impact how difficult it is to imagine a world in which that makes sense. And it's definitely a "spherical cows" abstraction for many things, which should clearly have much more complex resolution mechanics than just "1/day" or "1/encounter".


I personally found the idea of wizards "forgetting" their spells after casting them to be pretty damn immersion breaking back in the 90s, but can excuse it because "magic". They even changed the fluff in 3E onwards so you aren't forgetting spells, but rather completing a ritual you prepared earlier.

Forgetting martial powers makes no sense whatsoever. It was bad in ToB, it was bad in 4E, and its bad for battle-masters, even though the implementation has changed over the years.

IMO HP works as an abstract, forgetting powers does not. They could build in an exhaustion system that was similar to HP in execution and abstraction and that would probably work well enough to limit martials, although I personally don't really need it from either a fluff or a game balance perspective, but I guess game designers just gotta guy at the gym.

Not gonna lie, "forgetting" your spells when you cast them was disconcerting for me, as well. The "no, you're actually completing a ritual" (or the various Sorcerer / mana-based models) worked much better for my versimilitude - and were, if I'm not more senile than I believe, available in 2e.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-13, 10:42 AM
But people seem to have more trouble with it, why is that? HP is a game tool used to map the fiction to a playable thing and it works well enough. As to your "why is that?" I am not them, whomever they are, so don't ask me. :smallwink:

I personally found the idea of wizards "forgetting" their spells after casting them to be pretty damn immersion breaking back in the 90s, but can excuse it because "magic".
It's a capacitor discharging, not someone reading a book and forgetting what one has read. More Detail Here. (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/12311/22566) But I'll say this for Gary G: he'd have done us all a favor by including 'how this is intended to work' earlier than he did, and using the word 'prepare' rather than memorize since the memorization is only a part of what was involved in the Vancian model. The actual power was stored in the brain, like a charged capacitor or a coiled spring.

Especially if your at-wills get a nice bump to keep them relevant.

13th age did a good job on the idea of proving 'upcasting' for old powers as an alternative to choosing new ones. And obviously 5e did a good job of keeping cantrips relevant. Agree on both, wish our 13th age game had not died to the RL Scheduling monster.

What it fell down on a bit was slot overload of low level spells for full spellcasting casters causing overload. By middle of Tier 2 it is obviously a bit much for typical players to manage IMX. Full spell casters are not easy mode for any player, as my never ending overanalyzing of which spell to pick for my bard attests. (But that's partly on me). What I like about Cleric and Druid is that if I find that a spell I prepare just doesn't get used much, I can try a different one for a while ... same with wizard.

kyoryu
2021-12-13, 11:07 AM
No, I'm talking about in-character immersion.

My claim is that "realism" doesn't matter (I'm using realism in a very broad sense to mean "fidelity to whatever fiction you're imagining."). What matters is that you've internalized the logic of the game sufficiently that it doesn't cause the hitch in you're thinking.

Why? D&D doesn't match any fiction. The only thing D&D matches is itself. And yet people have internalized it and it are immersed with it. And other games, even though they required me to do things that were immersion-breaking, became immersive once I had internalized them.

Note when I say that it doesn't matter, I mean objectively. It might matter for you, and that's fine. There might be some things that are just too much for you to bite off and put away enough to ever internalize them. But those things aren't universal.

(BTW, I'm old school RP, all about immersion, started with Moldvay Basic and 1e, blah blah blah).

Again, my difficulty for counter-arguments: I have been immersed in both Fate and D&D 4e, as well as obviously older games. So any explanation which starts with those games being objectively not RPGs because you objectively can't immerse in them will be rejected. You don't get to tell me my experiences.

(And, no, I'm not telling you your experiences. I'm presenting a different explanation as to why you had them. I accept your experiences as 100% valid).

Note that my solution for "are HP meat points are not?" boils down to "meh, you know how they work, don't sweat it." Or, IOW, come up with narration that makes sense for what the mechanics produce and don't worry about it - because there are things that work really well for "luck + stamina + final hit" and some things that fail horribly with that model, while the "hp = meat" model produces a universe that is unlike anything in any fiction or reality I've seen, while at least being internally consistent.

... which kinda gets back to my point. So long as the mechanics aren't pulling you out, it doesn't matter as far as immersion goes.

At the extreme end of this, I've seen people who had internalized their own system so much that they described real life events in terms of the game mechanics, even when they didn't match.

Cluedrew
2021-12-13, 07:12 PM
Why? D&D doesn't match any fiction. The only thing D&D matches is itself.It matches "we are in an RPG" fiction, if that RPG is D&D. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't even match the lore in the rule-books, although the broad strokes probably work out. But here is another question: Is that a bad thing?

Well considering that many people don't even notice, no. It would be nice if it was an exact match but there are a lot of other design considerations competing with it. For instance, is this game fun to play? Does it invoke the feeling it is supposed to? Is it easy to learn and apply? Those things are worth a bit of a gap between The only systems I can think of that can get a perfect match are actually the abstract ones that really let you fill in the details, and you still have to fill in the details to get a match, they will not do it on their own.

kyoryu
2021-12-13, 07:34 PM
It matches "we are in an RPG" fiction, if that RPG is D&D. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't even match the lore in the rule-books, although the broad strokes probably work out. But here is another question: Is that a bad thing?

Well considering that many people don't even notice, no. It would be nice if it was an exact match but there are a lot of other design considerations competing with it. For instance, is this game fun to play? Does it invoke the feeling it is supposed to? Is it easy to learn and apply? Those things are worth a bit of a gap between The only systems I can think of that can get a perfect match are actually the abstract ones that really let you fill in the details, and you still have to fill in the details to get a match, they will not do it on their own.

No, it's not a bad thing at all.

The point isn't that that makes it bad. And I totally agree with "it's fun". The point is that even though it doesn't really match any fiction that wasn't generated by the ruleset, people still immerse.

My point is that what really matters for immersion is whether or not you've internalized the ruleset. I'm not making any statement about what rules should or should not have.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-14, 08:32 AM
Again, my difficulty for counter-arguments: I have been immersed in both Fate and D&D 4e, as well as obviously older games. So any explanation which starts with those games being objectively not RPGs because you objectively can't immerse in them will be rejected. You don't get to tell me my experiences. :smallsmile:

Note that my solution for "are HP meat points are not?" boils down to "meh, you know how they work, don't sweat it."
Likewise. It meets the 'good enough' standard, not the perfect standard.

At the extreme end of this, I've seen people who had internalized their own system so much that they described real life events in terms of the game mechanics, even when they didn't match. I failed my save versus seduction thanks to the beer volume penalty, and woke up in the coyote scenario ... :smalleek:

The point is that even though it doesn't really match any fiction that wasn't generated by the ruleset, people still immerse.

My point is that what really matters for immersion is whether or not you've internalized the ruleset. I wonder if this is similar to how I became very comfortable with flop shots, lob shots, and chips while playing golf. (For the last 15 years people try to get me on their scrambles as a C or D player, not due to my full shots but due to that element of my short game. Been a while since I played, COVID, but one of the guys in the old fart's league called me last week about a scramble in Februrary ... )
These shots were at one time moments of trepidation - it's easy to chunk or blade them. As I experimented with them, I developed my own technique and now I embrace them because I play them by feel. I don't think about the grip or the stance, I just know which one to do and visualize the distance and and ball path as I step toward the ball and swing a few times before the shot to give my self a tempo.

Is that the kind of immersion you are referring to, or am I out in the deep rough on that one?

kyoryu
2021-12-14, 12:37 PM
:smallsmile:

Likewise. It meets the 'good enough' standard, not the perfect standard.


I wonder if this is similar to how I became very comfortable with flop shots, lob shots, and chips while playing golf. (For the last 15 years people try to get me on their scrambles as a C or D player, not due to my full shots but due to that element of my short game. Been a while since I played, COVID, but one of the guys in the old fart's league called me last week about a scramble in Februrary ... )
These shots were at one time moments of trepidation - it's easy to chunk or blade them. As I experimented with them, I developed my own technique and now I embrace them because I play them by feel. I don't think about the grip or the stance, I just know which one to do and visualize the distance and and ball path as I step toward the ball and swing a few times before the shot to give my self a tempo.

That's Unconscious Competence.


Is that the kind of immersion you are referring to, or am I out in the deep rough on that one?

No, I mean in-character immersion. Where the game and world disappear and you feel one with your character.

You can have a flow state around Chess, but it's not "immersive" in that way. That's not what I'm talking about. I think I'm using immersion pretty much the way most people are using it.

I actually think the other thing is that a game can be more immersive the more time you spend focusing on your character in the fictional world, combined with having the "non-character stuff" internalized sufficiently that it doesn't really break things.

Rolling dice, adding things, etc., doesn't break immersion because we don't really think about it. I don't even think "illogical" things do, so much as you've internalized them so much that you don't notice them (and the key to that is, much like hp, "meh, I won't worry about it." - as long as you focus on the illogic, you'll never internalize it).

But, once you've got it internalized, I do think that the more time you spend in actor stance, the more immersed you can be. The reason why you break (dice, plotting out specific squares, calculating bonuses, spending Fate Points, whatever), seems to matter less than the amount of time. In my experience.

Since I need to hold myself to the same standard, here's how my model explains both Quertus and myself.

For me, at first Fate wasn't immersive, because its flow (use of Fate Points, Compels, other things that weren't processes I was used to). Since I approached it from a "this is new, I want to learn about it" stance, after a time I found it immersive (and surprisingly so). I found it very immersive, because even though it did have a number of ooc breaks (usage of Fate Points, Compels, Concessions), as a system it's light enough that I spent more time in character than in a lot of other, more traditionally-considered-immersive systems. I literally wasn't expecting this result - I went in assuming I was getting a different experience and accepting that.

For Quertus, 4e is not immersive. It breaks his expectations, and so drops him out of Unconscious Competence and his flow state. Because he dislikes these mechanics, and is trying to "play D&D", it's difficult for him to just ignore the contradictions (and, to be clear, that's okay. He's got something he likes, and so has no reason to really make that leap).

Honestly, Fate would have likely been the same for me had I not approached it with a "this is different, don't worry about it breaking expectations" mindset. IOW, I deliberately wanted a new experience, and that's the key to me accepting that the experience was, in fact, new. This should in no way be considered any kind of derogatory statement. I think my experience is pretty unusual, because I don't think most people approach games from a "hey, this is fundamentally different from what I've been doing, and I want to learn about it". Most people want to basically do more of what they already enjoy, and that is totally cool and normal. I'm the weird one.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-14, 12:49 PM
For Quertus, 4e is not immersive. It breaks his expectations, and so drops him out of Unconscious Competence and his flow state. Because he dislikes these mechanics, and is trying to "play D&D", it's difficult for him to just ignore the contradictions (and, to be clear, that's okay. He's got something he likes, and so has no reason to really make that leap).

Honestly, Fate would have likely been the same for me had I not approached it with a "this is different, don't worry about it breaking expectations" mindset. IOW, I deliberately wanted a new experience, and that's the key to me accepting that the experience was, in fact, new. This should in no way be considered any kind of derogatory statement. I think my experience is pretty unusual, because I don't think most people approach games from a "hey, this is fundamentally different from what I've been doing, and I want to learn about it". Most people want to basically do more of what they already enjoy, and that is totally cool and normal. I'm the weird one.

I can't say that I've ever experienced immersion by your definition, but I completely agree with this last part. Especially the latter paragraph. Someone who does not want to adapt to a new system's paradigm won't, no matter how much (objective or to other people) sense it makes or doesn't make. But that's not the system's fault, it's the person's "fault" (better decision).

Willingness and ability to put aside preconceptions and internal models and look at something with fresh eyes and a willingness to take it on its own terms is essential to really fairly evaluating much of anything. But it's really hard to do, especially once your own preferences are well established.

kyoryu
2021-12-14, 02:16 PM
I can't say that I've ever experienced immersion by your definition, but I completely agree with this last part. Especially the latter paragraph. Someone who does not want to adapt to a new system's paradigm won't, no matter how much (objective or to other people) sense it makes or doesn't make. But that's not the system's fault, it's the person's "fault" (better decision).

Willingness and ability to put aside preconceptions and internal models and look at something with fresh eyes and a willingness to take it on its own terms is essential to really fairly evaluating much of anything. But it's really hard to do, especially once your own preferences are well established.

And especially when your expectations are so internalized that you don't think about them consciously.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-14, 02:37 PM
And especially when your expectations are so internalized that you don't think about them consciously.

Yeah. It's one reason I try to be careful and deliberate about setting expectations and defaults especially for new folks--defaults are powerful and sticky. And it's easy to see them as the natural state of the world, instead of one set of many possible choices made somewhere along the way.

kyoryu
2021-12-14, 03:19 PM
Yeah. It's one reason I try to be careful and deliberate about setting expectations and defaults especially for new folks--defaults are powerful and sticky. And it's easy to see them as the natural state of the world, instead of one set of many possible choices made somewhere along the way.

I find the most useful thing is to get super specific about them. Like with concrete examples.

"This is an emergent game. That means it's not written out and I don't know what will happen. Most times, things aren't designed with a specific outcome in mind - so if you're chasing after someone with an artifact? You'll either get it or not. I won't know in advance and I won't care. Either way, the game/story will progress, though likely in a way that is completely different than if the other result occurred. I don't expect you to 'win' everything, and that's fine, the game will continue on."

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-14, 03:23 PM
I find the most useful thing is to get super specific about them. Like with concrete examples.

"This is an emergent game. That means it's not written out and I don't know what will happen. Most times, things aren't designed with a specific outcome in mind - so if you're chasing after someone with an artifact? You'll either get it or not. I won't know in advance and I won't care. Either way, the game/story will progress, though likely in a way that is completely different than if the other result occurred. I don't expect you to 'win' everything, and that's fine, the game will continue on."

Yeah.

I was thinking more specifically (in my case) of identifying the game's defaults vs what are my rulings and why I chose to rule that way. Especially since I run with a lot of new players who often go on to be new DMs. I try to err on the side of explaining my reasoning and the considerations involved. As well as explicitly pointing out the "ok, I'll go with that this time, but don't expect it to happen in the future" cases,

kyoryu
2021-12-14, 03:32 PM
Yeah.

I was thinking more specifically (in my case) of identifying the game's defaults vs what are my rulings and why I chose to rule that way. Especially since I run with a lot of new players who often go on to be new DMs. I try to err on the side of explaining my reasoning and the considerations involved. As well as explicitly pointing out the "ok, I'll go with that this time, but don't expect it to happen in the future" cases,

Another reason I err on the side of over-informing before player actions, per this thread.https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/ip3278/gm_tip_assume_your_players_arent_dumb/

Quertus
2021-12-14, 06:09 PM
Ok, @Kyoryu, I *think* I see what you’re saying. How’s this:

The feeling of immersion does not require all activities to be immersive. Like a video game character under water, whether your immersion can survive appears to be based on time spent on unimmersive activities.

That match what you’re saying so far? It explains why things like “rolling dice” or “jotting down notes” don’t necessarily break immersion, although I feel that there’s a little more to it than that. Then …

Gaining “skill” with various unimmersive activities can reduce the time spent in them, and cause them to no longer break immersion.

Personally, I liked the “Flow State” model better, but I can handle this definition.

*if* I’ve got that right, then

We’re saying the same thing, just focusing on different parts, and therefore saying it differently.

And *if* I’ve got that right, then

I don’t care about (your definition of) immersion per se; that is, whether one is immersed or not is irrelevant to my concerns. My commentary would only be, “something’s suitability to be played as an RPG is based on how often decisions are made via unimmersive mechanics.

Cluedrew
2021-12-14, 07:03 PM
To kyoryu: I love trying new systems. It's half the fun for me. (Actually considering how much actual role-playing I have done recently, more than that.)

I do however take one issue (sort of) with the comment about the more time spent in actor stance the more immersed you are. I think that is too narrow, any stance that has you engaging with the fiction should suffice. Author stance (for the GM) comes to mind. Or... is there observer stance for someone just watching? Maybe this is now getting overly broad but I think the interaction with the fiction is the important bit.

