What makes an RPG 'Video Gamey'?

[Jakinbandw]

So I was having a discussion in another thread, and when I brought up a rule from the game I'm developing, I had a couple players suggest that my system was 'Video Gamey'. When I asked what I meant, this was the response I got:


If the combat sequences look like I'm watching people play Mario Smash Bros? It's videogamey. Big flashy attacks, powerups, things exploding out of nothing, extra stuff appearing and doing "things" on the battle field? All videogamey to me.

And the more I thought about that, the more confused I got. While certainly that doesn't describe every game (Hello CoC) it certainly seems to describe every version of DnD I've played. In 3.5 clerics sit around yelling for minutes at a time as a large glow forms around them and they power up to their ultimate form, then they take off in a burst of flight to murder things by punching them. Wizards call explosions out of nothing all the time, and it is what they are widely known for (hello fireball!). Summoning monsters, or bringing objects to life to fight for your side are pretty standard.

But then if all fantasy games are Video Gamey (as described in this quote), then why specifically call my system out as videogamey? I feel like there has to be something more. The same person then gave an example of what they found as not video gamey:


If the combat is more about positioning of PCS and opponents, using terrain to advantage, and more subtle application of combat choices (so using an ability that allows you to tumble past an opponent to get into a better position is "normal". One that allows you to sprout firey wings that incenerates all enemies within 200' is "videogamey").

And the big thing I noticed, is that nothing there is incompatible with what they said a Video Gamey RPG was. Though again, we see them suggest that being able to nuke large portions of a battle as video-gamey, when DnD has always had spells like meteor swarm and similar. In fact, most fantasy RPGs I know of allow such feats of magic. So again, I'm not sure why if such things are video gamey, my system would be called out specifically.

So this is why I'm asking for other thoughts. What makes an RPG Video gamey in your perspective, and what separates a Video-Gamey game from a standard fantasy RPG like Pathfinder or 3.5?

[Drakevarg]

Overall "video gamey" is kind of a vague, semi-meaningless criticism. But to me, what it means when I think of it is a sense that combat is happening in a different dimension from things that are not combat. When resources are treated frivolously, enemies leap out of nowhere and have barely enough HP to endure a stubbed toe, or huge flashy moves are treated as purely cosmetic with no impact on the surrounding environment, that's "video gamey."

For instance, effects that can only be used in combat, or have a duration of "for the rest of the encounter." Health that restores immediately upon exiting combat. Giant fireballs that only deal slightly more damage than a volley of arrows and are about as hazardous to the wooden building you cast it in. A lot of convenience or 'quality of life' mechanics fall under this purview for me. In summation, when verisimilitude takes a backseat to being a game.

[BRC]

This topic has come up before, but to me it's nothing to do with the visuals and more to do with the game's approach to inputs.

The thing that distinguishes a TTRPG from other forms of game is that the first step of a player's action is not using an input.

In a videogame, you can only do the things that game gives you explicit option to do. If you walk up to, say, a bottle that's not coded as being interactable, and click the button that normally picks things up, nothing happens.

In a TTRPG, there is no difference between set dressing and "interactable" objects. The player doesn't select from inputs, they choose a thing to do.

And RPG starts feeling like a video game to me largely when it presents itself as a menu of inputs to choose from, rather than a series of Capabilities that PC's have. It's about the connection between Fluff and Crunch.

To discuss abilities, think of it like this.

Imagine I have an ability, "Leaping Strike", where my character jumps 30 feet horizontally and makes an attack, bypassing short obstacles in my path and dealing extra damage.

In a video game, I would accept that Leaping Strike is a combat move that must always target an enemy.

In a TTRPG, "Leaping Strike" establishes that my character can, in fact, jump 30 feet horizontally. If I have "Leaping Strike", I should be able to use it to cross a chasm, regardless of if there's an enemy to kill on the other side.


An RPG feels video-gamey when the artificial constructions that exist in the relatively limited design space of a video game are brought over to the TTRPG.

[King of Nowhere]

And the more I thought about that, the more confused I got. While certainly that doesn't describe every game (Hello CoC) it certainly seems to describe every version of DnD I've played. In 3.5 clerics sit around yelling for minutes at a time as a large glow forms around them and they power up to their ultimate form, then they take off in a burst of flight to murder things by punching them. Wizards call explosions out of nothing all the time, and it is what they are widely known for (hello fireball!). Summoning monsters, or bringing objects to life to fight for your side are pretty standard.

on the other hand, there are versions of d&d where martials hit with a weapon, and versions where each move they make has weird names that they have to call in advance like some anime characters. those are definitely more videogamey.

i'm unsure on positioning. i'd say a videogame is more likely to give importance to positioning, because it's a lot better at tracking position.

[Kurald Galain]

There are certain tropes that are common in video games (and often poked fun at, too) that are not usually found in TRPGs, and including these anyway makes the TRPGs more "video gamey".

For instance, a door that can only be opened by the correct key and not by bashing it or teleporting past; or an attack that is described/animated as a massive explosion but inexplicably only hurts a single target; or characters having specific "combat abilities" that cannot be used outside combat. Often these boil down to "I should be able to do <X> but the interface won't let me".

(of course, there are other definitions of "video gamey", as I'm sure this thread will show)

[Eldan]

Hmmmm.

For me, it's not about what the powers look like, or how big the power level is. It's about how things interact with the world. Basically, what makes a thing gamey is the sentence "you can't do that, the rules say so", where the thing you want to do is a thing that would make sense if we're simulating a world, not a fighting game. I.e. BRC's example with the Leaping Strike. But there's more of that. I can throw fire from my hands in combat, but can't use them to set a house on fire? Not because it's not enough fire damage, but because combat spells don't affect objects? Gamey. Gust of wind can blow enemies away, but can't knock a small item off a high ledge? Gamey. Your massive blows make the ground shake and rocks errupt from the floor, even if you're actually on the second floor of a wooden house? The gamiest.

One example I always think of is Gloomhaven. It's usually not too bad about being gamey (for a boardgame), because the setup is very limited. But there's that stupid rule that if you kill all the enemies, the game ends, and you can't finish looting anymore, even if you end your turn two steps away from the treasure chest. That's super gamey.

4E had rules like that. Fire elementals without resistance to fire.

[KillianHawkeye]

I'm not sure how things being anime-like makes it video gamey?

However, the fact is that video games, especially RPGs, have been influenced by tabletop games since the 80s, and a lot of things that evolved from those early video games are still a part of our tabletop RPG systems. D&D in particular had a strong influence on games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which came out around 10 years later.

[Just to Browse]

This topic has come up before, but to me it's nothing to do with the visuals and more to do with the game's approach to inputs.

Really liked this description. I would add that a common term for this sort of distinction is dissociated (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). Associated mechanics make sense in-world, like there's a in-character understanding of how and why a particular mechanic works. From the link:



For example, consider a football game in which a character has the One-Handed Catch ability: Once per game they can make an amazing one-handed catch, granting them a +4 bonus to that catch attempt.

The mechanic is dissociated because the decision made by the player cannot be equated to a decision made by the character. No player, after making an amazing one-handed catch, thinks to themselves, “Wow! I won’t be able to do that again until the next game!” Nor do they think to themselves, “I better not try to catch this ball one-handed, because if I do I won’t be able to make any more one-handed catches today.”

[False God]

To echo the first response, I generally find "video-gamey" to be an empty criticism. There's no consistency to the criticism IME, different people point out all sorts of different elements of "video games" as problematic, but there's rarely any agreement on those elements. Many people miss the fact that a lot of these "video game" elements have grown out of D&D and similars. They're really not different at all, yet somehow when on a screen with 3D graphics and a controller, they're bad.

So yeah, I generally ignore "thats video gamey" complaints. I don't think the "video" portion of the clomplaint has merit.

That said, there are "gamey" elements, and those are IMO, when the meta-rules of the game: the things the DM, the player, and the group interact with IRL become visible in the gameworld itself. Not to be confused with "game worlds" where the meta is real and the average PC and NPC is aware of their existence and function, if "leveling up" is a real element of this particular Fantasy Land, that's not a problem. If "leveling up" is something only player-facing, yet it comes through in the world when it shouldn't, that's "gamey". Decision-making on the basis of player-facing rules, rather than in-world logic. "I can jump off the 500ft cliff, because I have more HP than I'll take in fall damage." sorts of things.

Anything that takes you out of the role-play and focus instead on the roll-play is IMO "gamey".

And of course games by nature of being games will sometimes have gamey elements, it's not IMO possible to never run into this within one system. It's a 300-page book trying to present a way for IRL people to play fantasy people in fantasy-land.

[MrStabby]

For me its about freedom.

"Video Gamey" is about the limitations of explicitly programmed worlds. Its about things coming down to limited options, with pre programmed outcomes or probabilities of success. Its about excluding the things a flesh and blood and brains DM can make a call on.

You want to sneek into a room and stab the guard? There are probably rules for that.

You want to use some kind of detect thoughts effect to uncover their deepest shame and to whisper it loudly from just out of view to creep them out - most systems probably don't have a defined set of rolls for that.

Video gamey is, to me, where there is no support for the second type of action. It fails or it gets mapped to some other action for both difficulty and effects without being treated on its own merits.


Video Gamey is where what is written on a character on a character sheet matters more than a PC's character and experience at the table all the time (is swinging a sword, a strength stat might naurally matter more that a character having formed a loving polyamorous relationship with a pair of goblins from warring tribes or that they have tried but repeatedly failed to forge a magical shortsword or whatever). Video gamey is squeezing the richness that can reallistically still only be achieved with a human DM our of an RPG experience.


As a criticism of a system, I would guess its maybe about reducing things to dice rolls with little nuance (tables of DCs for different tasks, no flexability to use ad-hoc abilities to raise or lower success, diplomacy comming down to a die roll rather than depending on what you say etc.). Its not the most harsh criticism, and many tables like a bit of that. It may be you don't have a lot of open ended abilities - polymorph gives you a choice of three creatures, fireball has a set radius, searcing for traps always takes 30 seconds and so on.

[Tanarii]

For me, it's board-gamey not video-gamey. Anything that makes you make decisions for your character as piece within a set of rules is board gamey, anything that makes you make decisions for your character as a person within a world is not. They can and do overlap, and it's possible to also make a decision based on neither (e.g. for story/narrative/plot reasons).

And neither is inherently bad. TTRPGs are also games. Everyone has tolerance for different levels of


Really liked this description. I would add that a common term for this sort of distinction is dissociated (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). Associated mechanics make sense in-world, like there's a in-character understanding of how and why a particular mechanic works. From the link:
I don't say this often, but The Alexandrian is wrong. His definition of disassociated isn't correct, it is too simple and doesn't properly cover all the bases. And his example shows this, because it is also wrong, getting a +4 bonus to something once a day doesn't prevent you from doing it without the bonus later on.

[Pauly]

I tend to notice it more in world building and encounter designs. I think any system can be made video-gamey.

Two examples, being flip sides of each other.
1) Quests having no timers and are held in perfect stasis until the players interact with it.
2) Quests having unalterable timers. Once event A happens, outcome B will happen in [x] days unless the party solves the quest no matter what else the party does.
There’s a happy medium in between where quests will go stale if you fail to follow them up, or will be held as fresh due to the party’s attention being elsewhere.

The world having straight edge borders, progress to other areas being blocked by a sleeping pokemon despite a perfectly climbable fence nearby kind of thing.

Encounters that involve infinitely spawning enemies that need the party to shut a gate to stop.

Railroad progression - i.e. you must find a/the sanctioned solution to the problem, any other solution will fail.

Grinding. Enemies that exist only to be killed for the XP.

[Tanarii]

Grinding. Enemies that exist only to be killed for the XP.
Would XP for GP trigger the same response?

[Pauly]

Would XP for GP trigger the same response?

It depends on how its presented. If the monsters have no reason to exist other than to drop goodies for the PCs to farm then it feels video gamey to me.
It worsens if the PCs have incentives to cultivate random encounters or slay every possible enemy instead of concentrating on story objectives.

[Anonymouswizard]

Generally 'video gamey' is a way of dressing up 'it's not my thing'. That pretty much became clear to me when I picked up D&D4e and couldn't see where the '4e is WoW' crowd were coming from, like they could at least picked something the game vaguely resembles it like Final Fantasy Tactics. So it's kind of like being 'too anime', it's so broad it's basically meaningless*.

There's also the fact that some common video game tropes get a free pass when others do not. I can think of at least three games off the top of my head that have extra lives as a mechanically enforced concept, and I remember the days where 'how do I boss monster' threads were common. It's a way to make criticisms without having to be specific about why you have them.

Hell, RPGs could probably learn more from video games. I just hope WotC doesn't try selling loot boxes again, it didn't work that well for Gamma World.

Personally through I prefer for games to borrow from other art forms. ATM I'm interested in transferring the format of a TV serial into RPG mechanics, it'll pretty much never be used, but I'm throwing out the mechanics of a pulp space opera project and it helps me focus.

* Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine is too anime for some. However the dramatic poses are less for combat encounters and more for explaining to your housemates why it's not your responsibility to restock the milk.

[Pauly]

Hell, RPGs could probably learn more from video games. I just hope WotC doesn't try selling loot boxes again, it didn't work that well for Gamma World.
.

You mean supplements that could have things like additional subclasses, new spells, new magic items, additional feats?
I don’t think it will catch on. Players will be happy playing with what’s in the base set.

[GeoffWatson]

You mean supplements that could have things like additional subclasses, new spells, new magic items, additional feats?
I don’t think it will catch on. Players will be happy playing with what’s in the base set.

Random supplements with random additional subclasses/items/spells/feats so it costs a fortune to get a complete set.

[Tanarii]

Generally 'video gamey' is a way of dressing up 'it's not my thing'. That pretty much became clear to me when I picked up D&D4e and couldn't see where the '4e is WoW' crowd were coming from, like they could at least picked something the game vaguely resembles it like Final Fantasy Tactics.
That's why I like "board gamey" instead. Because most TTRPGs that are being accused of being to gamey are ones that are leaning into battlemat use.

That's not a disparagement. For combat I enjoy heavy battlemat use as well as games that don't, if they're well executed. And also it's important to note that built to work well with a battlemat doesn't automatically translate to "board gamey". That requires a strong emphasis on making decisions for your character as piece within a set of rules, and that doesn't automatically follow from battlemat-oriented combat rules. They can just as easily flow from making decisions for your character as a person, then utilizing the appropriate rule.

Edit: I should note I'm also a big fan of strong game structures. Which, if implemented or used in a certain way, can definitely increase the "gamey" feeling of a system.

[Witty Username]

Usually when I hear the term used, it is a comment on player agency, how a GM is supposed to adjudicate, or the amount of meta gaming assumed.

The most common thing on the system side is either, that it doesn't have good tools for handling situations outside a small number of set expectations , or the system is harmed by attempting things outside those expectations (usually, combat is easy to run, everything else is non-existent, or poorly organized).

This could be as simple as a less effective layout, or inadequate GM guidance. Or it could be the actions that players can take is too strongly defined (I have heard D&D 4e accused of this, as some read it as not being able to do actions in combat outside of powers, I can't read the things so I would need someone with greater system to comment).

[Telok]

One issue with discussing this is that early D&D strongly influenced early video games, and the cross pollenation has never stopped. As soon as you leave that sort of feedback loop ecosystem, as soon you're not talking D&Ds and sword/sorcery games, nobody cares. This issue never seems to ever come up.

But within that D&Ds-crpgs ouroboros there seems three main cults;

1. The grid, only the grid, and nothing but the grid. Basically every action you take has to fit within a rigid structure. Examples: You can move 30 feet. It's not a walk, jog, run, or anything, you can just move 30 feet (or 60 if that's all you do). Your character isn't walking or running, not taking corners by grabbing a pole or skidding on a polished stone floor in your metal soled boots or sliding down a bannister, it's moving a mini across a grid. You have a 'grand master pyromancer archmage flame lord' character where everything is so bolted to the rules that you have 27 "burn people" spells that may or may not (decided seemingly at random for each spell) start any fires, create smoke, shed light, work underwater, melt ice, heat or warm things, or make sounds. They all "do fire damage" of various sorts but everything else hast to be explicitly allowed, or is just completely ignored by the rules.

2. Combat, non-combat, and never the twain shall meet. Not limited to actual combat, but really any system where the rules so massively change the the character suddenly gains (or loses) abilities based on the "game phase" that has to have a hard bounded start & end. Examples: The party druid can shout so loud it can kill people, and those it doesn't kill get blown back 10 feet. But only once in a combat for as many times a day as you get into fights. No more, no less, no matter how long a "combat" lasts or how little time there is between "combats". And it doesn't do anything outside a fight. Or sure, maybe your character can scry on the other side of the planet, teleport to the moon, and accurately tell the future during regular combat while on fire and being stabbed by three kobolds. But this is a spaceship combat phase where you're in a comfy chair with a mai tai in your hand. Therefore, no, you can't do any of that.

3. The power of the rules compels you (but not me so neener neener neener)! This is where some of the characters (usually player characters) are bound by the rules to do things a certain way or required to use specific mechanics that put strict bounds on their abilities. But everyone else (usually npcs) is just bound by "whatever the GM thinks is OK" or the similar "whatever the narrative needs". Often it results in npcs that are, narratively & 'in the fiction', the same as a pc but with cooler and more fun abilities. Examples: The npc evoker wizard casts the same spells the pc does, but instead of casting fireballs they just make stuff blow up. Even in antimagic zones, can't be countered, and it stuns people too. Your pc can't do that because you can't have nice toys. Maybe you got the GM to let you play a kender so you get the racial taunting ability to play with. Oh, but only one guy at a time and only a couple times a day because apparently that's as many insults as you can think of. Don't pay any attention to the npc who has the at-will aoe version. The npc necromancer gets 50 zombie archers with extra large crossbows while your higher level and "more powerful" pc necromancer gets 5 unalterable stat blocks that say "zombie" and still need to get a good nights' sleep or else suffer exhaustion.

Those are the things I think I see get called out the most as video game like.

Now people will rush to defend all this in the name of "simplicity", or because they can come up with excuses for it, or they'll claim something about magic because I used convenient & easy examples. It's not 'just the magic' because that's some of the easiest and most obvious examples. You can have simple, understandable, coherent game play & npcs without the problems that get games called "video gamey". You shouldn't have to be making up excuses to cover up janky bad writing in rules. If some mechanic needed an excuse the authors of that mechanic are perfectly capable of coming up with one if they aren't just being sloppy **** writers. If the game literally just handwaves a bunch of in genera, on trope, directly relevant stuff, that's been previously successfully handled, as "too hard to do well"... **** writers.

[Pauly]

Random supplements with random additional subclasses/items/spells/feats so it costs a fortune to get a complete set.

That was Dragon magazine. Haven’t seen or heard of it in a while so I assume WotC have killed it.

[GeoffWatson]

That was Dragon magazine. Haven’t seen or heard of it in a while so I assume WotC have killed it.

Gamma World literally had random booster packs with extra feats/powers for players to use. That's why Gamma World was brought up when Loot Boxes were mentioned.

[KillianHawkeye]

That was Dragon magazine. Haven’t seen or heard of it in a while so I assume WotC have killed it.

Dragon and Dungeon magazines went digital when 4th Edition launched (and Paizo left to focus on Pathfinder), but I think they were both eventually phased out and replaced by D&D Beyond content by the time 5th rolled around.

[Lucas Yew]

To OP: the less the general verisimilitude of the game rules is (as an representative of the game world's general physics), the more "video?board-gamey it feels for me.

Such as Health-Damage Asymmetry (including the Minion/Mook template, and all other PC-NPC Blatant Asymmetries in general). Or wobbly physical constants (like if the gravitational constants factoring in for your Jump task difficulty loosely related to your GM's mood that day being a colossal NO).

[Duff]

For the topical OOTS comic:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0456.html

The first 4 responses give you a range of options. Any or all could be part of what they mean, and referring those concepts back to them may help to clarify the critisism. I'm assuming the way it was said meant those people at least feel it is a criticism.

I'm going to say my biggest objection to videogameyness is when powers have descriptions of their effect that don't consider the effect on the world.

As others have described, rocks from the ground, even on the second floor, fire that can't be used to light things up and jumps that can only be made as part of an "Attack action" or "once per encounter/day" abilities which are not explained by mechanics.

A gamey encounter power:
EG, once per encounter I can leap 30' and attack for extra damage.
OK, why only once per encounter? If it's because it uses up too much energy, then can I still do it while exhausted? How about if I have a 2nd power that uses my leg muscles as well? Why would I not be able to make 2 jumps of either kind?

In contrast
You can wrong foot your opponent, getting +x on your roll. Anyone who's seen you do this won't fall for your tricks so you would only be able to do this once per fight.
And then allow the GM to say "This enemy hasn't seen that trick, you can catch them with it"

[Ignimortis]

This topic has come up before, but to me it's nothing to do with the visuals and more to do with the game's approach to inputs.

The thing that distinguishes a TTRPG from other forms of game is that the first step of a player's action is not using an input.

*snip*

To discuss abilities, think of it like this.

Imagine I have an ability, "Leaping Strike", where my character jumps 30 feet horizontally and makes an attack, bypassing short obstacles in my path and dealing extra damage.

In a video game, I would accept that Leaping Strike is a combat move that must always target an enemy.

In a TTRPG, "Leaping Strike" establishes that my character can, in fact, jump 30 feet horizontally. If I have "Leaping Strike", I should be able to use it to cross a chasm, regardless of if there's an enemy to kill on the other side.

Pretty much this. A "videogamey" is what a TTRPG becomes when things you can do are severely limited by context of use and what's explicitly stated in ability text. If Power Attack is its' own separate attack instead of "I can swing harder on every swing", that's videogamey. If the only way I can use a Firebolt is to deal fire damage to an enemy with HP, rather than set a bunch of wood on fire or melt some wax, that's videogamey.

As for:

If the combat sequences look like I'm watching people play Mario Smash Bros? It's videogamey. Big flashy attacks, powerups, things exploding out of nothing, extra stuff appearing and doing "things" on the battle field? All videogamey to me.

If the combat is more about positioning of PCS and opponents, using terrain to advantage, and more subtle application of combat choices (so using an ability that allows you to tumble past an opponent to get into a better position is "normal". One that allows you to sprout firey wings that incenerates all enemies within 200' is "videogamey").

That's BS. The most videogame-like TTRPG I've played was PF2, and it's precisely about positioning, using terrain and subtle choices. Except it's so full of discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out, it feels like a video game (and a bad one at that).

Meanwhile in something like Vampire, I could throw a guy through a wall, jump ten feet high, summon shadows from nothing to assail my enemies, and it was all pretty much informed by numbers on my sheet and maybe a couple abilities that could be combined on the fly in various ways because nothing said you can't.

[Lord Torath]

For example, the Dungeon Crasher feat. Thog can only damage the dungeon if he has someone to crush against its walls (or columns) (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0808.html).

[Willie the Duck]

Generally agree with others that it's mostly a non-sensical term. There isn't enough consistency within video games (much less in ways that RPGs, much less only some RPGs, can also fit) for there to be a discrete set of things which are 'video-gamey.' More to the point, I don't think that a majority of people who use that terms as a criticism against certain TTRPGs are using the term to mean the same thing. And even beyond that, of the things people do use as descriptors of how things are video-gamey, the tend to either be universal/been in TTRPGs since time immemorial, or are fairly selective in the interpretation that they are a problem, which this other thing (that is near-universal/been in TTRPGs since time immemorial) is somehow okay. Example:

If the combat is more about positioning of PCS and opponents, using terrain to advantage, and more subtle application of combat choices (so using an ability that allows you to tumble past an opponent to get into a better position is "normal". One that allows you to sprout firey wings that incenerates all enemies within 200' is "videogamey").
As mentioned, spells routinely do the later. Even moreso, they do so in a manner that emulates that Alexandrian definition of dissociated mechanics, just with a superficial justification*. Your character performs an act, and a really contextually convenient** happenstance occurs that cannot be infinitely repeated (nor just plain exhausting the caster from a general endurance pool***). Somehow that's okay for casters, but not for anyone else (even other supernatural types like 'spellblades' or the like). That's the guy in the gym issue***, just wrapped in the packaging of a complaint that the martial-not-just-from-the-gym is 'too video-gamey.'
*Vancian magic or a near analog, usually.
**generally conforming to typical-battle-scenario-sized
***excepting HERO SYSTEM and a few others
****And to be clear, I'm okay with the one wanting limited non-magics as the guy in the gym issue alludes -- so long as you acknowledge that that's your real complaint, and offer solutions for the 'so why doesn't everyone play a wizard?' issue it invites.


One issue with discussing this is that early D&D strongly influenced early video games, and the cross pollenation has never stopped. As soon as you leave that sort of feedback loop ecosystem, as soon you're not talking D&Ds and sword/sorcery games, nobody cares. This issue never seems to ever come up.

D&D has done a massive amount of shaping of computer games, from Dungeon and Zork to Final Fantasy and WoW to general concepts like Hit Points and magic power meters (long-stapolated from various alternet spellpoint systems and just the concept of spells-per-day). Computer games have likewise brought back many concepts, themes, and genre elements.

I've seen a lot of people complain about games* being 'too video-gamey' when they are doing what much of early D&D always was -- playing relatively background-less characters exploring funhouse-of-death dungeons** for loot and XP for no other reason than advancing to get better and exploring dungeons for loot and xp. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and it's a good thing that additional playstyles have developed (and were experimented with effectively since the very beginning), but it's worth noting that it's always been with gaming and certainly isn't an artifact of video-games.
*systems, or more frequently just individual campaigns, as in the 'I like role-playing, you're just roll-playing, like a computer-game' mentality.
**often with traps and challenges that only make sense as ways to challenger/threaten the PCs

[Kurald Galain]

Generally agree with others that it's mostly a non-sensical term.

Funnily, most people in this thread that don't say it's a meaningless term are rather clearly in agreement over what the term means. :smallamused:

[BRC]

To expand a bit


The line between a video game and a TTRPG is the difference between a living world and an obstacle course.

A TTRPG exists in the realm of imagination, and so gives us the ability to create a true living world for the game to inhabit.

A Video Game, no matter how wonderful it is, and how much of an immersive sim it is, is always going to have limits. Sometimes, those limits are due to hardware or programming limitations, such as having players pick between pre-set dialogue options instead of saying whatever they want. Other times, it's just a decision the developers made. To use my "Leaping Strike" example, I would think nothing of playing through a puzzle section where I had to go lower a drawbridge over a chasm despite having Leaping Strike available for use in combat. I signed up for this experience, and part of that experience is solving this puzzle.

I might try to Leaping Strike across the chasm, but if I was blocked, I'd just think "Oh, the developers thought of that" rather than "That's Ridiculous".

In a TTRPG however, the contract is different. I'm here to inhabit a living world, rather than a very well dressed obstacle course. Forcing me to bring down the drawbridge when I should be able to launch myself over the chasm serves no purpose.

If the accusation of "Video-Gamey" has any true meaning, it's when the GM or designer backports assumptions and limitations from video-games into the TTRPG space. When they neglect the living world in favor of re-creating an experience from a different medium, even if it doesn't fit well.