To Quertus: You are only here to try and prove 4e is not a role-playing game? It think you might becoming a bit obsessed. I think this is still the "flow state" model, in fact it is arguing that the flow is actually more important to immersion than rules representing fiction or even being solidly in character.

Quertus
2021-12-15, 03:25 AM
To Quertus: You are only here to try and prove 4e is not a role-playing game? It think you might becoming a bit obsessed. I think this is still the "flow state" model, in fact it is arguing that the flow is actually more important to immersion than rules representing fiction or even being solidly in character.

No and yes and no and yes and no? But not in that order (from your PoV).

I had a much more… impassioned post, that while I think it was generally clearer, I also I think it was more likely to be mistaken as an attack. So let's try this instead:

There's a reason why I started with basic principles, like "role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character" and "there has to be an answer to 'why?' back to foundational events (like when Bruce Wayne's parents were shot)".

The most recent version / explanation of the model of immersion? It's


"I defeat the Dragon, because I've got a whizbang card."

"But what does that mean from your character's PoV?"

"Doesn't matter. But I still feel immersed, so I'm role-playing."

This model of immersion is useful only to help explain why it is human nature to reject the more reasoned path in favor of "feels". It's human failings, writ large.

At the same time, those same human failings are part of why "good enough" is "good enough", part of why we can accept spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane, part of why the perfect is the enemy of the good, part of why HP work just fine. I think. But teasing that apart when starting from this model of immersion looks hard. As you might say, all models are wrong, but some are useful. This model doesn't look useful to me. It seems a poor starting point to get to the Truth, it looks like, as a starting point, it makes things overly difficult. (HP, OTOH? One could simply bolt a "pain" mechanic onto them to make them work for your "immersion", the fiction that lives in your head (well, that and some issues with "meat points" vs not). They're a great starting point, afaict, to reach any level of fidelity I care about or comprehend (which, granted, isn't a high bar - certainly not compared to the bar I set for concepts like "understanding role-playing".))

Although the current model of immersion does make an accessible and compelling visual, of "while the 'air bubbles / holding your breath' icon is displayed, you aren't role-playing; measuring how often this occurs during the decision-making process is the naive metric for a system's suitability to be used as an RPG".

Also, the reason I had only touched on (the predecessor to) "why 4e is not an RPG", and not the rest of the topics, is because I wanted to wait for confirmation that I had correctly understood the model being used before addressing more, just using "why 4e isn't an RPG" as a touchstone, so that @Kyoryu didn't feel like I was tilting at a strawman again.

But, aside from it being funny, and matching my online persona, checking whether the model explains why 4e isn't an RPG is a good test for how easy to use, how applicable, how useful the model is. As you said, only some models are useful. :smallwink:

Cluedrew
2021-12-15, 08:33 AM
I had a much moreÂ… impassioned post, that while I think it was generally clearer, I also I think it was more likely to be mistaken as an attack.Did I cross that line? Sorry about that. But I was thinking about it and the fact that the only place your definition makes a difference is D&D 4e. You have no other examples of things that we think of role-playing games that you don't think we should and no examples at all of things we don't think of as role-playing games that you think we should.

What about Lancer? It was inspired by 4e in that it both a role-playing game and a strategy game. It clamps down on this divide in that the genre changes in combat and out. Now I would definitely call this a role-playing game, because a significant portion of the game is spent there and genre is kind of an inclusive thing. In fact there is a long and storied history of sticking tactical combat mini-games into role-playing games even though it isn't role playing. Neither is tactical dungeon crawling or optimizing character builds. I have kind of strayed from my original point. Which is Lancer has a similar structure to 4e but uses it a lot more deliberately.


"Doesn't matter. But I still feel immersed, so I'm role-playing."Who says this? Are you sure they don't actually mean: "I'm having fun playing a role-playing game and that's good enough."?

Quertus
2021-12-15, 10:07 AM
Did I cross that line? Sorry about that.

What? No, you didn't cross any line (I'd be kinda surprised if you ever did cross a line with me, in fact). No, I was just posting about something I feel *passionately* about, and I feared that the *impassioned* version of my post, while *generally* clearer, carried the risk that people might think I was attacking people that I wasn't (yourself included). Clearer?


But I was thinking about it and the fact that the only place your definition makes a difference is D&D 4e.

Well, I really want to open with "wrong,"; however, before I can do so, I really should make sure that I understand what @kyoryu's definition actually is, no?

Still, if you're right, and the *only* place moving to my definition makes any difference is in whether 4e is an RPG; a) that really lends credence to my supposition that @kyoryu and I are saying the same thing; b) that makes it much more likely that my understanding of the model is correct; c) it really makes 4e's status as an RPG suspect.

But, if @kyoryu doesn't think I've completely missed the mark (again :smallredface:), I'll circle back to this, and to my disagreements with the finer points of the model.


You have no other examples of things that we think of role-playing games that you don't think we should and no examples at all of things we don't think of as role-playing games that you think we should.

Because it's not a question I investigated, except in the context of "4e is not D&D". If "Rifts isn't a game" or "Fate isn't immersive" became such an internet / Playground meme, then I might bother putting similar effort into evaluating those systems. But, frankly, a) I'm lazy; b) I don't care. That is, I care about understanding role-playing; I care about having a metric by which to measure a game's suitability to being played as an RPG in terms of Kai-zen, not in terms of bothering to label things.

I don't care if *you* are a cat person or a dog person; I care that those terms have meaning.

My online persona appreciates that it *happens* to be the case that 4e is the butt of the joke, and I enjoy a running gag.


What about Lancer? It was inspired by 4e in that it both a role-playing game and a strategy game. It clamps down on this divide in that the genre changes in combat and out. Now I would definitely call this a role-playing game, because a significant portion of the game is spent there and genre is kind of an inclusive thing. In fact there is a long and storied history of sticking tactical combat mini-games into role-playing games even though it isn't role playing. Neither is tactical dungeon crawling or optimizing character builds. I have kind of strayed from my original point. Which is Lancer has a similar structure to 4e but uses it a lot more deliberately.

Strongly disagree with the bolded bit.

In combat, Das über drops the über gun. Batman chooses not to pick it up and use it, despite it being the superior tech (earning him a frown/groan and a "?" rating from the party Determinator) because he doesn't use guns, because his parents were killed in front of him at a formative age with a gun.

Role-playing, in combat.

Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character. Combat is filled with decisions. There is every opportunity to make those decisions in character.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, does not make the same decisions in combat that I would in their shoes. Nor does any other character I run. Character. Whereas, when I run a playing piece, I'm just playing a game, and the decisions are those of playing a game, not those of a character.

(EDIT: and, yes, I can learn the system well enough, and be immersed in playing the game. I just strongly differentiate that from playing the character.)


Who says this? Are you sure they don't actually mean: "I'm having fun playing a role-playing game and that's good enough."?

As I read it, it's actually kinda @kyoryu's point, that "who cares, as long as I've learned the system well enough that resolving it doesn't take long enough to drown my immersion".

Which… there's value in that model, to explain and express certain things. But, *to me*, to expressing and explaining the things that I care about, the only value in that model is negative.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-15, 10:31 AM
Another reason I err on the side of over-informing before player actions, per this thread.https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/ip3278/gm_tip_assume_your_players_arent_dumb/

I agree with most of the points made, the one thing I object to is in the very title. Namely, "assume your players aren't dumb" should be "don't assume your players are dumb".

Because empirical information acquirable from whatever game scenario may, in fact, prove your players are dumb, or willfully acting dumb. You just should check rather than assume.

kyoryu
2021-12-15, 11:11 AM
I still get back to this:

There are many circumstances, in D&D of any edition, where the smart thing to do is something that does not make sense in any known universe (fictional or other) except for the universe described by D&D's rules. Evidence of this is in this very thread, where people are saying that "of course" D&D characters are superhuman, despite there being nothing in the text or description of the game/world that would imply that apart from the mechanics.

Again, this doesn't make D&D a bad game in any way. But we're accepting some bits of this, and saying others are intolerable. This just isn't consistent with the difference being objective, and suggests that the difference is, in some way, subjective.

Or, you know, call me a liar for saying I was roleplaying when I played 4e. That's kind of the choice you've got.

Quertus
2021-12-15, 01:27 PM
I still get back to this:

There are many circumstances, in D&D of any edition, where the smart thing to do is something that does not make sense in any known universe (fictional or other) except for the universe described by D&D's rules.

Correct. Which is why the "role-playing" answer, and the Determinator "game" answer differ. If you're role-playing from the fiction first rather than the rules, you aren't playing the game optimally.

It's the measure of that difference that is the measure of a game's suitability to be played as an RPG.

Well, technically, *one* of those measures is what I'm calling the naive metric, and two of those measures factor into the "path of least resistance" metric.


But we're accepting some bits of this, and saying others are intolerable.

Again, correct. You are accepting the bits that don't pull you out of the zone for too long; my definition of role-playing is accepting the bits that occur on *resolution*, rather than *decision making* (regardless of the time lapse).


This just isn't consistent with the difference being objective, and suggests that the difference is, in some way, subjective.

Your choice bits are certainly subjective, in that the time spent, and the determination of whether or not that's "too long", will vary by subject, even though the amount of time and places where it occurs are able to be measured objectively.

My bits of choice, I contend, are objective. You seem to agree that the rules don't match the fiction in places. Do you feel that those places will vary by who is measuring them, or that they are objectively mismatched?

Do you feel that the truth value of "if you hit people, they can get hurt; hurt them enough, and they may die" will differ between us?


For Quertus, 4e is not immersive. It breaks his expectations, and so drops him out of Unconscious Competence and his flow state. Because he dislikes these mechanics, and is trying to "play D&D", it's difficult for him to just ignore the contradictions (and, to be clear, that's okay. He's got something he likes, and so has no reason to really make that leap).

This, OTOH, is just wrong. In many ways.

For me, 4e can be immersive *as a game*.

For me, 4e can be immersive *as a comedic RPG*.

I'm not "trying to 'play D&D'", I'm trying to play "a knight in shining armor" or "Batman" or whatever - I'm trying to play a character, make decisions from that character's PoV.

For me, 4e cannot be immersive *as an RPG*. I cannot make decisions from that character's PoV (without comedic results).

I don't "dislike the mechanics" per se; I do dislike their implementation. That may be what you meant, but I'll clarify just in case.

"Because I dislike (the implementation of) the mechanics" does not compute - it's an effect, not a cause.

I dislike (the implementation of) the mechanics *because* they impact role-playing
constantly
unfixably


*Because* (the implementation of) the mechanics impacts role-playing constantly and unfixably, I cannot and would not simply ignore the contradictions.

Even if my explanation is both incomplete, and touched by a Sith Lord, it better states my stance than your paragraph (although you'll probably suggest a better word than "comedic").

Is my stance clearer now? Do you think we'll ever understand one another's position well enough to stop accidentally breeding strawman likenesses? :smallbiggrin:

Similarly,


Someone who does not want to adapt to a new system's paradigm won't, no matter how much (objective or to other people) sense it makes or doesn't make. But that's not the system's fault, it's the person's "fault" (better decision).

Willingness and ability to put aside preconceptions and internal models and look at something with fresh eyes and a willingness to take it on its own terms is essential to really fairly evaluating much of anything. But it's really hard to do, especially once your own preferences are well established.

The ability to put aside preconceptions is key to my definition of role-playing. The issue is, does the system provide a fiction layer that objectively supports its mechanics?

"You cannot fire speculative smoke, because it's rare and valuable, and your superiors won't let you" does.

"When you hit people, they get hurt. Hurt them enough, and they die." + "Bruce Lee action hero can beat dozens of mooks, one at a time, skillfully reducing otherwise fatal hits to cosmetic wounds" (plus optional "but if he stands there and lets you stab him, he's just as dead as anyone else) does.

4e does not.

You have to be willing to adapt, but the system needs to give you a fiction to adapt to, a fiction that works to first principles, the way "Bruce Wayne doesn't use guns because his parents were shot & killed before his young eyes" does.

If I ask people why Batman doesn't use guns, they can tell me a character reason. If I ask people why a 4e character does something, it's pure rules logic.

If the decision process is based on rules, not roles, it's not an RPG. No matter how much one adapts or immerses.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-15, 02:51 PM
The ability to put aside preconceptions is key to my definition of role-playing. The issue is, does the system provide a fiction layer that objectively supports its mechanics? ...

4e does not.
...

If I ask people why Batman doesn't use guns, they can tell me a character reason. If I ask people why a 4e character does something, it's pure rules logic.

If the decision process is based on rules, not roles, it's not an RPG. No matter how much one adapts or immerses.

I disagree fully about 4e. But those disagreements? Those are subjective considerations. 4e is full of roles and fiction. It's just not fiction you happen to see as such. But that's a problem between you and 4e, not a problem between 4e and the world.

JNAProductions
2021-12-15, 03:45 PM
Quertus, would you consider free-form RPing with occasional dice rolling to adjudicate outcomes an RPG?
Would you consider Mutants and Masterminds an RPG?
Would you consider GURPS an RPG?

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-15, 05:55 PM
To Quertus: You are only here to try and prove 4e is not a role-playing game? It think you might becoming a bit obsessed. I think this is still the "flow state" model, in fact it is arguing that the flow is actually more important to immersion than rules representing fiction or even being solidly in character. Your second sentence hits the nail on the head.

This just isn't consistent with the difference being objective, and suggests that the difference is, in some way, subjective. Immersion is a subjective, not an objective, experience. :smallwink:

Or, you know, call me a liar for saying I was roleplaying when I played 4e. And I seem to recall getting whacked by the mods when something I wrote was construed as a "bad wrong fun" statement ...

But that's a problem between you and 4e, not a problem between 4e and the world. Or it may be as simple as a matter of taste, which leads me to:
de gustibus non disputandum est

Quertus
2021-12-15, 06:03 PM
Quertus, would you consider free-form RPing with occasional dice rolling to adjudicate outcomes an RPG?
Would you consider Mutants and Masterminds an RPG?
Would you consider GURPS an RPG?

No idea. Like I said, I don't really care about the labels. I just got tired of hearing "4e isn't D&D". :smallamused: at least, without supporting evidence

I *can* say, however, that M&M passed the 7-year-old sniff test.

And, earlier, I explained the sniff test, if you're *really* curious what I'd say about either.

-----

Talk of "freeform" does bring up 2 ideas - we'll see if I can explain either coherently.

So… imagine you're playing "your character", whether that's "a knight in shining armor", Batman, Quertus, whoever. But imagine that you don't know the system. Literally. All RPG knowledge has been erased from your mind, and the system is a black box - the GM isn't telling you anything besides "here's what you perceive" and "what do you do".

Is that role-playing? Well, yes.

But then the underlying mechanics can make it *not* role-playing? Is that my claim?

No, not exactly.

*Knowledge* of the rules can make the activity "not role-playing", if you're playing *the rules* rather than the role, playing the game rather than the character.

And *incoherent rules* (like the misconceptions and irrationality that lives inside the heads of most GMs I've played with) can make something "comedic".

Or… imagine if you were playing your character, and the GM was secretly running Fatal as the game engine. 'Nuff said?

Also… imagine the guy who's already read the module, and is having his character act perfectly. Can you picture how you'd feel, when you're feeling your character's Discovery, feeling the novelty and confusion of the scene, and they're taking seemingly inexplicable actions… that happen to turn out in their favor. They place their valuables in the safe Tuesday when you get attacked, but not Wednesday when the safe gets robbed. They search exactly 2 sections of floor, which *happen* to contain the one trap in the dungeon, and a secret cache of loot. *That's* what "playing the game" looks like from a role-playing perspective. It's inexplicable actions that *somehow* work out.

JNAProductions
2021-12-15, 06:37 PM
And you honestly think 4E pushes beyond what anyone can reasonably say is immersive, yet 3.P does not?

That stretches my boundary of belief.

Edit: also, that post was entirely system agnostic. You can just as easily read a module in 4th as you can in 3rd.

Quertus
2021-12-15, 07:16 PM
And you honestly think 4E pushes beyond what anyone can reasonably say is immersive, yet 3.P does not?

That stretches my boundary of belief.

Depends on the definition of "immersive".

I have experience with 7-year-olds making reasonable, in-character decisions with 3e.

4e requires you to play the rules.

If your definition of "immersion" has nothing to do with role-playing? Obviously both can be immersive.

If your definition of "immersive" has a "playing the rules" timer before your immersion drowns? Then it's subjective, and either one could be immersive or not, depending on the player.

If your definition of "immersive" is based on frequency (or frequency and degree) to which remaining in character produces incoherent results / how often you have to drop role-playing immersion and enter rules mode to make reasonable and expected decisions? Then 4e's daily muggle powers, "please don't help!" skill challenges, fictionless marking, "everyman abilities" masquerading as class features or monster abilities, and everything @Telok has commented on? Yeah, they're a bit beyond what anyone - even the vaunted Playground - has ever been able to explain to a 7-year-old *as character perspective*, rather than as rules. And also well beyond what 3e asks.

Feel free to outperform your contemporaries, and hand me "7-year-old executable code" for in character perspective that allows one to play 4e competently without triggering the "drowning" meter (during the "decision making" phase, I don't care about "during resolution").

But, afaict, 4e neither ships with such code, nor has such code ever been published.

With the opposing opinion,

4e is full of roles and fiction. It's just not fiction you happen to see as such. But that's a problem between you and 4e, not a problem between 4e and the world.@PhoenixPhyre either misunderstood me, or seems to think that 4e shipped with fiction that satisfies my request. So this might be really easy.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-15, 08:11 PM
With the opposing opinion,
@PhoenixPhyre either misunderstood me, or seems to think that 4e shipped with fiction that satisfies my request. So this might be really easy.

My whole point is that nothing can satisfy someone who has chosen dissatisfaction. Satisfying your request is not an objective thing at all. It's purely a choice you make that no one can unmake except yourself.

And to be a bit more clear, I have no idea if 4e shipped with fiction that satisfies your request...because I have no access to your satisfaction routine. It certainly shipped (yes, even in the PHB alone) with fiction that satisfies my definitions, but my definitions (all I have access to) are not necessarily like anyone else's. Because fundamentally, "can I get immersed in X" is a subjective matter. It's asymptotically isomorphic to "do I like system X and its associated fiction (etc)" given enough play time.

I do know that you've made a very fixed point of saying you don't like it, and repeated that same thing in every thread that even nominally touches on it. At extreme length[1]. Which tells me that nothing anyone says will change your mind and that everyone should just mentally (or literally) asterisk that point and talk about something more productive.

[1] not that I'm any stranger to verbosity, mind.

Cluedrew
2021-12-15, 08:45 PM
Still, if you're right, and the *only* place moving to my definition makes any difference is in whether 4e is an RPG; a) that really lends credence to my supposition that @kyoryu and I are saying the same thing; b) that makes it much more likely that my understanding of the model is correct; c) it really makes 4e's status as an RPG suspect.Well kyoryu will have to answer for a) and b) but I can tell you than no, c) is not true. The only thing it calls into question is how biased you are about 4e. And the fact you state below that you don't care about applying the question to other system is further evidence that this is about 4e in the end and not about role-playing games. So no, D&D's status as an role-playing game still isn't in question. Plus you know, I've though about it and figured out reasons why it is.


Strongly disagree with the bolded bit.Go back earlier in that sentence. I said "tactical combat mini-game" is not role-playing (you know, a mode of play separate from the game's main loop that exists to test the player's tactical ability). This is different from a combat scene in a role-playing context. A fact that has escaped many people who cry "you can role-play during combat" but I will not go into further detail about that.


Feel free to outperform your contemporaries, and hand me "7-year-old executable code" for in character perspective that allows one to play 4e competently without triggering the "drowning" meter (during the "decision making" phase, I don't care about "during resolution").But our argument is we can't. It is not an executable, it is a piece of hardware. Well wetware, the player. It is a subjective issue. To my understanding, you are the only one there is an objective measure that everyone can use. By the way, I still don't know how to use your measure.

JNAProductions
2021-12-15, 08:53 PM
I have a brutal, probably evil PC.
20’ away, there is an enemy Cleric, who can heal injured people.
In the middle of us is an injured and dying ally of the Cleric.

My goal is to defeat the Cleric-to do so, I will charge him, and along the way, kick the dying foe’s skull in.

I cannot do that in 3.5, without some major cheese. A big standard Fighter, Barbarian, or other martial cannot manage that. Even an ubercharger cannot manage that, to my knowledge-they could do something else, of course, but not that.

Why doesn’t that break your immersion?

Quertus
2021-12-15, 10:20 PM
I do know that you've made a very fixed point of saying you don't like it, and repeated that same thing in every thread that even nominally touches on it. At extreme length[1]. Which tells me that nothing anyone says will change your mind and that everyone should just mentally (or literally) asterisk that point and talk about something more productive.

[1] not that I'm any stranger to verbosity, mind.

(Scarab's voice) "if that is all that you have learned of me in our time together, then you have learned nothing."

I'm kinda the patron saint of role-playing. I was taught that metagaming was Evil to role-playing's Good. Yet I've learned to constantly metagame, to evaluate the fun of others, and that My Guy, "it's what my character would do" shouldn't be the path to sainthood.

I hate Railroading. Yet I've come to accept that some people prefer more linear games, and that is the *forced* portion, the *without buy-in*, not the library nature itself that's the issue. My party history will attest to my changes attitude regarding linear storylines upon contact with the Playground.

I much prefer to be wrong. It gives me the opportunity to learn and grow.

If you really think that my feelings about 4e makes my stance immutable, you don't know me at all.


Go back earlier in that sentence. I said "tactical combat mini-game" is not role-playing (you know, a mode of play separate from the game's main loop that exists to test the player's tactical ability). This is different from a combat scene in a role-playing context. A fact that has escaped many people who cry "you can role-play during combat" but I will not go into further detail about that.

Pity. In addition to being one of the most interesting bits of this thread IMO, I'm thinking I'm not understanding you at all here.


I have a brutal, probably evil PC.
20’ away, there is an enemy Cleric, who can heal injured people.
In the middle of us is an injured and dying ally of the Cleric.

My goal is to defeat the Cleric-to do so, I will charge him, and along the way, kick the dying foe’s skull in.

I cannot do that in 3.5, without some major cheese. A big standard Fighter, Barbarian, or other martial cannot manage that. Even an ubercharger cannot manage that, to my knowledge-they could do something else, of course, but not that.

Why doesn’t that break your immersion?

A character of mine met a man at the Inn Between. He had been driven half-mad by realizing that, if you went halfway to your destination, then halfway again, you were but a quarter of the original distance away. Go halfway again, and now but one eighth remained. But, while you would always grow closer, you could never actually reach your destination.

Several children have drawn comics where one character easily - almost effortlessly - defeats another, because the second character never takes any actions.

The answer to both of these is "Time" - and, for the latter, something along the lines of "taking turns" (heh).

I've… done something surprisingly close to what you described, and, having two left feet, I full well appreciate the time that action costs.

Saying "I kick the downed guy while I charge towards the Cleric" is not unlike, "I do both those after I finish my crossword, and annotate the two hour documentary of that crossword" - it's not giving the other actors a turn.

Even "I kick the downed guy while I charge towards the Cleric"? If the GM responds, "as you look up from the mangled pulp that was once McStabby, you find yourself staring into the barrel of Father Gunslinger's pistol. The familiar flash and crack precede a sharp pain in your shoulder…", that doesn't break immersion. Depending on the system, that could happen. Depending on the exact setup in that reality, that could happen.

More generally, a resolution of any combination of [he's dead, he's not dead] + [resolve charge, Cleric acts] does not break my immersion. Any of those could happen. Heck, even "you miss the kick, trample him anyway, but trip and fall prone" or "you slip in the target's blood and skid prone at the Cleric's feet" could be a valid result of that action

Any one of those could make me call foul on following the rules of game, depending upon the system. But that's a separate issue from losing immersion for results not following from actions.

But even *that* isn't as interesting to me as the *decision* phase. That was perfectly reasonable character logic, to kick the target on the way to the Cleric, as would charging the Cleric directly be. The question of whether to finish off the dieing man can be answered either way. Whereas "because I have a whizbang card and two Fate Points, I gain Trample until end of turn, and kill the downed man en passant as I Charge the Cleric", with no in-character reasoning? When the "holding your breath" icon is displayed during the decision-making process? That's what definitionally forces me out of role-playing stance into playing the game.

And, again, role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character. It's fine for action resolution, for "writing down mana spent" to access the game layer, and take me out of immersion. It's fine for writing a 20-page "session summary" or for character creation to take hours, and not be immersive.

It's not fine in an RPG to have to drop to the rules layer in order to make a reasonable decision. Not optimal, reasonable.

"Clerics can heal. Him healing his dieing ally would be disadvantageous. If I just charge the Cleric, can I prevent him from healing the dieing guy?"
I've turned ancient dragons into a thin red mist in a single charge; yeah, the Cleric being dead should stop him from healing his ally.
I could miss, and it's not worth the risk.
I'll let the Force decide his fate.
I'll be between the Cleric and the dieing man; previous experience tells me I can / cannot keep myself between them.
(in this world) healing can be done at range - only death of one of them will prevent the Cleric healing his ally.

Any of those could be valid in character thoughts. Those mechanics have corresponding in character fiction. Or (presumably non-mechanical) thoughts like, "it's a risk either way, but I hate ____ more" could come into play.

From what I understand of you setting the scene, any of those seem possible to me. That's why none of those results will inherently break my immersion.

Violate the rules (whatever they may be), sure, then those results can break immersion.

Force me to access the rules rather than the fiction to choose my action in the first place, and that not only breaks immersion, it breaks what being an RPG means.

Does any of that make any sense?

JNAProductions
2021-12-15, 11:16 PM
Does it make sense?

Yes. It sounds like you’re making excuses for why 3rd rules don’t break immersion for you, but 4th does.

There is nothing wrong with loving 3rd edition. There’s nothing wrong with disliking 4th. If all you had said was “3rd is my favorite system, and I cannot get ANY enjoyment from 4th,” there wouldn’t be such pushback. But you phrase it as an objective truth that 4th doesn’t even count as an RPG. That’s wrong.

Tanarii
2021-12-15, 11:27 PM
Why doesn’t that break your immersion?
No, because that neither is an outside game distraction nor does it make me view my character as a game piece.

But nor would it break my sense of verisimilitude, which is a different thing from immersion. That's where the rules don't line up with something you'd expect from 'reality', and is counterbalanced by suspension of disbelief. Because I would not automatically expect that stopping a charge long enough to kick in a dying foe's skull is necessarily something that could be done in the time frame the game uses for one round.

OTOH firing a heavy crossbow every 6 seconds does hurt my sense of verisimilitude to some degree. That's something I've learned to tune out by just accepting it as the rules and heroic fantasy, suspending my disbelief.

JNAProductions
2021-12-15, 11:30 PM
No, because that neither is an outside game distraction nor does it make me view my character as a game piece.

But nor would it break my sense of verisimilitude, which is a different thing from immersion. That's where the rules don't line up with something you'd expect from 'reality', and is counterbalanced by suspension of disbelief. Because I would not automatically expect that stopping a charge long enough to kick in a dying foe's skull is necessarily something that could be done in the time frame the game uses for one round.

OTOH firing a heavy crossbow every 6 seconds does hurt my sense of verisimilitude to some degree. That's something I've learned to tune out by just accepting it as the rules and heroic fantasy, suspending my disbelief.

It seems contradictory that someone-say, a Monk-can move 120’ and cave a man’s skull in with his bare hands in six seconds, but cannot strike two people within 20’, one of whom is dying and is directly in the path of getting to the second guy, in that same period.

The move action being separate is a huge bit of weirdness-something 4th has, but 5th does not.

Quertus
2021-12-16, 07:26 AM
Does it make sense?

Yes. It sounds like you’re making excuses for why 3rd rules don’t break immersion for you, but 4th does.

There is nothing wrong with loving 3rd edition. There’s nothing wrong with disliking 4th. If all you had said was “3rd is my favorite system, and I cannot get ANY enjoyment from 4th,” there wouldn’t be such pushback. But you phrase it as an objective truth that 4th doesn’t even count as an RPG. That’s wrong.

Loving 3e?

If all the editions of all games were personified, their spirits incarnated into (demi)humanoid form, and I could kill just one of them? No, it wouldn't be Fatal, sorry. I know that should be everyone's moral imperative, but I just don't hate Fatal enough for it to top the list, and I'd follow my passions here. GURPS would be second on my list, for all the lies that were spread in its name about what it being "universal" meant. But topping my list would be 3e D&D.

3e was the Death of Joy in the name of "balance". 3e was the Death of the concept of the D&D Wizard. 3e was the Death of muggle superiority. 3e was the Death of custom content.

3e was the birth of "the build", and needing to plan for your future. 3e was the birth of the slog of creating content. And, although 3e can't help it, 3e was the birth of internet D&D discussions and the death of people understanding just how clueless those not standing on the backs of Giants can be.

And the litany of sins continues beyond that short list.

If there's one game I truly hate, and would balefire from existence for the damage it did, it's 3e.

Oh, 3e had plenty of good things, too: better systems, clearer writing, more base classes, rules for gaining unique powers (feats, prestige classes) later in the game, and so much more.

But that doesn't excuse the harm it did.

No, I don't love 3e. It's the system I would murder, or strangle in its crib, were that an option.

So the last thing I would be is an apologist for 3e out of love. My *feelings* for it run quite strongly in the opposite direction. I just don't normally let my feelings influence my decisions. If the best doctor in town got drunk and ran over my dog, I might hate him personally, but I'd still respect him professionally, still send my mom there if she asked for a recommendation.

As a game, 3e's not bad. And at least it's an RPG.


No, because that neither is an outside game distraction nor does it make me view my character as a game piece.

But nor would it break my sense of verisimilitude, which is a different thing from immersion. That's where the rules don't line up with something you'd expect from 'reality', and is counterbalanced by suspension of disbelief. Because I would not automatically expect that stopping a charge long enough to kick in a dying foe's skull is necessarily something that could be done in the time frame the game uses for one round.

OTOH firing a heavy crossbow every 6 seconds does hurt my sense of verisimilitude to some degree. That's something I've learned to tune out by just accepting it as the rules and heroic fantasy, suspending my disbelief.

Interesting. Much better worded than my response. Kudos!

So… your immersion… is only broken by… things pulling you out of the game, or things forcing you to view the game as a game rather than… as its own reality, maybe? Have I got that right? If so, do you subscribe to *any* of the definitions of "immersion" that have been used in this thread?

Your sense of versimilitude… is counterbalanced by your suspension of disbelief. Does that mechanically work like my "holding your breath" model, or would you describe it differently?


It seems contradictory that someone-say, a Monk-can move 120’ and cave a man’s skull in with his bare hands in six seconds, but cannot strike two people within 20’, one of whom is dying and is directly in the path of getting to the second guy, in that same period.

The move action being separate is a huge bit of weirdness-something 4th has, but 5th does not.

Ah, now *that* example is a bit different than the scene you set earlier. Yes, I expect Action Hero Bruce Lee can hit someone dozens of times, *or* wade a sea of mooks, hitting and moving, in the same timeframe.

But that's different from a brutal warrior (viewed by me, inserting my own failings, "guy at the gym"ing the *floor* of my expectations for his capacities) kicking someone while *charging* (both a game keyword, and something I have nonzero experience with).

So, yes, unlike the original scene you set, das Uber monk being unable to land a single blow on a target of opportunity en route to another target? Still has the "takes time" Truth to it, but tickles at the fidelity of the model to the fiction, in a way that "brutal warrior kicking someone while charging" does not.

Still well within the realm of "spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane" level of abstraction I've bought into to play a game, however.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-16, 08:57 AM
I still get back to this:

There are many circumstances, in D&D of any edition, where the smart thing to do is something that does not make sense in any known universe (fictional or other) except for the universe described by D&D's rules.

You can go more general than that: all fictional universes with non-overlapping assumptions will have different "smart" solutions from each other.