The most "Video-Gamey" experience I ever had was when a group of friends from a nearby town (friends with each other, I didn't know them) came to my FLGS to run a playtest of the system they'd created. A sort of "magic returns post-apocalypse" type deal. Mechanically, the system wasn't great, featuring a ton of clunky nested rolls (Roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll to damage, roll to resist or something like that). I actually felt pretty bad for this group, it seems like they'd paid to have a professional-looking binding of their sourcebook, and were here mostly to try to drum up interest/ show off this game they'd made, but they had only really playtested amongst themselves, so they were pretty caught off guard when our group started tearing the game to pieces in the intro scenario they ran for us.


One thing that always stuck out to me about that intro scenario, which took place in "New York, while the magic-returning apocalypse is happening", and featured the pre-built PCs trying to use their newfound magic powers to escape from an incursion of demons and chaos, was that at one point we had a random encounter with "Bandits". In this scenario, Demons are flowing out of holes in the ground, the world has become magical less than an hour ago, and we're accosted by random armed people who want to kill us and take our stuff. There was very little thought put into this, just, an encounter with Bandits. And these were the same Bandit statblocks they'd drawn up for the post-apocalyptic setting that the game was supposed to be mostly about, wielding assault weapons and the like.

And it stuck with me because it felt like they were re-creating the experience of a CRPG on a tabletop. We had our initial tutorial fight, and then an objective marker "Escape the City", and on the way had some random encounters against low-level foes, like Bandits. Because in a CRPG resources are limited, and you don't want to design bespoke enemies for each random encounter, so you can just slap something close enough on there, like the Bandit mobs you created for the rest of the game, even if it doesn't make a ton of sense for those bandits to be present in this exact scenario. In a Video Game, those Bandits are just a blob of hit points and attacks. In the living world of a TTRPG, Bandits are NPC's who happen to be attacking you, so they need to make sense within the world.

It felt video-gamey because it felt like the designers were using a TTRPG as a way to actualize their ideas for a video-game, but without all that annoying computer stuff, rather than for the medium that it was.

[Drakevarg]

In a Video Game, those Bandits are just a blob of hit points and attacks. In the living world of a TTRPG, Bandits are NPC's who happen to be attacking you, so they need to make sense within the world.

For what it's worth, I'm generally every bit as critical of videogames that do this as much as TTRPGs. Worst offender that comes to mind being Dragon Age II, but really any game where you slaughter 50 people on the way to the grocery store and the story gives little/no acknowledgement of it.

[HeraldOfExius]

These days I would say it's just a more complicated complaint trying to say "the world and mechanics have obvious disconnects." As people have previously brought up, this typically includes things like "usable once per [fight/day/etc.]" without any obvious resource consumption, fire attacks that don't do anything except cause "fire" typed damage to creatures, and so on.

Which makes it weird that this concept of "video gamey" applies to games like D&D4e or PF2, yet I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft. "Video gamey" as a complaint about TTRPGs often seems to be thrown around by people that aren't all that acquainted with the video games used as comparisons, if they're even specific in the first place (see the previous reference to "Mario Smash Bros" or the inaccurate "4e is WoW" instead of at least picking a tactics game).

I think there is a legitimate comparison that can be made when TTRPGs can feel like CRPGs, but a lot of times that comes down to the difference between a human GM and whatever predetermined mechanics are implemented in a video game. A well designed game in either case should give you the tools to intact with the world rather than just watch it, but video games are more likely to skew towards the latter just because of the relative limits between computers and humans.

[Vahnavoi]

Calling something "videogamey" or such happens when someone who has played too few computer games and too few roleplaying games tries to generalize the distinction between the small number of examples they're familiar with. It's a pretty good sign whoever is using the term doesn't know all that much about computer games, or of roleplaying games, or both. There might be a legitimate gripe behind the sentiment, but the person lacks perspective and vocabulary to properly explain it.

This is super common. I'm old enough to remember when "videogame" meant Super Mario Bros and "computer game" meant DOOM, with those not in the hobby having no concept of gaming beyond those common examples. Likewise, I remember when "roleplaying game" meant either D&D or weird sex stuff. Then it meant dressing up as elves, because those not in the hobby had no concept of tabletop games and live-action games being different.

Of course it doesn't make sense. It makes less sense by the day, since improving technology allows for increasingly varied and increasingly expansive computer games. The medium by now arguably has more variety and more artistic ambition than the tabletop. It would make infinitely more sense, when complaining about a game being too much like another, to name the specific game being used as reference. I can't appreciate "videogame" as any kind of serious criticism, but I can understand why someone would not like surreal aesthetics of Super Smash Brothers.

---


One issue with discussing this is that early D&D strongly influenced early video games, and the cross pollenation has never stopped. As soon as you leave that sort of feedback loop ecosystem, as soon you're not talking D&Ds and sword/sorcery games, nobody cares. This issue never seems to ever come up.

So true. I once did some historical research and held a lecture on the topic. Just to give an idea, D&D, and its earliest computerizations (which started a year after the original publication), can be credited with popularizing hitpoints, levels and boss monsters. If anything, D&D's harmed video game development more than the other way around.

[Telok]

I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft.

That's a great example of the crossing back and forth between the table & computer. Someone had to explicitly encode those sorts of actions and effects. Probably trying to make it less "video gamey" and more like a well run ttrpg. It would be interesting to go through any dev notes or blogs to see if they mention it.

It's not totally unique though. Original XCom from the 1990s had terrain destruction & good "it burned up the scenery" smoke effects (and smoke inhalation) that dissipated over time in a way that something like several of the D&D versions never even address. We're getting more than just pretty graphics upgrades as technology improves.

[Batcathat]

Which makes it weird that this concept of "video gamey" applies to games like D&D4e or PF2, yet I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft. "Video gamey" as a complaint about TTRPGs often seems to be thrown around by people that aren't all that acquainted with the video games used as comparisons, if they're even specific in the first place (see the previous reference to "Mario Smash Bros" or the inaccurate "4e is WoW" instead of at least picking a tactics game).

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of.

[Tanarii]

This could be as simple as a less effective layout, or inadequate GM guidance. Or it could be the actions that players can take is too strongly defined (I have heard D&D 4e accused of this, as some read it as not being able to do actions in combat outside of powers, I can't read the things so I would need someone with greater system to comment).
If improvised actions are significantly less effective than using a push-button ability, players will default to the push-button ability.

Also true if there actually is another push-button set of rules that covers commonly attempted improvised actions but isn't very good. Historically with TTRPGs, this often includes martial options other than "I attack": grapple/push/trip rules or trying to hamper/CC someone often is ineffective or too hard to pull off in comparison to doing damage towards killing someone.

Of course, some push-button TTRPGs excel at providing solid alternatives that aren't spells to just doing damage.

[Vahnavoi]

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

[Imbalance]

However, the fact is that video games, especially RPGs, have been influenced by tabletop games since the 80s, and a lot of things that evolved from those early video games are still a part of our tabletop RPG systems. D&D in particular had a strong influence on games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which came out around 10 years later.

Funny, that. As someone who had only ever played video games until the early 2000's, and had only ever played video RPG's until ~2017, what I found, in retrospect, is how many of my old electronic favorites were very "tabletop-ey," or, "pen-and-paper-ey?" Yeah, so, methinks the criticism comes mostly from grognards who haven't actually played many video games, and don't know what they're missing.

[Vahnavoi]

@Imbalance: it's not just that; it's also that development trends in mainstream computer games are not representative of what can be done and what has been done. Game developers play complex and experimental games (including tabletop roleplaying games), then take a few ideas from those, distill them into a new game, and the new, simpler game is what becomes an actual mainstream hit. A pair of old games that makes a good example of this: Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss (1992) versus DOOM (1993). One of these tried for a detailed "dungeon simulation", involving complex interactions between items, puzzles and quest that can be solved in any order, so on and so forth. The other was so simple that the developers joked the instruction manual could've read "if it moves, shoot it".

[gbaji]

Since it was my posts that spurred this thread, here's my take.

I guess I make a distinction between "gamey" and "videogamey" here. I don't have an issue with games having rules. That's part of playing any game. But in a TTRPG, I lean towards games that at least try to have some sort of standard "rules" for how the world works, and powers/abilities/whatever are logically slotted into those rules in a way that still allow for a living breathing (and perhaps even rational) world to exist, complete with people who aren't PCs and featured NPCs.

In a videogame, you tend to only ever encounter things or people who are related to the game purpose/objective/whatever. And they tend to be scaled in some way to "fit" into the powers and abilities of the players. I was specifically responding to a series of descriptions of what I felt were extremely unrealistic and unreasonable powers for PCs to have in a game. Powers that, while really cool for combat situations, would effectively "break the world" if we actually asked the question: "What would a world be like if people in it actually had these sorts of powers".

And yeah. That's absolutely a subjective view on my part. But to me, it's really about "does this work if we imagine that this is a real world plus <PC powers>", or does it only work if we assume that the only things that ever happen in this world are the things outlined in and managed within the scenario at hand. Video games (and to be fair, many board games) only consider the powers/abilities within the context of the game itself. And when the focus is on flash and whatnot rather than effect, I tend to label that more "videogme" versus just "game".


I'm going to say my biggest objection to videogameyness is when powers have descriptions of their effect that don't consider the effect on the world.

Yup. More or less this. But also with a helping of "how does the rest of the world survive?" as well. If the game powers more or less assume that all use of these powers must occur in a vacuum where nothing exists other than the combatants, and the focus is on just that, I tend to lean towards it feeling videogamey to me. If the moment combat begins, you feel like you are removed from the rest of the game world until the combat ends, it feels videogamey to me.



That's BS. The most videogame-like TTRPG I've played was PF2, and it's precisely about positioning, using terrain and subtle choices. Except it's so full of discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out, it feels like a video game (and a bad one at that).

I was talking about the focus and limits on powers. Was your perception of PF2 being "videogamey" because of the rules about positioning and terrain, or because in addition to that it had "discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out"?


Meanwhile in something like Vampire, I could throw a guy through a wall, jump ten feet high, summon shadows from nothing to assail my enemies, and it was all pretty much informed by numbers on my sheet and maybe a couple abilities that could be combined on the fly in various ways because nothing said you can't.

And presumably V:tM could have very detailed rules about distance, range, line of sight, cover, etc, but would still not feel "videogamey" to you, because those things are fit into a system that otherwise takes "normal world rules" and then provides exceptions that "fit" into those base rules.

For me, it's where the powers lead to, and how realistically they fit. And yeah, I get that to some it's hard to see a distinction between D&D where you have mages tossing fireballs around and what I'm talking about. But it's not a binary choice. It's not "this is magic, so no rules matter". It's "this is magic, so the rules are even more important". If your game setting/system/whatever doesn't ask the question: "how do ordinary people live in this world if people with these powers exist", then it feels videogamey to me.

I suppose it's also how various powerful game effects are managed. If AE attacks always hit your enemies only, then it feels videogamey to me. And yeah, if you are dealing out damage levels that should level mountains, but only ever cause damage to your enemies/target/whatever, that feels videogamey to me. Several people have commented on this sort of thing already and I more or less agree with them. If a game system starts out by determining that "this is how physical damage works", and "this is how fire (elemental) damage works", and "this is how falling works", and "this is how weight and structures and physics work", etc, and then magic or tech or whatever is slotted in within that context? That's feels "real" to me, and makes some sort of logical/rational sense to me, and feels like a world that people exist in and that I want to roleplay in.

When people are tossing around effects that incinerate whole armies with one blast, I start to question how the game world can have survived to the point where the PCs were ever born in the first place. Saying "My game system supports someone standing on the sun and firing bolts of flame down at targets on the planet", I start to wonder as well. I can suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but only to a point. So I suppose at least some of this is about "sustainable power level in a game world" as well. But mostly it's about why that escalation of power level exists, and less the actual power level.

And yup. This is totally a subjective preference thing. I just happen to prefer to play in game settings where I feel like both the PCs and NPCs actually "fit" iinto the world, rather than the world more or less just exists as a background for the PCs and NPCs to have combats in (you know, like the background in a video game, which changes, but really has no functional effect on the game). So I suppose it's directional. If you start with a game world and rules that works and then add the powers/abilities/whatever, that's probably going to feel "real" to me. If you start with the powers/abilities/whatever, and then add a world to that just to give some facade of "this is happening somewhere", then it feels "not real", and yeah... videogamey. The game world is like the background in Smash Bros. It's there. You can see it. But it is not affected by nor has any actual effect on the action we are playing out though.

Does that make sense?

[PhoenixPhyre]

And yup. This is totally a subjective preference thing. I just happen to prefer to play in game settings where I feel like both the PCs and NPCs actually "fit" iinto the world, rather than the world more or less just exists as a background for the PCs and NPCs to have combats in (you know, like the background in a video game, which changes, but really has no functional effect on the game). So I suppose it's directional. If you start with a game world and rules that works and then add the powers/abilities/whatever, that's probably going to feel "real" to me. If you start with the powers/abilities/whatever, and then add a world to that just to give some facade of "this is happening somewhere", then it feels "not real", and yeah... videogamey. The game world is like the background in Smash Bros. It's there. You can see it. But it is not affected by nor has any actual effect on the action we are playing out though.

Yeah. This is my personal preference as well, although I'd put it orthogonal to the "video-game" complaint. Setting as backdrop, with all the weight of cardboard, annoys me. Bad superhero properties (as well as a lot of the bad shonen anime) tend to fall into this--they're leveling mountains, but next episode everything's back to normal. At most you have a token "out"--the quasi-canon group of superheros who go around rebuilding the cities after each fight leaves things a total wreck...but what about the collateral human damage? Or you have things like fighting in some form of "frozen" zone that doesn't affect the "real world". But that too feels hollow.

And all of that means that I prefer generally lower-power adventures. Not zero power--the PCs should absolutely be able to change the world. But not trivially by pressing character sheet buttons, but over the course of an adventure requiring multiple actions, each of which can succeed and fail, and interacting with the people. Lower power makes it way easier to have a coherent world where the PCs are entangled with the world. Higher power ends up in the "cheat isekai" realm really fast, where the world becomes a pretty background and stops making any sense.

[Jakinbandw]

Since it was my posts that spurred this thread, here's my take.

I guess I make a distinction between "gamey" and "videogamey" here. I don't have an issue with games having rules. That's part of playing any game. But in a TTRPG, I lean towards games that at least try to have some sort of standard "rules" for how the world works, and powers/abilities/whatever are logically slotted into those rules in a way that still allow for a living breathing (and perhaps even rational) world to exist, complete with people who aren't PCs and featured NPCs.

In a videogame, you tend to only ever encounter things or people who are related to the game purpose/objective/whatever. And they tend to be scaled in some way to "fit" into the powers and abilities of the players. I was specifically responding to a series of descriptions of what I felt were extremely unrealistic and unreasonable powers for PCs to have in a game. Powers that, while really cool for combat situations, would effectively "break the world" if we actually asked the question: "What would a world be like if people in it actually had these sorts of powers".

And yeah. That's absolutely a subjective view on my part. But to me, it's really about "does this work if we imagine that this is a real world plus <PC powers>", or does it only work if we assume that the only things that ever happen in this world are the things outlined in and managed within the scenario at hand. Video games (and to be fair, many board games) only consider the powers/abilities within the context of the game itself. And when the focus is on flash and whatnot rather than effect, I tend to label that more "videogme" versus just "game".

Yup. More or less this. But also with a helping of "how does the rest of the world survive?" as well. If the game powers more or less assume that all use of these powers must occur in a vacuum where nothing exists other than the combatants, and the focus is on just that, I tend to lean towards it feeling videogamey to me. If the moment combat begins, you feel like you are removed from the rest of the game world until the combat ends, it feels videogamey to me.


Does that make sense?

As the designer of the rules you were talking about, I find this interesting. I've always mentally labeled my system as Apocalyptic Fantasy, because you're right, the world can't survive unchanged when that scale of power is thrown around.

One of the events I was talking about, where a character was sitting on the sun shooting bolts of fire down was impressive, but to give scale, in that setting he was a god that had traveled to another reality broken his soul, allowing him to gain power super quick. He was a month away from turning into a mindless primordial that consumed peoples souls, and then created a new universe of his own dying in the process. He was fighting the last Demi-Primordial of that universe, one that could control time and space.

The entire campaign had been trying to protect the remainder of the people of a hell world from the Demi-Primordials, and involved long discussions of how to handle the religions that had sprung up, feed the human survivors, and keep them safe. Two sessions of planning went into temporally locking every remaining human away right so they wouldn't be destroyed in the final battle. Even with all that, any location not temporally locked in time was destroyed in the battle, and the PCs had to flee back to their own dimension before they could fix anything. Instead, a baby god was left to pick up the pieces.

Now it might sound like that was all GMing stuff, but it wasn't. I put a ton of work into writing my game in such a way that world maps could be reshaped in battle. I had to ditch traditional mapping, and prototype some new stuff that honestly isn't as useful unless you want maps that can be destroyed. The game has a full faction system that forces to players into interacting with the towns and cities in the world, so that when a fight happens, and one of them has a 3 block radius wiped out, the consequences of that can be felt and need to be dealt with. Because of this, one of the most coveted abilities in combat are abilities that protect people and locations, or shunt battles into demiplanes.

I still remember one fight earlier in that campaign where the party connived to get the entire population of a survivor town inside a tower that they rigged to explode, on the principle that they could res a town of dead people, but couldn't do anything if all their souls were destroyed. Of course all this stuff with Gods and multiverse is just my own personal setting, and not going with the books.

The setting I'm going with is one where the primordial forces of chaos have just been unsealed, and wish to destroy the world. In a world where the most powerful wizard ever would only be level 7, and the strongest god is a level 16, eventually level 20 chaos things will force their way into a standard fantasy world and try to destroy it, while angels and the forces of light will do their best to preserve it with opposite but equal levels of power. Their definition of preserving it does mean freezing time in place so that nothing can ever happen or change again.

So the players have to deal with 2 eldritch horrors slowly breaking into a fantasy world, and that world is designed to shatter. It's designed for players and primordial forces to rip it up and leave it unrecognizable. Because I do agree with you, the power I want to give players in my game breaks the world, and I find how the world breaks to be the most interesting part of the game. When you give players the responsibility to save the world, along with the power to alter it in whatever way they can manage, and see morally fit to do so, you end up with a really fascinating game.

The only part that's really hard is giving the GM the tools to manage the game at these levels of power and setting alteration.

[King of Nowhere]

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

you sound like you had some bad game masters in your past. also, preparation =/= railroading

[Talakeal]

In my experience people complain that things are too "video-gamey" when you hand-wave something for ease of play.

For example, my system has reinforcements mechanics where, when you are in enemy territory and trip an alarm, you roll a dice to see how many enemy guards respond to you and how quickly. It works out to be mostly the same as keeping track of the individual locations of every enemy in the region, but is a heck of a lot easier for the GM to run, but gets dismissed as video-gamey.

Or even using average HP and stat arrays for enemies for enemies rather than building each as a unique character, or even not worrying about stuff like the air-flow of a dungeon and the oxygen content of the various rooms, especially when torches and fireballs get involved.


That's the guy in the gym issue***, just wrapped in the packaging of a complaint that the martial-not-just-from-the-gym is 'too video-gamey.'

Its also kind of backwards. "Guy at the Gym" is normally about restricting martials to stuff that is plausible IRL; this is about shackling martials with Vancian limitations that don't exist IRL.

[gbaji]

Yeah. This is my personal preference as well, although I'd put it orthogonal to the "video-game" complaint. Setting as backdrop, with all the weight of cardboard, annoys me. Bad superhero properties (as well as a lot of the bad shonen anime) tend to fall into this--they're leveling mountains, but next episode everything's back to normal. At most you have a token "out"--the quasi-canon group of superheros who go around rebuilding the cities after each fight leaves things a total wreck...but what about the collateral human damage? Or you have things like fighting in some form of "frozen" zone that doesn't affect the "real world". But that too feels hollow.

Yeah, it probably is othangonal. I think I tossed in "videogamey" due to the descriptions of the powers involved as well. When it seems like the focus is on cool powers and crazy abilities that feels videogamey to me. Because I see it as "I'm mashing buttons on my game console, controller, keyboard, whatever" instead of "I'm actually roleplaying my character in a realistic manner within the game setting to acheive my goals". It's very much about focus though.


And all of that means that I prefer generally lower-power adventures. Not zero power--the PCs should absolutely be able to change the world. But not trivially by pressing character sheet buttons, but over the course of an adventure requiring multiple actions, each of which can succeed and fail, and interacting with the people. Lower power makes it way easier to have a coherent world where the PCs are entangled with the world. Higher power ends up in the "cheat isekai" realm really fast, where the world becomes a pretty background and stops making any sense.

Yeah. I lean heavily that way too. Enough power to be able to defeat most "normal" things out there, and even some "really powerful" things (but not just by beating them, but having to figure out how to do it, like in a quest or something), but not like "walking around changing the primal rules of the universe at whim" level stuff (or anywhere close to that).

I tend to believe that low to mid power level gives the greatest sense of accomplishment. If you can just change things at a whim, then there's no real reward if you do so. If you have to struggle and work, and go on multiple adventures, and over time see some changes in the world around you (evil forces are decreased, good folks are running things, etc), that feels like you did something. In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now. And it's been small things. Helping out a rival to that king. Helping out some of the farmers who were in trouble. Gradually helping to get some other forces to put some economic pressure on said kingdom (then realizing that this was part of yet another evil kings scheme from yet another kingdom, so had to deal with the ramifications of that). Going around finding historical information about his family. Finding additional secret factions with various hands in the goings on. Working with or against those factions. Helping some border nobles deal with this kings actions. Each is a small little actions. Each gradually is changing things in the direction they want to go. To the point that now, like years and years later, they have helped build up a group of rebels, made contact with two secret groups who are helping them (each for different reasons, and of course each with their own ulterior motivations as well), built up some contacts with dissident nobles (and put them in contact with the aforementioned rebels), and are otherwise "poised" to make a final push. Is it going to be a grand battle where the players fight the evil king? Probably not. I haven't actually decided yet, but most likely the actual battle/civil war/whatever will be done by NPCs in the background. I'll likely have them involved by dealing with some other evil final strike thing the king has going in the background that'll turn the tide in his favor, or do <horrible things> if he loses. Something like that.

Because I like to make worlds that actually operate by themselves, even when the players aren't there doing anything. And that also means that there are large forces of history constantly moving along. And the actions of the PCs can influence these things, adjust the direction of that flow slightly here and there. But it's never just "we show up and change everything because we are mighty and can". That's the kind of game I just don't find any interest in at all. If you can just do that with the powers on your character sheet, then what's the point of doing so in the first place? It's all just arbitrary.


As the designer of the rules you were talking about, I find this interesting. I've always mentally labeled my system as Apocalyptic Fantasy, because you're right, the world can't survive unchanged when that scale of power is thrown around.

One of the events I was talking about, where a character was sitting on the sun shooting bolts of fire down was impressive, but to give scale, in that setting he was a god that had traveled to another reality broken his soul, allowing him to gain power super quick. He was a month away from turning into a mindless primordial that consumed peoples souls, and then created a new universe of his own dying in the process. He was fighting the last Demi-Primordial of that universe, one that could control time and space.

The entire campaign had been trying to protect the remainder of the people of a hell world from the Demi-Primordials, and involved long discussions of how to handle the religions that had sprung up, feed the human survivors, and keep them safe. Two sessions of planning went into temporally locking every remaining human away right so they wouldn't be destroyed in the final battle. Even with all that, any location not temporally locked in time was destroyed in the battle, and the PCs had to flee back to their own dimension before they could fix anything. Instead, a baby god was left to pick up the pieces.

Not knocking you here, but this is pretty much the opposite of a game I would enjoy playing. As I said above, I find that playing at that power level just isn't very satisfying after a fairly short amount of time. What's the point of having characters who can reshape whole worlds and universes and timelines, if it's all going to be torn down and they'll have to do it again? Other than just saying you did it, which I find to be a really empty accomplishment. It's kind of interesting because you are running a very high power level game, but it seems like the playeres have less power in it than a relatively low power game I might run because nothing they do sticks around for very long (I may be reading into this incorrectlly though).

Again though, that's my preference. I'm quite aware that other people have different likes and dislikes.



The setting I'm going with is one where the primordial forces of chaos have just been unsealed, and wish to destroy the world. In a world where the most powerful wizard ever would only be level 7, and the strongest god is a level 16, eventually level 20 chaos things will force their way into a standard fantasy world and try to destroy it, while angels and the forces of light will do their best to preserve it with opposite but equal levels of power. Their definition of preserving it does mean freezing time in place so that nothing can ever happen or change again.

If the most powerful wizard in the setting is the equivalent of level 7, gods are 16, and these chaos things are 20, what power level are the PCs, such that they are shunting people into alternate dimensions or freezing time in order to save them from destruction?

Do the PCs ever actually just live in the towns and among the populations they save? Or do they just hang out in some alternate plane/time/whatever, waving their fingers and saving people? I'm just not seeing where the scale of this game fits. Why do they bother with this? Seems like the PCs are so far beyond "normal people", that they shouldn't care. Unless there's some explanation as to why they are normal people living among normal populations of these worlds, but somehow magically are able to do these things that no one else can? Or are they all from other universes or something (which puts me right into the "why bother" category, since there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of outcomes, so you're really not changing anything at all. Just hang out in the universes where the chaos things aren't destroying everything, right?). If you can travel to alternate realities, then all that's required to "save the universe" is to travel to one where no one is in danger. That scale is just too large for anything you do to actually matter. And if we want to get more 'sci-fi' with it, then every action the PCs take just create an new infinite number of additional alternate universes, each with their own quantum probabilities of success or failure. So why bother? I'll just dimensionally travel to the universe where I'm the king and everything is perfect. And if someone shows up to mess that up, I'll just travel to the new alternate universe exactly like the one I was in, where that person didn't show up to mess that up. I can play this game forever, but it's boring.

Again. Goes with my general feeling that if the scale and scope of the PCs and their operations are too high/large, it becomes somewhat meaningless. Who are you really saving? Why? Are people actually people to save that you care about, or just numbers on some cosmic balance sheet?


So the players have to deal with 2 eldritch horrors slowly breaking into a fantasy world, and that world is designed to shatter. It's designed for players and primordial forces to rip it up and leave it unrecognizable. Because I do agree with you, the power I want to give players in my game breaks the world, and I find how the world breaks to be the most interesting part of the game. When you give players the responsibility to save the world, along with the power to alter it in whatever way they can manage, and see morally fit to do so, you end up with a really fascinating game. .

Yeah. No thanks. I could very well be missing something here, but that sounds like the opposite of what I want out of a game. I want to build things, not destroy them, or just save some parts of it that are being destroyed, or rescue people by shunting them into some other location while their world/homes are destroyed.

And then what? We get to create some new universe with new rules/laws whatever, only to have the GM tear that one apart? I'm not seeing the attraction here.

Again. Not knocking it. I'm sure it's great fun for you and your players (which is all that ultimately matters). It just does not sound at all like something I would have fun playing.

[Zuras]

This is an interesting discussion, because none of the examples given really match what I mean when I complain about a game or mechanic being video gamey.

To me, a video game style mechanic is one that may seem totally reasonable in isolation, but causes problems in practice due to how finicky it is, or the additional cognitive load it places on the GM and players. Lots of stacking bonuses, marking targets for effects, elements that are no problem at all if the game or VTT handles it for you, but can be a real pain if you do them with pencil and paper. Skill and feat trees that are confusingly impenetrable if you have to rummage through books for them, but actually seem straightforward when you look at them in a character builder app.