Devils_Advocate
2021-12-16, 06:00 PM
4e's daily muggle powers
I recall that others already remarked that it's not necessarily more realistic for someone to be able to perform a physical action multiple times per day. It really depends on the nature of the activity and how strenuous it is.


"please don't help!" skill challenges
It's entirely possible to mess something up through a misguided attempt at assistance. (I was going to link the OotS strip where Durkon learns this lesson from his mother, but on reflection it doesn't seem like that would be worth the time it would take to find it.)


"everyman abilities" masquerading as class features or monster abilities
Do you mean only specific characters and creatures being "given the ability to do" things that it sees like others ought to also have a chance of accomplishing? Like, say... Battle Master Fighter maneuvers in D&D 5E? Or Thief skills in 1E and 2E? Or, heck, Sneak Attack?


Feel free to outperform your contemporaries, and hand me "7-year-old executable code" for in character perspective that allows one to play 4e competently without triggering the "drowning" meter (during the "decision making" phase, I don't care about "during resolution").
In another thread, you touched on the idea of accepting that things in the game world work the way that the rules say they do, and if the results are unfamiliar, then those differences are just part of the setting. Why not just apply that here? The important thing is that characters understand how marking works, not that they have any understanding of why it works that way. Lighting is a real-world phenomenon that I can only imagine seemed pretty arbitrary before people understood stuff like electromagnetism. We encounter unexplained phenomena all the time, and we assume that those effects have causes that we don't know about.

If the issue is that arbitrary magic stuff is less acceptable than arbitrary non-magic stuff, then seriously just go ahead and call everything magic. Not sure why just using the word "magic" should make anything more believable, but that honestly looks more like an opportunity than a problem if believability is the goal.

Cluedrew
2021-12-16, 08:23 PM
Pity. In addition to being one of the most interesting bits of this thread IMO, I'm thinking I'm not understanding you at all here.Do you have any questions? I could try saying it again at half speed double word count but I'm not really sure what the issue is.

I'm just going to leave everything else.

Quertus
2021-12-17, 09:07 AM
I recall that others already remarked that it's not necessarily more realistic for someone to be able to perform a physical action multiple times per day. It really depends on the nature of the activity and how strenuous it is.

Agreed. Note that good examples of IRL muggle dailies were absent from the conversations until just recently. Note also that my tune changed to acknowledge my acceptance of that fact, that only *certain* muggle dailies required mental pretzels.

The brevity of the entry was not indicative of backsliding, merely intended as a call to the original topic header.


In another thread, you touched on the idea of accepting that things in the game world work the way that the rules say they do, and if the results are unfamiliar, then those differences are just part of the setting. Why not just apply that here? The important thing is that characters understand how marking works, not that they have any understanding of why it works that way. Lighting Lightning is a real-world phenomenon that I can only imagine seemed pretty arbitrary before people understood stuff like electromagnetism. We encounter unexplained phenomena all the time, and we assume that those effects have causes that we don't know about.

If the issue is that arbitrary magic stuff is less more acceptable than arbitrary non-magic stuff, then seriously just go ahead and call everything magic. Not sure why just using the word "magic" should make anything more believable, but that honestly looks more like an opportunity than a problem if believability is the goal.

FTFY?

This is very intelligent question and commentary.

Hmmm… you're right, at first glance, one would expect that "it's inexplicable, and just accepted as fact" would work. I see exactly where you're coming from.

My response is… complicated. There's a risk of getting lost in chopped up elephant bits. But here goes.

At its simplest, it's that there's friction between "like this world, unless noted otherwise" and "secretly completely unlike this world". My *first* foray into this huge topic was, as was mentioned in the thread you referenced, predicated upon "HP are a 'noted otherwise' exception". Yet even something as ubiquitous and understandable to 7-year-olds as HP can make intelligent, adult seasoned gamers lose their immersion. Wow, right? Yeah, these changes *aren't* things to be taken lightly.

Similarly, people freak out when I talk about the idea of my characters being "not from around here", just cannot grok the idea that the game could possibly be about anything other than my characters and places not here under such circumstances.

How, then, could a game where lightning is simply known by first principles, rather than being understood as being the logical consequences of electromagnetic forces, possibly *not* be about researching how lightning really works? Especially when it's clear that we have tools to manipulate this unknown force, from Call Lightning to Lightning Bolt to Control Weather.

Doesn't it boggle the mind that anyone could ever play a game of D&D where Lightning just exists by first principles, as a difference from this reality, and it *not* be the focus of the campaign to investigate Lightning? By the logic above, shouldn't it make sense to *only* make such a change if you intend it to be the *focus* of the campaign?

...

Sorry, that line of thought might not be very accessible. Let me try another.

Suppose I want to play "a knight in shining armor". What is the purpose of the rules?

The rules are there to make promises, to calibrate expectations. Sure. But they're also there to facilitate gameplay.

HP are so much easier / simpler than reality. They're an abstraction of wounds (or wounds and stamina and skill and luck and…) that is much more accessible, and much easier to grok, than going through med school to play your knight, and understand exactly what being hit by a Dragon's tail means.

Changing Lightning to "first principles", however, has no inherent value (outside Discovery, which was covered above). It doesn't make the game easier to play. It's not "spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane".

When it's something that the Knight is expected to know, it's one more thing you need to learn in order to play your "knight in shining armor". It adds to the distance between "I'm roleplaying a knight in shining armor" and "I'm role-playing a knight in shining armor in 4e".

That distance, that learning curve, is… not identical to, but… related to? Part of? I think I'm going with, "its shadow is part of"… anyway, that learning curve has something to do with the metric I'm calling a game's suitability to be played as an RPG.

Because, when you cannot conceptualize the character independent of the setting, it's an issue. There's terms in software development for this kind of "bad touch" interconnectivity that, maybe after my fever breaks, I'll remember.

I've seen people roleplay "King Arthur" (I almost left the autocorrect "King Author") in systems with HP, systems with wound tracks, systems with little beyond "alive or dead". In systems with group initiative, systems with individual initiative, systems with simultaneous initiative, systems with "time tracks". The idea of "king Arthur" somehow, magically, seems able to transcend the underlying system.

The extent to which a game requires my "knight in shining armor" concept to remember and adapt to the peculiarities of the system is part of how unsuited to being a RPG that system is.

...

Or how about from this angle?

IRL, there's people who do things by mindless rote, and people who actually *understand* things.

Which category do you picture the true masters of the art belonging to? Miyamoto Musashi, Sherlock Holmes, Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named), Batman? Do they feel like people who are reading off the scripted routine that was taught them, or like they do what they do because they have an understanding of the how and why?

How do you picture replacing the low-level physics calls of this world with high-level "just because" calls in theirs impacts such character concepts?

...

Or… I've got a more complicated PoV, that involves explaining things to a 7-year-old, and the difference between what I've dubbed the "naive" and "simplest path" metrics of a game's suitability to be played as an RPG.

But does any of this "beating around the bush" help you see where the bush might be?


Do you have any questions? I could try saying it again at half speed double word count but I'm not really sure what the issue is.

I'm just going to leave everything else.

Hmmm…

What about Lancer? It was inspired by 4e in that it both a role-playing game and a strategy game. It clamps down on this divide in that the genre changes in combat and out. Now I would definitely call this a role-playing game, because a significant portion of the game is spent there and genre is kind of an inclusive thing. In fact there is a long and storied history of sticking tactical combat mini-games into role-playing games even though it isn't role playing. Neither is tactical dungeon crawling or optimizing character builds. I have kind of strayed from my original point. Which is Lancer has a similar structure to 4e but uses it a lot more deliberately.


Strongly disagree with the bolded bit.

In combat, Das über drops the über gun. Batman chooses not to pick it up and use it, despite it being the superior tech (earning him a frown/groan and a "?" rating from the party Determinator) because he doesn't use guns, because his parents were killed in front of him at a formative age with a gun.

Role-playing, in combat.

Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character. Combat is filled with decisions. There is every opportunity to make those decisions in character.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, does not make the same decisions in combat that I would in their shoes. Nor does any other character I run. Character. Whereas, when I run a playing piece, I'm just playing a game, and the decisions are those of playing a game, not those of a character.

(EDIT: and, yes, I can learn the system well enough, and be immersed in playing the game. I just strongly differentiate that from playing the character.)


Go back earlier in that sentence. I said "tactical combat mini-game" is not role-playing (you know, a mode of play separate from the game's main loop that exists to test the player's tactical ability). This is different from a combat scene in a role-playing context. A fact that has escaped many people who cry "you can role-play during combat" but I will not go into further detail about that.

Honestly, I have no idea what you're saying in that paragraph, so I cannot formulate questions (beyond the eloquent, "huh?"). But the notion of combat + role-playing, plus anything *you* would think might be of interest there, certainly means that this bit has my attention.

Let me try a different approach, going back to first principles. Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character. What does it matter, from a role-playing perspective, if those decisions are *resolved* through a complex combat minigame vs "roll combat" (aside from the number and type of opportunities for expressing the character presented by those systems (EDIT: oh, that reminds me of something I wanted to say in your "response" thread! I may bring this up there soon.))? So long as the resolution of in character choices isn't incoherent, so long as you can play the minigame by playing the character rather than playing the system, how does this impact role-playing? What were you trying to get at with talk of Lancer?

There, 3 questions. Probably not the right ones, but I managed 3 questions.

Now, I full well agree that some tasks, some minigames, like "build optimization" or "after-session write-up" are not role-playing. The *character* might reasonably be trying to increase their power, but that will look different than the build minigame of some systems (although some overlap should exist, even then).

But combat is (or should be) a 100% role-playing minigame, regardless of the underlying resolution mechanics. As should dungeon crawling. That is, the extent to which the system *forces* you to play the rules rather than the roles is exactly what I've been talking about measuring.

Or… if the table is screaming at each other about the latest TPK, and one player is yelling "you should have used Das über's über gun!", while a second is yelling back, "Batman doesn't use guns!"… yeah, OK, maybe not a happy example.

Point is, I have no idea what your point is. Most I've got is that you're referencing role-playing and various minigames, including 2 which a roleplayer should play in role-playing stance (combat, dungeon crawl), and one not (character optimization minigame - "Balance to the table" is a metagame construct, as is character creation).

kyoryu
2021-12-17, 11:20 AM
Again, I go back to the fact that, FOR ME, D&D has enough whoppers in any version that I don't see a categorical difference in 4e compared to earlier editions. It's not a procedural change, it's the same illogic.

I get marking. "I'm fighting you, and if you don't pay attention to me, you're going to create an opening". At the base case, that makes sense. Just like HP makes sense (more or less) for two warriors smacking each other with sticks. And martial dailies make sense (to me) more or less, because of reasons I've said earlier.

There are edge cases to each. There are situations where HP just stops making any sense (the most consistent interpretation is "meat points", which is inconsistent with any of the descriptive material). There are edge cases of marking, often involving multiple marks. There are dailies that are harder to justify.

If someone has me dead to rights with a crossbow, and I'm not wearing armor, and says "don't do the thing you're doing", in almost any fiction (not involving superheroes) the smart thing to do is to stop what I'm doing. In D&D it's not. This isn't even that much of an edge case - I'm not nitpicking commoner railguns or things like that. These are the types of things that made me stop playing D&D for the most part decades ago. Even a 7 year old understands "getting shot with a crossbow is bad," though I think your 7 year old criteria is actually not useful.

i don't doubt that 4e doesn't work for you. I don't doubt that certain of its elements cause that break. I get it. But I don't think it's because of some objective difference. Because there's enough things in D&D that are core to the system that cause exactly those breaks to me - and the way I deal with it is to ignore it, internalize it, and get on with the game.

icefractal
2021-12-17, 03:17 PM
If someone has me dead to rights with a crossbow, and I'm not wearing armor, and says "don't do the thing you're doing", in almost any fiction (not involving superheroes) the smart thing to do is to stop what I'm doing. In D&D it's not.This is a good example of tastes varying, because personally, house-rules I've seen to promote that always feel like they're pushing genre/narrative over consistency, which harms my immersion a bit.

It's true that a crossbow is deadly in many pieces of fiction, but it's also true that in that fiction, the protagonists don't ever just "tank" a fireball or a giant crushing them. There'll always be a thing they can dive for cover behind, uneven ground that stops the giant squashing them flat, a distraction right at the moment when they'd otherwise be swallowed, and so forth. In D&D? Not the case. Sometimes you can say it was luck or dodging, but other times the whole room is filled with acid/fire, the giant stomps on you uninterrupted for several rounds, etc.

And for that matter, the fiction isn't always consistent either. Sometime the protagonists go up against, say, a bunch of skeleton archers with no problem - and they're not hiding behind cover either, they're jumping around and fighting them, and any arrows which hit will just be grazing wounds. But then in the cutscene where you get captured, a single crossbow is too much to go against? Worst for this is video games, where you might be trivially tanking a missile barrage from a helicopter in one scene and then surrender to a couple guys with pistols five minutes later.

Cluedrew
2021-12-17, 09:50 PM
My response is... complicated.
[...]
Sorry, that line of thought might not be very accessible. Let me try another.
[...]
Or how about from this angle?
[...]
Or... I've got a more complicated PoV, [...]You know for clarity purposes you should probably focus you efforts a bit more, spend a couple of posts working on an explanation before abandoning it. But this got me laughing.
Still don't get your main point unfortunately.

Honestly, I have no idea what you're saying in that paragraph, so I cannot formulate questions (beyond the eloquent, "huh?"). But the notion of combat + role-playing, plus anything *you* would think might be of interest there, certainly means that this bit has my attention.Well let's see... if I may each back into my memory of posts long ago, you once spoke of how you would play the same character through different campaigns and different GMs to put them through as many different situations as possible. While I'm not as interested in doing an exhaustive search but I agree with the general principle of using a variety of situations or decisions that the character has to make.

But the thing is, some situations/decisions aren't very different in terms of role-playing. Combat (which I will just say instead of "a tactical combat mini-game") has a lot of these. For instance... OK I am having a hard time thinking of some good examples, so let me say that you are attacked at the side of the road by bandits, they could attack you a whole bunch of different ways that will create many different tactical situations. But from a role-playing perspective most are just "a force capable of using 1/4 of your daily resources attacks you, what do you do?" There isn't a lot of interesting ways to express personality, background or drive there. Some yes, you can in fact role-play during combat, but it is very repetitive from a role-playing stand-point.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-18, 07:04 AM
But the thing is, some situations/decisions aren't very different in terms of role-playing. Combat (which I will just say instead of "a tactical combat mini-game") has a lot of these. For instance... OK I am having a hard time thinking of some good examples, so let me say that you are attacked at the side of the road by bandits, they could attack you a whole bunch of different ways that will create many different tactical situations. But from a role-playing perspective most are just "a force capable of using 1/4 of your daily resources attacks you, what do you do?" There isn't a lot of interesting ways to express personality, background or drive there. Some yes, you can in fact role-play during combat, but it is very repetitive from a role-playing stand-point.

The general point (underlined by me) you're trying to make is correct, but your example is bad. "A force capable of using 1/4 of your daily resources attacks you, what do you do?" is not "roleplaying perspective", it's a metagame perspective abstracting away all details of the scenario to ask a high level strategic question. The question doesn't give a lot interesting ways to express personality etc. because you are deliberately skipping all the details that would allow answering how to do that.

Let me offer some specific examples to make the point clearer:

Who are these bandits? Does it make a difference to your decision to fight or flee if they're Robin Hood's Merry Men versus Uruk-Hai of Sauron? Starving villagers driven to banditry by desperation? Hired assassins? Does it make it a difference to which of your resources you expend in fighting them? Does which resources you expend make a difference in how you defeat them and what happens to them afterward? So on and so forth. The more attention to detail is paid in every respect, the more variety you can get, and consequently less repetition.

Quertus
2021-12-18, 11:59 AM
You know for clarity purposes you should probably focus you efforts a bit more, spend a couple of posts working on an explanation before abandoning it. But this got me laughing.
Still don't get your main point unfortunately.
Well let's see... if I may each back into my memory of posts long ago, you once spoke of how you would play the same character through different campaigns and different GMs to put them through as many different situations as possible. While I'm not as interested in doing an exhaustive search but I agree with the general principle of using a variety of situations or decisions that the character has to make.