Basically any game that would be significantly easier to play on a properly set up VTT than at a table is video-gamey, by my standards. It’s not necessarily pejorative, I’m just a Luddite who prefers face to face physical games whenever possible, so if I call something video gamey it’s probably one of the reasons I don’t like it personally.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah. I lean heavily that way too. Enough power to be able to defeat most "normal" things out there, and even some "really powerful" things (but not just by beating them, but having to figure out how to do it, like in a quest or something), but not like "walking around changing the primal rules of the universe at whim" level stuff (or anywhere close to that).

I tend to believe that low to mid power level gives the greatest sense of accomplishment. If you can just change things at a whim, then there's no real reward if you do so. If you have to struggle and work, and go on multiple adventures, and over time see some changes in the world around you (evil forces are decreased, good folks are running things, etc), that feels like you did something. In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now. And it's been small things. Helping out a rival to that king. Helping out some of the farmers who were in trouble. Gradually helping to get some other forces to put some economic pressure on said kingdom (then realizing that this was part of yet another evil kings scheme from yet another kingdom, so had to deal with the ramifications of that). Going around finding historical information about his family. Finding additional secret factions with various hands in the goings on. Working with or against those factions. Helping some border nobles deal with this kings actions. Each is a small little actions. Each gradually is changing things in the direction they want to go. To the point that now, like years and years later, they have helped build up a group of rebels, made contact with two secret groups who are helping them (each for different reasons, and of course each with their own ulterior motivations as well), built up some contacts with dissident nobles (and put them in contact with the aforementioned rebels), and are otherwise "poised" to make a final push. Is it going to be a grand battle where the players fight the evil king? Probably not. I haven't actually decided yet, but most likely the actual battle/civil war/whatever will be done by NPCs in the background. I'll likely have them involved by dealing with some other evil final strike thing the king has going in the background that'll turn the tide in his favor, or do <horrible things> if he loses. Something like that.

Because I like to make worlds that actually operate by themselves, even when the players aren't there doing anything. And that also means that there are large forces of history constantly moving along. And the actions of the PCs can influence these things, adjust the direction of that flow slightly here and there. But it's never just "we show up and change everything because we are mighty and can". That's the kind of game I just don't find any interest in at all. If you can just do that with the powers on your character sheet, then what's the point of doing so in the first place? It's all just arbitrary.


Yeah. I run a "living world" with multiple simultaneous groups where the things each party does affects the other groups in "real time" and the characters (and their effects) persist beyond the campaign. That's been tons of fun--my last session saw a group get to meet their characters from the first campaign (now level 20 and retired). That first campaign definitely changed the world--one of their last adventures saw them dethrone a god. If they'd have just walked up and said "let's fight", they'd never have succeeded--physical might cannot dethrone a god. But maneuvering (both intentionally and not) a god into breaking the rules that bind their kind, manifesting on the Mortal Plane and interfering with mortals directly? That makes them vulnerable to a good old-fashioned beat-down. And it had been the entire campaign coming, ending a meta-arc that had started near the very beginning. Same with their other big thing, which was foiling an ancient dragon's plan. They never ended up fighting that one--it ended in a court battle in front of all the other ancient/adult dragons in the setting. And if they'd not have built up relationships over the campaign, if they'd have just "pressed buttons"...it would have never happened that way.

I tend to run on the principle of Archimedes and the lever--give me a lever and a place to stand and I shall move the world. PCs are definitionally catalysts. They're the ones who happen to be in the right place at the right time to make changes. Not because they pushed a button labeled "rewrite things", but because they moved a rock here, talked to a person there, and things snowballed. A high-level party is powerful in part because they themselves are powerful. Sure. But not "kick down a demon prince's door" powerful. But their true power comes from the allies they've made, the truths they've discovered (or created!), the lives they've touched, etc. All those together make them able to change the world and have it stick.

Direct physical (or magical) power is actually, IMO, the worst way to make lasting change. Sure, you can change things right around yourself. But your power projection is limited, and it's well attested that "great men" who aren't great leaders tend to get sandbagged/ignored by those ostensibly following them. Historical inertia is a thing--you can stand against the tide yelling "stop", but it'll bowl you over. Instead, you need to redirect it slowly.

[Jakinbandw]

It's kind of interesting because you are running a very high power level game, but it seems like the playeres have less power in it than a relatively low power game I might run because nothing they do sticks around for very long (I may be reading into this incorrectlly though).

It worked well for an 8 session playtest of the rules. In a way, what they did had a long term impact on the campaign as they became something of a legends amongst the other gods. But this is a local game, so I wouldn't discuss if you would like it or not. I'm not trying to sell you on it, just give context.




If the most powerful wizard in the setting is the equivalent of level 7, gods are 16, and these chaos things are 20, what power level are the PCs, such that they are shunting people into alternate dimensions or freezing time in order to save them from destruction?

They start at level 1, and can level up all the way to level 20. Remember, I was giving examples from the 'High Level playtest that started the PCs at level 11, and leveled them about once a session until they hit 20 instead of a slower game, with all the examples coming when they were level 19-20. The setting was a completely different one than the one I'm writing to include in the book.

Right now, I'm in a game where we are level 1, and we, as a party, are struggling to reliably beat more than a dozen weak Shadows (chaos monsters) in a battle. Our faction work so far has included setting up a training grounds, and recruiting 30 characters to train up as a militia to protect our local town when we aren't there.

Our last session was us traveling with a train of refugees to protect them in case a bunch of Shadows saw them and attacked, as we escorted them to the capital, only to arrive and find that the doors were barred to all due to overcrowding. We had to deal with the water making the horses sick, a person getting a broken arm after falling off a spooked horse, and a stick up from some local outlaws that had been partially infected by Shadow Taint.

Now you still might not enjoy it. Not everyone enjoys slowly building up from low levels of power to higher levels while their actions affect the world around them and they are forced to make moral choices.




Yeah. No thanks. I could very well be missing something here, but that sounds like the opposite of what I want out of a game. I want to build things, not destroy them, or just save some parts of it that are being destroyed, or rescue people by shunting them into some other location while their world/homes are destroyed.

I think you're confusing the homebrew setting I described with the main setting that I'm writing with the game. That said, if you don't want to play a character that can build cool things, then sure, the game wouldn't be for you. Not everyone is able to enjoy games that allow them to do things like build temples or recruit militias. It can be too much responsibility for some players that just want to go and kill monsters rather than interact with the world and grow to care about it.

Why am I talking about building things when you're complaining about destroying them? Because every time you change things, something of the past is lost. Raising a militia fundamentally changes the nature of a town. They lose something of their innocence as you teach a good number of how to be soldiers.




As for not being able to save everyone. Do you usually only play games where there is no chance of failure or no consequence for it? Things going wrong, and people failing are the risks that make success all the more exhilarating for me. That said, I could see players working with there GM to turn the game into something without such terrifying stakes. Where if something too dark happens, like the death of a cared about town or NPC, the players can veto it. I'm all for accessibility options for players that don't want such depressing or grim topics in their games. Heaven knows we have enough of that in our daily lives.

I also have rules for converting the games power level to be on point with something like 3.5 and ditching the faction system. Because when my last DM was running curse of Strahd, they and another player asked if there was anyway they could switch to my system because they were finding 5e too frustrating for multiple reasons. We switched over, and everything went smooth.

I talk about the high level play stuff though, because there are a million different systems that can run low powered fantasy games. It's not unique, and I don't find that my system can do it in a fun way a real selling point. For me, I want to sell my game on things that other systems can't do. And at the end of the day, it's having practical rules for handling the big flashy stuff. Sure it's cool that our bard is healing wounds by gathering wild herbs and using them as poultices, and sure it's neat that my character can access a bunch of light magic spells without it breaking the system, but neither of those are things that DnD, and other low powered games can't do.

So yeah, I'll talk about the time the party managed to ground a dragon just before it could fly over a fort and burn it to ash. I'll talk about the fact that a high level Technologist character can effectively build a full on air fleet. But at the end of the day, it's just me writing rules that allow for balanced scaling up to around level 60 or so in 3.5 (An easy way of converting is to assume 1 level in my system is worth 3 levels in a dnd game. Thus a Level 7 character would be about as powerful as a normal level 21 B tier character in 3.5).

If you don't ever plan on playing a campaign past level 6 in dnd, then outside of me and my friends finding character design more enjoyable than the other fantasy games we've tried, there won't be much for you there. And what people like when it comes to how a game plays is different for each person.

[Ignimortis]

I was talking about the focus and limits on powers. Was your perception of PF2 being "videogamey" because of the rules about positioning and terrain, or because in addition to that it had "discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out"?

And presumably V:tM could have very detailed rules about distance, range, line of sight, cover, etc, but would still not feel "videogamey" to you, because those things are fit into a system that otherwise takes "normal world rules" and then provides exceptions that "fit" into those base rules.
Because of discrete actions, yes. I don't think of, say, D&D 3.5 as too "videogamey", despite it having multiple relevant positioning mechanics of the same bent, because it achieves enough integration of abilities into how the core rules work to feel like it's something my character can do IC rather than a "button to press".



For me, it's where the powers lead to, and how realistically they fit. And yeah, I get that to some it's hard to see a distinction between D&D where you have mages tossing fireballs around and what I'm talking about. But it's not a binary choice. It's not "this is magic, so no rules matter". It's "this is magic, so the rules are even more important". If your game setting/system/whatever doesn't ask the question: "how do ordinary people live in this world if people with these powers exist", then it feels videogamey to me.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a system+setting combo that doesn't ask those questions. Either the system does (powers are limited in some way and not just everyone can have them), or the setting does (powers are limited in some other, not entirely mechanical way, but still not everyone has them).



I suppose it's also how various powerful game effects are managed. If AE attacks always hit your enemies only, then it feels videogamey to me. And yeah, if you are dealing out damage levels that should level mountains, but only ever cause damage to your enemies/target/whatever, that feels videogamey to me.
I find that it's enough for me for the ability to have the "deals damage to the targets in the area you choose" or "deals damage to all targets in the area, from which you can exclude X targets of your choice".

Otherwise things get bogged down with calculating how much earth displacement a Fireball-equivalent effect causes. Actually, Shadowrun does this with AoE damage effects and barriers, and resolving a grenade blast in an enclosed space completely RAW instead of skipping to "how many people it blew up" might take several minutes if you're good with those rules or half an hour if you're not.

[Duff]

The only part that's really hard is giving the GM the tools to manage the game at these levels of power and setting alteration.

That seems like a setting that would ask a fair bit of a GM. And the players
Which could lead to a table leaning more on their "buttons" than they normally would like.
That might lead to them feeling the experience to be videogamey

[Kurald Galain]

I find that it's enough for me for the ability to have the "deals damage to the targets in the area you choose" or "deals damage to all targets in the area, from which you can exclude X targets of your choice".
The catch here is consistency between rules and flavor. If an effect is flavored as an explosion, then it makes not a whole lot of sense that this somehow doesn't affect allies in the area. You can either solve that by describing the effect differenly (e.g. "seeking fire snake") or by making the effect ally-unfriendly.

That doesn't mean requiring overcomplexity like you describe with Shadowrun. But note the difference that 5E's Fireball spell explicitly sets flammable stuff on fire, and 4E's Fireball does not (and as mentioned, 4E has fire elementals that do not resist fire damage). Again, the point is consistency between rules and flavor.

[icefractal]

I don't generally think in terms of "video gamey", but overly gamist? Like, gamist to the point that it interferes with other qualities like "feeling like a world" and "being able to solve things in outside-the-box ways" or "emergent properties"?

Yes, that's something that bugs me in TTRPGs. I'm not saying it's inherently wrong, but it's not why I'm playing a TTRPG, and I feel like I could get more and faster gamist fun by playing a board/card/video game.

And that said, there are some video games which are better in certain areas I value than most TTRPGs. The table that will let you invent and use devices/mechanisms to the extent that Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress (or, I've heard, Tears of the Kingdom) does is rare. And TBF, those are single-player games (well, Minecraft has multiplayer but not in an RPG way). So if that single player wants to spend several hours fiddling around with a device that they then use to defeat the big boss risk-free, that's well and good. Probably not so good at a table of other players, so I understand there's going to be limits. But still, I don't think the video-gameness is the problem.


Re: "low and slow" - I get the appeal, but for me this is the sticking point:

In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now.So it's been five years and they're getting close to launching a coup/rebellion, but not quite there yet. So maybe six years total? That's not an unreasonable span of time for a realistic rebellion, but also it's longer than the significant majority of campaigns I've been in.

Personally speaking, I've been in enough games that lasted a year or less that I'm pretty wary of slow starts and delayed payoffs. Low-level play is fine, but I want to eventually use all the levels the system has, not just the first 1/4 repeatedly. Obviously some campaigns do last significantly longer, so YMMV.

[Ignimortis]

Re: "low and slow" - I get the appeal, but for me this is the sticking point:
So it's been five years and they're getting close to launching a coup/rebellion, but not quite there yet. So maybe six years total? That's not an unreasonable span of time for a realistic rebellion, but also it's longer than the significant majority of campaigns I've been in.

Personally speaking, I've been in enough games that lasted a year or less that I'm pretty wary of slow starts and delayed payoffs. Low-level play is fine, but I want to eventually use all the levels the system has, not just the first 1/4 repeatedly. Obviously some campaigns do last significantly longer, so YMMV.
I have not had a game that didn't lose steam after two years at most. Most games either conclude or peter out after a year and a half. It's very annoying to keep redoing "low levels" (even in systems without levels) over and over again, that's for sure.


The catch here is consistency between rules and flavor. If an effect is flavored as an explosion, then it makes not a whole lot of sense that this somehow doesn't affect allies in the area. You can either solve that by describing the effect differenly (e.g. "seeking fire snake") or by making the effect ally-unfriendly.

That doesn't mean requiring overcomplexity like you describe with Shadowrun. But note the difference that 5E's Fireball spell explicitly sets flammable stuff on fire, and 4E's Fireball does not (and as mentioned, 4E has fire elementals that do not resist fire damage). Again, the point is consistency between rules and flavor.
That's true, but someone can be justified in asking "ok why isn't Fireball area difficult terrain afterwards? it's bound to make a crater", etc. It's all a matter of how far you go with abstraction and suspension of disbelief.

[Kurald Galain]

That's true, but someone can be justified in asking "ok why isn't Fireball area difficult terrain afterwards? it's bound to make a crater", etc. It's all a matter of how far you go with abstraction and suspension of disbelief.

Yes, and I'm seeing a sliding scale here:
On the top level, the game makes rules for almost everything, and gets judged for being overcomplicated. Example: Shadowrun or Hackmaster, or those large-table wargames that last for days.
In the middle, the game makes an effort to match rules to the fluff within complexity limits. Example: 2E, 3E, 5E, but frankly most RPGs I'm familiar with fall in this category.
On the bottom level, the game doesn't mind having disassociations, and gets judged for being "gamey" or "gamist" or "video gamey". The most prominent example here is 4E, but games like Descent or Arkham Horror tend to be here as well.


Note that this is a scale and not three distinct categories with hard cut-off points.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of. This covers much of my feel for the distinction.

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa. I am not sure if this is heresy or not. (Your last sentence).

Same with their other big thing, which was foiling an ancient dragon's plan. They never ended up fighting that one--it ended in a court battle in front of all the other ancient/adult dragons in the setting. And if they'd not have built up relationships over the campaign, if they'd have just "pressed buttons"...it would have never happened that way. From a player in that campaign: We actually were in the dragon's lair. The four of us and an ancient black dragon were face to face. Dragons in Phoenix's world tend to be spell casters. Our nemesis (since about level six?)cast something like Plane Shift at the whole party. My attempt at counterspell failed, but all four of us made our Charisma save. (Which in retrospect makes sense, since we were playing a Paladin, a Warlock, a Bard and a Sorcerer). The dice were kind.
One of the things that I had hoped to manage during the campaign, or maybe shortly after retirement, was to make a deal with our former nemesis to take out those evil snake folk who were enslaving/sacrificing the zandolit / lizardfolk, but we I never got around to that. And now, motherhood takes a priority so that grand idea probably won't happen.

PCs are definitionally catalysts. Yes! (But that presumes players engaged with the world. I have a group which isn't really engaged, despite my best efforts).

I don't generally think in terms of "video gamey", but overly gamist? You captured another bit of my feel on this. +1

Yes, and I'm seeing a sliding scale here I recall Chivalry and Sorcery also being pretty Rules Heavy.

[Tanarii]

Some examples of games I consider quite (usually board) gamey and ones I don't:

Gamey:
AD&D 2e /w Combat and Tactics
Battletech
Shadowrun
GURPS
D&D 3e
PF 1e
D&D 4e
PF 2e

Not Gamey:
D&D BECMI
AD&D
AD&D 2e
D&D 5e (especially with TotM)
Palladium Robotech
Palladium RIFTS
Gamma World
Traveller
Apocalypse World / PBTA
Blades in the Dark
Mutant Year Zero
Forbidden Lands

[Easy e]

To me the premise of this entire thread seems a bit off. If you look at the OPs question, and then scratch it beyond the surface the REAL question seems to be:

"What do I do with feedback about my creation?"

Well, you really only have a handful of responses to feedback about your game:

1. Ignore it, because it is doing what you want it to do and the people critiquing it do not value or understand what you are trying to do.

2. Compromise with it. Incorporate some parts of it to try and get closer to what you want it to do.

3. Adopt it. Steal it and make it part of the game because it does what you want it to do.

4. Cut it. Realize it is causing more confusion than helping you do what you want the game to do so it is better to not be in the game at all.


However, in order to decide how to react or incorporate the feedback you need to have two things.

1. A clear idea of what your game is trying to do.

2. Clear design goals that you use to keep the game doing what you want it to do through out.


"Video Gamey" is simply a distraction from the main question you as a designer need to have. Is the mechanic helping your game do what it is suppose to be doing, and is it in line with the design goals?


If the answer to those two questions is no, cut it.
If it is Yes, ignore it.
If it is maybe, adopt or compromise it.


If you re-look at the feedback you got about your system, which of those conditions applies?

[Jakinbandw]

To me the premise of this entire thread seems a bit off. If you look at the OPs question, and then scratch it beyond the surface the REAL question seems to be:

"What do I do with feedback about my creation?"


In this case, it actually was about the term Video Gamey. I have a very set goal of the game I want to build, IE: one that allows for a character to level from standard levels of power to extreme levels of power. I'm frustrated with systems that make using powerful abilities have no effect on the world, and ones that limit the PCs access to the highest levels of power. For example, in Exalted the selling point of the game is often stated that you get to play powerful superheroes in a fantasy setting, but when you play the game you're surrounded by beings that make a mockery of the maximum power you can reach, the Unconquered Sun being a prime example.

So with those solid goals in mind, I've made a system that matches them, along with a few others that makes the system playable and fun for me and my group.

Obviously that means I'm not going to change the system because someone feels that they don't want to play a system where they can gain that much power, but the whole Video Gamey comment left me confused because, well, the things that were brought up certainly felt like they applied equally if not more to dnd and dnd-alikes.

After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that video-gamey is a messy term, and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Also that most people here wouldn't find my system video gamey (Though, I wish to stress, if the opposite was true and the general consensus was pretty solidly that what I was building was Video-Gamey to most, I'd likely embrace it and use it as marketing. There is no right and wrong answer here, and what excites some people drives others away. Knowing what audience you want to appeal to is always the first step).

[HeraldOfExius]

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of.

The point that I was getting at is that some video games provide more than enough freedom that you can do a lot of what you might think to try and do while some TTRPGs might not have much inherent support for most types of possible interactions despite (or possible because of) being very mechanically heavy in specific areas. Yes, a human can adapt to new ideas, but...


By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

Some people don't adapt well. And since a lot of the more "gamey" TTRPGs tend to be very mechanically heavy in specific areas (usually combat), those mechanics can be a crutch that leaves anything that happens outside of them obviously hobbled. That isn't always the case, but I've seen it happen several times.

[Easy e]

In this case, it actually was about the term Video Gamey. I have a very set goal of the game I want to build, IE: one that allows for a character to level from standard levels of power to extreme levels of power. I'm frustrated with systems that make using powerful abilities have no effect on the world, and ones that limit the PCs access to the highest levels of power. For example, in Exalted the selling point of the game is often stated that you get to play powerful superheroes in a fantasy setting, but when you play the game you're surrounded by beings that make a mockery of the maximum power you can reach, the Unconquered Sun being a prime example.

So with those solid goals in mind, I've made a system that matches them, along with a few others that makes the system playable and fun for me and my group.

Obviously that means I'm not going to change the system because someone feels that they don't want to play a system where they can gain that much power, but the whole Video Gamey comment left me confused because, well, the things that were brought up certainly felt like they applied equally if not more to dnd and dnd-alikes.

After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that video-gamey is a messy term, and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Also that most people here wouldn't find my system video gamey (Though, I wish to stress, if the opposite was true and the general consensus was pretty solidly that what I was building was Video-Gamey to most, I'd likely embrace it and use it as marketing. There is no right and wrong answer here, and what excites some people drives others away. Knowing what audience you want to appeal to is always the first step).

Cool. It sounds like you figured out what you needed then!

Kudos.

[Psyren]

I never understood "video game" as a pejorative. Even putting aside the gray areas between the two like VTTs and BG/Solasta-style conversions, a lot of video game designers cut their teeth on tabletop gaming and vice-versa. They share a great deal of DNA, and there are valuable design lessons to be learned from any medium, even non-interactive ones. Every tool in the toolbox has a use, whether or not it applies to the task at hand.

One of my favorite D&D youtubers is Trekiros, a channel that uses video game design principles to improve tabletop games (mostly D&D 5e, but applicable to others as well.) For example, he has a great video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUQiwasHVzE&lc) analyzing the problems with Legendary Resistances in 5e, and looks at how video game boss fights do a better job of approaching this idea than 5e does. I also love a lot of video game design channels such as Extra Credits, Game Maker's Toolkit, Game Overanalyzer, Up Is Not Jump and several more.

Folks who want to better understand or improve tabletop design, yet write off everything happening in the video game sphere as unworthy, are doing themselves a disservice in my view.

[Talakeal]

Some examples of games I consider quite (usually board) gamey and ones I don't:

Gamey:
AD&D 2e /w Combat and Tactics
Battletech
Shadowrun
GURPS
D&D 3e
PF 1e
D&D 4e
PF 2e

Not Gamey:
D&D BECMI
AD&D
AD&D 2e
D&D 5e (especially with TotM)
Palladium Robotech
Palladium RIFTS
Gamma World
Traveller
Apocalypse World / PBTA
Blades in the Dark
Mutant Year Zero
Forbidden Lands

It seems like your criteria is mostly based on tactical combat and battle mats. Although I do wonder why Shadowrun is in that category.


To me the premise of this entire thread seems a bit off. If you look at the OPs question, and then scratch it beyond the surface the REAL question seems to be:

"What do I do with feedback about my creation?"

Well, you really only have a handful of responses to feedback about your game:

1. Ignore it, because it is doing what you want it to do and the people critiquing it do not value or understand what you are trying to do.

2. Compromise with it. Incorporate some parts of it to try and get closer to what you want it to do.

3. Adopt it. Steal it and make it part of the game because it does what you want it to do.

4. Cut it. Realize it is causing more confusion than helping you do what you want the game to do so it is better to not be in the game at all.


However, in order to decide how to react or incorporate the feedback you need to have two things.

1. A clear idea of what your game is trying to do.

2. Clear design goals that you use to keep the game doing what you want it to do through out.


"Video Gamey" is simply a distraction from the main question you as a designer need to have. Is the mechanic helping your game do what it is suppose to be doing, and is it in line with the design goals?


If the answer to those two questions is no, cut it.
If it is Yes, ignore it.
If it is maybe, adopt or compromise it.


If you re-look at the feedback you got about your system, which of those conditions applies?

It can be very hard to know what to do with feedback until you understand what the feedback means. There are a lot of vague terms that have little to no meaning by themselves, but people are using as shorthand for very real and correct feedback.


Yes, and I'm seeing a sliding scale here:
On the top level, the game makes rules for almost everything, and gets judged for being overcomplicated. Example: Shadowrun or Hackmaster, or those large-table wargames that last for days.
In the middle, the game makes an effort to match rules to the fluff within complexity limits. Example: 2E, 3E, 5E, but frankly most RPGs I'm familiar with fall in this category.
On the bottom level, the game doesn't mind having disassociations, and gets judged for being "gamey" or "gamist" or "video gamey". The most prominent example here is 4E, but games like Descent or Arkham Horror tend to be here as well.


Note that this is a scale and not three distinct categories with hard cut-off points.

That seems right.

I know my system is normally in the #2 area, but certain things such as downtime actions, wealth, encumbrance, reinforcements, wilderness survival, etc. are more in the bottom category, and players often complain about the "lack of realism / agency" when those systems don't go their way.


Generally 'video gamey' is a way of dressing up 'it's not my thing'. That pretty much became clear to me when I picked up D&D4e and couldn't see where the '4e is WoW' crowd were coming from, like they could at least picked something the game vaguely resembles it like Final Fantasy Tactics. So it's kind of like being 'too anime', it's so broad it's basically meaningless*.

IIRC 4E was explicitly created to appeal to WoW fans because it was the biggest game in the world at the time, while FF Tactics was a lot more obscure.

IMO the 3 big reasons 4E plays like WoW are:

Gamist over simulationist.
Tactical encounter balance over strategic scenario balance.
and clearly defined party rolls for each class.

[gbaji]

Re: "low and slow" - I get the appeal, but for me this is the sticking point:
So it's been five years and they're getting close to launching a coup/rebellion, but not quite there yet. So maybe six years total? That's not an unreasonable span of time for a realistic rebellion, but also it's longer than the significant majority of campaigns I've been in.

The point isn't so much with the time frame, as with the methodology involved. But yeah, my main campaign is a very long running game, so I have the luxury of putting long term stuff in it. And also not just following one plot line. The one I outlined is literaly like one of maybe 5 or 6 other things all going on at the same time. So maybe one adventure they're sailing off to somewhere to deal with something unrelated. Another, they're wandering around searching for some lost treasure hidden in the area. They may interact with various bits of different plots threads while currently doing something completely unrelated, pick up some useful bit of information, contact some new potential ally, etc.

I also run and play in shorter term games. But those are usually focused on a single set of adventures being run in a given setting. And I don't expect massive buildup or conclusions there. Often "winning" simply means achieving whatever objectives were set before us at the start (though others may come along as well).



In this case, it actually was about the term Video Gamey. I have a very set goal of the game I want to build, IE: one that allows for a character to level from standard levels of power to extreme levels of power. I'm frustrated with systems that make using powerful abilities have no effect on the world, and ones that limit the PCs access to the highest levels of power. For example, in Exalted the selling point of the game is often stated that you get to play powerful superheroes in a fantasy setting, but when you play the game you're surrounded by beings that make a mockery of the maximum power you can reach, the Unconquered Sun being a prime example.

So with those solid goals in mind, I've made a system that matches them, along with a few others that makes the system playable and fun for me and my group.

Obviously that means I'm not going to change the system because someone feels that they don't want to play a system where they can gain that much power, but the whole Video Gamey comment left me confused because, well, the things that were brought up certainly felt like they applied equally if not more to dnd and dnd-alikes.

After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that video-gamey is a messy term, and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Also that most people here wouldn't find my system video gamey (Though, I wish to stress, if the opposite was true and the general consensus was pretty solidly that what I was building was Video-Gamey to most, I'd likely embrace it and use it as marketing. There is no right and wrong answer here, and what excites some people drives others away. Knowing what audience you want to appeal to is always the first step).

Yeah. In hindsight, perhaps I should not have used the term "videogamey", since that has a lot of different meanings to different people (far more than I thought). I'm hard pressed to precisely label it though. Maybe "powergamey" (although that also has a lot of very different connotations). But yeah, I'm not super comfortable with games where the power scale for the PCs is, well... extreme. There should be things more powerful than the PCs in the game setting. There should be lots of such things IMO. And (again IMO based on my own preferences), at all times the PCs should be bounded by "more powerful people/forces" around them, which force them to come up with ways to deal with the situation at hand by working within those constraints.

And I guess that's why I went with "videogamey". In a lot of videogames, the solutions are always about using the players own abilities in a somewhat direct manner. Yes. There are constraints around you, but each and every single individual "scene" you deal with you must have the correct power/items/whatever to win it. That's somewhat the nature of most such games. I suppose we could except various scripted CRPGs, but even those, it's a matter of the player picking the correct sequence of choices, and as long as they do so, any conflicts are directly winnable.

That's not to say I don't like PCs having powers and abilities that kick butt. Just that there's a scale to that. Kicking butt on large numbers of "normal" opponents? Sure. But there will be NPCs with similar powers as well. And things like gods? So far outside that power range as to be laughable. The closest the very most powerful characters in my game setting can manage is an avatar of a god (which are by rules limited in power when operating on the material plane). Said avatar might represent like .0001% of the actual power of the god, but will still represent a massive epic fight for the PCs to manage. If they actually traveled to a god's home plane (or just encountered them on any higher plane)? The most powerful party in existence would be incinerated to ash (or equivalent effect depending on the powers of the deity) in one second. No exceptions. Not because I'm being arbitrary here, but because in the game rules, gods have well defined amounts of primal power. Power measured in the hundreds of thousands of points, with no casting limit. While mortals, if they've managed to obtain some relic or whatnot with primal power in it, might have like 5 or 10 points. Maybe. God magic just ignores anything less than that, so all your other magic does nothing against a god. An avatar, for example, could have up to 100 such primal points (and casting limits if on the mortal plane). Possible, but incredibly dangerous. An actual god on a higher plane? A casual handwave puts several hundred points of damage/effect to everyone in the area, with nothing but primal magic protecting against it. In a game sytem where max hps are in the mid double digits. So even those super powerful characters might be able to block the first 40 points of damage/effect, then take the remaining couple hundred, and then die immediately. No saving throw. No takebacks. No do-overs. That stuff is simply out of the scope of player characters. As it should be IMO.

Does that mean that PCs in this game can't have an impact on stuff at that power level? Sure they can. But it'll never be "fight a god". We have, however, had scenarios where we were recovering lost or imprisoned deities from the gods age (or in one case a diety had trapped and was stealing the power of another and the PCs, with another deity's help, snuck into the "jail" and opened it up to free him). Or another where we were locating the tomb of a dead god and releasing its last bit of power back into the world (for "reasons", but the PCs who did this got some rewards for it as well). Every one of those had an impact on the world, even a significant impact, but never required that the PCs themselves have power anywhere near that of the gods. There's also a bit of setting rules about gods where they are more or less "stuck" doing their various functions, and can't really act so directly. Which is why they often need to have mortals act in situations like this (with some help from them, of course). But those types of adventures are rare, specifically because I find that the "god stuff" gets a bit tedious if over used.


And sure. In theory, I could scale this same game up and hand out super powerful artifacts and relics (or just direct power) to PCs to give them that sort of power. But I've seen what happens to game settings when you do that. You kinda can never come back afterwards. It's a one way trip. And I supppose, if you're runnning a one shot sequence type thing, you could use this sort of progression to build PCs up to where they are fighthing gods, and changing the flow of time, and whatnot. But where do you go from there? Nowhere. You're done. Start a new campaign in a new setting with new characters. Again, fine for the single shot stuff. But IME, players like to replay their characters. Having a more flat progression allows them to do that, and allows you as the GM to continue to provide a variety of challenging and fun things for them to do with those characters. Once you go to the god level? You kinda can't do much except new and more poweful god level stuff. And that becomes so disconnected from the "normal world" that you run into the problem of "why are we doing this" stuff I mentioned earlier.


Again. That's just my experience and my preference. YMMV of course.

[icefractal]

There should be things more powerful than the PCs in the game setting. There should be lots of such things IMO. And (again IMO based on my own preferences), at all times the PCs should be bounded by "more powerful people/forces" around them, which force them to come up with ways to deal with the situation at hand by working within those constraints.

And I guess that's why I went with "videogamey". In a lot of videogames, the solutions are always about using the players own abilities in a somewhat direct manner. Yes. There are constraints around you, but each and every single individual "scene" you deal with you must have the correct power/items/whatever to win it. That's somewhat the nature of most such games. I suppose we could except various scripted CRPGs, but even those, it's a matter of the player picking the correct sequence of choices, and as long as they do so, any conflicts are directly winnable.
Interesting definition - I think we have fairly different ideas of "videogamey", because I find bounds/constraints very compatible with being video-game-like. Not inherently so, there's plenty of real situations where constraints are important, but video games are full of constraints and boundaries.

"Despite that you are a master infiltrator, you can't just go steal the key, you must Do The Quest to gain access"
"And no, you can't steal from the shop either, that's Not How It Works"
"You may have beaten giants and dragons, but nothing you can do will move this boulder from your path or let you go around it, because you need to Convince The NPC to move it (probably by Doing The Quest)"
"You might have a crowbar, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and an alien plasma cannon, but there's nothing you can do to this wooden fence, because that's Not The Path"
"No matter what you do, you can't defeat the Big Bad in any way other than Following The Plan that the quest giver explained to you"
"You may be literally saving the entire world and everyone knows it, but don't expect free lodging, or permission to access the royal library without Doing The Quest"

The point where this feels video-gamey is (IMO) when there's insufficient justification for the constraints. See The Plot-Driven Door (https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945) for a notable example.

But like, "the characters are very powerful, and the world acknowledges that"? Not at all video-gamey, IMO, any more than "the characters are pretty average, and treated as such" is.

[Telok]

"You may be literally saving the entire world and everyone knows it, but don't expect free lodging, or permission to access the royal library without Doing The Quest"

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "Dude, the nameless door guards in every town have 10x my hit points and put a 300% one-shot beat down on my ass if I accidentally button A without holding down C first. But I'm the only person who can go stab a half dozen goblins?"

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "What about that army that's camped outside? They union and won't go into dungeons that aren't OSHA approved? You need four rando semi-criminals to clear the giant ants out of your gold mines?"

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "Yeah yeah, we get it already. We're still taking seven weeks off to upgrade our ship & gear because we'll get there just in the nick of time no matter how fast or slow we go."

[Ignimortis]

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "Dude, the nameless door guards in every town have 10x my hit points and put a 300% one-shot beat down on my ass if I accidentally button A without holding down C first. But I'm the only person who can go stab a half dozen goblins?"

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "What about that army that's camped outside? They union and won't go into dungeons that aren't OSHA approved? You need four rando semi-criminals to clear the giant ants out of your gold mines?"

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "Yeah yeah, we get it already. We're still taking seven weeks off to upgrade our ship & gear because we'll get there just in the nick of time no matter how fast or slow we go."
And that's the reverse side of the philosophy that gbaji seems to be suggesting. Unless the players actually are above the average weight class for problem-solving, why won't any of those high-power NPCs that keep the players bounded go do that? The answer usually is along the lines of "they are too busy with REAL problems" and causes some meaningful doubt about whether the plot is worth following, especially if your party is made up of people who don't particularly care as long as the world's not getting destroyed.

If the local lord can take 40 of his men and send them to clear out the goblin caves with good chances of success, and they'll maybe lose 10 people, then they'd better care SO MUCH about those 10 men that putting adventurers on the task is reasonable.

And this gets pretty easily extrapolated onto higher-level plots too, since such a philosophy also has to have limiters on high-level characters too. If a sorcerer king can pop over to the big bad of the plot, two-round them to death with negligible risks of failure and zero risk of death, and then pop right back - why aren't they doing that, again?

[Telok]

And this gets pretty easily extrapolated onto higher-level plots too, since such a philosophy also has to have limiters on high-level characters too. If a sorcerer king can pop over to the big bad of the plot, two-round them to death with negligible risks of failure and zero risk of death, and then pop right back - why aren't they doing that, again?

True, although that's more world building. I've played current mainstream games where such questions were brought about mechanically by basic relevant rules.

Perception is everything. Mechanics and presentation shape everything the players know about the game & game world. You can write the exact same setting & metaphysics & adventure & party & fights in Gurps, Conan 2d20, D&D 5e, and a Fudge hack. They'll just all be wildly different games because the mechanics are wildly different.

Perhaps... perhaps "video gamey" as an epithet came about when computer memory & processing were more limited. With more constraints on programming there were more constraints on what a crpg could allow you to do. For those of us without the free time to keep up with current open world sandbox crpgs "video game" carries more connotations of that earlier era of much more limited games where occasionally rules trumped reasonable/believable because they had to. Thus some of us perceive rule bits like "magic missile can't target doors but psychic brain melt can explode a chair and while force blast can't move either of those objects it can push around 100 foot tall giants with ease" as a video game-like rules flaw because the designer was inconsistent or sloppy and not because they're "leaving it open for the GM to interpret".

[Just to Browse]

Another thing that definitely comes to mind when I think of "video gamey" games that I was reading recently is the Plot-Driven Door (https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945):


Most videogames in the RPG genre have plot-driven doors. You know, a locked door which may be made of wood and 100 years old, but which is indestructable, un-pickable, and un-openable until some plotpoint takes place. Some games are better about this than others, but it’s a necessity of the medium.

[...]

This is the key to good writing in a game. KOTOR had many roadblocks and a couple of plot doors, but they were portrayed in a way that made sense at first glance, they didn’t insult the player’s intelligence, and the sidequests kept the player engaged along the way. Yes, the player must be on rails to some extent in a computer game, but a good writer can camoflage those rails. A bad writer draws attention to the rails and quickly makes the player resent them.

[Talakeal]

You can easily have situations where an army / town militia can defeat the PCs but not the monsters, and the PCs can defeat the monsters but not the guards.

You just have to balance the numbers right, factor in the terrain the battle will be taking place in, the logistics of supplying people, and have qualities like area attacks or needing magic weapons to hit a monster.

Basically, don't do what 5E did.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You can easily have situations where an army / town militia can defeat the PCs but not the monsters, and the PCs can defeat the monsters but not the guards.

You just have to balance the numbers right, factor in the terrain the battle will be taking place in, the logistics of supplying people, and have qualities like area attacks or needing magic weapons to hit a monster.

Basically, don't do what 5E did.

IMX, that kind of thing gets super railroady fast. Or at least has that very strong appearance. Because it requires carefully balanced situations that don't respond well or stably at all to PCs doing anything but approaching it exactly as planned.

Effectively (and this goes for other things as well), the tighter your balance is, the more fragile your system is to deviations from the expectations. Or modifications made by DMs.

I'd much rather have a flexible system with loose balance than an inflexible one with tight balance. In fact, even a small amount of inflexibility (outside of the "ok, here are the supported archetypes and genres" form) in situations, any amount of "if you don't play it exactly this way, the system starts fighting you" turns me off fairly immediately. Because it makes for worlds and fictions that require absurd levels of contrivance.

[gbaji]

And that's the reverse side of the philosophy that gbaji seems to be suggesting. Unless the players actually are above the average weight class for problem-solving, why won't any of those high-power NPCs that keep the players bounded go do that? The answer usually is along the lines of "they are too busy with REAL problems" and causes some meaningful doubt about whether the plot is worth following, especially if your party is made up of people who don't particularly care as long as the world's not getting destroyed.

If the local lord can take 40 of his men and send them to clear out the goblin caves with good chances of success, and they'll maybe lose 10 people, then they'd better care SO MUCH about those 10 men that putting adventurers on the task is reasonable.

And this gets pretty easily extrapolated onto higher-level plots too, since such a philosophy also has to have limiters on high-level characters too. If a sorcerer king can pop over to the big bad of the plot, two-round them to death with negligible risks of failure and zero risk of death, and then pop right back - why aren't they doing that, again?

Telok was primarily describing some elements of MMORPGs though, which exist purely as a means to prevent players from just wrecking the game world for everyone else by killing of NPCs that others use for various things (merchant and quest related). So you have town guards who can slap the PCs in no time, despite them being apparently unable to clear out the rats, snakes, and spiders roaming around killing everyone just outside their front gate. That's not at all what I was talking about (though, again, the term can be very very broad).

There's certainly a power level range where PCs would be much more powerful than any individual town guard (and I pretty much expect them to), but still well below power levels where they are blasting whole armies of enemies with single activations of their powers. There is, in fact, a very very large range between those two things.

Sure. That local lord could take 40 of his men and clear out the goblin caves, and lose 10 of them in the process. 10 men he's paid to train, has gotten to know, have families in town, etc. Or, he can hire out a group of strangers and have them do it instead. Or, better yet, just let these adventurers do it for free because they seem to just love doing such things merely for the rewards they will find in the goblin caves. Of, better better yet, there's one thing in the goblin caves that the lord knows about and wants retrieved, and he gets the adventurers to go kill the goblins, hand him the one item he's looking for, all for the "cost" that they get to keep any other treasure they find. Sounds like a pretty standard adventure setup, and makes 100% economic sense to all involved.

And sure. Higher level stuff gets explained away easily as well. There are lots of NPCs who are similarly powered as the PCs. The PCs happen to be the people right here at this moment. We can assume that lots of other quests are going on, right now, involving NPCs that the PCs themselves are unaware of. The false assumption here is that the PCs, and only the PCs, are powerful enough to do the task at hand. And when one extrapolates that concept and actually makes it so that it is true (ie: no one else is actually as powerful as the PCs), then that is where it feels "videogamey" to me.

It's less about whether there are bounds, but whether those bounds feel realistic or constrained. And yeah, a lot of this comes back to the kinds of adventures the setting places in front of the players. I suppose it also calls back to questions like "why doesn't Iron Man call up the whole Avengers to help him?". If there exist a whole world of heroes, as powerful or moreso than the PCs, why aren't they here to help out with this one world saving quest? Which leads one to assume that either they just don't exist (ie: game is in a vacuum with only the PCs really existing as "people who can complete the adventure", like in a videogame), or there is some reason why they aren't there (which IMO, can be good or bad given the actual rationale involved). The latter can also feel videogamey (like the guards that don't save the town from rats), but when done correctly feel "right" (to me at least). If the scenario is "PCs follow a set of clues from A, to B, to C, and then find themselves dealing with something really nasty at D", you can explain why there aren't other folks there, even though some may be more powerful: They just aren't there. You could leave and go find them, but hey, you are here, you can probably handle things (but it'll be a tough fight), so you do it. If the scenario is "super powerful being arrives and threatens to destroy the entire world", it's somewhat hard to explain why every epic level person in that world doesn't show up to fight it.

I suppose the answer here is to not have so many "world ending" type scenarios in the first place. The PCs are the ones doing <whatever> because they happened to be the folks who stumbled upon whatever lead them to that. If they weren't there, maybe someone else would be instead? To me, that's what feels "real". So I prefer to run settings like that. The whole powerlevel escalation thing is what results when you do adopt the idea that "the only way the PCs would be doing this is if they are, in fact, the most powerful and only people who can". Which leads rapidly to said escalation via logical progression (and oten requires that the GM provide powers and abilities to the PCs to make them such as well, effectively cutting them out of any "lesser" tasks because they become too trivial).

I just think there are ways to construct a game setting that can be both challenging and fun to the players while not requiring that sort of escalation. Again, maybe "videogamey" was not the best term to use, but whatever the correct term, it's something I find to be problematic when run at a tabletop game, but (and I guess this is where I was coming from) seems to work just fine in video games due to the artificial constraints on the story/scenes/whatever.

Eh. There's probably other aspects to this I've got jangling around in my head as well. Just hard to express it.

[Jakinbandw]

I just think there are ways to construct a game setting that can be both challenging and fun to the players while not requiring that sort of escalation. Again, maybe "videogamey" was not the best term to use, but whatever the correct term, it's something I find to be problematic when run at a tabletop game, but (and I guess this is where I was coming from) seems to work just fine in video games due to the artificial constraints on the story/scenes/whatever.

Eh. There's probably other aspects to this I've got jangling around in my head as well. Just hard to express it.

It's really interesting, because in my experience the reverse is true. Most videogames strongly limit the amount of power you can get, while TTRPGs are ones that can fully explore the effects of giving players the power to affect the setting. To be clear, I'm fine with low powered games where PCs aren't expected to progress. It's just for me, I already have rpg systems that allow me to play those games that I love. I don't need a new system to play Ravenloft. I don't even need DnD, as I am a massive fan of FATE, and I've GMed in it more than any other. I don't have any need of another system of low level play. DnD and FATE do just fine. If for whatever reason I couldn't use those, I'd probably use worlds without number, as it's alright.

But from where I stand, there are distinct lack of games that try to allow for really high levels of power, and fewer that contain the rules to support it. I remember playing in a game of Dungeons the Dragoning, where the GM quit because the system didn't give him enough options to challenge the players. I also remember that game, as it lacked tools for handling the types of battles that occurred. Honestly, my current favorite high powered game is free and unfinished, and goes by the name 'Badass Kungfu Demigods.' It's a more narrative system, but it works, and it gives guidance on how battles should affect the world around the combatants.

But it still doesn't scratch the itch I have for a more crunchy game, and it doesn't have a lot of options for going from 0 to hero. You basically start as the strongest thing in the setting, rather than it being an end goal you work towards.

I think the real draw of wanting to give the PCs power can can be found in an old quote that I have seen repeated many ways, many times:

"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test."

There is no greater moral quandary that I can give a party, then to put them in charge of a town or faction full of people they care about, and like, and then give them full power over that town with no oversight. Then to slowly ramp up that power as they gain control of towns where they do not know the people. To give them control over locations that have traditions they aren't comfortable with. To force them to walk the line between shaping a society they view as desirable, and committing cultural genocide.

It's not something that you could every replicate properly in a video game, where as I cut my teeth on games like Neverwinter Nights, and Siege of Avalon, where you never have the power to make the choice, only the choice of what quests you wish to take on. Another example is something like Skyrim or Oblivion. At the end of the day, you lack the power to do anything but choose your own personal destiny.

Everyone wants something different from their RPG. That's why we have so many settings, and so many systems. It's what makes the hobby so diverse and wonderful.

[Tanarii]

Game: "Only you can save the world from this terrible scourge!"
Player: "What about that army that's camped outside? They union and won't go into dungeons that aren't OSHA approved? You need four rando semi-criminals to clear the giant ants out of your gold mines?"
I am definitely using a guards and army union next time I'm running a taking-the-piss silly buggers single party one shot.:smallamused:

[Lord Raziere]

"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test."

There is no greater moral quandary that I can give a party, then to put them in charge of a town or faction full of people they care about, and like, and then give them full power over that town with no oversight. Then to slowly ramp up that power as they gain control of towns where they do not know the people. To give them control over locations that have traditions they aren't comfortable with. To force them to walk the line between shaping a society they view as desirable, and committing cultural genocide.

It's not something that you could every replicate properly in a video game, where as I cut my teeth on games like Neverwinter Nights, and Siege of Avalon, where you never have the power to make the choice, only the choice of what quests you wish to take on. Another example is something like Skyrim or Oblivion. At the end of the day, you lack the power to do anything but choose your own personal destiny.


Indeed, and strategy games don't allow for that either- its too detached from people and makes them nothing but pawns in some overly complex chess game, reducing things like city loyalty to a number, and thus whether they rebel against you a matter of proper play rather than roleplaying that requires some personal moments, that requires the human element to be seen, but strategy games while determining the course of an entire civilization, also makes the civilization a mere extension of yourself.

only a ttrpg can truly give the experience you speak of, because either way you do it, the videogame needs to be simplified so that its a fun game with no room for elements that detract from it.

[Telok]

You can easily have situations where an army / town militia can defeat the PCs but not the monsters, and the PCs can defeat the monsters but not the guards.

You just have to balance the numbers right, factor in the terrain the battle will be taking place in, the logistics of supplying people, and have qualities like area attacks or needing magic weapons to hit a monster.

Basically, don't do what 5E did.

Yeah, I basically did that when I converted the d&d tarrasque over to DtD40k7e. Built a couple simulators, knew the strength/power level I was aiming for, set the intended terrain & start distance it'd be at. Then you just tweak the numbers until it slaughters a couple few thousand veteran troops or a some hundreds of space marines, make sure that appropriate high end pc characters can take it down, and use it.

I had more knobs to tune with and viable play range than 5e has though so I didn't need hacks to fake it being a tough critter. It's like the kaiju thread, you use a system that handles the scale & range in a reasonable way or you make ugly kludges and selectively ignore/change rules to square the circle.

But it results in a critter that has the right level of lethality vs common & elite soldiers is straight combat. No fudging or excuses needed, just straight basic mechanics. Yet the heroes can still take it down or stop it if they work as a team and pull some stunts (or are just ultra tough).

[Vahnavoi]

If the local lord can take 40 of his men and send them to clear out the goblin caves with good chances of success, and they'll maybe lose 10 people, then they'd better care SO MUCH about those 10 men that putting adventurers on the task is reasonable.


This is a problem with conceptualization of who the player characters are. The root cause is treating them as a special class of people detached from rest of the setting. The solution is to cut that out - in this case, it would mean player characters just being those 10 men of the local lord, rather than random extras. A lot of computer games manage this just fine too when they're not burdened by tabletop D&D trope of player characters being ill-defined "adventurers".

[Anymage]

Indeed, and strategy games don't allow for that either- its too detached from people and makes them nothing but pawns in some overly complex chess game, reducing things like city loyalty to a number, and thus whether they rebel against you a matter of proper play rather than roleplaying that requires some personal moments, that requires the human element to be seen, but strategy games while determining the course of an entire civilization, also makes the civilization a mere extension of yourself.

only a ttrpg can truly give the experience you speak of, because either way you do it, the videogame needs to be simplified so that its a fun game with no room for elements that detract from it.

The experience of being a superhero whose actions can have dramatic effects on normal people and whose actions can only be meaningfully challenged by other superheroes is not too functionally dissimilar from being a government official. You're granted a fair amount of power over other people's lives and often some level of remove from the consequences of your choices. You have comparatively fewer checks on your ability to act, and many of those checks do create perverse incentives. And ultimately there are questions of what issues you prioritize over others, and how much you focus on those vs. self interest/self-preservation. (E.G: cozying up to special interests who can help fund your reelection campaign, vs. taking principled stands and leaving your coffers depleted.) There are games that do focus on the hard choices you might have to make when you're in power.

TTRPGs in theory are better at this because a human GM is much more flexible, but D&D in particular is far from the best case for this. There are very few rules for anything beyond personal heroics, and those few that exist are spell effects/magic items where it's entirely on the DM to think how those would impact the world at large.

[Jakinbandw]

TTRPGs in theory are better at this because a human GM is much more flexible, but D&D in particular is far from the best case for this. There are very few rules for anything beyond personal heroics, and those few that exist are spell effects/magic items where it's entirely on the DM to think how those would impact the world at large.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure we are talking about TTRPGs in general, and this specific topic is about the one I'm writing which does in fact have such rules.

[gbaji]

"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test."

There is no greater moral quandary that I can give a party, then to put them in charge of a town or faction full of people they care about, and like, and then give them full power over that town with no oversight. Then to slowly ramp up that power as they gain control of towns where they do not know the people. To give them control over locations that have traditions they aren't comfortable with. To force them to walk the line between shaping a society they view as desirable, and committing cultural genocide.

It's not something that you could every replicate properly in a video game, where as I cut my teeth on games like Neverwinter Nights, and Siege of Avalon, where you never have the power to make the choice, only the choice of what quests you wish to take on. Another example is something like Skyrim or Oblivion. At the end of the day, you lack the power to do anything but choose your own personal destiny.

I get that we've diverged a fair bit into power levels here, but allow me to reign this in a bit by observing that this is not what you said earlier (in the other thread) that I responded to with "extremely videogamey". Here's what you said:


Trust me, my system gives players many options to make themselves stand out, I'm just against feat taxes. Some example of Low level archer feats increase their range, allow them to spend actions aiming for an extra high damage/high accuracy shot, cause a failed ranged attack to ricochet back at the target during the next round, shoot everyone withing a (DnD adjusted) 30' radius of a location within their bow's range, and other fun things. At higher levels they unlock feats that allow them to shoot spells and other ranged attacks out of the air, attack every single opponent within range, Fire off swords and spears instead of arrows, Or shoot an arrow at a target when only the existence of that target is known, but not their location (and at this tier of play, archers can have infinite range). I've got 24 Archer only feats, and that doesn't touch on the fact that my game has innate multiclassing (thing gestalt from 3.x) that allow players to grab some interesting options to enhance archery from other classes.

Noting in here about presenting moral quandaries to the players by handing them power over NPCs. This is 100% about mechanical rules. My previous comment about something being "videogamey" was also about mechanics in that thread (providing a bonus to ranged attacks when there are melee folks engaged with the target instead of the other way around). My argument to the first was that it's a mechanic you see only in video games because it forces combined class tactics (and deals with clippping/agro issues), which video games handle well, but are not at all good simulations of "real world physics".

My response to the seccond (quoted above) statement was similarly about the mechanics and how they "feel" to me. To me, feats are people using innate skill/ability to do things. They should not violate the laws of physics (well, much). Spells do that. And yeah, I get that some games mix and match these, so that's fine. But yeah, the kinds of powers you describe here are the kinds of things I expect to see in video games. Causing other people's missile attacks to bounce back? Video game. One shot spreads out into a bunch and hits everyone (presumably just your enemies) in an area? Videogame effect. Your arrows transform into swords or spears? Video game. Heck. I'm pretty sure I've literally played console video games with these exact effects in them.

That's what I was talking about. And yeah, your description of a guy standing on the sun firing heat blasts at someone on a planet. Replace that guy with a giant ape, and the heat blasts with barrels, and you've just replicated freaking Donkey Kong. Video game.

[icefractal]

That's what I was talking about. And yeah, your description of a guy standing on the sun firing heat blasts at someone on a planet. Replace that guy with a giant ape, and the heat blasts with barrels, and you've just replicated freaking Donkey Kong. Video game.I've got to say I don't get this part, at all.

"Your description of a warrior fighting undead with a sword - add some health and mana gauges in there and you've just replicated freaking Diablo. Video game."

And heck - gritty? Low power? Realistic? Those are also in video games! Is old-school OD&D video-gamey because the entire Roguelike genre exists? Is wilderness survival video-gamey because Don't Starve exists? Would a game about the ethics of working as a border guard for a dystopian regime, while supporting a family, be video-gamey to you? Well it literally is a video game, it's called 'Papers, Please'.

I mean, I guess if you personally think of "flashy" as "videogamey" (and "videogamey" as "undesirable") then fine, but it's not a definition I'd agree with.

[Jakinbandw]

I get that we've diverged a fair bit into power levels here, but allow me to reign this in a bit by observing that this is not what you said earlier (in the other thread) that I responded to with "extremely videogamey". Here's what you said:

Noting in here about presenting moral quandaries to the players by handing them power over NPCs.