But the thing is, some situations/decisions aren't very different in terms of role-playing. Combat (which I will just say instead of "a tactical combat mini-game") has a lot of these. For instance... OK I am having a hard time thinking of some good examples, so let me say that you are attacked at the side of the road by bandits, they could attack you a whole bunch of different ways that will create many different tactical situations. But from a role-playing perspective most are just "a force capable of using 1/4 of your daily resources attacks you, what do you do?" There isn't a lot of interesting ways to express personality, background or drive there. Some yes, you can in fact role-play during combat, but it is very repetitive from a role-playing stand-point.

In addition to the excellent reply by @Vahnavoi,

The general point (underlined by me) you're trying to make is correct, but your example is bad. "A force capable of using 1/4 of your daily resources attacks you, what do you do?" is not "roleplaying perspective", it's a metagame perspective abstracting away all details of the scenario to ask a high level strategic question. The question doesn't give a lot interesting ways to express personality etc. because you are deliberately skipping all the details that would allow answering how to do that.

Let me offer some specific examples to make the point clearer:

Who are these bandits? Does it make a difference to your decision to fight or flee if they're Robin Hood's Merry Men versus Uruk-Hai of Sauron? Starving villagers driven to banditry by desperation? Hired assassins? Does it make it a difference to which of your resources you expend in fighting them? Does which resources you expend make a difference in how you defeat them and what happens to them afterward? So on and so forth. The more attention to detail is paid in every respect, the more variety you can get, and consequently less repetition.
I have a few things to add.

Now, the problem is, I'm not sure if any of my ways of communicating those things will let you (or anyone else) hear them.

Most enjoyable TV characters aren't characters, they're caricatures. They have strongly identifiable, predictable "beats", moreso than a realistic personality.

Different languages have different cadences, different rules for certain subtleties that make a native speaker sound different from a foreign learner - and make different "base languages" result in different sounding accents.

Radio frequencies have a carrier wave, that you vary slightly in order to transmit data.

Reality having general consistency is what allows intelligence.

An RPG having a baseline "cadence" against which your choices can occur is not a bad thing.

To me, those touch on the same concept, as instantiated in 5 different fields.

To me, it's a matter of buy-in. I, personally, accept that when I'm playing D&D, my role-playing will occur to a particular background music, to a particular beat. In that vein, it is in fact highly suboptimal (from a role-playing perspective) to simply abstract that encounter as simply "bandits", and generally detrimental to think of them in terms of resource expenditure (unless, of course, "thinking of human(?) life in terms of resource expenditure" is what you want to say about your character).

Sadly, I have yet to game with a group where "you are my quest" was a line my character got to give, was something that would really fly. Even having a choice of more than one of "kill the bandits", "join the bandits", "be captured by the bandits", "convert the bandits", "take the bandits alive", "some bandit casualties before they flee (possibly with the goods)", "negotiate with the bandits", etc, is really rare. Because most GMs force *even more* of a required beats to the song than just "you will be doing your role-playing in the context of exploration, monsters, and fighting". If you cannot roleplay the character in that context, then the character is poorly suited to being used to play D&D as an RPG.

But if I get to expand my role-playing outside that, well, bonus! In fact, proficiency in the various components of "outside the core expectations" is one of the sources of my desires to roleplay my character under multiple GMs.

How about now? Any of that make sense?

Cluedrew
2021-12-18, 04:02 PM
The general point (underlined by me) you're trying to make is correct, but your example is bad.Yes, I said that. And for the rest of your post, yes those can be there, but even if they are and the GM has put thought into it, wading through the tactical combat to reach them (or show how we react to them) still kind of slows the role-playing down.


How about now? Any of that make sense?It does, but you are saying it in a way like I should be happy about it. I'm not. A "rhythm" is fine but it seems like a waste when the beats are "lets spend time not focusing on the reason we are playing".

Vahnavoi
2021-12-18, 04:54 PM
@Cluedrew: in effort to find a better example, lets talk about player psychology and videogames for a moment.

Every once in a while, you get someone saying that "videogames are boring because you just press buttons". The observation is technically correct but the argument is preposterous - it's equivalent to "play-by-post is boring because you just type letters on a screen" or "drawing is boring because you just put lines on paper".

What's happening here is a sort of myopia where focus on repetitive elements of a control interface prevents observations of the thing being controlled. This relates to the original post and idea of this thread, because often the myopic focus is caused by lack of familiarity with the control interface. All mental effort is spent on learning or handling the controls and little room is left for anything else. This is also why it might be hard to figure out "how to roleplay" in a slow-paced tactical game - if calculating spatial positions or die roll results is taking all available brain power, it's hard to observe how the decions made reflect a person's motives etc.. It's like watching a animation meant to be watched at 60 frames per second play out at 1 frame per second.

Quertus
2021-12-18, 07:15 PM
Again, I go back to the fact that, FOR ME,

I think your 7 year old criteria is actually not useful.

These two are related.

"For me" is subjective.

The point of the 7-year-old is to remove that subjectivity.

I don't care about you, I don't care about me, I care about the simplest, most fundamental breakdown of the game.

I don't care whether you think a 6' human with 18 Dex and 3 Str, or getting wounded without suffering any degradation to your performance is "realistic", I care whether a naive 7-year-old can accept the fiction of, "fighting multiple people can be more difficult, forcing you to divide your focus", for every piece of fiction required to play the game.

That, per the notions of abstraction, "spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane", and game, that anything illogical counter-logical ("the more damaged you are, the more effective you are"), anything that increases complexity (including whole cloth "just because" first principles, and choosing complex wound system abstractions over simple HP abstractions), even anything that diverges from a "known fiction" (which includes the way things work IRL), the designers had best have a *really* good reason for including.

Note that the simplest way to play D&D is "beer and pretzels kick in the door murderhobos", so don't mistake me for saying that simplest/easiest is *always* better.

That… Hmmm… I think I'm straying away from my point, that the point of the "7-year-old" bit is to learn to express things in the simplest terms (like math often teaches you to do), and to test those simplest terms, not your subjective perception on the game.

Or, at least, that's one of the points of the 7-year-old.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-12-18, 07:22 PM
These two are related.

"For me" is subjective.

The point of the 7-year-old is to remove that subjectivity.

I don't care about you, I don't care about me, I care about the simplest, most fundamental breakdown of the game.

I don't care whether you think a 6' human with 18 Dex and 3 Str, or getting wounded without suffering any degradation to your performance is "realistic", I care whether a naive 7-year-old can accept the fiction of, "fighting multiple people can be more difficult, forcing you to divide your focus", for every piece of fiction required to play the game.

That, per the notions of abstraction, "spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane", and game, that anything illogical counter-logical ("the more damaged you are, the more effective you are"), anything that increases complexity (including whole cloth "just because" first principles, and choosing complex wound system abstractions over simple HP abstractions), even anything that diverges from a "known fiction" (which includes the way things work IRL), the designers had best have a *really* good reason for including.

Note that the simplest way to play D&D is "beer and pretzels kick in the door murderhobos", so don't mistake me for saying that simplest/easiest is *always* better.

That… Hmmm… I think I'm straying away from my point, that the point of the "7-year-old" bit is to learn to express things in the simplest terms (like math often teaches you to do), and to test those simplest terms, not your subjective perception on the game.

Or, at least, that's one of the points of the 7-year-old.

Quertus...

You're not asking an actual 7-year-old. You're asking yourself to emulate what you think a 7-year-old would say, if that 7-year-old knew all the things you know. Because that's all you can do. You can't escape subjectivity this way. And even if you were asking a real 7-year-old, all that does is push the subjectivity onto that 7-year-old.

This is not an objective measure by any means.

Oh, and I've played with more than one 7-year-old (and a couple on either side). They (those specific examples, I won't try to generalize) were
a) completely uninterested in mechanics
b) completely unconcerned by ludonarrative dissonance
c) completely unconcerned by anything like realism, internal (or external) consistency, or, in general, things making sense.

If anything, they're way more accepting of things that adults think are weird.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-19, 05:32 AM
Yeah, have to echo PhoenixPhyre here.

Using a 7-year-old as a benchmark for how you are designing a game makes sense, if you are interested in making a game to 7-year-olds. If you want to dig deep into it, you can take a look at existing body of research of human development, to see when various cognitive faculties develop and when skills relevant to playing a game are learned.

But the same body of research will rapidly tell you that children don't care about or even notice the same things as adults do. They almost certainly won't care or notice the same things as habitual tabletop gamers. Children will complain when something doesn't match their idea of reality, just like adults, but their ideas of reality are frequently different. When you're adjusting towards children's idea of reality, you are literally adjusting toward naive assumptions.

Quertus
2021-12-19, 06:35 AM
Quertus...

You're not asking an actual 7-year-old. You're asking yourself to emulate what you think a 7-year-old would say, if that 7-year-old knew all the things you know. Because that's all you can do. You can't escape subjectivity this way. And even if you were asking a real 7-year-old, all that does is push the subjectivity onto that 7-year-old.

This is not an objective measure by any means.

Oh, and I've played with more than one 7-year-old (and a couple on either side). They (those specific examples, I won't try to generalize) were
a) completely uninterested in mechanics
b) completely unconcerned by ludonarrative dissonance
c) completely unconcerned by anything like realism, internal (or external) consistency, or, in general, things making sense.

If anything, they're way more accepting of things that adults think are weird.

So, you understand my point, you just don't understood that you understand my point.

Yes, a 7-year-old will accept HP, or "you cannot fire speculative smoke". That's part of the point. Accept the fiction.

You actually are breaking it down as though to explain it to a 7-year-old. Consider it "prime factoring" for rules.

But it's adult minds that are suffering through the incoherence, and evaluating the efficiency of the rules. You're not asking the 7-year-old if they match, you're evaluating the (virtual or actual) 7-year-old play the game using the fiction you have handed them.

If I explain, "hit people, and they get hurt; hurt them enough, and they die", and they get used to the size of their horse's HP bar, do they have their horse charge the line of archers or pikemen, or not, at somewhat reasonable times? Can they make reasonable decisions via the fiction?

If I explain, "spells require concentration to cast; if anything disturbs you while you're casting, you lose the spell", can they make reasonable choices about when and where to cast, and when to hit (or otherwise disrupt) which enemies?

If I explain, "your illusion power will make someone see whatever you want them to see, but it won't fool their other senses; if what they see doesn't make sense to them, they'll try to resist with their will, and possibly break the illusion", can they make reasonable choices about who to target with what illusions? Can they think of ways to test their reality for illusions?

The answer for the 7-year-olds I've played with is "yes".

The fiction matches the rules enough for them to make reasonable decisions when handed the fiction.

hamishspence
2021-12-19, 06:49 AM
I have a brutal, probably evil PC.
20’ away, there is an enemy Cleric, who can heal injured people.
In the middle of us is an injured and dying ally of the Cleric.

My goal is to defeat the Cleric-to do so, I will charge him, and along the way, kick the dying foe’s skull in.

I cannot do that in 3.5, without some major cheese. A big standard Fighter, Barbarian, or other martial cannot manage that. Even an ubercharger cannot manage that, to my knowledge-they could do something else, of course, but not that.

Why doesn’t that break your immersion?

A Swordsage using Tornado Throw can attack multiple characters, each some distance apart, by throwing them - they'd move, throw the cleric's ally, move again, and throw the cleric. All in the space of one round.

Not quite what you were describing - but very close.

Cluedrew
2021-12-19, 08:58 AM
The answer for the 7-year-olds I've played with is "yes".Why do I care what those 7-year-olds think? I'm not one of them. I agree with the high level view, without getting caught up in details, is useful. But ultimately what people notice at a high level is different, and you could probably do some statistics if you wanted to (err... and had access to the population to do a proper study) to get which ones people notice the most often. But that doesn't matter because popularity and trends still does not make for objectivity.

So don't worry about the 7-year-olds. Do you like D&D 4e? From what I gather no, you find it's metaphors unwieldy and jarring. This is true. But that doesn't mean it is fundamentally different from other role-playing games.

On Tactical Combat: The issue is mostly about time and energy spent during the game. I have played systems where combat feels very interwoven with role-playing, but the combat there tends not to be tactical. Usually at the level you declare what your character is trying to accomplish and then you roll to see how well you accomplish it. It is more than saying "I combat them to let me pass." (like how some people use social skills) but it also doesn't require tracking of everyone's position over many turns to get the result.

Tanarii
2021-12-19, 12:33 PM
If someone has me dead to rights with a crossbow, and I'm not wearing armor, and says "don't do the thing you're doing", in almost any fiction (not involving superheroes) the smart thing to do is to stop what I'm doing. In D&D it's not.Exactly, you are not a movie action hero, which is exactly what most TTRPG characters are (at a minimum). Not taking a hit from the "dead to rights with a fast projectile weapon" is absolutely something that happens in most hero genres. And remember, in the inception of TTRPGs, characters above 1st level were literally "Heroes" and their primary special ability was to survive more than one "Hit".

I do agree that if that's not supposed to be the genre, if most non-combat-specialized characters are supposed to die from a single well placed gun shot without hero-ablation of any kind, with the only defensive option being investing massively in fast reactions and movement, then yeah generic "hero" defensive things like hit points or fate points or whatever should be left out.

Whereas a heavy crossbow being fired every 6-10 seconds is considerably more than various other movies never running out of ammo, or an action hero dodging a dead to rights gun and killing the attacker. That's an artifact of (specifically D&D) moving from 1 minute rounds to 10 second rounds in 2e C&T, which carried over to 6 second rounds in 3e, while retaining one projectile attack per round.

Regardless, not of this has to do with immersion, either in the broader level of taking you out of the game entirely, or the more narrow level of seeing your character as a thing separate from you. This is all verisimilitude & suspension of disbelief issues.

Quertus
2021-12-19, 12:45 PM
Why do I care what those 7-year-olds think? I'm not one of them.

An excellent question. Off the top of my head? Three reasons: you’re not a 7-year-old, you’re not me, and I’m not a 7-year-old.

you’re not a 7-year-old

You don’t have the flexibility to just accept HP, or “no speculative smoke” as just being “the way the world works”.

It’s a call to remove personal biases, to look at a theoretical someone else - someone able to accept alternate world physics.

you’re not me

If you were me, I could just say, “write executable code”, and you’d grok my meaning. If you were me, you’d be fully familiar with the examples I use, and what I mean by them.

Instead, I need a lowest common denominator example, something anyone can relate to.

I figure most everyone has encountered a 7-year-old before.

I’m not a 7-year-old

Eh, would you believe I forgot what I was going to say here?

Oh, right - that it isn’t just me saying “this makes sense”, I can point to actual 7-year-olds who have executed the code :smallwink:successfully.

So it’s intended as an approachable example to express the idea of writing the simplest “prime factorization” executable code for the fiction, and evaluating the complexity of that code, the capacity of a being bereft our biases to run said code, and the evaluation by the system of how well said being running said code fares at playing the game. And it’s something I’ve done.

Of course, caveats regarding last time I was foolish enough to answer your questions of “why should one care …”. :smallannoyed:


Do you like D&D 4e? From what I gather no, you find it's metaphors unwieldy and jarring.

Eh, my online persona, as represented by the Quertus account, hates 4e. And I’ll shift back to that caricature of myself shortly. It’s fair to say that I don’t enjoy the gameplay in 4e (although I remain quite interested in the fact that there are those who do - especially muggle players), but I don’t hate it the way I do 3e.


you declare what your character is trying to accomplish and then you roll to see how well you accomplish it.

Have you ever played with hidden information, where “what you are trying to accomplish” isn’t known? Or, per my old example about spilling oil drums, do you grok how one can have *many* objectives?

kyoryu
2021-12-19, 06:59 PM
Regardless, not of this has to do with immersion, either in the broader level of taking you out of the game entirely, or the more narrow level of seeing your character as a thing separate from you. This is all verisimilitude & suspension of disbelief issues.

Well, yes. This is my point. This is precisely my point.

D&D, in general, has some big whoppers that people are able to swallow without concern. This makes me very very skeptical that many of the things that are brought out as making immersion possible or making a game "not an RPG" are the actual concern in an objective way, when other things that to me are bigger are handled without blinking.

(THough even in the action hero scene, the hero will, every time, treat the threat as an actual threat, something a D&D character doesn't need to do, because there is no actual danger. The hero responds to it as if it were danger, and the stakes are set that "if the hero screws up, something bad will happen to them." They don't just face-tank the hit.)

Tanarii
2021-12-19, 07:21 PM
(THough even in the action hero scene, the hero will, every time, treat the threat as an actual threat, something a D&D character doesn't need to do, because there is no actual danger. The hero responds to it as if it were danger, and the stakes are set that "if the hero screws up, something bad will happen to them." They don't just face-tank the hit.)
Right. They grab the weapon and move it slightly so the attack misses while counter attacking. In D&D terms, that's losing some hit points to the attack to be heroic, while doing some damage in return.

JNAProductions
2021-12-19, 07:34 PM
Right. They grab the weapon and move it slightly so the attack misses while counter attacking. In D&D terms, that's losing some hit points to the attack to be heroic, while doing some damage in return.

And if the crossbow has a poisoned bolt… then what?

Because a hit in game terms applies the effect of the poison. Something that requires a narrative hit too.

Cluedrew
2021-12-19, 09:13 PM
You don’t have the flexibility to just accept HP, or "no speculative smoke" as just being "the way the world works".So I have to completely different replies: Superhuman durability is my default explanation of HP, I don't push the reflexes/luck view that seems to be the official explanation because... maybe it is less silly or something but it just isn't as consistent. (See JNAProductions about poisoned weapons.)
If I couldn't do it, and other people playing role-playing can't do it, why is it better to remove that? Especially if you are claiming it is objective (I'm not sure what it we are on right now, is it one of the maybe objective ones?) than we should be able to get the answers considering only the object an not the subject.In short, it is not true and if it was I still don't see why it should matter.

Tanarii
2021-12-19, 09:45 PM
And if the crossbow has a poisoned bolt… then what?

Because a hit in game terms applies the effect of the poison. Something that requires a narrative hit too.
Not really. Poisoned bolts are more dangerous, so they require more hero ablative points to avoid the final fatal wound if the game determines there is a 'hit'.

The possible bigger dissonance is zero hit points not being an automatically final fatal would any more, but being a quantum duality of maybe dead and maybe not dead until you fail three saving throws. You're not necessarily even bleeding out in that state, until it's resolved. Only then can the in world description of that final blow be locked in. :smallamused:

JNAProductions
2021-12-19, 11:04 PM
Not really. Poisoned bolts are more dangerous, so they require more hero ablative points to avoid the final fatal wound if the game determines there is a 'hit'.

The possible bigger dissonance is zero hit points not being an automatically final fatal would any more, but being a quantum duality of maybe dead and maybe not dead until you fail three saving throws. You're not necessarily even bleeding out in that state, until it's resolved. Only then can the in world description of that final blow be locked in. :smallamused:

That might work for some poisons, that just do damage.
What if the poison is a paralytic? How do you explain that with anything other than a hit?

Quertus
2021-12-20, 01:23 AM
And if the crossbow has a poisoned bolt… then what?

Because a hit in game terms applies the effect of the poison. Something that requires a narrative hit too.


So I have to completely different replies:[A] Superhuman durability is my default explanation of HP, I don't push the reflexes/luck view that seems to be the official explanation because... maybe it is less silly or something but it just isn't as consistent. (See JNAProductions about poisoned weapons.)


That might work for some poisons, that just do damage.
What if the poison is a paralytic? How do you explain that with anything other than a hit?

A scratch.

The point is, you have to accept the fiction (for this metric of whether or not it's suitable to being played as an RPG). If you cannot do that, you are not qualified to measure its suitability.

Note that "accept the idiocy" is not required (or desirable) when playing the game, per se. Only for measuring its suitability to be played as an RPG. If the system is as shallow as Dr. Who logic, yeah, I'm not gonna be happy, and I don't ask you to be, either.

But "HP as meat" or "HP as meat and luck and skill and…" are both perfectly actionable for an RPG.



If I couldn't do it, and other people playing role-playing can't do it, why is it better to remove that? Especially if you are claiming it is objective (I'm not sure what it we are on right now, is it one of the maybe objective ones?) than we should be able to get the answers considering only the object an not the subject.[/]In short, it is not true and if it was I still don't see why it should matter.

7-year-olds can. That's the "remove the subjectivity" benchmark for acceptance.

Otherwise, we get people complaining that "no speculative smoke" isn't realistic.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-20, 04:28 AM
I'm starting to suspect the subjective versus objective tangent is useless, as often is the case.

These things aren't hard antonyms anymore.

Once upon a time, Aristoteles claimed measuring temperature couldn't be done, after all the sensations of hot and cold depend on the person. Well, it turns out, Aristoteles was wrong, temperature can be objectively measured and mapped in a useful way to a person's sensation of hot and cold - and if there's some oddity to how some person senses a given temperature, further digging usually reveals an objective reason why that is. As our understanding of human cognition grows, every precedent suggests that more and more things we've proclaimed to be subjective move into the same category as temperature - meaning the issue with using a 7-year-old as a benchmark is not an issue of subjectivity at all. It is an issue of objective variability and arbitrariness. The clothes made to fit a 7-year-old objectively won't fit most adults and vice versa, why are you presuming a game system would?

Quertus
2021-12-20, 06:28 AM
I'm starting to suspect the subjective versus objective tangent is useless, as often is the case.

These things aren't hard antonyms anymore.

Once upon a time, Aristoteles claimed measuring temperature couldn't be done, after all the sensations of hot and cold depend on the person. Well, it turns out, Aristoteles was wrong, temperature can be objectively measured and mapped in a useful way to a person's sensation of hot and cold - and if there's some oddity to how some person senses a given temperature, further digging usually reveals an objective reason why that is. As our understanding of human cognition grows, every precedent suggests that more and more things we've proclaimed to be subjective move into the same category as temperature - meaning the issue with using a 7-year-old as a benchmark is not an issue of subjectivity at all. It is an issue of objective variability and arbitrariness. The clothes made to fit a 7-year-old objectively won't fit most adults and vice versa, why are you presuming a game system would?

Asked and answered: because 7-year-olds are smarter than us, they lack out inability to accept the fiction and the physics.

You are, of course, welcome to replace them as the abstraction and placeholder they are, and instead evaluate,
break the fiction down into the simplest statement of the fiction;
evaluate the complexity of said fiction;
evaluate the efficiency out running the game using said fiction.

Just like I've done with actual 7-year-olds (not an abstraction or placeholder here, simply irreplaceable :smalltongue:)

And maybe now people will stop saying "but me" or "but I" about their own personal inability to accept speculative smoke. But the point of the 7-year-old was to remove that useless actively counterproductive thinking.

Well, one of the points.

Vahnavoi
2021-12-20, 07:29 AM
I've run games to actual 7-year-olds as well, which is precisely why I'm confused at you choosing them as a benchmark. The complexity level of a game you can hold for 7-year-olds is lower than it's for 10-year-olds or 15-year-olds or adults. A lot of the plasticity you are attributing to them is them literally not knowing better.

Quertus
2021-12-20, 09:23 AM
I've run games to actual 7-year-olds as well, which is precisely why I'm confused at you choosing them as a benchmark. The complexity level of a game you can hold for 7-year-olds is lower than it's for 10-year-olds or 15-year-olds or adults. A lot of the plasticity you are attributing to them is them literally not knowing better.

Exactly! They don’t believe that they know better than disallowing speculative smoke, don’t believe that they know better than HP, don’t believe that they know better than the game’s fiction. They’re actually capable of immersion. at least until you hit the rare, “*my* daddy said that hay is for horses” that won’t accept any other fiction for hay, like bedding or starting fires. Sigh. But that’s the exception that proves the rule.

kyoryu
2021-12-20, 10:55 AM
Pretty sure seven year olds would have no issue with "you can do this once a day", either.

Quertus
2021-12-20, 11:19 AM
Pretty sure seven year olds would have no issue with "you can do this once a day", either.

That’s mechanics, not fiction.

The fiction is, “when the soccer player does a split block, it pulls his muscles and really hurts.”

EDIT: the rules are an abstraction. You’re telling the players the fiction that the rules are an abstraction for. And measuring the extent to which, armed only with that fiction, one can play the game. You’re measuring how well the abstraction matches the fiction.

Tanarii
2021-12-20, 02:42 PM
Pretty sure seven year olds would have no issue with "you can do this once a day", either.
Ten year olds definitely don't IMX. Because it's trivial to explain that it's a cinematic trope, you know how to do it on demand, but your action hero doesn't do the same (powerful) thing a bunch of times. And it can map to one of a multitude of in-world reasons why.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-20, 04:01 PM
Whereas a heavy crossbow being fired every 6-10 seconds is considerably more than various other movies never running out of ammo, or an action hero dodging a dead to rights gun and killing the attacker. That's an artifact of (specifically D&D) moving from 1 minute rounds to 10 second rounds in 2e C&T, which carried over to 6 second rounds in 3e, while retaining one projectile attack per round.

Regardless, not of this has to do with immersion, either in the broader level of taking you out of the game entirely, or the more narrow level of seeing your character as a thing separate from you. This is all verisimilitude & suspension of disbelief issues. Give this man a cigar. :smallsmile:

(See JNAProductions about poisoned weapons.) I think that JNA served us a red herring, because he's not folding Saving Throws into that add on to the HP conversation. (he did raise paralysis, though, as a follow up to Tanarii). Saving throws are an additional non-meat-how-not-to die game feature. (In the original game, poison save fail usually meat 'dead' and over the years that's been expanded into some more nuanced uses of poison).

In short, it is not true and if it was I still don't see why it should matter. For possibly different reasons, I agree with you on that. :smallsmile:

Not really. Poisoned bolts are more dangerous, so they require more hero ablative points to avoid the final fatal wound if the game determines there is a 'hit'.

The possible bigger dissonance is zero hit points not being an automatically final fatal would any more, but being a quantum duality of maybe dead and maybe not dead until you fail three saving throws. You're not necessarily even bleeding out in that state, until it's resolved. Only then can the in world description of that final blow be locked in. :smallamused: Retcon, it's a method ...
What if the poison is a paralytic? How do you explain that with anything other than a hit? In some editions that's handled with a save, in some editions that's not even in the kit.
I'm starting to suspect the subjective versus objective tangent is useless, as often is the case. Concur.

- meaning the issue with using a 7-year-old as a benchmark is not an issue of subjectivity at all. It is an issue of objective variability and arbitrariness. The clothes made to fit a 7-year-old objectively won't fit most adults and vice versa, why are you presuming a game system would? FWIW, on the front of the box is used to say "for ages 12 and up" but that's nit picking: I've played Basic and 1e with kids younger than that and it works if you DM for your audience. :smallsmile:

I've run games to actual 7-year-olds as well, which is precisely why I'm confused at you choosing them as a benchmark. The complexity level of a game you can hold for 7-year-olds is lower than it's for 10-year-olds or 15-year-olds or adults. A lot of the plasticity you are attributing to them is them literally not knowing better. Here's a cigar.

Pretty sure seven year olds would have no issue with "you can do this once a day", either. Yep.

Ten year olds definitely don't IMX. Because it's trivial to explain that it's a cinematic trope, you know how to do it on demand, but your action hero doesn't do the same (powerful) thing a bunch of times. And it can map to one of a multitude of in-world reasons why. Lots of precedents in comics and TV shows too. :smallsmile:

JNAProductions
2021-12-20, 05:12 PM
The point is, a paralytic poison cannot do anything if it misses entirely in the narrative.

And, should you fail your save from getting hit by a paralytic poison… what happens when the foe walks up and shoots you while you’re paralyzed? If you’ve got enough HP to survive it with plenty left.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-20, 05:37 PM
The point is, a paralytic poison cannot do anything if it misses entirely in the narrative.

And, should you fail your save from getting hit by a paralytic poison… what happens when the foe walks up and shoots you while you’re paralyzed? If you’ve got enough HP to survive it with plenty left. Which edition?
In the one case, if your PC is still paralyzed, the crits and failed death saves add up quickly, but the DM can also simply not call for a roll particularly once combat is over.

Why is that?
5e goes:
1. DM describes the environment.
2. Player describes what they do.
{Roll dice if necessary)
3. DM narrates results.

In some other editions, it was called a coup de grace. Our first 5e DM applied coup de grace liberally during our 2014-2015 campaign. The DM doesn't need a rule to do that beyond steps 1-3 above.

As the creature sits there trying to pull a Rasputin thing, we can have the enemy keep filling them with shots and dagger thrusts that are auto crits on a hit, and with crit save fails counting two dead isn't that far away, but maybe each turn the "let's see if you can Rasputin your way out of this" is allowed for.

DMs have the latitude to take this either way.

Quertus
2021-12-20, 06:12 PM
The point is, a paralytic poison cannot do anything if it misses entirely in the narrative.

And, should you fail your save from getting hit by a paralytic poison… what happens when the foe walks up and shoots you while you’re paralyzed? If you’ve got enough HP to survive it with plenty left.

That's… not how D&D works.

Originally? By the rules, you would be dead.

3e? Attacker's choice of not caring, and just doing regular damage, or automatic crit + death save DC damage done (+10?).

You don't just take HP damage when you're helpless. That's a dumber implementation of HP than Gygax intended.

JNAProductions
2021-12-20, 06:29 PM
That's… not how D&D works.

Originally? By the rules, you would be dead.

3e? Attacker's choice of not caring, and just doing regular damage, or automatic crit + death save DC damage done (+10?).

You don't just take HP damage when you're helpless. That's a dumber implementation of HP than Gygax intended.

You could easily survive that save and damage. Even in 3rd.

Medium Heavy Crossbow does 2d10 damage on a Coup De Grace. That’s a DC 21 save and 11 damage.

That’s VERY survivable. And they would need 12 seconds to move up and then take the full round action to actually perform the coup.

Quertus
2021-12-20, 08:33 PM
You could easily survive that save and damage. Even in 3rd.

Medium Heavy Crossbow does 2d10 damage on a Coup De Grace. That’s a DC 21 save and 11 damage.

That’s VERY survivable. And they would need 12 seconds to move up and then take the full round action to actually perform the coup.

And IRL it's… 2 to the chest, 1 to the head?

Feel free to evaluate which edition of D&D most closely stimulates real life… before realizing that it doesn't matter, because that's not the correct fiction. Instead, ask yourself which of those should describe how, say, James Bond, or Conan, should respond to being shot while paralyzed, and it might provide a more meaningful answer.

oxybe
2021-12-21, 05:44 AM
Why don't the Power Rangers don't just IMMEDIATELY summon the megazords or their superweapon at the first sign of trouble?

Because they need to weaken the bad guys with karate first. duh. They're called finishing moves, not starting moves.

My stupid kid brain knew that back 93 when I was 8: Heroes gotta weaken the bad guy before they whip out the once an episode finishing move or summon the giant robot only after the bad guy gets big. You can't just pre-empt the series by going "Screw it, we're flying to the moon in our robo-dinosaurs and nuking Rita Repulsa's space castle into lunar dust"... Heroes don't do that.

Kids understand tropes.

they might not be able to properly voice or explain them, but their not-fully-developed brains can make the link and understand that there is a method to whatever madness they're shown if it's repeated enough, even if they don't understand the underlying principals. toss in some choreographed karate, lasers and a big dumb monster costume and now it also entertaining madness.

First you take out the putties, then you fight the boss, then you lose to learn a lesson and then either win with the power of teamwork lasers AND/OR the boss goes big and you teamwork it to death with giant dinosaur robots. Then you get a moral lesson before the end credits about trust or not doing drugs or staying in school or something.