I'm curious how you think a character could have that level of power in a setting and not have power over NPCs, and thus cause the exact moral quandaries that the games brings about? Like let's take a look at an established setting: The Sword Coast. If we put a character in the sword coast that could target any NPC they were aware of with an instant death attack, including gods (and able to have an equal battle against Ao), how would that not cause the player moral quandaries over what to do with that power? They have the power to choose who lives and who dies, but they aren't omniscient. They can still make mistakes. They can't make people do what they want, only threaten them.

I just don't understand how you can look at what I wrote, and not see how it both hands the pc power over NPCs, and how that power would create moral quandaries.



I've got to say I don't get this part, at all.

"Your description of a warrior fighting undead with a sword - add some health and mana gauges in there and you've just replicated freaking Diablo. Video game."

It's worse than that though. Like yours at least make sense. But seriously, shooting interplanetary blasts of plasma is the same as Donkey Kong? I can't even begin to figure out the parallels there. Donkey Kong is the 'archer'? Jump Man is the target... The barrels are attacks. But then what's the parallel of jumping over the barrels? Of climbing the structure? Of the Ladders? Honestly, a low level dnd archer would be a closer comparison, as running towards the archer would be like climbing the structure, and jumping over barrels could be like ending each turn in cover or something.

I agree, it just doesn't work.

[Marcloure]

My conclusion reading this thread is that lots of people who say a ttrpg feels "videogamey" actually mean it feels anime. Limited powers that can only be used under special circumstances, moves with evocative names, characters getting wounded and quickly recovering, anime bull**** overall. Which is far from bad if that is what you are looking for.

[Vahnavoi]

@Marcloure: that's just another example of the same bad behaviour: defining something by example, when the person doing so has limited experience of the relevant medium.

Because that's what anime is, a medium - Japanese animation. It covers ground from serious period dramas to goofy children's shows. It isn't limited to speculative fiction or single aesthetic; people who think it is just don't watch anime beyond fighting series aimed at young boys.

So, just like I can't appreciate "videogamey" as criticism, I can't appreciate "animey" or some such. Specify the series, and then we're talking. "I wanted Berserk, not Dragon Ball Z" is legible and doesn't rely on stereotypes, similarly to "I wanted Maus, not Donald Duck".

[OldTrees1]

@Marcloure: that's just another example of the same bad behaviour: defining something by example, when the person doing so has limited experience of the relevant medium.

Because that's what anime is, a medium - Japanese animation. It covers ground from serious period dramas to goofy children's shows. It isn't limited to speculative fiction or single aesthetic; people who think it is just don't watch anime beyond fighting series aimed at young boys.

So, just like I can't appreciate "videogamey" as criticism, I can't appreciate "animey" or some such. Specify the series, and then we're talking. "I wanted Berserk, not Dragon Ball Z" is legible and doesn't rely on stereotypes, similarly to "I wanted Maus, not Donald Duck".

A good comparision.

My conclusion when hearing "too videogamey" or "too anime" is:
1) The person has a real critique that they would be able to consistently single out. However communication has broken and I did not receive enough to understand the attribute(s) that they are critiquing. I better ask more questions to get past the failed shorthand.
2) These moments of broken communication are all independent despite having some indirect correlation. The correlation stems from similar but not identical experiences with a fraction of one medium that is then used as a shorthand that does not work when communicating to someone with a different experience with that medium. When the fractional experiences correlate, the miscommunication's intended message might also correlate.

[Bohandas]

To OP: the less the general verisimilitude of the game rules is (as an representative of the game world's general physics), the more "video?board-gamey it feels for me.

That sounds right to me

[Trafalgar]

I would agree that "Video Gamey" is very much a pejorative. It sounds very elitist as in people who play TTRPG are somehow better than people who play video games. However, in my opinion, there is a very big difference between the two in that my character is very much limited in what they can do in a video game.

Let's say my character casts an illusion spell to make an open door appear closed. In a video game, this can only happen if the programmer/ game designer built that into the game. In a TTRPG, it is completely up to the DM's discretion. After 40 years, video games still suffer from the "you need the blue key to get through the blue door" problem. Maybe someday there will be an AI DM that can adapt to the players animation but we are not there yet.

My short list of things that make a TTRPG feel like a video game:
-All encounters result in combat
-All problems have 1 solution that was thought of ahead of time by the DM
-Interactions with NPCs feel like a video game conversation tree
-Your PC is limited in their ability to interact with the environment
-PC actions have no long term effect/consequences on the world/society/towns/etc.

[OldTrees1]

I would agree that "Video Gamey" is very much a pejorative. It sounds very elitist as in people who play TTRPG are somehow better than people who play video games. However, in my opinion, there is a very big difference between the two in that my character is very much limited in what they can do in a video game.

I am not so sure. How much of it should we chalk up to broken communication instead?

I love noodles. If, hypothetically, I told you D&D was too noodley (whatever that might mean to me failing to be communicated to you), would that be elitism, merely sound like elitism, or sound like broken communication?

[Lord Raziere]

I am not so sure. How much of it should we chalk up to broken communication instead?

I love noodles. If, hypothetically, I told you D&D was too noodley (whatever that might mean to me failing to be communicated to you), would that be elitism, merely sound like elitism, or sound like broken communication?

Hypothetical doesn't track. You are not talking about DnD being a food. you are talking about DnD having traits ascribed to an entire medium of entertainment which has its own fans, identity, and so on that while seemingly similar to some mindsets in DnD is technically completely separate as many of them have no idea that DnD exists.

noodles are highly specific. videogames are incredibly broad: like, do you mean the kind of videogames Nintendo makes? Sega? Microsoft? Ubisoft? EA games? Indie games? What genre? Action? horror? strategy games? beat em ups? shooters? puzzle-solving? platformers? minecraft-likes? Soul-likes? Rogue-likes? 4x games? visual novels? immersive simulators? city builders? collectathons? stealth games? survival games? rhythm games? battle royale? metroidvania? text adventure? MMORPG? tactical rpg? sandbox rpg? monster tamer? vehicle simulator? life simulator? construction and management simulator? artillery game? auto battler? MOBA? RTS? tower defense? turn-based strategy? sports? racing? digital card game? gacha? party games? social deduction? trivia game? programming game?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about halfway through that list, thats intentional, those are all genres or subgenres of videogame I can think of, off the top of head or looking them up. I don't expect people to know all of these, I can't remember all of these genres.

More probably I should be asking what specific named videogame you mean? which could be even more names to list?

like the complaint "its too videogamey" can mean anything because videogames have done a lot of things. your gesturing vaguely at the ocean here and expecting me to know which specific fish your talking about, its that useless of a phrase.

Edit: because we can't read your mind to know what videogame background you have. I don't know what videogames your comparing DnD to. I doubt its the same videogames that the other guy saying the same complaint as you is thinking of, because what videogames someone likes and dislikes can get highly personal and taste-based. its a very generalizing statement for both the people making the complaint and what is being complained about, because I doubt all the people complaining are complaining about the same thing.

[Kane0]

When you hit a barrier that breaks your immersion in a way that comes off as 'computer logic'. Stuff that in the narrative should intuitively not be a problem, but the game (or the DM) treats in an alien manner.

'I dont want to kill him, ill try to put this sack over his head since he's already grappled'
'You cant, you dont have the feat'

'i'll follow Bruce and climb up the rope behind him'
'Well since you only have one point in climb your chance of success is like 2%'

'Well i have fireball, ill cast that to ignite the barrel from a safe distance'
'Fireball only damages creatures, not their belongings or other objects, nor does it catch anything on fire'

'Ill try to unlock the door with my magic thieves kit'
'Youre going to need the green key, even with magic lockpicks and a dispelling rune and the gnomish door breacher'

'I break the puzzle box open!'
'it still needs an intelligence roll to figure out'

'Ill stop moving and see if i can hear him'
'theyre invisible, so you have a -4 on the roll'

'Ill run over and touch him with my healing glove'
'That would use too many of your actions'

*visible confusion*

[stoutstien]

When you hit a barrier that breaks your immersion in a way that comes off as 'computer logic'. Stuff that in the narrative should intuitively not be a problem, but the game (or the DM) treats in an alien manner.

'I dont want to kill him, ill try to put this sack over his head since he's already grappled'
'You cant, you dont have the feat'

'i'll follow Bruce and climb up the rope behind him'
'Well since you only have one point in climb your chance of success is like 2%'

'Well i have fireball, ill cast that to ignite the barrel from a safe distance'
'Fireball only damages creatures, not their belongings or other objects, nor does it catch anything on fire'

'Ill try to unlock the door with my magic thieves kit'
'Youre going to need the green key, even with magic lockpicks and a dispelling rune and the gnomish door breacher'

'I break the puzzle box open!'
'it still needs an intelligence roll to figure out'

'Ill stop moving and see if i can hear him'
'theyre invisible, so you have a -4 on the roll'

'Ill run over and touch him with my healing glove'
'That would use too many of your actions'

*visible confusion*

It's not necessarily computer logic as much as just having a system that is inherently trying to work backwards with resolutions out comes. Plenty of mediums do this for good reason as that is the goal.

Take battleship for example. Everything is designed backwards from the sole goal/resolution of sinking all the opposition's boats. The grid, markers, rules for ship placement, and even the actual physical materials are all meant to facilitate that single goal. *It was actually a pen and paper game for years prior*

Even with modern version of the game that have different rules for opening salvo, larger grids, or ship movement still fall back on the premise that the goal is to sink before you get sunk. You change that assumption and you have a new system.


Any game you have that inherently works backwards like this will have a gamey feel. This usually present itself as "balance" with some semi open resolution systems as they are trying to have the appearance of being open ended but in reality they tend to just shift some stuff around and give it a quick coat of paint. PF2 is a good example here as everything is working back towards a single design goal.

[OldTrees1]

Hypothetical doesn't track. You are not talking about DnD being a food. you are talking about DnD having traits ascribed to an entire medium of entertainment which has its own fans, identity, and so on that while seemingly similar to some mindsets in DnD is technically completely separate as many of them have no idea that DnD exists.

noodles are highly specific. videogames are incredibly broad
The more you know about a medium the more of this breadth you recognize. I know videogames are incredibly broad (I recognized your entire list) however the "it is too videogamey" critique appears to surface from someone assuming the shorthand (videogames) is narrow enough to be useful as a shorthand for their miscommunicated critique. I used "noodles" as a comparison because I thought it was highly likely to evoke the same kind of miscommunication. I was overly optimistic about people understand how incredibly broad pasta is.



More probably I should be asking what specific named videogame you mean? which could be even more names to list?

like the complaint "its too videogamey" can mean anything because videogames have done a lot of things. your gesturing vaguely at the ocean here and expecting me to know which specific fish your talking about, its that useless of a phrase.
This is similar to the point I made earlier. I think we should assume "its too videogamey" to indicate they have a real critique but communication broken down. So we should ask more questions rather than trying to find a single one-size-fits-all meaning of "its too videogamey"



Edit: because we can't read your mind to know what videogame background you have. I don't know what videogames your comparing DnD to.
Clarification: I didn't compare D&D to videogames. I compared the comparison to a comparison of D&D to pasta (which is also quite broad to those familiar with the medium). I made that comparison to indicate that "too videogamey" might not indicate anti videogame elitism because it could be said by someone that enjoys videogames but is using it as a failed shorthand for expressing their tastes in RPGs differing from their tastes in videogames.

Based on your post, I messed up communicating that message. It would have been better if my example was something whose breadth more RPGs players were also familiar with.

[Tanarii]

I love noodles. If, hypothetically, I told you D&D was too noodley (whatever that might mean to me failing to be communicated to you), would that be elitism, merely sound like elitism, or sound like broken communication?
Makes perfect sense to me. Ubiquitous, often used to far do more than it was designed for, delicious when prepared right, but often leaves you hungry for more a few hours later. Also starchy.

[OldTrees1]

Makes perfect sense to me. Ubiquitous, often used to far do more than it was designed for, delicious when prepared right, but often leaves you hungry for more a few hours later. Also starchy.

:smallbiggrin:

Since it was a hypothetical within a comparison, I did not actually have a meaning predetermined. However that is not what I would have expected.

I was expecting something more like:
"Bland to not overwhelm the sauce. Comes in a variety of shapes but a handful are used much more than the rest."

Your interpretation focuses on it being overused outside of its scope. I was expecting something about it's foundation being intentionally bland and rote. Both highlight things the pasta maniac might like about pasta, but might not prefer in their RPGs. Guessing which one a randomly selected critic meant is a bit of guesswork.

[Slipjig]

I'd point out two structural points that I would describe as "video-gamey":

1) There is an extremely limited set of solutions to a problem. "The ONLY way to solve this problem is to go get [McGuffin]..." "Why don't we just [obvious solution]?" "Uhh... that TOTALLY won't work because [justification for railroad plot]."

2) When pretty much every choice is a "right choice" and ends up eventually leading you to the same point. This includes NPCs "resetting" their attitudes toward the PCs between encounters ("The Turian Counselor is going to be a jerk no matter what you choose"), and the PCs failing to gain a meaningful reputation based on their actions.

[Telok]

More possibilities:
1. City as unpopulated shopping mall.
2. Multiple planes of existance as just themed dungeons (the water dungeon, the tentacle dungeon, the fire dungeon, etc.)
3. No point in home ownership because you out level any possible defenses you can put in there so any enemies you have can trivially destroy it.
4. No point in home ownership because you carry all you value on your body at all times.
5. No point in civilization because everything you want is in some dungeon or you craft it yourself.
6. No point in governments because you and everything you fight is too powerful for them.
7. The NPCs can't help you (ever) so you have to clear a dungeon for that item/info/plot coupon.
8. Falling in the water is death in seconds/a minute unless you have the "no drown" magic item. Falling off 1500 foot cliffs is normal and a faster way down than climbing.
9. NPCs have awesome abilities until you recruit them as allies, then they get nerfed hard.
10. Random nameless NPCs/mooks can do tricks PCs never can because "balance".

Some of it's partially world building. But world building is an intersection of system rules & the narrative basis of the adventures. Thus it is informed & shaped by the system.

[kyoryu]

I'd point out two structural points that I would describe as "video-gamey":

1) There is an extremely limited set of solutions to a problem. "The ONLY way to solve this problem is to go get [McGuffin]..." "Why don't we just [obvious solution]?" "Uhh... that TOTALLY won't work because [justification for railroad plot]."

2) When pretty much every choice is a "right choice" and ends up eventually leading you to the same point. This includes NPCs "resetting" their attitudes toward the PCs between encounters ("The Turian Counselor is going to be a jerk no matter what you choose"), and the PCs failing to gain a meaningful reputation based on their actions.

Both of those fall under the basic umbrella of "the world does not respond to player actions in a meaningful way." A plastic, non-responsive world can definitely lead to that.

[gbaji]

I've got to say I don't get this part, at all.

"Your description of a warrior fighting undead with a sword - add some health and mana gauges in there and you've just replicated freaking Diablo. Video game."

And heck - gritty? Low power? Realistic? Those are also in video games! Is old-school OD&D video-gamey because the entire Roguelike genre exists? Is wilderness survival video-gamey because Don't Starve exists? Would a game about the ethics of working as a border guard for a dystopian regime, while supporting a family, be video-gamey to you? Well it literally is a video game, it's called 'Papers, Please'.

Not all "computer/console games" are what I would call "video games". Maybe I'm using an older use of the term, but when I say "video game", I'm referring specifically to the "video" part of it. When the graphics and whatnot are more important to play than the decisions/actions of the player, it leans into "video game" territory. We could certainly play chess on a computer, but neither of us would call that a "video game", despite the fact that we are playing on a computer, and looking at a video display instead of using a physical board.

Many CRPGs straddle that line quite a bit. Leaning more in the direction of Diablo or Balur's Gate? More "Computer"RPG, and less "video game". Something like the old arcade game "Gauntlet" (wizard needs food badly!), leans more in the "video game" side.

Again. I get that many people use the term very dfferently. But that's how I use it.


I mean, I guess if you personally think of "flashy" as "videogamey" (and "videogamey" as "undesirable") then fine, but it's not a definition I'd agree with.

Somewhat. But it's not merely that it *has* flashy effects, but that the flashy effects and even mechanisms are an inherent part of the gameplay rather than just graphical depictions of something else. When I feel like the game starts with "something we could do in real life (even a fantasy version of real life)", and then depicts it in a graphical game format, it doesn't feel "videogamey" to me. When it starts with "build an engine to diplay all sorts of coof effects" and moves from that to "wrap some basic gameplay around it", then yeah.... that feels videogamey to me.

And let me also be clear. I don't have an issue with any of that when it's an actual video game. I love playing smash and crash video games, with power-ups and life bonuses, special weapons/powers you find/earn, special moves with sequences to follow, and whatnot. Used to play Doom/Quake/<tons of other follow ups> back in the day (like... a lot, as well as a bunch of others as well). But they are very much video games and I enjoy them for that aspect. But if someone ports Doom/Quake back to a tabletop game, I would find myself not being terribly interested in playing that.

On a side topic: Something with limited choice options, I don't consider to be "video gamey", becuase that's not a function of the "video" part of that. It's just a limitation that is common to all CRPGs, usually due to coding restrictions. Also not really something great to port back to a tabletop game, but in a different category IMO. The old school text based dungeon hack games had the same restrictions, and they were not, by any real definition "video games" (you are eaten by a Grue).


I'm curious how you think a character could have that level of power in a setting and not have power over NPCs, and thus cause the exact moral quandaries that the games brings about? Like let's take a look at an established setting: The Sword Coast. If we put a character in the sword coast that could target any NPC they were aware of with an instant death attack, including gods (and able to have an equal battle against Ao), how would that not cause the player moral quandaries over what to do with that power? They have the power to choose who lives and who dies, but they aren't omniscient. They can still make mistakes. They can't make people do what they want, only threaten them.

I just don't understand how you can look at what I wrote, and not see how it both hands the pc power over NPCs, and how that power would create moral quandaries.

Because, as I thought I just explained in the previous post, the post you made and to which I responded by speaking about it being "video gamey" did not mention anything about the moral quandaries you are now talking about. I was responding purely to the kinds of mechanical powers/feats you were highlighting in your descriptioin. Many of which feel like the kinds of powers and abilities I see more like video game abilities (as described above).

I have no issue at all with the moral implications you are putting into your game as a response to the power level of the PCs. That's perfectly fine. Also not at all what I was resonding to.


I'd point out two structural points that I would describe as "video-gamey":

1) There is an extremely limited set of solutions to a problem. "The ONLY way to solve this problem is to go get [McGuffin]..." "Why don't we just [obvious solution]?" "Uhh... that TOTALLY won't work because [justification for railroad plot]."

2) When pretty much every choice is a "right choice" and ends up eventually leading you to the same point. This includes NPCs "resetting" their attitudes toward the PCs between encounters ("The Turian Counselor is going to be a jerk no matter what you choose"), and the PCs failing to gain a meaningful reputation based on their actions.

Yeah. As I mentioned above, this is more a feature of CRPGs in general, and does not at all have anything to do with the "video" component. The video component is about seeing objects on the screen, picking them up, and gaining something from them, and using powers/abilities in ways that create big showy effects, that don't necessarily follow any sorts of base logic or physical requirements (but again, work just fine on a video game screen). And yeah, powers/abilities that work in contrived combat situations, but would actually break a world if they were allowed elsewhere (shades of video games where all there is is the combat sequences, so considerations like that just don't matter).

There's certainly a fair amount of spillover, but just because something exists in a video game, doesn't mean it can't exist elsewhere (and vice versa). But there are some things that are somewhat unique to video games that (IMO) should stay there. They're fun when blasting enemies on a screen, but become somewhat silly when played out on a tabletop. That's all I'm trying to get across here.

[Duff]

I'd point out two structural points that I would describe as "video-gamey":

1) There is an extremely limited set of solutions to a problem. "The ONLY way to solve this problem is to go get [McGuffin]..." "Why don't we just [obvious solution]?" "Uhh... that TOTALLY won't work because [justification for railroad plot]."

2) When pretty much every choice is a "right choice" and ends up eventually leading you to the same point. This includes NPCs "resetting" their attitudes toward the PCs between encounters ("The Turian Counselor is going to be a jerk no matter what you choose"), and the PCs failing to gain a meaningful reputation based on their actions.

This hilights an element of "Videogamey" which may be a legitimate criticism.
Some GMs are very much inclined to follow what is written*. Some game writing reinforces this sort of behavior from a GM some demands the GM not do this but the best sort coaches the GM through this sort of process

* Inexperienced, inflexible, underprepared, overcommitted to the rest of their life, reluctant to say they can do better than the people who wrote stuff down. There's lots of reasons for a GM to be like this.

[Jakinbandw]

Somewhat. But it's not merely that it *has* flashy effects, but that the flashy effects and even mechanisms are an inherent part of the gameplay rather than just graphical depictions of something else. When I feel like the game starts with "something we could do in real life (even a fantasy version of real life)", and then depicts it in a graphical game format, it doesn't feel "videogamey" to me. When it starts with "build an engine to diplay all sorts of coof effects" and moves from that to "wrap some basic gameplay around it", then yeah.... that feels videogamey to me.

I'll be honest, I still don't understand your definition. Is a wizard casting a fireball a flashy effect (Wizards should be able to make big explosions!) with basic mechanics wrapped around it? Or is something that wizards can do in the setting, and the mechanics are there to represent that? Those don't seem like opposites, so I feel that I'm getting something wrong.

[Trask]

I think a better word for this phenomenon would be "cheesy", I've seen that adjective a lot in Old School D&D circles, which is a decent source for this "feel" because many of them can remember a time playing D&D before the D&D-Videogame feedback loop. Here are some examples I've read.

A lot of old schoolers find it "cheesy" how Paladins can summon their warhorse out of thin air, and if it dies no big whoop. I've seen it derided as "Pokemon mechanics". I've seen old schoolers mock healing to full HP after a night's rest as "stupid", but not care about lining up in front of the temple every morning for cleric healing. I've seen old schoolers complain that WotC D&D is full of too many wacky races and that makes its game worlds "cheesy"...and there is no irony, its kind of true. I've seen them complain that modern D&D characters, especially fighting types, sprout too many magical superpowers, but then lament that magic is so gamey and weak in 5e.

[kyoryu]

I think a better word for this phenomenon would be "cheesy", I've seen that adjective a lot in Old School D&D circles, which is a decent source for this "feel" because many of them can remember a time playing D&D before the D&D-Videogame feedback loop. Here are some examples I've read.

A lot of old schoolers find it "cheesy" how Paladins can summon their warhorse out of thin air, and if it dies no big whoop. I've seen it derided as "Pokemon mechanics". I've seen old schoolers mock healing to full HP after a night's rest as "stupid", but not care about lining up in front of the temple every morning for cleric healing. I've seen old schoolers complain that WotC D&D is full of too many wacky races and that makes its game worlds "cheesy"...and there is no irony, its kind of true. I've seen them complain that modern D&D characters, especially fighting types, sprout too many magical superpowers, but then lament that magic is so gamey and weak in 5e.

I think there's a lot of things that people have internalized and so don't think about any more. Then when it's changed, they think about the new thing, and (reasonably) criticize it in some ways, without realizing that the old thing wasn't really any less "bad" in terms of realism.

Like, honestly, D&D-style HP is just so inconsistent you can't really reconcile it with any kind of "realistic" world in any meaningful way. If you really try to think about it, it's one of the least "realistic" things in gaming.

As far as being video-gamey, I think it's not one thing. It's a bunch of different things, and it's highly subjective. So as a term in a discussion, it's almost never actually that informative, and is usually worth getting more detail - not that the person using the term doesn't have a point (they usually do, in some ways at least), but the term itself doesn't communicate anything well.

[False God]

I think a better word for this phenomenon would be "cheesy", I've seen that adjective a lot in Old School D&D circles, which is a decent source for this "feel" because many of them can remember a time playing D&D before the D&D-Videogame feedback loop. Here are some examples I've read.

A lot of old schoolers find it "cheesy" how Paladins can summon their warhorse out of thin air, and if it dies no big whoop. I've seen it derided as "Pokemon mechanics". I've seen old schoolers mock healing to full HP after a night's rest as "stupid", but not care about lining up in front of the temple every morning for cleric healing. I've seen old schoolers complain that WotC D&D is full of too many wacky races and that makes its game worlds "cheesy"...and there is no irony, its kind of true. I've seen them complain that modern D&D characters, especially fighting types, sprout too many magical superpowers, but then lament that magic is so gamey and weak in 5e.

I suspect grogs of all stripes probably all agree everything was better "back in the day" and that everything now is "too easy" and "casual". Maybe we should just call them all boomers?

----

In response to some other comments above, I really do dislike the complaint about it being video-gamey due to a "lack of options". As I read these critiques, modules and adventure books spring more to mind than video games. That's not to say video games aren't limited, but they're limited because there's only so much that can be reasonably programmed, and only so much that can be reasonably programmed thats worth including. Yes, you could make a check at the table to stomp a bunch of squirrels, but there's a question of how meaningfully that adds to the game, instead of your DM saying "Why are you wasting time Bob?" the programmer just said "No, we're not programing that."

In the same way while on the adventure to defeat Strahd, you could certainly attempt to have an affair with the local barkeep, but this doesn't meaningfully add to the adventure. Sure, the DM could choose to work it in some way, but by default, by the "programming" of the adventure, your little side-tryst has no bearing on anything.

I often see this (I want to say anti-complaint) lauding of TTRPGs as the players having the ability to do theoretically anything, because you could potentially make a check for anything and attempt to do anything you can imagine. And while this is technically true, I think it overlooks the more important issue of how much value does "theoretically anything" actually add to the game at hand. Worse, I think it encourages players to disregard well-made games, prepared content, in favor of banal absurdity. It's sort of the opposite of the 101 flavors of ice-cream problem, instead of "choice lock" where there are too many decisions, they hyper-focus on the decisions that have no meaning.

And yes I suppose one could argue that since they're making those decisions, those decisions have meaning to the player, but IME, I don't think thats true. I feel a lot of people simply "go left" for the sake of "going left", the choice only has value as an "anti-choice", because they can theoretically do anything, they feel they must do something else. It doesn't matter what the initial choices are, whatever choice they make must always be something else.

A good number of video games present limited, but meaningful choices within the context of the game. What they don't offer is the hypothetical "infinite choice" of a TTRPG. Which, finally circling back, I think makes "limited choice" an unfair critique of video games. Limited choices can of course be bad choices(in the sense that they do not advance the story, improve the game, or are generally meaningful) but it's counter of "infinite choice", which again I've seen lauded about TTRPGs, is not necessarily any better.

[Metastachydium]

on the other hand, there are versions of d&d where martials hit with a weapon, and versions where each move they make has weird names that they have to call in advance like some anime characters.

GIRALLON WINDMILL FLESH RIP!! FIVE-SHADOW CREEPING ICE ENERVATION STRIKE!!!! (I… Kind of didn't read the rest of the thread. Please do carry on with your conversation.)

[Telok]

GIRALLON WINDMILL FLESH RIP!! FIVE-SHADOW CREEPING ICE ENERVATION STRIKE!!!! (I… Kind of didn't read the rest of the thread. Please do carry on with your conversation.)

The five finger creepy diddly squat strike was astonishingly dissapointing in action. Bad save, mediocre damage, random second effect, lots of stuff immune to the second effects.

[Lord Raziere]

GIRALLON WINDMILL FLESH RIP!! FIVE-SHADOW CREEPING ICE ENERVATION STRIKE!!!! (I… Kind of didn't read the rest of the thread. Please do carry on with your conversation.)

the thing is with this and what your responding to, is that such attack-calling and such isn't really a videogame trope, or even anime trope. those are both mediums. to be more specific this is a martial arts trope. its just that videogames have certain limitations in their animations, so, specific names for their attacks just translates to doing specific routines for their swordplay or brawling real well, when that is like, something you see in real life all the time, you'd think that given how fast combat can be that they'd just improvise everything but no, every move has a name, even in wrestling and boxing, they just aren't as fanciful or called out like in martial arts fantasy stuff, they train to do specific moves all the time, they do improvise and have to be adaptable yes, but ultimately there is a reason why they do certain specific moves and thats because the less you have to manually control with your mind in combat the better, and if you get a certain move down so much that you can pull it off like breathing, thats real good because you don't have to think about it, you just react, because the muscle memory has been trained so well that just knows exactly what to do without you guiding it.

like, this kinda of thing is why we are taught how to type on a keyboard at a young age, at first the way your taught seems like unnatural movement and hard, but at some point the fingers just dance to make the words happen. so imagine how you are keyboard typing except its your entire body moving to kill things and thats the logic behind specific moves in combat. attributing it to videogames is frankly just silly. like any sport or contest that revolves around doing movements to win will accumulate specific movements or techniques that are named that will just be considered very good to use for the sake of ease and communication. all martial arts fantasy stuff is a romanticization and exaggeration of that with cool fancy names and those moves doing cooler stuff.

[Dienekes]

GIRALLON WINDMILL FLESH RIP!! FIVE-SHADOW CREEPING ICE ENERVATION STRIKE!!!! (I… Kind of didn't read the rest of the thread. Please do carry on with your conversation.)

I am always somewhat amused by this criticism, as if the real world doesn't have: The Murder Stroke, Master Hewing Strike, Crooked Strike, Reverse Crooked Strike, The Strike of Wrath, Scalping Cut, and the Squinter.

If you strike in certain ways, you gotta name them if you want to talk about them. Now I'll admit, not all the names D&D designers came up with were particularly good.

Edit: for the record, on the actual topic of the actual thread.

I kinda see “video game-y” as a bit of a relic as far as criticisms go. But as I understand the criticism, it’s just when the mechanics of the game break from verisimilitude so much that the person can’t really rationalize how it makes sense in the game fiction.

4e got called out of this a lot, because the AEDU system (which is a fairly unique and interesting by itself) was forced to represent essentially everything even when it did not fit at all.

I personally have a similar criticism with 5e’s Short and Long Rest systems, where everything gets folded into those mechanics whether they make sense to be so or not. But those for away with it a little better because it has the veneer of a reason behind it. That only really breaks down when you think about it.

The irony of course is that there are now video games that model things much better than any ttrpg ever has. One of the benefits of having all the difficult computations and math in the background. You can create games like Hellish Quart, Mount and Blade, and hell even For Honor which portray combat in varying amounts of more dynamic and realistic ways than most versions of D&D I’ve played. And only a handful of other ttrpgs match them.

[Talakeal]

the thing is with this and what your responding to, is that such attack-calling and such isn't really a videogame trope, or even anime trope. those are both mediums. to be more specific this is a martial arts trope. its just that videogames have certain limitations in their animations, so, specific names for their attacks just translates to doing specific routines for their swordplay or brawling real well, when that is like, something you see in real life all the time, you'd think that given how fast combat can be that they'd just improvise everything but no, every move has a name, even in wrestling and boxing, they just aren't as fanciful or called out like in martial arts fantasy stuff, they train to do specific moves all the time, they do improvise and have to be adaptable yes, but ultimately there is a reason why they do certain specific moves and thats because the less you have to manually control with your mind in combat the better, and if you get a certain move down so much that you can pull it off like breathing, thats real good because you don't have to think about it, you just react, because the muscle memory has been trained so well that just knows exactly what to do without you guiding it.

like, this kinda of thing is why we are taught how to type on a keyboard at a young age, at first the way your taught seems like unnatural movement and hard, but at some point the fingers just dance to make the words happen. so imagine how you are keyboard typing except its your entire body moving to kill things and thats the logic behind specific moves in combat. attributing it to videogames is frankly just silly. like any sport or contest that revolves around doing movements to win will accumulate specific movements or techniques that are named that will just be considered very good to use for the sake of ease and communication. all martial arts fantasy stuff is a romanticization and exaggeration of that with cool fancy names and those moves doing cooler stuff.

This is kind of a tangent, but is this the case in actual combat?

Obviously there are moves for certain maneuvers and techniques, but I have heard that people who do combat sports are at something of a disadvantage in actual fights because their muscle-memory is used to specific routines that work in highly controlled environments but lack the adaptability in an actual fight were almost anything can happen.

[Telok]

Obviously there are moves for certain maneuvers and techniques, but I have heard that people who do combat sports are at something of a disadvantage in actual fights because their muscle-memory is used to specific routines that work in highly controlled environments but lack the adaptability in an actual fight were almost anything can happen.

It depends. If you're trained in a structured sport combat then yeah. Its about as useful being trained in skeet shooting in a war zone with people shooting automatic weapons at you.

If you're actually trained in chaotic melee scrums then a lot carries over. Some of the more historically accurate HEMA stuff could probably carry over pretty well if you have time to grab your usual arms. Several of the other martial arts work just fine if you've participated in more chaotic multi-person practices but not if the only thing you've ever done is single controlled duels.

Edit: I guess I should be more specific. It's less about muscle memory training type stuff and more about focus & situational awareness. If you're trained to block with a shield or parry with a sword it works in both sport & lethal combat. What's really different is going to be the fact that there are probably more people & confusion or that you'll need to be prepared to really hurt the other opponent and not slow or pull blows.

In a multi combatant melee or full battle the person trained in individual duels is at a disadvantage, whether or not it's lethal or sport training. Because individual duels let you focus on one opponent at a time and that's what will trip you up, not muscle memory for strikes or parries.

[Lord Raziere]

This is kind of a tangent, but is this the case in actual combat?

Obviously there are moves for certain maneuvers and techniques, but I have heard that people who do combat sports are at something of a disadvantage in actual fights because their muscle-memory is used to specific routines that work in highly controlled environments but lack the adaptability in an actual fight were almost anything can happen.

In modern combat? eh. probably not. its all guns. muscle doesn't matter when we got the hax insta-death lead sticks around.

in medieval combat that we have manuals about? probably a bit more so. we have manuals of people who use techniques to fight with swords and such. they wouldn't have done the training if wasn't useful to what they do. granted the people who used them also had better armor, horses, bows, and often social standing that made them a bad idea to kill even if they were from another kingdom because of some social things worked so.....there is room for other factors to influence that. shot in the dark: being clad in plate mail and thus being the medieval equivalent of a tank to most people probably allows you to do your well-practiced sword swings more easily.

none of which matters for fantasy combat of course. but that, and my opinion on it, are a different can of worms.

[Dienekes]

This is kind of a tangent, but is this the case in actual combat?

Obviously there are moves for certain maneuvers and techniques, but I have heard that people who do combat sports are at something of a disadvantage in actual fights because their muscle-memory is used to specific routines that work in highly controlled environments but lack the adaptability in an actual fight were almost anything can happen.

So, we actually live in a particularly interesting time in terms of martial arts. Because you are right, that when a martial art stops being about "how to defeat/kill your opponent" and turns into "how to win in this sport without killing anyone" then the structures used to train and prepare for the sport can hinder you when facing an unwilling opponent.

What makes today interesting, is in the early days of MMA we got to see people of various martial arts try and face each other with relatively sparse rules (as far as martial sports went), and we got to see which training methods really had become too structured to face differently trained opposition. However, regardless of that, we never really saw some random strongman who never trained in any martial art win anything, as far as I can remember.

Same is mostly true with weapon based martial arts. Modern Olympic fencing has a lot of rules on right of way and touch, that work well for the sport. But if they're fighting with actual weapons, it didn't matter if the opponent didn't have technical right of way, you still got stabbed.

But we do have actual warriors from the medieval and early modern period who wrote down some of their techniques and guides. We know Fiore dei Liberi for example was a knight, and a mercenary. And he wrote about how he fought, and we know he fought for a living. So it worked for him. And he has his own named techniques and stances, and he explains when and why to use them. It's actually interesting, because he even makes a point in his work about how he tries to keep his moves precise and streamlined in a way so that they can be used with little variation regardless of if your opponent is armored or unarmored, or whatever primarily knightly weapon you're holding. Specifically so he did not get himself confused and doing the wrong thing in battle.

[Kane0]

I am always somewhat amused by this criticism, as if the real world doesn't have: The Murder Stroke, Master Hewing Strike, Crooked Strike, Reverse Crooked Strike, The Strike of Wrath, Scalping Cut, and the Squinter.

And the most infamous of special attacks, the steel chair

[Metastachydium]

the thing is with this and what your responding to, is that such attack-calling and such isn't really a videogame trope, or even anime trope. those are both mediums. to be more specific this is a martial arts trope.


I am always somewhat amused by this criticism, as if the real world doesn't have: The Murder Stroke, Master Hewing Strike, Crooked Strike, Reverse Crooked Strike, The Strike of Wrath, Scalping Cut, and the Squinter.

If you strike in certain ways, you gotta name them if you want to talk about them. Now I'll admit, not all the names D&D designers came up with were particularly good.

I know that. I just love the mental image of someone shouting one of these mid-combat before doing… Well, as Telok points out, something oddly underwhelming. Plus based on my very limited experience with shounen anime (which, unlike anime, is totally a genre of sorts), these two in particular are stuff I can imagine being employed there.

[Jakinbandw]

I know that. I just love the mental image of someone shouting one of these mid-combat before doing… Well, as Telok points out, something oddly underwhelming. Plus based on my very limited experience with shounen anime (which, unlike anime, is totally a genre of sorts), these two in particular are stuff I can imagine being employed there.

Not quite combat, and yet it's the first thing I thought of:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5bCJZmyEKI

[Kurald Galain]

I'll be honest, I still don't understand your definition. Is a wizard casting a fireball a flashy effect (Wizards should be able to make big explosions!) with basic mechanics wrapped around it? Or is something that wizards can do in the setting, and the mechanics are there to represent that? Those don't seem like opposites, so I feel that I'm getting something wrong.

Yes. There is a fundamental difference between (a) the wizard can cast fireball and this is represented by 10d6 damage; and (b) the wizard can deal 10d6 damage and this is represented by a fireball. The difference is that (a) doesn't work under water and may set a forest on fire, and (b) deals 10d6 damage regardless of circumstances, and the fluff gets changed if you do that underwater or in a forest or whatnot.

(b) is video gamey, (a) is not. Clearly the GM has influence over which of the two will happen; also clearly some RPG systems or editions lean strongly one way or the other.

[Jakinbandw]

Yes. There is a fundamental difference between (a) the wizard can cast fireball and this is represented by 10d6 damage; and (b) the wizard can deal 10d6 damage and this is represented by a fireball. The difference is that (a) doesn't work under water and may set a forest on fire, and (b) deals 10d6 damage regardless of circumstances, and the fluff gets changed if you do that underwater or in a forest or whatnot.

(b) is video gamey, (a) is not. Clearly the GM has influence over which of the two will happen; also clearly some RPG systems or editions lean strongly one way or the other.

So by that reading, 5e is mildly less videogamy than 3.5, as 3.5 let casters use fireball as normal underwater, while in 5e its effect is lessened.

[Vahnavoi]

Kurald Galain's point is excellent example of a genuine distinction where "videogamey" serves no purpose or is even actively misleading.

Why? Because actual videogames are often closer to a), and many roleplaying games are very much b). The reason is because for a functional videogame, the description has to be codified along with the abstraction, you can't leave one half of the equation undefined or you get a glitch. There is no fundamental difference between making a videogame that runs on moon logic versus one that does realistic physics simulation, and there are quite a few games in the latter genre, from UnReal World to Tears of the Kingdom.

By contrast, tabletop games have a living human who can come up with any missing description for the abstraction. The rules can say fireball does 10d6 damage and then leave it up to a game master to decide what that happens to mean in the game on a situational basis. The most famous case of exactly this... is D&D. It was in fact one of the original points of contention about hitpoints, to the point it was officially commented upon and discussed by the game maker in official game books, notably 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. What does a hitpoint stand for? It can be anything from skill to luck to physical toughness, depending on context. What kind of injury is one point of damage? Nobody knows before a game master or a player narrates a description after-the-fact.

[Kurald Galain]

Kurald Galain's point is excellent example of a genuine distinction where "videogamey" serves no purpose or is even actively misleading.
Sure, people could have picked a better word than "video gamey". A more fitting term is "disassociated mechanics" but that's a bit of a mouthful.


many roleplaying games are very much b)
There's not many tabletop RPGs that are "very much b", but I'm sure that most TRPGs have a couple of "b" mechanics. The primary example of a TRPG that is "very much b" is of course 4E D&D, and unsurprisingly that's the RPG that is most often accused of being "video gamey".


There is no fundamental difference between making a videogame that runs on moon logic versus one that does realistic physics simulationThere is, in fact, a fundamental difference; and that difference is that one of them runs on moon logic and the other does realistic physics. It's pretty hard to get more fundamental than that. But yes, players also commonly make fun of disassociations in video games.


What does a hitpoint stand for? It can be anything from skill to luck to physical toughness, depending on context.
That's a very good example. "Characters have health, which is represented by hit points, and therefore HP loss equals physical wounds" is not video gamey. "Characters have HP, which represents a whole lot of different things depending on what the fiction needs at the time" is video gamey. And indeed, it's quite common for that debate to come up on these forums, because players don't like the latter, because that is video gamey.

It's very straightforward. Whenever a game (that has a narrative) goes mechanics-first instead of fiction-first, some players call the designer out on it, and other players counter that they fail to see a difference between the two approaches.

[Vahnavoi]

Sure, people could have picked a better word than "video gamey". A more fitting term is "disassociated mechanics" but that's a bit of a mouthful.

As AD&D put it, your a) is reality simulation, and b) is just a game - with explicit game instruction being that AD&D is the latter, not the former.


There is, in fact, a fundamental difference; and that difference is that one of them runs on moon logic and the other does realistic physics. It's pretty hard to get more fundamental than that. But yes, players also commonly make fun of disassociations in video games.

I'm afraid you missed the point.

When writing software, 10d6 damage that changes from fireball to something else underwater takes the same effort to code (and the same kind of code, to a large degree) as a fireball that fails to work underwater. Whichever aesthetic a game is after, the abstraction and description have to both be codified, or the game won't work; the finished product has to run mechanics first regardless of what a game's concept is.

[NichG]

However it doesn't take the same effort to code '10d6 damage + play effect' and 'this is an expanding ball of rapidly combusting fuel-oxidizer mixer where the fuel and oxidizer are magically provided at a certain rate and pressure - it sets things on fire, makes a loud noise, makes light, gets channeled by confined spaces, struggles to expand in high pressure environments, can startle wildlife, has an exact distribution of pressure somewhat dependent on the caster's will which can be commented on by skilled observers, creates a briefly noticeable drain at a random point on the elemental plane of fire when produced which can maybe be traced back to the caster, and other things which we can't even pre-emptively list and you should figure out via the implication of how exactly it is that a fireball works'.

Treating something as 'first of all, real' means that even if there is something unanticipated by the designers, the mandate is for the (GM/players/author/etc) to fill in those gaps as if the thing were more real than the rules are capable of establishing. Whereas treating something as 'first of all, mechanics' instead would hold that if you find such a gap, you should figure out a reason why that actually isn't a gap at all and that the specific mechanical way of resolving the situation should still apply.

Why the second might be called videogamey is that this is a restriction that in videogames you have to work very hard and very intentionally to escape, whereas in anything run by a person you have easy access to natural language which lets you make open-ended rules, utilize ambiguity, and thereby make things flexible to when someone tries to do something the author of the mechanics did not previously anticipate. When videogames do escape this limit its a big deal because its legitimately difficult to give the feeling in a preprogrammed environment that you could 'try to do anything' and have the game actually respond reasonably, for a game that purports to be presenting something even remotely close to the complexity of a real world.

You can easily make a physics game where you can push sand however you want, but if you want the NPC kids on the beach in that game to react to your sand castle based on recognizing what you actually made, well, now you're at frontier AI-in-games research.

[Jakinbandw]

'this is an expanding ball of rapidly combusting fuel-oxidizer mixer where the fuel and oxidizer are magically provided at a certain rate and pressure - it sets things on fire, makes a loud noise, makes light, gets channeled by confined spaces, struggles to expand in high pressure environments, can startle wildlife, has an exact distribution of pressure somewhat dependent on the caster's will which can be commented on by skilled observers, creates a briefly noticeable drain at a random point on the elemental plane of fire when produced which can maybe be traced back to the caster, and other things which we can't even pre-emptively list and you should figure out via the implication of how exactly it is that a fireball works'.

I think this highlights one of the hard things about RPG design. Mainly, the purpose of rules. Now there are several purposes for them, but one I want to highlight is the part where they help a player and GM get on the same page.

Let's take your fireball example up above. This description says that a fireball works as normal underwater and in space. But what if you view a fireball like that, and another player views it as conjuring fire from the elemental plane? What if another views it as just bringing forth the fuel mixture magically, but not the oxidizer? What if the GM views it as making the air rich in O2, and then providing a flame that ignites it?

Each player expects the fireball to act differently, and it can lead to frustration where one player expects one outcome but doesn't get it. For example, you suggest that it produces a lot of noise, but going back to my 2nd edition adnd handbook, "The burst of the fireball creates little pressure and generally conforms to the shape of the area in which it occurs." Since the sound of the explosion is created by the pressure wave, I wouldn't expect fireball to be that loud at all. If I am playing a wizard and cast a fireball, and you say it alerts the entire dungeon, then our understandings differ. Now in this example, I can point to the rules as a justification on why the fireball probably wouldn't be loud. But for many things, that isn't the case (while I might be able to argue the sound, each of the points of view I posted above change how the spell works if cast in a vacuum).

This leads to the question: Is it important for the players to all be on the same page with how an ability, such as the spell fireball, functions?

It feels like people say that if the answer is yes, then the rpg is video gamy. If the rules tell you exactly what happens, and you aren't expected to extrapolate, then each player can agree on what occurs when the fireball is cast.

If the answer is no, then each player is free to extrapolate based on their interpretations of how the mechanics interact with their fictional version of the world, with the GM having the final say as they are in charge.

I will admit, that for me, I like knowing how a character's abilities work, and it frustrates me when I'm expecting one outcome to a plan, only to be overruled. I also find it frustrating when players don't share my understanding of the rules, and try to work with them on a compromise, usually codifying the result to limit future miscommunication as much as possible.

[Vahnavoi]

Treating something as 'first of all, real' means that even if there is something unanticipated by the designers, the mandate is for the (GM/players/author/etc) to fill in those gaps as if the thing were more real than the rules are capable of establishing.

Sure. Which is something that most tabletop games don't do nor even seriously try for. Due all the difficulties of doing it, authors don't try to codify it in books and game masters don't try to reach it at tables.

So what is called "videogamey" is in fact just gamey. That was the point. The distinction is real. The term used for it is misleading. It isn't tabletop versus videogames, or even fiction first versus mechanics first, it's just realism versus non-realism.


Whereas treating something as 'first of all, mechanics' instead would hold that if you find such a gap, you should figure out a reason why that actually isn't a gap at all and that the specific mechanical way of resolving the situation should still apply.

Most tabletop game masters and players manage to achieve this simply by not thinking about it too much and proceeding to roll more dice.

[NichG]

I think this highlights one of the hard things about RPG design. Mainly, the purpose of rules. Now there are several purposes for them, but one I want to highlight is the part where they help a player and GM get on the same page.

Let's take your fireball example up above. This description says that a fireball works as normal underwater and in space. But what if you view a fireball like that, and another player views it as conjuring fire from the elemental plane? What if another views it as just bringing forth the fuel mixture magically, but not the oxidizer? What if the GM views it as making the air rich in O2, and then providing a flame that ignites it?


It doesn't though, but maybe this is actually kind of the point I'm making?

If you read it carefully, it produces things at a 'certain rate and pressure'. That means if for example you're 10ft below water it works, if you're 100ft below water the radius might be reduced but the intensity increased and you'd get sonic shockwaves that could also hurt someone, and if you're 2000ft below water then the fireball just doesn't even go. And it would be just as true if you tried to cast a fireball in a chamber pressured at the ambient pressure 2000ft below, but filled with air. And if you cast it in space, it should actually be bigger but less intense. And so on.

Treating what I wrote as a description of reality, you'd be expected to reason those things out to figure out what happens to a fireball underwater or in space - just like if someone said 'we have this model that ideal gasses behave like PV=nRT, but you have to figure out what happens when you compress water vapor suddenly past its freezing point pressure' then to answer the question you have to go beyond the model rather than saying 'well the model says PV=nRT so therefore...'

This is what I take from the previous comment about the difference between '(the abstraction of) 10d6 fire damage represents (the reality that) the character can throw a fireball' vs '(the abstraction of) a Fireball spell represents (the reality that) the character can cause 10d6 fire damage'.



This leads to the question: Is it important for the players to all be on the same page with how an ability, such as the spell fireball, functions?

It feels like people say that if the answer is yes, then the rpg is video gamy. If the rules tell you exactly what happens, and you aren't expected to extrapolate, then each player can agree on what occurs when the fireball is cast.


I think this is a secondary consideration of the deeper thing that a formal rule system is one particular way to reliably create agreement, and that happens to align well with the needs for making video games. But there are other ways to create agreement that wouldn't feel the same as 'the rules are the physics'.


Sure. Which is something that most tabletop games don't do nor even seriously try for. Due all the difficulties of doing it, authors don't try to codify it in books and game masters don't try to reach it at tables.

So what is called "videogamey" is in fact just gamey. That was the point. The distinction is real. The term used for it is misleading. It isn't tabletop versus videogames, or even fiction first versus mechanics first, it's just realism versus non-realism.

Most tabletop game masters and players manage to achieve this simply by not thinking about it too much and proceeding to roll more dice.

Video games exemplify this because in video games there basically is no choice but to do it this way because of technological limitations. Many tables do take a stance of treating the fictional reality as real-as-presented as opposed to putting the mechanical rules first - whether its hard or not to do, whether it can be done perfectly, that's all an aside - you can still reasonably hold it as a goal or as a mandate for how decisions at the table should be made. But with video games, there's not even try to do this quite yet. So until that changes, 'video gamey' can refer to the shape cut out in the design space due to that practical technological constraint.

[Jakinbandw]

It doesn't though, but maybe this is actually kind of the point I'm making?

If you read it carefully, it produces things at a 'certain rate and pressure'.

I had been talking about fireballs in dnd. I assumed you were too. If I read what you wrote carefully, It doesn't say what ignites the mixture, so whether it can work in space, or underwater is still unclear. If it's ignited by a spark, then it may work in space, but may not work underwater for example, however since the description doesn't say, it still allows for misalignment of expectations.



I think this is a secondary consideration of the deeper thing that a formal rule system is one particular way to reliably create agreement, and that happens to align well with the needs for making video games. But there are other ways to create agreement that wouldn't feel the same as 'the rules are the physics'.

Such as?

[NichG]

I had been talking about fireballs in dnd. I assumed you were too. If I read what you wrote carefully, It doesn't say what ignites the mixture, so whether it can work in space, or underwater is still unclear. If it's ignited by a spark, then it may work in space, but may not work underwater for example, however since the description doesn't say, it still allows for misalignment of expectations.


Since it works 'at a certain pressure' when the external pressure is greater than that, nothing can come through. Whether it ignites or not is a separate matter - as I described it, it would ignite underwater just fine.


Such as?

- Every time there's an ambiguity, the table as a whole votes and moves forward with the result. Everyone will be in agreement after the mediation process.

- You have a single-player or single-author experience where the author simply decides based on their own judgment.

- You preview the scenario and actions before actual play and come to an agreement about how each thing will work, and then actual play is just acting out that pre-agreed upon plan

- You agree to use the real world as reference, so when its unclear you can resolve that by looking things up or even going and doing an experiment

- You're playing in a universe whose metaphysics all of the players are familiar with from previous experience playing together, and you have a norm about what constitutes standards of evidence and argument in order to say that a particular thing should work a particular way.

[Jakinbandw]

Since it works 'at a certain pressure' when the external pressure is greater than that, nothing can come through. Whether it ignites or not is a separate matter - as I described it, it would ignite underwater just fine.
I feel there is ambiguity, as you never state what ignites the fuel. That said I don't really want to argue about it, and I would be interested in seeing an RPG written in that style, where there are no rules for damage, or anything, just an explanation of the physics of the world. I seem to remember something like that being created for FMA once, where they got down into how each magic circle functioned, and the exact changes it created as well as how and why, but it was more of an experimental thought project, and not marketed as an rpg.



- Every time there's an ambiguity, the table as a whole votes and moves forward with the result. Everyone will be in agreement after the mediation process.

- You have a single-player or single-author experience where the author simply decides based on their own judgment.

- You preview the scenario and actions before actual play and come to an agreement about how each thing will work, and then actual play is just acting out that pre-agreed upon plan

- You agree to use the real world as reference, so when its unclear you can resolve that by looking things up or even going and doing an experiment

- You're playing in a universe whose metaphysics all of the players are familiar with from previous experience playing together, and you have a norm about what constitutes standards of evidence and argument in order to say that a particular thing should work a particular way.

I notice that none of those options are available to a person writing a game, only to individual groups. Unless you are trying to suggest that writers don't concern themselves with expectation alignment?

[NichG]

I feel there is ambiguity, as you never state what ignites the fuel. That said I don't really want to argue about it, and I would be interested in seeing an RPG written in that style, where there are no rules for damage, or anything, just an explanation of the physics of the world. I seem to remember something like that being created for FMA once, where they got down into how each magic circle functioned, and the exact changes it created as well as how and why, but it was more of an experimental thought project, and not marketed as an rpg.

Oart of what I'm saying is that if you take 'we are representing a world that should be real' as a primary consideration, whenever there is ambiguity there is also a specific principle by which that ambiguity is to be resolved (that is, to work out what would make sense given the underlying fictional reality, rather than what would make sense given the written form of the rules) even if the rules don't explicitly spell out how it should be resolved. Yes, that may in fact mean that people might disagree about how it should be resolved, but that's not actually a non-starter for having a game run according to those principles.

Here I wrote the 'rules' purely in natural language descriptions of physical processes to make an extreme point, but practically speaking what you'd have would be a two-layer system where there are mechanical glosses which are meant to be taken as examples of 'how could you resolve this physical reality?' rather than being taken as defining that physical reality. So you'd say 'a fireball is a microscopic portal to a pressurized region in the elemental plane of fire' but also 'a fireball is a 20ft area blast dealing 10d6 damage, with a Reflex save halving the damage'. But the 'realism' principle applied to this would be that when the former text suggests that the effect should be different than a 20ft area blast dealing 10d6 damage, then it should take precedence over the specific mechanical example. Whereas the approach that feels more video-game-like is when its the reverse, and the specific mechanics are taken to have higher priority than the description of 'what actually is a fireball?'.