KorvinStarmast
2021-12-21, 12:10 PM
Then you get a moral lesson before the end credits about trust or not doing drugs or staying in school or something.
In the 70's the lesson was 'stay in school since that's where you know folks who have drugs' but I guess they changed that later on. :smallbiggrin:

Quertus
2021-12-21, 12:39 PM
So, what were the claims of the OP? That their model would accurately predict immersion, why immersion matters more to some than others, why 4e shatters immersion for some, what 4e did wrong.

The initial model of immersion, as I understood it, was about Flow. The “new” (actual) model is about acceptance, and focuses on *time*, where the point is to keep the “not immersed” light from staying on too long. There have also been models of immersion presented that focuses on things such as “in game” vs “outside distraction”.

These models have their uses, and indeed explain the problems that some people have with certain games, including 4e. My misunderstanding of the model presented in the OP even explains why a feeling of “immersion” is not only not a good indicator of roleplaying, but actually explains how, when people are tricked into playing the game rather than playing the fiction, it can be difficult for them to recognize the difference.

However, for all their uses, none of these models explains “my problems with 4e”, or as I (IMO more accurately) label it, “why 4e is not an RPG”.

What I define as a metric for the suitability of a game to be played as an RPG focuses on *when* the “not immersed playing the mechanics” light comes on, rather than for how long, or whether one feels immersed - it only mattering whether you are accessing the rules for making decisions, not what happens during the resolution of those decisions.

As has been seen, to use my metric, one needs to be able to do things people have demonstrated having difficulty with: be able to accept the premise of the game, and be able to differentiate “mechanics” from “fiction”. It also requires using the much more difficult skill of breaking the fiction down into its simplest form.

Then there’s things that I can’t recall how they’re related to immersion at all, like the idea that different systems can have different “beats” to measure roleplaying against.

So where do we go from here?

Well, I’m not sure. Unless someone disagrees, I think I’ve pretty well demonstrated why none of these models of immersion explain *my* problems with 4e. Given the current state of things, my next logical step for me would be a deep dive into understanding the difference between “rules” and “fiction”, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to immersion. I’m still curious why the OP thought immersion mattered more to some people than others, especially in light of how I don’t find the model useful, and how many models there are. And I’d like to explore the “RPG cadence” concept… but, again, I’m not certain that it’s relevant to this thread.

Devils_Advocate
2021-12-31, 05:02 PM
You know for clarity purposes you should probably focus you efforts a bit more, spend a couple of posts working on an explanation before abandoning it.
Recommending a depth-first approach (https://xkcd.com/761/), are we?


If I explain, "hit people, and they get hurt; hurt them enough, and they die", and they get used to the size of their horse's HP bar, do they have their horse charge the line of archers or pikemen, or not, at somewhat reasonable times? Can they make reasonable decisions via the fiction?
If "the fiction" in context is the above quote, then they can't especially predict likely consequences (and then choose based on those predictions) via "the fiction". Because in that case, "the fiction" is compatible with a character having to seriously worry about getting hit with cannonballs, and with the character still being basically fine after tanking multiple cannonballs to the face. It's "getting used to the size of their horse's HP bar" that does almost all of the work there.

If, on the other hand, "the fiction" covers whether or not the characters are supposed to be essentially superheroes capable of doing superheroic things, then things that are reasonable from a metagame perspective may well be unreasonable from an in-character perspective, and vice versa.


Pretty sure seven year olds would have no issue with "you can do this once a day", either.

That’s mechanics, not fiction.

The fiction is, “when the soccer player does a split block, it pulls his muscles and really hurts.”

EDIT: the rules are an abstraction. You’re telling the players the fiction that the rules are an abstraction for. And measuring the extent to which, armed only with that fiction, one can play the game. You’re measuring how well the abstraction matches the fiction.
Well, in that case, what's the fiction for spell slots? How well-equipped would a someone be to play a spellcaster in an edition of D&D other than 4th, if not informed of per day limits?

If those limits are allowed to be part of the fiction because they describe how magic works, then I must ask whether calling all of 4E's rules oddities "magic" would make you okay with them, and if not why not. Because it's not like the weird bean counting involved in playing a non-4E spellcaster is in any way required for the basic character concept of someone who can use strange gestures and incantations to call forth supernatural forces. Depending on what media they have prior experience with, I'd expect for some 7-year-olds to tell you that no, it doesn't work like that, don't be dumb.

The general procedure for translating game rules into fiction is to explain them in terms of something familiar (whether real or fictional) where possible, and where that doesn't work, come up with new fiction to accommodate the rules. And the good news is, that's mostly already done for you! An RPG straight-up tells you what things in the fiction layer its various rules are for! Hot damn! Of course, there will always be aspects of something that the system fails to simulate, as the rules are necessarily a simplified abstraction, and the game may have been designed with goals beyond realism and simplicity.


Agreed. Note that good examples of IRL muggle dailies were absent from the conversations until just recently. Note also that my tune changed to acknowledge my acceptance of that fact, that only *certain* muggle dailies required mental pretzels.

The brevity of the entry was not indicative of backsliding, merely intended as a call to the original topic header.
Okay, so the general concept isn't inherently implausible, but some of the details of the implementation are. Which... puts it on the level of hit points, no?


FTFY?
Ah, yes, quite. Bit of an odd coincidence that the typo still makes some sense in context, but not exactly what I was going for.

... And I used "sees" instead of "seems" as well. I blame rouge angles of satin (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RougeAnglesOfSatin).


This is very intelligent question and commentary.
I am a purveyor of only the finest overanalysis, except when I'm not.


Hmmm… you're right, at first glance, one would expect that "it's inexplicable, and just accepted as fact" would work. I see exactly where you're coming from.
Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. Woah.

I ain't said nothin' 'bout no inexplicable, Quertus! I'm not talking about anything being fundamentally impossible to explain, just about some things being unexplained. Which should not be a strange concept, especially in a vaguely medieval setting. Seems more than a bit weird to assume that even well-educated characters are aware of the principles underlying nearly everything.


there's friction between "like this world, unless noted otherwise" and "secretly completely unlike this world".
Technically speaking (as is my wont), there's tension within "secretly completely unlike this world", as in order to seem like our world, characters' perceptions, if nothing else, must be the same. (Now, I recall that you earlier trotted out the old argument that we can never know that two perceptions are identical, but the hidden implicit assumption there is that a perception (e.g. of subjective redness) is separable from the overall mental context in which it occurs; i.e., that a description of a perception's relationships to the rest of the mind does not give a full account of the subjective experience, as there is still an "internal content" that is "left over". It is my position that, counterintuitive though it may seem, that assumption quite simply does not stand up to scrutiny.)


Yet even something as ubiquitous and understandable to 7-year-olds as HP can make intelligent, adult seasoned gamers lose their immersion. Wow, right?
Perhaps because adults' understanding of serious injury isn't mostly derived from the likes of games and action movies, as is more commonly the case with 7-year-olds?


Similarly, people freak out when I talk about the idea of my characters being "not from around here", just cannot grok the idea that the game could possibly be about anything other than my characters and places not here under such circumstances.
That... strikes me as perhaps a bit odd.


How, then, could a game where lightning is simply known by first principles, rather than being understood as being the logical consequences of electromagnetic forces, possibly *not* be about researching how lightning really works? Especially when it's clear that we have tools to manipulate this unknown force, from Call Lightning to Lightning Bolt to Control Weather.

Doesn't it boggle the mind that anyone could ever play a game of D&D where Lightning just exists by first principles, as a difference from this reality, and it *not* be the focus of the campaign to investigate Lightning? By the logic above, shouldn't it make sense to *only* make such a change if you intend it to be the *focus* of the campaign?
No, that doesn't boggle the mind at all.

The idea here seems to be that realizing that one doesn't know something automatically sparks overwhelming, irresistible curiosity. That's really weird for anyone who doesn't exist in a virtually constant state of overwhelming, irresistible curiosity, because that requires assuming that one knows everything until that assumption is challenged. Most... most people don't assume that they know everything. Like... That's... not normal.

Is everyone in your game group devoted to discovering a complete Theory of Everything that unifies all of physics? And if not, why not? Don't they realize that the current models of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity aren't even fully compatible?! OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE MOST BASIC PHENOMENA IN OUR UNIVERSE IS INCOMPLETE!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!! FLY, YOU FOOLS!!!

But of course not everyone is working on that. Some because "Eh, is that really even all that important?", but some people who find the problem really interesting are nevertheless fairly dissuaded by the distinct possibility of working for decades without progress. Because there are a bunch of really smart people at work at this already who have probably already made most of the easy discoveries.


HP are so much easier / simpler than reality. They're an abstraction of wounds (or wounds and stamina and skill and luck and…) that is much more accessible, and much easier to grok, than going through med school to play your knight, and understand exactly what being hit by a Dragon's tail means.
Oh, come on. Hit points in Dungeons & Dragons don't correspond to stuff in the fiction layer except in the most contrived, hand-wavy way. There's a reason you added in that parenthetical portion. It's possible to model injury dozens of times more plausibly for basically zero additional complexity.


Changing Lightning to "first principles", however, has no inherent value (outside Discovery, which was covered above). It doesn't make the game easier to play.
To the contrary, "the spell just does whatever damage it says" rules out arguments that a lightning bolt should fry everything in a small pool of water, based on players' dubious grasp of how electricity works.


When it's something that the Knight is expected to know, it's one more thing you need to learn in order to play your "knight in shining armor".
Well, great news! Knights are not expected to have detailed understanding of exactly how lightning works!

... But you're not concerned about that, are you? You were trying to use lightning as some sort of extended metaphor that doesn't really work very well, I think.


IRL, there's people who do things by mindless rote, and people who actually *understand* things.

Which category do you picture the true masters of the art belonging to? Miyamoto Musashi, Sherlock Holmes, Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named), Batman? Do they feel like people who are reading off the scripted routine that was taught them, or like they do what they do because they have an understanding of the how and why?
I don't know a lot about wu wei, but that feels like a false dichotomy.


How do you picture replacing the low-level physics calls of this world with high-level "just because" calls in theirs impacts such character concepts?
First of all, again, I didn't suggest doing that. Unexplained is not inexplicable.

But to answer your question, I don't picture that making much of a difference at all. Even in physics, the use of simplified abstractions is often preferable (e.g. using Newton's Laws of Motion for things moving at far below light speed), because the error introduced is minute under normal circumstances. Sherlock Holmes, in his original formulation, told Watson that he intended to forget that the Earth circles the sun rather than vice versa, because that information has no relevance to what he does (and Holmes didn't want to clutter his mind with useless data).


does any of this "beating around the bush" help you see where the bush might be?
I think that it's about as clear to me as it was before.

Cluedrew
2021-12-31, 09:01 PM
Recommending a depth-first approach (https://xkcd.com/761/), are we?Not to that extent, but there has been a lot of bouncing around and I think digging in a bit more would be helpful in this conversation. Also the conversation has moved to RPG metric, simplified version (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640604-RPG-metric-simplified-version), meaning it has spanned about 4 threads now.

I guess we can still talk here, but it should probably be about the model of immersion. I think it is a good explanation of one of the contributing factors for the backlash to 4e but might not be a general model of immersion. I think, it has been a while since I really looked at it.

kyoryu
2022-01-01, 10:51 AM
Perhaps because adults' understanding of serious injury isn't mostly derived from the likes of games and action movies, as is more commonly the case with 7-year-olds?

Games are a bit of an ouroboros with D&D. They have the model they do because of D&D, so that's just saying "the D&D model makes sense and is intuitive if you've internalized the D&D model." Which I've been saying for any number of pages now.

Action movie damage does not really work like D&D HP. I don't know why people keep saying this. If you get kersmacked with a sword or an arrow in an action movie, it's going to hurt, impact you, and is going to be significant. People in action movies don't take a full-on sword blow and shrug it off. The closest analogue to the amount of damage a D&D fighter is expected to take is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqjfq5gsfYk Note that as soon as Boromir gets hit with an arrow he's pretty messed up.

An action hero might take a minor scrape or two, but not a significant blow. We expect D&D heroes to take blow after blow. We expect them to face tank dragons. This is not how action movies work.


Oh, come on. Hit points in Dungeons & Dragons don't correspond to stuff in the fiction layer except in the most contrived, hand-wavy way. There's a reason you added in that parenthetical portion. It's possible to model injury dozens of times more plausibly for basically zero additional complexity.

Exactly. The only consistent model is to accept that there is no consistent model and to just make up an explanation that makes sense given the unique circumstances of each blow.

People only don't recognize how unreal it is because it is so ubiquitous and has been so internalized.


I think that it's about as clear to me as it was before.

I've understood his point from day one. I've just rejected it as inconsistent, due to being willing to gloss over things in other versions and not being willing to do so for 4e.

Mind you, I don't doubt that there is a difference in his mind - just that it is subjective. And I find that subjectivity really interesting, as it leads to "why does it have this impact for him but not others", which leads me back to this theory.

Tanarii
2022-01-01, 02:35 PM
Action movie damage does not really work like D&D HP. I don't know why people keep saying this. If you get kersmacked with a sword or an arrow in an action movie, it's going to hurt, impact you, and is going to be significant. People in action movies don't take a full-on sword blow and shrug it off. The closest analogue to the amount of damage a D&D fighter is expected to take is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqjfq5gsfYk Note that as soon as Boromir gets hit with an arrow he's pretty messed up.

An action hero might take a minor scrape or two, but not a significant blow. We expect D&D heroes to take blow after blow. We expect them to face tank dragons. This is not how action movies work.
"They" (we) say it because it's also not how D&D hit points work. Hit Points are explicitly are not (only) meat.

Quertus
2022-01-01, 03:37 PM
"They" (we) say it because it's also not how D&D hit points work. Hit Points are explicitly are not (only) meat.

Seconding this. To clarify.… the goons with their guns have the action hero dead to rights.… then, suddenly, he charges them, maybe gets a scrape, but emerges victorious. That’s how the guns’ 2d8 damage translates to his 70+ HP.

It’s not “taking the sword to the face” *unless* you’re at a table that, contrary to Gygax, translates all HP to meat points. It’s eating your “luck and stamina and.…”, and nicking your meat points.

That’s action hero logic, and D&D logic.

And it is generally understandable to 7-year-olds. Even ones raised by wolves, who have never encountered the concept before. But, yes, *definitely* by ones who are immersed in the concept through video games and the like.

JNAProductions
2022-01-01, 04:12 PM
Seconding this. To clarify.… the goons with their guns have the action hero dead to rights.… then, suddenly, he charges them, maybe gets a scrape, but emerges victorious. That’s how the guns’ 2d8 damage translates to his 70+ HP.

It’s not “taking the sword to the face” *unless* you’re at a table that, contrary to Gygax, translates all HP to meat points. It’s eating your “luck and stamina and.…”, and nicking your meat points.

That’s action hero logic, and D&D logic.

And it is generally understandable to 7-year-olds. Even ones raised by wolves, who have never encountered the concept before. But, yes, *definitely* by ones who are immersed in the concept through video games and the like.

So, my Barbarian with 200+ HP gets paralyzed by a Ghast. (Flubbed the save roll, most likely.)

The shadow dragon that is leading the Ghasts attacks me-and hits with its bite and two claws.

I survive, because that’s only 100 or so HP of damage.

Narrate that in-universe, please.

Thrudd
2022-01-01, 05:12 PM
So, my Barbarian with 200+ HP gets paralyzed by a Ghast. (Flubbed the save roll, most likely.)

The shadow dragon that is leading the Ghasts attacks me-and hits with its bite and two claws.

I survive, because that’s only 100 or so HP of damage.

Narrate that in-universe, please.

lol. "The Barbarian strains against the paralytic flowing into their veins from the ghast scratch, black vines slowly creeping up his arm as the dragon raises its claws for a strike. His eyes and the tendons in his neck bulge, teeth grinding, as he heroically overcomes the paralysis long enough to shield himself from the dragon's strikes with his sword at the very last minute, its first claw strike knocking him back and spinning him, the second scraping over his back as he stumbles to the side, and its bite just passing over his head as he falls on his knees. The paralytic reasserts its effect and the barbarian's body tenses up as he glares in fury at the dragon."