Neither is an inherently invalid way to play, but (for me) I have a preferred balance between those considerations and I might well describe a game that is unbalanced towards making the mechanics less ambiguous at the cost of making the underlying fictional reality become more absurd or forced as 'video-gamey'. Because in that case, the designers failed to make the two things harmonious in a way that has a lot in common with the compromises one must make when developing standalone video games that have to run on their own.

But, if the designers happen to make the mechanical glosses less ambiguous but also at the same time manage to align them well with that underlying fictional reality so that the fiction doesn't have to be distorted in order to achieve it, then I wouldn't describe that as video-gamey even if it ends up being less ambiguous or more objectively computable. There's a practical limit there which is that eventually these things will be in tension at some level of detail - its not like you can hand a group of players a modified Schroedinger equation for magi-physics and just have them compute everything from first principles - so there generally are tradeoffs. And in the case of those tradeoffs, for my tastes at least, its a good trade to allow some ambiguity into the rules in exchange for the flexibility to actually behave as if what you're interacting with is a world rather than a ruleset. Personally, 4e falls too far on the side of 'the abstractions are the reality' for me, 3e straddles the boundary depending on how it's run (if a GM is willing to quash nonsensical things like infinite economic exploits, its fine; if the GM runs pure RAW, it'd be too video-gamey for my tastes), and something like Nobilis is well enough into the 'allow ambiguity to let the world be a world' zone that (for my tastes) it has room to afford more mechanical detail, even if it doesn't really need it.

FATE, ironically, is both somewhat ambiguous (at least in the sense that the GM is just making up what happens from whole cloth in basically every case) and it feels kind of video-gamey to me, because the particular abstraction that FATE uses (tag things for + to dice roll) abstracts over a lot of the details and nuances that actually matter to why a world feels like a world. So its kind of a worst-of-both-worlds point for me.



I notice that none of those options are available to a person writing a game, only to individual groups. Unless you are trying to suggest that writers don't concern themselves with expectation alignment?

I'm suggesting that the issue of 'expectation alignment' is just a separate one from the constraints of a video game and 'video game feel'. That having resolution-algorithm-style formal rules can enable expectation alignment just happens to correlate with the fact that when you write a video game your only vehicle for expressing anything is in the form of resolution-algorithm-style formal rules. It may remain true that someone pushing for expectation alignment also tends to, in a correlated manner, push for design decisions that tend to make something feel more video gamey. But expectation alignment is not the definition of videogamey feel.

That is to say, I'm arguing that its possible to have a TTRPG experience in which expectations do happen to align, but it doesn't feel like a video game - that the alignment of expectations itself is not what gives rise to a video game feel. Whether or not game writers can intentionally go about trying to produce that result and how they would do so is an unrelated discussion.

[Telok]

What makes an RPG Video gamey

If I can go through a TVTropes video game page like "the computer is a cheating bastard" or "our rules are not your rules" and start using it like a check list for the ttrpg in question.

[gbaji]

I'll be honest, I still don't understand your definition. Is a wizard casting a fireball a flashy effect (Wizards should be able to make big explosions!) with basic mechanics wrapped around it? Or is something that wizards can do in the setting, and the mechanics are there to represent that? Those don't seem like opposites, so I feel that I'm getting something wrong.

I think Galain mentioned something later that touches on this a bit. I'm going in an even simpler direction. If a wizard casts the spell "fireball", and the spell "creates a ball of fire x feet in radius, doing y damage", then I expect that to otherwise act as a "real" ball of fire would, if one actually were generated via some means. In other words, despite the fact that magic is generating some effect, the effect itself should act in accordance with "normal" physical laws of the universe.

One of the most common failures (and yeah, often in various computer/video games) is area effect attacks hitting only foes and not friends. IIRC, the entire discussion that lead to me talking about a set of feats being "video gamey" was in reference to firing into melee rules. And a number of the feats I was looking at were things that hit "all enemies in X area", or "hit desired enemy no matter how far away" kind of things.

It's not that the effect is "flashy". It's that it doesn't behave like how it would if we were to actually generate said effect. Again, forget that "magic" is what causes the effect. How does the effect behave once it's created? That's the part of this I'm looking at. And when the method to resolve that effect is more about convenience than realism, that's what I was talking about as well. And I'm also more going in terms of how things work in the game "by default". You can certainly also have special spells/abilities that "break the rules". But then that's what it does. If every AE in your game avoids doing damage to anything but enemies, then that's "by default", and is unrealistic to me. And maybe part of this is that I really want players to have to actually work to use things like AEs and to make them useful. Same thing with archery in general (which is what brought this up, sorta). If you can fire into melee safely every time, then there's no need to work in any way to get a "clean shot" on an enemy. No need to move to the side so you can have a clear line of fire. No need to make sure you position yourself so the enemy has to run across a field to get to you. Just fight anywhere you want, and your archer is at full effectiveness, all the time, every time. No need to lure enemies into a kill zone for AEs either. Just engage in melee and let your spell casters blast away full power. No problem, right? That's what I find unrealistic. Now if you have a special ability or feat that allows "this shot" or "this spell" to hit only enemies, but with some cost (can use X/day or whatever), that puts it back into "magic can do this" category. So yeah, I suppose part of this goes to a "game balance" issue for me as well. I want players to have to actually engage their brains and think about an encounter, what the terrain looks like, what abilities and weapons/spells they have, and then actually have to use that stuff to make the best use of what they have. Some games go to great length to make all abilities useful all the time. Which means there's no actual reward to the players for good planning. And less reward for gaining "special" feats or spells or whatnot that allow them to break those rules sometimes (which I think was labled a "feat tax" when I mentioned it in that previous thread).

Whether "video gamey" was the best term to use, on the other hand, is certainly a completely valid subject for debate.


Same is mostly true with weapon based martial arts. Modern Olympic fencing has a lot of rules on right of way and touch, that work well for the sport. But if they're fighting with actual weapons, it didn't matter if the opponent didn't have technical right of way, you still got stabbed.

Well. In theory modern fencing right of way rules are supposed to simulate the concept that anyone attacking someone else who didn't want to just die in the attempt, needed to move the other persons weapon aside via some means first. Of course, in practice it does result in folks "playing to the rules", and doing things like "half hearted" beat attacks, knowing they're going to get hit, but knowing also that they have "right of way" and will therefore score the point. Something, you would *never* do if actually fighting someone "for real".

To be fair on the flip side, I've also seen a lot of these sorts of touches count differently depending almost on the whim of the director. Some will call simultaneous and restart (cause they just don't like rewarding what they see as "sloppy" fencing). Some will rule right of way (but not necessarily the way you might have thought it was). Some will rule "first hit" regardless of right of way (different tolerances for how much time you actually have right of way for, or whether someone else's attack is a remise or counted as a new attack). Good fencers strive to always get "clean hits" (you establish right of way, attack, and hit without getting hit in return). It's the only way to actually guarantee you get the point.

You see the same sort of thing in any martial sport where there are "touch points" involved in some way. Um... Obviously not so much when the bout is to knockdowns, knockouts, or pins.




Sure, people could have picked a better word than "video gamey". A more fitting term is "disassociated mechanics" but that's a bit of a mouthful.


There's not many tabletop RPGs that are "very much b", but I'm sure that most TRPGs have a couple of "b" mechanics. The primary example of a TRPG that is "very much b" is of course 4E D&D, and unsurprisingly that's the RPG that is most often accused of being "video gamey".

There is, in fact, a fundamental difference; and that difference is that one of them runs on moon logic and the other does realistic physics. It's pretty hard to get more fundamental than that. But yes, players also commonly make fun of disassociations in video games.

Yup. I was speaking of "disassociated mechanics" then. Yeah, that's a mouthful though. :smallyuk:

Also agree on the whole "HP mechanics are silly" bit as well btw. Doubly so when you have level based games, and HPs scale upwards with level. A highly skilled person should not be able to survive being hit in the head any better than someone who is less skilled, yet there you have it. It's more "fuzzy mechanics" really. The rationalization is that higher HPs somehow just means you are able to avoid taking serious wounds even while being "hit" more often (somehow?). But that doesn't explain things like falling damage, or "boulder fell on my head" or "trampled by a rhino" type situations (maybe you just "roll with it" better?).

Then again, I tend to also play more games with "flat" HP mechanics (no level based HP progression), or with "wound level" mechanics anyway (although some of those can trend towards silliness too). So that's just where my head is at with stuff like this anyway.

I guess it's just that for me, my willingness to suspend disbelief has some firm(ish) limits. And for me, anyway, it's that I'm fine with "magic creates this effect/change/whatever", but having defined that thing and what it is, we apply it to an otherwise "real world" to determine the result. I get that other folks have a "it's magic, so it doesn't matter" threshhold though. Different strokes and all of that.

[Jakinbandw]

I think Galain mentioned something later that touches on this a bit. I'm going in an even simpler direction. If a wizard casts the spell "fireball", and the spell "creates a ball of fire x feet in radius, doing y damage", then I expect that to otherwise act as a "real" ball of fire would, if one actually were generated via some means. In other words, despite the fact that magic is generating some effect, the effect itself should act in accordance with "normal" physical laws of the universe.

You know what, this actually does clarify things to the point where I can understand it. Thank you!


One of the most common failures (and yeah, often in various computer/video games) is area effect attacks hitting only foes and not friends. IIRC, the entire discussion that lead to me talking about a set of feats being "video gamey" was in reference to firing into melee rules. And a number of the feats I was looking at were things that hit "all enemies in X area", or "hit desired enemy no matter how far away" kind of things.

It was about firing into melee, you remember correctly.


It's not that the effect is "flashy". It's that it doesn't behave like how it would if we were to actually generate said effect. Again, forget that "magic" is what causes the effect. How does the effect behave once it's created? That's the part of this I'm looking at. And when the method to resolve that effect is more about convenience than realism, that's what I was talking about as well. And I'm also more going in terms of how things work in the game "by default". You can certainly also have special spells/abilities that "break the rules". But then that's what it does. If every AE in your game avoids doing damage to anything but enemies, then that's "by default", and is unrealistic to me.

I can certainly understand that perspective. I think everyone has their own hiccups and concerns here. For me, it's dungeons. I worked for a while at a mine as a vent technician, so I know about the importance of air flow, and every time I look at a dungeon I can't help but try to figure out the air flow, and most of the time my conclusion is that all the monsters in the dungeon should be dead of asphyxiation. Part of fixing this for me, was a core change to how the world worked with massive knock-on effects.

I ended up making human belief (humans are pretty much the only sentient race in my setting), and allowing perception to affect reality. People can breath fine in dungeons without airflow because people don't understand concepts like CO2 buildup and O2 depletion, and thus those effects are overwritten by a persons belief that they are breathing just fine. Lacks never run out of fish without some sort of natural disaster because everyone knows where the best fishing holes are and thus there are always fish to catch there.

This has negative effects too, Like when people get worried that their town is cursed, or a monster is stalking the night, then that can bring about curses or monsters to attack that town. It's also why advanced martials can do the impossible. They have slowly started to believe that they can do these impossible things if they put enough effort in. As their faith in their abilities increases there abilities themselves increase.

It doesn't make a world that mirrors the real world, but it does make for an internally self consistent one.


And maybe part of this is that I really want players to have to actually work to use things like AEs and to make them useful. Same thing with archery in general (which is what brought this up, sorta). If you can fire into melee safely every time, then there's no need to work in any way to get a "clean shot" on an enemy. No need to move to the side so you can have a clear line of fire. No need to make sure you position yourself so the enemy has to run across a field to get to you. Just fight anywhere you want, and your archer is at full effectiveness, all the time, every time. No need to lure enemies into a kill zone for AEs either. Just engage in melee and let your spell casters blast away full power. No problem, right? That's what I find unrealistic.

I almost agree with you here, but I feel like we have different backgrounds when it comes to RPGs. I also want strategy and tactics to matter, but I also enjoy games on a higher power spectrum. The last two big games I've played (outside of homebrew FATE stuff) were the OSR game Godbound, and 5e. In Godbound there are multiple tactics that allow characters to freely attack others from outside their range, to the point where that becomes the default unless something directly prevents it. In 5e, similar situations came up all the time where I was doing things like walking up to monsters with Spirit Guardians and Sanctuary up and taking the dodge action each round to nuke down mass groups of foes in CoS. It was one tactic that worked pretty much every time.

So for me, to have interesting tactical encounters, I decided that both sides of the conflict needed to have options. That assuming two foes of roughly equal power, one side should not be able to consistently invalidate the other. Both should have multiple tactical options in a fight that allowed them a chance at victory.

And so we come back to shooting into melee. I find it provides a richer tactical experience to allow characters not in melee to be able to evade attacks than it does to penalize archers for shooting into melee. There is no longer a set of 'auto win' tactics that can consistently guarantee victory after victory. Battles turn on positioning now more than they have in previous games I've played. As a minor example, I was running an old adnd module for a friend in a lower level solo game, and for the 4 rounds combat lasted, every round there was movement and battlefield alteration going on as part of a constant struggle for tactical advantage. Meanwhile, generally in my experiences in DnD, fights are much more static, with relatively little movement or jockeying for tactical advantage, outside of the initial setting up conditions for the battle. Battles play out much the same way that the new video-game genre of auto-battlers do: You set the initial conditions, but then after that, there aren't any decisions to be made.

Though maybe another advantage my system has is that it's simultaneous resolution of actions in combat. So you never have perfect information when you try to figure out what you are doing in a round. You have to outguess opponents, and with player skill you can even survive rounds that would have killed you with clever tactical thinking. Archer rolled high enough to kill you? Too bad for him that you had already stunned his melee fighter and moved to a zone you can evade in, allowing you to negate that attack. I and my friends find it much more engaging than 5E's very rout combat.



Now if you have a special ability or feat that allows "this shot" or "this spell" to hit only enemies, but with some cost (can use X/day or whatever), that puts it back into "magic can do this" category.

I've always preferred the Effort model that I first ran into in Godbound. Characters have a set amount of effort, and abilities are either always on, require them to have a point of effort free for the duration they use the ability, require them to exert a point of effort, losing it until they can take a 5 minute rest, or requiring them to burn it, losing it until they take a long rest. It's a nice unified system that never leaves a player asking 'why can I only do this x times per battle but still have enough ever'?



Some games go to great length to make all abilities useful all the time. Which means there's no actual reward to the players for good planning. And less reward for gaining "special" feats or spells or whatnot that allow them to break those rules sometimes (which I think was labled a "feat tax" when I mentioned it in that previous thread).

As someone with Chronic Minmax Disease, I don't feel like mastery of character planning is something that should be the biggest deciding factor in a fight (or second, or even third). In my perspective, if a character without any special abilities can't reliably win against a minmaxed character through a higher tactical mastery at least half the time, then I'll be frustrated when building for it, and playing it. A player should be able to get better at the game and have it matter. But if they've messed up their build by not taking a required, expected special ability, then no amount of improvement in the game matters. All they can do is kill their old character and roll up a new one.

It's actually why I made sure my system allows for pretty intensive respeccing without letting it mess up the cohesiveness of the game. It makes it so that players can get better at the character building part of the game, and see improvements there. Right now a fellow player has realized that his character needs a higher Resilience stat, and so they are using the downtime rules to raise it up, allowing them to fix an oversight from character creation without punishing them for it in the long term.

[Talakeal]

I don't really think the correlation between "video-gamey" mechanics and "dissasociated mechanics" are necessarily the same thing.

4E has lots of both, but I don't think they are the same.

For example, tripping snakes, bleeding skeletons, and poisioning golems are all video-gamey things you find in 4E. They are not dissasociated.

The dissasociated stuff is mostly things like marking targets and the AEDU resource system, things that only exist on the mechanical level without representing something on the narrative level.

[Just to Browse]

I think all of those examples are actually dissociated, Talakeal. If a thing made out of rock, metal, or bone can be poisoned or made to bleed, it presents a disconnection between the IRL mechanic and the in-game world. If I saw any of those in a D&D game, I'd call it a video-game-y action.

I think video-game-y-ness includes all dissociated mechanics, but also other things like metagame and narrative conventions. Something like this:
https://i.imgur.com/PeXqSJ5.png

(I'd also like to note that a lot of 4e constructs were immune to poison, presumably for this very reason. Helmed Horrors, Shield Guardians, and Stone Golems all come to mind. The constructs that didn't were things like Flesh Golems, which IMO is pretty reasonable. Bleeding skeletons are/were definitely a thing, though.)

[Talakeal]

snip

We are working on a different definition of disassociated mechanics then.

Dissasociated mechanics are, imo, more often associated with narrative systems rather than gamist systems, as they usual involve the players making a decision that affects the world without their characters doing anything. They are not simply gamist abstractions for ease of play like bleeding skeletons or tripped slimes.


To use an example from my system; every session each player receives a number of destiny points which they can use to reroll dice. This is a dissasociated mechanic, but doesn't feel "gamey".

At the same time, all 1 handed weapons weigh the same amount, regardless of if they are a dagger or an arming sword. This is not a disassociated mechanic, but it does feel "gamey".


Now, some things are both dissasociated and gamist, for example marks in 4E, as that plays very much like a board game mechanic that has no in universe explanation afaict.

[Telok]

To use an example from my system... all 1 handed weapons weigh the same amount, regardless of if they are a dagger or an arming sword. This is not a disassociated mechanic, but it does feel "gamey".

That's really just a low resolution encumberance mechanic. For gamey you want slot based inventory where stuff is 0, 1, or 2 slots and there's no "too much weight" function.

[Just to Browse]

The usual reference for associated vs dissociated mechanics is from The Alexandrian (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). To whit:

An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.

So "no in-universe explanation" is actually a hallmark of dissociation. If it's normal in your RPG for things made out of rocks to bleed, then the mechanism that inflicts a bleed status on a creature made out of rocks is associated. If it's not, then that mechanism is dissociated.

To the weapon example:

If, in this in-game universe, all 1-handed weapons are magically bound by the gods to have the exact same weight, the system you're describing is associated. The decisions the players make are connected to the game world.
If you've some crazy physics where mass isn't real and weight is determined by how much pain an object can create, that would also be associated.
If all daggers are made out of super-dense metal and maces are made out of light metals, that's also associated just fine.
On the other hand, if the player treats a dagger with the same weight as a mace, but their character considers those 2 things to be different weights, that's definitely dissociated.

In terms of GNS theory, conventional wisdom is that dissociation is common in both Gamist and Narrativist games.

EDIT: Though I want to add that some dissociated mechanics are definitely not gamist. Games like Wushu and the Sentinel Comics RPG, for example, have the player invent fiction under certain scenarios. Definitely not something I would call video-game-y.

[Talakeal]

The usual reference for associated vs dissociated mechanics is from The Alexandrian (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). To whit:


So "no in-universe explanation" is actually a hallmark of dissociation. If it's normal in your RPG for things made out of rocks to bleed, then the mechanism that inflicts a bleed status on a creature made out of rocks is associated. If it's not, then that mechanism is dissociated.

To the weapon example:

If, in this in-game universe, all 1-handed weapons are magically bound by the gods to have the exact same weight, the system you're describing is associated. The decisions the players make are connected to the game world.
If you've some crazy physics where mass isn't real and weight is determined by how much pain an object can create, that would also be associated.
If all daggers are made out of super-dense metal and maces are made out of light metals, that's also associated just fine.
On the other hand, if the player treats a dagger with the same weight as a mace, but their character considers those 2 things to be different weights, that's definitely dissociated.

If we're using GNS theory here, conventional wisdom is that dissociation is common in both Gamist and Narrativist games.

I have read that article many times, and reread it again today before making my post.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you on what Justin is saying.

Abstractions for the sake of play are, in my opinion, fundamentally different than the sort of thing he is describing and are present in every edition of D&D, not just 4E. I suppose if we really cared we could ask him.

[Just to Browse]

Justin Alexander frequently uses 3e D&D as an example of a game that is almost entirely associated, and has called other mechanics dissociated despite them being abstractions for the sake of play (e.g. skill challenges). You should be able to pop on his discord server and ask if you'd like, but I would not be surprised if he called the all-weapons-are-the-same-weight game system dissociated.

[kyoryu]

Justin Alexander frequently uses 3e D&D as an example of a game that is almost entirely associated, and has called other mechanics dissociated despite them being abstractions for the sake of play (e.g. skill challenges). You should be able to pop on his discord server and ask if you'd like, but I would not be surprised if he called the all-weapons-are-the-same-weight game system dissociated.

Justin has a lot of good ideas, but I think he's a lot off when it comes to 3.x and especially 4e.

Specifically, AED abilities for martials kind of map to reality. I've even seen high level athletes agree. There are certain things you can do as a baseline, and certain things that are so exhausting or painful that you can't. It's a lossy abstraction, for sure - a good "system" would look at fatigue, different types of soreness/overexertion based on body parts, etc. - but frankly it's a reasonable one. And it maps to reality a heckuva lot better than hit points do.

I'm not a 3.x or 4e fanboy, to be clear. Neither are in my top 5 games. But when I came back to D&D in 4e, and was willing to accept hit points, frankly AED on martials was easier to justify.

But he's also gone to great lengths to defend 3.x as actually being a super accurate simulation. I think he definitely has a stance, and is deep into the confirmation bias on that subject.

A lot of his other stuff is really good though.

[Just to Browse]

I enjoy talking about AEDU but I don't want this conversation to veer off course, so I'd like to focus on Skill Challenges. I think skill challenges definitely abstract away things like materials, time, and options in a way that isn't connected to in-universe logic.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I enjoy talking about AEDU but I don't want this conversation to veer off course, so I'd like to focus on Skill Challenges. I think skill challenges definitely abstract away things like materials, time, and options in a way that isn't connected to in-universe logic.

I'd say that Skill Challenges don't have to break in-universe logic. The 4e implementation may have, but that's because (like with so many other things), the ideas were ok but the implementation was half-baked.

If each attempt has a narrative-appropriate cost (time, materials, etc) and consequence (not just increasing a bare counter of success/failure), then it's totally connected to the fiction.

A pure "use whatever skill, roll against a fixed DC, X successes before Y failures" model is more disconnected, but you can say the same thing about just about any mechanic if you strip off all the connections to the world and the underlying fiction.

[KorvinStarmast]

As I ponder the opening question, it strikes me that WBL makes D&D video gamey.
I realize that this is a bit of a recursive thing, since defeat monsters get loot get XP was/is a core game loop in dungeon crawls.

[Talakeal]

Personally, I think marks are the real disassociated mechanic in 4E. Way worse than martial AEDU or skill checks.

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't know if AEDU and skill cool downs in games like Warcraft III, Diablo III, WoW, DotA, or LoL are related, but they seem to run off of a similar pattern of logic. Just throwing that thought out there as regards the thread title.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, I think marks are the real disassociated mechanic in 4E. Way worse than martial AEDU or skill checks.

For me, marks have alternative interpretations that don't disassociate as bad. But you need different ones per Defender.

Fighter marks can represent just an increased attention. You focus on one person, so if they turn their attention away, you take advantage of the opportunity to punish them. Maybe?

Paladin marks...are divine vengeance? Maybe? It's been too long since I looked at them.

[Talakeal]

For me, marks have alternative interpretations that don't disassociate as bad. But you need different ones per Defender.

Fighter marks can represent just an increased attention. You focus on one person, so if they turn their attention away, you take advantage of the opportunity to punish them. Maybe?

Paladin marks...are divine vengeance? Maybe? It's been too long since I looked at them.

Ok, but why can only one person mark a given target at a time?


And there are lots of other abilities called marks that may or may not actually be marks. Justin Alexander uses the Legion Devil as an example. I remember when we played the Ranger's Mark interfered with the defender's marks as well, but I believe that has since been fixed in errata.

[JNAProductions]

Ok, but why can only one person mark a given target at a time?


And there are lots of other abilities called marks that may or may not actually be marks. Justin Alexander uses the Legion Devil as an example. I remember when we played the Ranger's Mark interfered with the defender's marks as well, but I believe that has since been fixed in errata.

Why do Dodge bonuses stack, but Alchemical ones don’t? Or Profane? Or Insight? Or…
You get the point.

EVERY game has abstractions-where the line is drawn on what feels right or not is entirely subjective.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ok, but why can only one person mark a given target at a time?


And there are lots of other abilities called marks that may or may not actually be marks. Justin Alexander uses the Legion Devil as an example. I remember when we played the Ranger's Mark interfered with the defender's marks as well, but I believe that has since been fixed in errata.


Why do Dodge bonuses stack, but Alchemical ones don’t? Or Profane? Or Insight? Or…
You get the point.

EVERY game has abstractions-where the line is drawn on what feels right or not is entirely subjective.

I agree with JNAProductions. Every game has some hybrid of things that are
a) narratively driven (ie tied directly to and arising from the underlying fiction)
b) retroactively explained (ie the underlying fiction can explain things, if read right)
c) purely "we had to draw a line for game purposes, but this doesn't conflict with the fiction if you read it generously"
And all of these are (generally, specifics may vary) fine and not disconnected.

Disconnected mechanics become more salient where there isn't a sane fictionally-coherent reason. Explicit plot armor is one--a mechanic that says you can't die unless you choose to is disconnected almost inherently. A mechanic that allows the player to dictate the fiction X times per session is disconnected from the fiction--it's pure author stance. But I'd not call it "video gamey". A mechanic where you smash the ground and create a crater...that goes away by the next person's turn, no matter the terrain (ie you can do it while flying, and it doesn't disturb thin ice)...that's disconnected. It's pure VFX. All of those are (IMO) disconnected.

Limits on how many people can mark someone? Meh. It's not perfect, but it's a tradeoff.

[Talakeal]

Why do Dodge bonuses stack, but Alchemical ones don’t? Or Profane? Or Insight? Or…
You get the point.

EVERY game has abstractions-where the line is drawn on what feels right or not is entirely subjective.

Those terms are gamist abstractions which represent magical effects that don't exist in real life.

Marks are a fundamental aspect of gameplay that determines the basic nature of mundane tactical combat.

Disassociated mechanics are not abstractions for ease of play, they are mechanics which exist purely on the narrative / gamist layer and which involve making decisions based on out of character information that has no equivalent in the fiction.


Nobody has ever really complained about magic items not stacking that I can recall, but minutes into our first game of 4E the marking system had everyone hating the game and hating each other.


Disconnected mechanics become more salient where there isn't a sane fictionally-coherent reason. Explicit plot armor is one--a mechanic that says you can't die unless you choose to is disconnected almost inherently. A mechanic that allows the player to dictate the fiction X times per session is disconnected from the fiction--it's pure author stance. But I'd not call it "video gamey". A mechanic where you smash the ground and create a crater...that goes away by the next person's turn, no matter the terrain (ie you can do it while flying, and it doesn't disturb thin ice)...that's disconnected. It's pure VFX. All of those are (IMO) disconnected.

Agreed.


Limits on how many people can mark someone? Meh. It's not perfect, but it's a tradeoff.

Maybe if they even tried to give some explanation in fiction for what the mark represents that would work better.

[JNAProductions]

Those terms are gamist abstractions which represent magical effects that don't exist in real life.

Marks are a fundamental aspect of gameplay that determines the basic nature of mundane tactical combat.

Disassociated mechanics are not abstractions for ease of play, they are mechanics which exist purely on the narrative / gamist layer and which involve making decisions based on out of character information that has no equivalent in the fiction.


Nobody has ever really complained about magic items not stacking that I can recall, but minutes into our first game of 4E the marking system had everyone hating the game and hating each other.