Obviously, this is much too wordy to do with every character every round of combat, but all damage that doesn't drop a character should be considered/narrated as near misses and glancing blows thanks to the heroic exertion of the characters. It must be physical exertion, toughness/grit/endurance, not just "luck", since it is modified by constitution. They didn't actually hit you, they would have hit you if you hadn't had enough HP left. "Damage" should be renamed as something like "threat" - the greater the threat of the attack, the more points you need to avoid it. Actually getting hit by an attack with deadly intent will kill you, or at least wound you to the point of being incapacitated and making death saves.

OR
You go by the old-school rules that say that a helpless/incapacitated character cannot defend themselves and therefore can be killed by an attacker. It doesn't matter how many HP you have, if you can't move you're at the enemy's mercy. "Since the barbarian can't move at all, the dragon looks down at him, smiles a wide-toothed grin, and bites his head off. Sorry. Maybe the rest of the party can kill it and get his head out of its stomach so they can resurrect you."

RandomPeasant
2022-01-01, 06:21 PM
So, my Barbarian with 200+ HP gets paralyzed by a Ghast. (Flubbed the save roll, most likely.)

The shadow dragon that is leading the Ghasts attacks me-and hits with its bite and two claws.

I survive, because that’s only 100 or so HP of damage.

Narrate that in-universe, please.

I mean, it's not like "bitten by jaws that are physically larger than you are" is terribly survivable for a non-paralyzed person. The Barbarian survives because a Barbarian at that level is, or should be, a character like Thor or the Hulk, and those guys are simply durable enough to withstand getting bitten in half by a lizard the size of a house. Your reference point should be Thor getting hit by the jaws of one of those giant space serpent-whale things from the first Avengers movie.

Cluedrew
2022-01-01, 08:21 PM
"They" (we) say it because it's also not how D&D hit points work. Hit Points are explicitly are not (only) meat.I reject this. Even if the if it was the intent or not but everything just holds together better if you attribute HP to being just that tough. But before anyone freaks out (if it is not to late already) yes this is a matter of taste. I mean I will list a bunch of concrete factors that lead to this but still, I think it is fare if you (or anyone) looks at this and think that's still fine. But I can't. And I do know the other explanations, someone can try explaining them again if they think it will help, but none of them just seem to work as well.

Anyways, here are some of the problems for me:
CON contributes to HP. - This makes sense under either model as basic toughness is always a factor. It is just a baseline, for later.
DEX does not contribute to HP. But it can contribute to AC which decides whether or not you get hit at all. - Already we are starting to get into problems, if HP is supposed to, in part, represent your ability to make last minute maneuvers to save yourself, how come the stat that represents your ability to maneuver is not a factor?
Armour and shields do not contribute to HP. But they can contribute to AC. - Similar to the above, but for alternate explanations that involve your armour.
Healing often explicitly mentions wounds. Very rarely mentions vitality or some danger sense. - This one is less mechanical and more about related flavour. Still, it does suggest that the issue is injury and not some reserve of energy. Especially since healing is usually linear with the wound.*
Poison applies every time get hit.** - This implies that the attack at least made contact every single time.
Vicious weapons (that would be really nasty if they hit you) are more likely to do critical hits.** -
Save or dies exist. - Other types of saves I can work away. But if HP represents some instinct or will to live to avoid danger, how come it doesn't apply to instant death? Yes turning to stone could drop a hardened warrior instantly, but so could a knife to their neck.
In other words, whatever notes might exist that say otherwise, I just find that all the mechanics seem to suggest that yes, you get hit every time you get hit, that is not an abstraction.

I was going to talk about a combat system I made that actually was based around the "dodge at the last moment" idea and looked completely different. But I made that so of course it matches up with my view. So I will cite it only as "if I made a system based on the lore of HP, it would look very different". Because these problems just make the explanation not work for me.

* Except in D&D 4e, it may have actually handled this better. Actually I could say a lot about 4e in the light of this post.
** I think, these I don't have a lot of experience with and examples I can remember are few and kind of fuzzy.

Thrudd
2022-01-01, 08:52 PM
I reject this. Even if the if it was the intent or not but everything just holds together better if you attribute HP to being just that tough. But before anyone freaks out (if it is not to late already) yes this is a matter of taste. I mean I will list a bunch of concrete factors that lead to this but still, I think it is fare if you (or anyone) looks at this and think that's still fine. But I can't. And I do know the other explanations, someone can try explaining them again if they think it will help, but none of them just seem to work as well.

Anyways, here are some of the problems for me:
CON contributes to HP. - This makes sense under either model as basic toughness is always a factor. It is just a baseline, for later.
DEX does not contribute to HP. But it can contribute to AC which decides whether or not you get hit at all. - Already we are starting to get into problems, if HP is supposed to, in part, represent your ability to make last minute maneuvers to save yourself, how come the stat that represents your ability to maneuver is not a factor?
Armour and shields do not contribute to HP. But they can contribute to AC. - Similar to the above, but for alternate explanations that involve your armour.
Healing often explicitly mentions wounds. Very rarely mentions vitality or some danger sense. - This one is less mechanical and more about related flavour. Still, it does suggest that the issue is injury and not some reserve of energy. Especially since healing is usually linear with the wound.*
Poison applies every time get hit.** - This implies that the attack at least made contact every single time.
Vicious weapons (that would be really nasty if they hit you) are more likely to do critical hits.** -
Save or dies exist. - Other types of saves I can work away. But if HP represents some instinct or will to live to avoid danger, how come it doesn't apply to instant death? Yes turning to stone could drop a hardened warrior instantly, but so could a knife to their neck.
In other words, whatever notes might exist that say otherwise, I just find that all the mechanics seem to suggest that yes, you get hit every time you get hit, that is not an abstraction.

I was going to talk about a combat system I made that actually was based around the "dodge at the last moment" idea and looked completely different. But I made that so of course it matches up with my view. So I will cite it only as "if I made a system based on the lore of HP, it would look very different". Because these problems just make the explanation not work for me.

* Except in D&D 4e, it may have actually handled this better. Actually I could say a lot about 4e in the light of this post.
** I think, these I don't have a lot of experience with and examples I can remember are few and kind of fuzzy.
I agree, D&D HP is only fully consistent with some sort of superhuman toughness.
I also was working on a system in line with the idea of HP as "dodging at the last moment", closer to the D20 Star Wars vitality/wounds. My system didn't have the six attributes, either. I called HP "exertion", instead, and the points could be used for more than just avoiding being hit by attacks - you could also spend them to succeed at failed athletics checks and saving throws representing physical activity.

Tanarii
2022-01-01, 10:54 PM
I reject this. Even if the if it was the intent or not but everything just holds together better if you attribute HP to being just that tough. But before anyone freaks out (if it is not to late already) yes this is a matter of taste. I mean I will list a bunch of concrete factors that lead to this but still, I think it is fare if you (or anyone) looks at this and think that's still fine. But I can't. And I do know the other explanations, someone can try explaining them again if they think it will help, but none of them just seem to work as well.
Whelp, I for one a, glad that the writers of D&D have made it clear for every single edition that Hit Points are not only meat. Because when they're treated that way, it makes for a slapstick game that threatens verisimilitude. One where you have to think of it as some kind of webcomic like OotS. Those kind of games have a time and place and are not Bad Wrong Fun, but I wouldn't want to play in them all the time.

Otoh, I don't think that kind of game would necessarily threaten immersion. :smallamused:

kyoryu
2022-01-02, 11:49 AM
"They" (we) say it because it's also not how D&D hit points work. Hit Points are explicitly are not (only) meat.

I'm fully aware of that. And the "meat + luck + stamina" model works well... until it doesn't. There are, really, two models that work for D&D:

1. HP doesn't "mean" anything. Figure out some kind of narration that doesn't strain plausibility after the fact, that takes into account all the things going into this particular roll. (this is what I use)
2. Supernatural toughness (I personally hate this one).

At any rate, my point was that "oh getting hit takes hp and if you take enough you die" doesn't really match any fiction directly. Action heroes at least make the cosmetic effort of avoiding getting hit. The claim was that "getting hit, and if you get hit enough you die" matches fiction and common sense. It matches neither.

To be SUPER CLEAR, my point here is not "D&D is a bad game" or "D&D is not an RPG". My point here is that "4e is objectively not an RPG because of <reasons>" doesn't fly for me because other versions of D&D have even more egregious violations in my mind. Now, I can easily get over those because I (as most others) have pretty completely internalized, but if you step back and look at it, it flies in the face of reality/fiction pretty badly.

Cluedrew
2022-01-02, 11:54 AM
To Tanarii: I know what they say, but the mechanics tell a different story. I find that gap a lot harder to swallow than "just that tough". I don't even know why it comes across as particularly silly.

Tanarii
2022-01-02, 12:47 PM
At any rate, my point was that "oh getting hit takes hp and if you take enough you die" doesn't really match any fiction directly. Action heroes at least make the cosmetic effort of avoiding getting hit. The claim was that "getting hit, and if you get hit enough you die" matches fiction and common sense. It matches neither.
Your #1 option matches any fiction you want that reasonably fits the specific circumstances, and matches 'action hero' logic, which for many people is a form of common sense. Or at least provides sufficient verisimilitude. Not sure what else you could want from it, other than a highly complex system that tries to simulate / model reality.

I've seen plenty of other abstract models for damage in various games, and they usually can also be made to work for various fictions, with varying 'logic' from godlike down through superhero through action to gritty to wet paper bag, as desired by the game. They usually work for their games purposes more or less sufficiently.

But what I haven't seen work well is a serious attempt to 'fix' D&D by simulating / modeling damage better. Palladium & Hackmaster are the first simple tweaks that didn't add anything but complication, off the top of my head. Runequest is a fairly dramatic overhaul, that also didn't add much other than complications.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-02, 05:12 PM
Because when they're treated that way, it makes for a slapstick game that threatens verisimilitude. One where you have to think of it as some kind of webcomic like OotS. Those kind of games have a time and place and are not Bad Wrong Fun, but I wouldn't want to play in them all the time.

Otoh, I don't think that kind of game would necessarily threaten immersion. :smallamused:
The amount of 4th wall breaking, and Elan's role in that group, is immersion dissolving.

To Tanarii: I know what they say, but the mechanics tell a different story. I find that gap a lot harder to swallow than "just that tough". I don't even know why it comes across as particularly silly. Overthinking can lead to a lot of self inflicted difficulty. I've walked a mile or two in those shoes.

Quertus
2022-01-02, 05:52 PM
Let’s say Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, decides to adventure around the multiverse with Tom and Tim, mid-level Fighter representatives of “HP s as meat” and “HP as meat and luck and skill and stamina and.…” worlds, respectively.

The fiction that lives in Tom’s head is, “I’m just that tough, I can face tank a sword and hardly notice.”

The fiction that lives in Tim’s head is, “I’m one of the toughest guys I know.… but swords are deadly. I do my best not to get hit, and I’m skilled enough to usually avoid the worst of the blow.”

The fiction that lives in Quertus’ head is.… more like.… “I’m quite durable for a Wizard, but injuries can not only be fatal in and of themselves, but can carry poison, disease, and magical effects, and even non-fatal pain isn’t conducive to the focus required for wizardry. And the rules of reality - the exact way that being hit by mundane steel will affect me - can vary. Best not to get hit at all.”

Or perhaps the fiction that lives in Tom’s head is more like, “as I’ve grown more skilled, I’ve become tougher, and can and have survived two of the hottest fireballs possible back to back.”

But anyway, say Quertus takes Tim and Tom on as bodyguards, for the oh so not dangerous job of establishing spell component shops on alternate reality versions of their worlds.

Tom knows a great place to eat, where the food is free to anyone who can face tank a blow.

The first world they visit works by “HP are meat” logic, and Tom successfully face tanks the sword🗡/axe / swordaxe, and enjoys his free meal. Tim pays for his food, and looks on at this questionably human being in his company. Quertus also pays for his meal, but isn’t disturbed by the rules of reality, only by the barbarity of it all.

The second world they visit follows Tim’s world’s logic, and 3e mechanics. Tom makes his save vs the coup de grace, but is surprised at how much damage his body took from that blow.

Undaunted, and wanting to prove his manhood, Tom again tries to earn a free meal on the third world that they visit. Unfortunately for Tom, it follows 2e “stand still and die” logic, and Tom is simply beheaded / eviscerated by the blow (no save).

The fourth world is one of the rarest in existence, and, on that world, Tom has meat points, and Tim has “action hero” HP - everyone’s mechanics work the way that they expect them to. Tom gets his free meal, and starts calculating just how many free meals he’ll need in order to break even from being Resurrected.

So.… where does that put us on immersion, verisimilitude, and the suitability of the greater multiverse to be played as a roleplaying game?

kyoryu
2022-01-02, 06:13 PM
Your #1 option matches any fiction you want that reasonably fits the specific circumstances, and matches 'action hero' logic, which for many people is a form of common sense. Or at least provides sufficient verisimilitude. Not sure what else you could want from it, other than a highly complex system that tries to simulate / model reality.

I've seen plenty of other abstract models for damage in various games, and they usually can also be made to work for various fictions, with varying 'logic' from godlike down through superhero through action to gritty to wet paper bag, as desired by the game. They usually work for their games purposes more or less sufficiently.

But what I haven't seen work well is a serious attempt to 'fix' D&D by simulating / modeling damage better. Palladium & Hackmaster are the first simple tweaks that didn't add anything but complication, off the top of my head. Runequest is a fairly dramatic overhaul, that also didn't add much other than complications.

What is the position you think I'm taking here, at the larger side? I suspect we're talking past each other.

Tanarii
2022-01-02, 06:31 PM
What is the position you think I'm taking here, at the larger side? I suspect we're talking past each other.
As far as I can tell, it's that a Hit resolution that does hit point damage should often (but not required for all circumstance) involve something that resembles some kind 'hit' in-universe to maintain either verisimilitude or immersion.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-02, 08:42 PM
So, why did 4e not bug me, personally? Because I'm not a heavy D&D player. I barely played 3e. I stopped playing 1/2e in the mid 80s, and migrated to other systems. So when I came to start playing 4e again, I wasn't in that state of deep unconscious competence. And so 4e didn't yank me out of it. I had no expectations to be broken.

But for someone deeply into 3.x? Yeah, it's going to slam you out of immersion, HARD, every single time.


I think your theory has merits, I think you've posted some of it before and that I considered it at least thought provoking (in a positive way).

However, I struggle to apply it to my own experience, in which I find 2e, and 3.xx/PF, and 4e, and 5e, all non-immersive. That's probably quite clear from past conversations.

To me, there's something more than just familiarity that goes into maintaining a "flow state" defined version of immersion.




I think this is the most relevant factor for what I define as "immersion" in an RPG. System mastery, what I feel kyoru is describing, does make a difference, but it isn't the whole of it. Understanding of the setting and general expectations goes into this for players, as well. Your OOC decision process will be skewed if you don't understand some aspects of the world and the genre the characters are in. I think the degree to which the mechanics of the game accurately map to the setting and genre of the fiction have a role to play in immersion experience.


This, I think, is a big part of it, and no version of D&D does that as far as I'm concerned... see, the Hit Points discussion.

kyoryu
2022-01-02, 10:12 PM
As far as I can tell, it's that a Hit resolution that does hit point damage should often (but not required for all circumstance) involve something that resembles some kind 'hit' in-universe to maintain either verisimilitude or immersion.

Actually no, I don't think that.

What I think is that HP is at least as "out of world" as any of the supposed roleplay/immersion breakers in 4e, and so that it stands as a good counter-argument to "4e isn't a roleplaying game because of dailies/marking" or "4e can't be immersive because of <same stuff>"

I think HP can be fine for verisimillitude or immersion, if the player has internalized it sufficiently that it doesn't break flow state.

My personal stance on HP is "meh, it's whatever. Narrate something that makes sense in the moment without worrying about a grand unified theory of HP and move on".

Tanarii
2022-01-02, 10:36 PM
My personal stance on HP is "meh, it's whatever. Narrate something that makes sense in the moment without worrying about a grand unified theory of HP and move on".
Then I don't understand at all how you can object to it running on action hero logic.