Today I learned that people cannot dodge attacks in real life, or at least no one can be any better at dodging than someone else.
I also learned that drugs that can affect your performance aren't real.

I won't say you're wrong to dislike Marking in 4E, because again, it's subjective.
But your opinion is not universal, nor is it fact.

[Talakeal]

Today I learned that people cannot dodge attacks in real life, or at least no one can be any better at dodging than someone else.
I also learned that drugs that can affect your performance aren't real.

Did you seriously not understand what I was saying or do you need me to go back and break my post down word for word?


But your opinion is not universal, nor is it fact.

Not sure about that as it was one of the prime examples of the person who invented to the term "disassociated mechanics".

[False God]

Disconnected mechanics become more salient where there isn't a sane fictionally-coherent reason. Explicit plot armor is one--a mechanic that says you can't die unless you choose to is disconnected almost inherently. A mechanic that allows the player to dictate the fiction X times per session is disconnected from the fiction--it's pure author stance. But I'd not call it "video gamey". A mechanic where you smash the ground and create a crater...that goes away by the next person's turn, no matter the terrain (ie you can do it while flying, and it doesn't disturb thin ice)...that's disconnected. It's pure VFX. All of those are (IMO) disconnected.

Limits on how many people can mark someone? Meh. It's not perfect, but it's a tradeoff.

To the bold, I think they're disconnected in the context of a strict rules-heavy game like D&D, but they're not in more narrative oriented games. When the game assumes that there is "a world" and the mechanics are how the game interprets its existence, yeah, elements like plot armor and destiny mechanics are disconnected from that specific fiction. In a game with a heavier focus on narrative gameplay, things like "I can't die until I give up!" or "With enough willpower you can bend fate." are absolutely connected to the fiction. Because these games aren't focused on randomized outcomes produced by "neutral" arbiters (ie: the dice). They're focused on specific outcomes, so you can beat the hero against the wall 17 times and slam their head through the floor and they can still stand up because they have "the will to fight". Because the game is about them maintaining the will to fight, not about how much damage they take(see: Princess the Hopeful).

----

A lot of this thread, as much of this forum does, over-focuses on this edition of D&D and its gamey or not gamey mechanics and quite frankly, I find every edition of D&D to be pretty high on the gamey chart. The fact that 3.5 is a 6 and 4E is a 7 doesn't make all that much of a difference to me. It's the relatively low narrative burden the game places on gameplay that makes the whole thing disassociated. That is to say: the rules basically dictate how you're going to act. The narrative element is superfluous and superficial, stripped away, the underlying game continues to function just fine as a purely mechanical construct. That to me makes the entire game disassociated from the worlds in which you're playing the game.

Games that cannot exist without the narrative element, where spells, abilities, special features cannot function without the narrative input from the player to determine, quite frankly, what they even do or how they interact with the world in this situation; games with soft mechanics that allow for non-deterministic outcomes are what make the game associated. You cannot play it without playing in it.

The fact that D&D stems from a wargame and was initially focused on dungeon crawling, inherently disassociated locales whose very existence is isolated from "the world" at large is I think really demonstrative of how highly gamey the whole thing is.

[JNAProductions]

Did you seriously not understand what I was saying or do you need me to go back and break my post down word for word?

Not sure about that as it was one of the prime examples of the person who invented to the term "disassociated mechanics".

Dodge bonuses stack. Dodging is very much a real-world thing.
Alchemical bonuses don't stack. While it'd be more accurate to call them chemical or drug bonuses, that kind of thing is very much real world.
Hell, on the (al)chemical side, some drugs specifically work better in tandem.

And if you're talking about the Alexandrian, see this earlier post:


Justin has a lot of good ideas, but I think he's a lot off when it comes to 3.x and especially 4e.

[icefractal]

Some marks can be associated, others aren't.

Paladin mark is the easiest. You can't multi-mark someone because that's not what the gods consider honorable, fine.

Fighter mark works fine by itself, but questionable why you can't multi-mark. And whenever you bring this up people will jump in with "lol just watch sports and you'll understand" ... ah yes, I forgot the part in sports where there can never be more than one person blocking someone. 🙄

Swordmage could work re: other Swordmages - the tele-stab beacon interferes with others on the same person, maybe. But it gets weird with Fighter - there's not really an IC reason why a Fighter and a Swordmage can't be marking the same person. And since the Swordmage one works from a distance, you can't even say they're getting in each-others way.

That said, IME dissociation via marking was rare in practice. Other things like poorly-justified skill challenges (and I agree it's the implementation rather than the concept that's broken) were much more of an issue.

[Talakeal]

Dodge bonuses stack. Dodging is very much a real-world thing.
Alchemical bonuses don't stack. While it'd be more accurate to call them chemical or drug bonuses, that kind of thing is very much real world.
Hell, on the (al)chemical side, some drugs specifically work better in tandem.

So you are saying the disassociation is that dodge bonuses *do* stack then?

I was posting under the assumption that you were saying the disconnect is that magical bonuses don't stack.

As for alchemical bonuses, iirc this is a pathfinder only thing and so not something I am terribly familiar with, but no, alchemical potions in RPGs function drastically differently from any real-world drugs to the point where I would not call them the same thing. Although I suppose you could easily explain away them not stacking using a number of real world biological explanations if that was the goal, I know in Fallout you have a seizure if you use to many combat drugs at once which is a reasonable approximation of how the real world works.



And if you're talking about the Alexandrian, see this earlier post:

Right, but he is the one who invented the term.

You can argue that his definition is bad, but I don't think you can say that I am not objectively correct when using his examples / definitions for a term which he invented.



Edit: Reading the article again, I think the simplest dividing line is whether or not it represents something in the world. For example, a bleed attack working on a skeleton isn't disassociated because both the bleed attack and the skeleton have descriptions in the text, and it is only their interaction that seems weird; and the DM could easily make a ruling that the bleed attack doesn't work on the skeleton. But marks don't represent *anything* in the game world, we are never told what a mark is or how it should function on the fiction layer, because it is purely a meta-game construct that is applied to numerous disparate abilities with nothing to link them together.

[lesser_minion]

'Dissociated' doesn't mean 'bad', 'wrong', or 'unrealistic'. I don't remember anyone in the edition wars criticising 4e for having hit points or character creation. The people complaining about dissociated mechanics were more interested in when and how often they come up, not in whether or not they exist at all. Dissociation also isn't binary -- if Fred got stabbed twice in the last three minutes, then even if he's still standing and walking, no one in-universe will be too surprised that he's suddenly being a lot more careful, even though only his player knows that he only has six hit points left.

[False God]

Edit: Reading the article again, I think the simplest dividing line is whether or not it represents something in the world. For example, a bleed attack working on a skeleton isn't disassociated because both the bleed attack and the skeleton have descriptions in the text, and it is only their interaction that seems weird; and the DM could easily make a ruling that the bleed attack doesn't work on the skeleton. But marks don't represent *anything* in the game world, we are never told what a mark is or how it should function on the fiction layer, because it is purely a meta-game construct that is applied to numerous disparate abilities with nothing to link them together.

You exaggerate.

For Paladins, for example, the fiction layer is called out right in the name "Divine Challenge". You are using your divine magic to force them to challenge you. Unsurprisingly, the Fighter power is called "Combat Challenge", gosh golly willikers, I wonder what the fiction implications are? The specifics of the fiction are unnecessary. Perhaps you call upon your god to smite those who will note face you, perhaps you insult their ancestors, or plain old call them a turnip-face and mock them for attacking weaker foes (your allies).

But this fiction layer you're demanding from 4E isn't called out in any other edition. 5E doesn't add a bunch of mandatory fiction and fluff to special attacks, 3.5 doesn't either. This is just a poor attack on an edition you didn't like by demanding it provide you with something that D&D has never provided you with.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You exaggerate.

For Paladins, for example, the fiction layer is called out right in the name "Divine Challenge". You are using your divine magic to force them to challenge you. Unsurprisingly, the Fighter power is called "Combat Challenge", gosh golly willikers, I wonder what the fiction implications are? The specifics of the fiction are unnecessary. Perhaps you call upon your god to smite those who will note face you, perhaps you insult their ancestors, or plain old call them a turnip-face and mock them for attacking weaker foes (your allies).

But this fiction layer you're demanding from 4E isn't called out in any other edition. 5E doesn't add a bunch of mandatory fiction and fluff to special attacks, 3.5 doesn't either. This is just a poor attack on an edition you didn't like by demanding it provide you with something that D&D has never provided you with.

Yeah. And 4e intentionally shied away from putting hard "fiction markers" into the rules text (something other people have claimed is good).

Almost any rule can be explained in the fiction. The fact that the developers didn't do so isn't necessarily a sign of disconnection or bad rule writing. The concerning thing is when different rules have conflicting explanations (either explicitly written or presumed, if the latter can't be reconciled by choosing a different sane interpretation). For example, if one ability says or intrinsically implies that (say) fireball works by summoning energy from the Plane of Fire...and another claims that everything (including fireball) is an application of real-world physics and chemistry...there's a conflict. Both can't be true, because real-world physics and chemistry don't allow for there being a Plane of Fire.

Additionally, powers that have flashy FX and implied consequences...but disclaim any actual consequences for those powers. If you explicitly can't break through a thin stone floor with an ability that lets you create fissures in the earth to slam opponents, that's disconnected. You've cabined it away into the Combat Dimension, not the "interacts with the self-consistent world" realm.

[Talakeal]

You exaggerate.

For Paladins, for example, the fiction layer is called out right in the name "Divine Challenge". You are using your divine magic to force them to challenge you. Unsurprisingly, the Fighter power is called "Combat Challenge", gosh golly willikers, I wonder what the fiction implications are? The specifics of the fiction are unnecessary. Perhaps you call upon your god to smite those who will note face you, perhaps you insult their ancestors, or plain old call them a turnip-face and mock them for attacking weaker foes (your allies).

But this fiction layer you're demanding from 4E isn't called out in any other edition. 5E doesn't add a bunch of mandatory fiction and fluff to special attacks, 3.5 doesn't either. This is just a poor attack on an edition you didn't like by demanding it provide you with something that D&D has never provided you with.

It's not that the specific abilities that can't be squared*, it's what a *mark* is and why all of these different abilities apply them. Them being mutually exclusive it extremely weird (and frustrating at the table) but doesn't by itself make the rule disassociated.

I legitimately can't think of anything like that in any other edition of D&D, and am welcome to some examples. The closest I can come are things like XP and Action Points which are gamist / narrative mechanics that simply don't exist on the fiction layer.


*Although as Justin points out, this requires a lot of house ruling and subjective extrapolation.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's not that the specific abilities that can't be squared*, it's what a *mark* is and why all of these different abilities apply them. Them being mutually exclusive it extremely weird (and frustrating at the table) but doesn't by itself make the rule disassociated.

I legitimately can't think of anything like that in any other edition of D&D, and am welcome to some examples. The closest I can come are things like XP and Action Points which are gamist / narrative mechanics that simply don't exist on the fiction layer.


*Although as Justin points out, this requires a lot of house ruling and subjective extrapolation.

Spell-like abilities from 3e. It's a catchall term for "things that basically behave like this".

Heck, D&D magic is like this. It's just a grab bag of utterly disconnected "does stuff" that they've retconned and shoved into some kind of post-hoc framework that kinda works unless you actually look at it in any detail.

And that's the kicker--you could absolutely find some kind of post-hoc framework that explains marks (fragile or otherwise). But 4e didn't gain the player traction for this to be done via fan action, and the devs were studiously distant from any kind of fictional framework for the mechanical bits because they believed (wrongly, IMO) that there should be a hard fluff/crunch distinction. They wanted to leave it up to the player to decide what that represented in-fiction. Which is a totally fine reason, and one that's championed elsewhere on these forums for lots of different things. Up to and including classes and races.

[lesser_minion]

You exaggerate.

For Paladins, for example, the fiction layer is called out right in the name "Divine Challenge". You are using your divine magic to force them to challenge you. Unsurprisingly, the Fighter power is called "Combat Challenge", gosh golly willikers, I wonder what the fiction implications are? The specifics of the fiction are unnecessary. Perhaps you call upon your god to smite those who will note face you, perhaps you insult their ancestors, or plain old call them a turnip-face and mock them for attacking weaker foes (your allies).

But this fiction layer you're demanding from 4E isn't called out in any other edition. 5E doesn't add a bunch of mandatory fiction and fluff to special attacks, 3.5 doesn't either. This is just a poor attack on an edition you didn't like by demanding it provide you with something that D&D has never provided you with.

The main complaints about marking were the rule that they can't be combined (which has already been discussed in this thread) and the specific cases that don't give you any help figuring out what's going on (apparently there was a monster that just marks people at range while buffing its allies). I don't think anyone has ever taken issue with this being a thing that the fighter can do.


Spell-like abilities from 3e. It's a catchall term for "things that basically behave like this".

Heck, D&D magic is like this. It's just a grab bag of utterly disconnected "does stuff" that they've retconned and shoved into some kind of post-hoc framework that kinda works unless you actually look at it in any detail.

Both are mostly associated, with a very small number of edge cases.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Both are mostly associated, with a very small number of edge cases.

Only because there has been a lot of retroactive refitting to the underlying fiction. That is, it's only associated because people took the disassociated mechanics and forcibly altered the fiction to suit it. Sort of. Kind of. Mostly not. D&D magic mostly works by ipse dixit (because the devs said it does) and has zero in-universe, non-retrocausal limits or underpinnings. It's basically just stapled onto the fiction by force. And that works for anything--the only reason that 4e mechanics don't have that is that it didn't get enough traction for people to take the effort.

[KorvinStarmast]

A lot of this thread, as much of this forum does, over-focuses on this edition of D&D and its gamey or not gamey mechanics and quite frankly, I find every edition of D&D to be pretty high on the gamey chart.
No kidding? It's a game.
The whole GNS esoterica has a wide variety of holes in it, in particular the whole stove piping assumption that is necessary but not sufficient. No wonder it crumbled into rubble, as did The Big Model that succeeded it.
I give an A for effort, since as an academic pursuit RE and others were trying to get their hands around something, but in the end it failed.

[False God]

It's not that the specific abilities that can't be squared*, it's what a *mark* is and why all of these different abilities apply them. Them being mutually exclusive it extremely weird (and frustrating at the table) but doesn't by itself make the rule disassociated.

I legitimately can't think of anything like that in any other edition of D&D, and am welcome to some examples. The closest I can come are things like XP and Action Points which are gamist / narrative mechanics that simply don't exist on the fiction layer.

*Although as Justin points out, this requires a lot of house ruling and subjective extrapolation.
No, it doesn't. It's fairly spelled out in the name of the ability. "Blah Blah Challenge". The fiction layer doesn't need additional explanation. You are a fighter, you challenge people by taunting their small muscles and ugly face. You are a Paladin, you call upon the power of your god to force someone to do a thing.

The fact that several abilities all look similar is because several different people are attempting to achieve the same goal with different approaches. A house built from sticks and a house built from stone are still square because both of them want to build a square house. The focus is on the outcome, not the approach, and 4E, if nothing else, is not concerned with how you get to the answer, only that you do. The process is for you to add to the fiction layer. The interpretation is left open for your specific character to be your own. 2+2 and 1+1+1+1 still equal 4.

Again, you're demanding that 4E hold your hand and spell everything out for you. That's not 4E's job. 4E's job is to tell you that you got from A to B. How you got from A to B is your job.


Yeah. And 4e intentionally shied away from putting hard "fiction markers" into the rules text (something other people have claimed is good).
I'll very regularly make and stand by that argument.


Almost any rule can be explained in the fiction. The fact that the developers didn't do so isn't necessarily a sign of disconnection or bad rule writing. The concerning thing is when different rules have conflicting explanations (either explicitly written or presumed, if the latter can't be reconciled by choosing a different sane interpretation). For example, if one ability says or intrinsically implies that (say) fireball works by summoning energy from the Plane of Fire...and another claims that everything (including fireball) is an application of real-world physics and chemistry...there's a conflict. Both can't be true, because real-world physics and chemistry don't allow for there being a Plane of Fire.
I disagree, in large part because "magic".

One of D&D's problems, which I think if I'm reading people right are actually saying is a feature not a bug, is that is treats magic like science. It's repeatable using the same formula, every time, exactly. And I'm not sure where people get this from the RAW, but fundamentally one wizard's version of fireball summoning flame from the elemental plane of fire and another wizard's version using IRL combustion rules and a little bit of magical energy to turn guano and sulfur into a magic grenade are, IMO, absolutely reconcilable in that it's magic. You're using magic to create a specific result without having to follow the normal rules of the world.


Additionally, powers that have flashy FX and implied consequences...but disclaim any actual consequences for those powers. If you explicitly can't break through a thin stone floor with an ability that lets you create fissures in the earth to slam opponents, that's disconnected. You've cabined it away into the Combat Dimension, not the "interacts with the self-consistent world" realm.
I agree and disagree with this, but that agreement or disagreement depends a lot on the presentation and what I'm going to call the "presumption of specificity". A power that causes massive spikes to sprout from the earth and a great fissure to form doesn't work on a thin stone floor because it's not the earth silly! If a power/ability/spell is very specific on what it requires then yeah, of course you can't use it on anything else. If the power/ability/spell is very generic, then yeah I agree. But this is I guess the connection to the fiction layer and if it doesn't specifically call out the limitations of the ability, even if the limitations seem odd, then there's a disconnect. So, agree and disagree.


The main complaints about marking were the rule that they can't be combined (which has already been discussed in this thread) and the specific cases that don't give you any help figuring out what's going on (apparently there was a monster that just marks people at range while buffing its allies). I don't think anyone has ever taken issue with this being a thing that the fighter can do.

I think ultimately this stems from a classic D&D element: "Two of the same type of effect don't stack." and "All of these things would completely neuter a single enemy and isn't good for the game." And fundamentally both of these things are the same concern: Stacking effect causes problems. It's not new to 4E, it's just applied to some other element of the game, and it applied to LOTS of elements of 3.5, like, you can't stack Armor and Mage Armor, because they both grant "armor bonuses", even though one is clearly some form of clothing and the other is a magical force-field. But "same type" bonuses don't stack, regardless of sensibilities, because it would unbalance the game.

Again, folks call out 4E on a lot of things that previous editions already did, 4E (IMO) just made it more obvious. Personally I think more people are offended over the fact that 4E calls out a game for being a game than any actual flaws the edition had.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I disagree, in large part because "magic".

One of D&D's problems, which I think if I'm reading people right are actually saying is a feature not a bug, is that is treats magic like science. It's repeatable using the same formula, every time, exactly. And I'm not sure where people get this from the RAW, but fundamentally one wizard's version of fireball summoning flame from the elemental plane of fire and another wizard's version using IRL combustion rules and a little bit of magical energy to turn guano and sulfur into a magic grenade are, IMO, absolutely reconcilable in that it's magic. You're using magic to create a specific result without having to follow the normal rules of the world.


"Because magic" explains too much. Specifically, it means you can't have a coherent world, because it's allowed to contradict itself. Real-world physics and chemistry do not allow D&D magic. So any magic that tries to use them gets a 400 Bad Request error.

And it's worse worldbuilding, because now you have "because magic" as the one and true explanation for everything. It explains nothing by explaining everything. Once you allow someone to show A != A...you can prove that 1 + 1 = 42 = Purple Unicorn. All logic breaks down.

Magic is (in order to allow for a coherent world) part of the world's natural laws, which by definition form a self-consistent set (outside the Far Realms, which are notable for not being self-consistent). Which mean those natural laws must not be the real-world ones, because real-world laws are self-consistent and don't allow for magic.



I agree and disagree with this, but that agreement or disagreement depends a lot on the presentation and what I'm going to call the "presumption of specificity". A power that causes massive spikes to sprout from the earth and a great fissure to form doesn't work on a thin stone floor because it's not the earth silly! If a power/ability/spell is very specific on what it requires then yeah, of course you can't use it on anything else. If the power/ability/spell is very generic, then yeah I agree. But this is I guess the connection to the fiction layer and if it doesn't specifically call out the limitations of the ability, even if the limitations seem odd, then there's a disconnect. So, agree and disagree.


What I meant was that if you use this fissure ability on a thin stone floor, the floor isn't actually affected. No one falls through, the effect is purely cosmetic. Sure, a power that only works on "earth" and not on stone floors could be coherent. But I'm thinking of things like the VFX in various MMOs (e.g. the Warrior from FFXIV, who smashes the ground and causes cracks...but will never break through thin ice doing that. Because the world is a backdrop not an actual thing and that ability only hurts enemies.).

[Just to Browse]

Personally, I think marks are the real disassociated mechanic in 4E. Way worse than martial AEDU or skill checks.

Mood. They're definitely up there.


'Dissociated' doesn't mean 'bad', 'wrong', or 'unrealistic'. I don't remember anyone in the edition wars criticising 4e for having hit points or character creation. The people complaining about dissociated mechanics were more interested in when and how often they come up, not in whether or not they exist at all. Dissociation also isn't binary -- if Fred got stabbed twice in the last three minutes, then even if he's still standing and walking, no one in-universe will be too surprised that he's suddenly being a lot more careful, even though only his player knows that he only has six hit points left.

Agreed with this. I think a lot of the resistance 4e fans have to the claims of dissociation are because "dissociated" and "video gamey" both get treated as "bad" frequently in many conversations. Those are preference, and it would be nice if online discussions emphasized that a little more.

[lesser_minion]

Only because there has been a lot of retroactive refitting to the underlying fiction. That is, it's only associated because people took the disassociated mechanics and forcibly altered the fiction to suit it. Sort of. Kind of. Mostly not. D&D magic mostly works by ipse dixit (because the devs said it does) and has zero in-universe, non-retrocausal limits or underpinnings. It's basically just stapled onto the fiction by force. And that works for anything--the only reason that 4e mechanics don't have that is that it didn't get enough traction for people to take the effort.

Dissociated mechanics create a split between the in-character motive for a decision (Fred being more cautious because he was just stabbed and even if he's still standing, he doesn't want to push his luck) and the out of character one (Fred's player making him behave more cautiously because he is down to his last five hit points). I completely agree that D&D magic isn't particularly well-written, but preparing a spell is an in-character choice, and expending it is an in-character choice.

That said, the general framework of things having N uses per [time interval] is just as dissociated in 3e or 5e as it was in 4e, and it's not unique to spells in any of those editions either.

There are differences between the editions however, both in presentation -- 5e's "you must take a short or long rest before using this again" seems to have been received a lot better than 4e's "this is an encounter power" despite "encounter power" in 4e meaning "you must finish a short or long rest before using this again" (although the words "short rest" have a different meaning in 4e), and in the sorts of abilities that get limited -- only 4e has an implied five-minute cooldown on "you scoop up some dirt from the ground...", for example.

[Talakeal]

No, it doesn't. It's fairly spelled out in the name of the ability. "Blah Blah Challenge". The fiction layer doesn't need additional explanation. You are a fighter, you challenge people by taunting their small muscles and ugly face. You are a Paladin, you call upon the power of your god to force someone to do a thing.

The fact that several abilities all look similar is because several different people are attempting to achieve the same goal with different approaches. A house built from sticks and a house built from stone are still square because both of them want to build a square house. The focus is on the outcome, not the approach, and 4E, if nothing else, is not concerned with how you get to the answer, only that you do. The process is for you to add to the fiction layer. The interpretation is left open for your specific character to be your own. 2+2 and 1+1+1+1 still equal 4.

Ok then, so how about I just redefine a disassociated mechanic as one that doesn't explain how or why it works? Are we in agreement now that marks are not associated?

And that still doesn't explain what a mark is. Some abilities that mark people give enough context clues that you can make up your own story as to how and why they work, but even then they aren't consistent or universal.


Short term defender oriented marks are easy enough to explain as abstract tanking mechanics, even if they are a little silly, but when you get into long term offensive marks its just weird. If a war devil looks at you, you are marked for the encounter, and then the war devil can flee the battlefield entirely and go on vacation and you are still marked until the encounter ends. But then, the mark goes away forever if a defender (including a friendly defender) attacks you.

Like yeah, a GM who is good enough at bull-pooping can retroactively spin increasingly convoluted explanations for what happens in fiction, but that just makes the game get sillier and sillier and more and more work for everyone involved.


That's not 4E's job. 4E's job is to tell you that you got from A to B. How you got from A to B is your job.

That's a matter of philosophy.

Whether its the book's "job" or not, it is still an expectation I have of an RPG book, and one that the vast majority of them at least attempt to do.

The edition was an objective failure, and it is my opinion that this attitude goes a long way to explaining why it does so, and shouting "its not my job" does very little to excuse its poor reception.

[Kurald Galain]

Some marks can be associated, others aren't.

Fighter mark works fine by itself, but questionable why you can't multi-mark.
Yes. It's also questionable why fighter mark keeps working when the fighter is (e.g.) unconscious; and if you describe fighter mark as some kind of intimidation effect (which is pretty common) then it becomes questionable why it works on mindless enemies.


For example, a bleed attack working on a skeleton isn't disassociated because both the bleed attack and the skeleton have descriptions in the text,
It is precisely disassociated unless either the rulebook or the GM decides that bleed attacks don't work on anything that doesn't have blood.


It's not that the specific abilities that can't be squared*, it's what a *mark* is and why all of these different abilities apply them. Them being mutually exclusive it extremely weird (and frustrating at the table) but doesn't by itself make the rule disassociated.
Yes, it does. The "extremely weird" thing that a fighter's intimidation mark will dispel the swordmage's arcane mark is a disassociation.


Ok then, so how about I just redefine a disassociated mechanic as one that doesn't explain how or why it works?
I'd go one step further and define it as a mechanic that cannot be explained in a way that is both consistent with itself and doesn't contradict the rules involved. An easy example is that the (explicitly non-magical) Inspiring Word works on someone who is deaf; that warlock power that sends an enemy to hell but only if you send him back five seconds later (why not leave him there??); and many reaction powers that state that e.g. you can teleport but only when an ally is being attacked.


Additionally, powers that have flashy FX and implied consequences...but disclaim any actual consequences for those powers. If you explicitly can't break through a thin stone floor with an ability that lets you create fissures in the earth to slam opponents, that's disconnected. You've cabined it away into the Combat Dimension, not the "interacts with the self-consistent world" realm.
Precisely.

[KorvinStarmast]

Nobody has ever really complained about magic items not stacking that I can recall, but minutes into our first game of 4E the marking system had everyone hating the game and hating each other. If this is the group that you are still playing with, and DMing for, and have regaled us with stories about, this does not come as a surprise. :smallwink:

Whether its the book's "job" or not, it is still an expectation I have of an RPG book, and one that the vast majority of them at least attempt to do. With varying levels of success. As noted a few pages back, writing rules well is hard.

[False God]

"Because magic" explains too much. Specifically, it means you can't have a coherent world, because it's allowed to contradict itself. Real-world physics and chemistry do not allow D&D magic. So any magic that tries to use them gets a 400 Bad Request error.

And it's worse worldbuilding, because now you have "because magic" as the one and true explanation for everything. It explains nothing by explaining everything. Once you allow someone to show A != A...you can prove that 1 + 1 = 42 = Purple Unicorn. All logic breaks down.

Magic is (in order to allow for a coherent world) part of the world's natural laws, which by definition form a self-consistent set (outside the Far Realms, which are notable for not being self-consistent). Which mean those natural laws must not be the real-world ones, because real-world laws are self-consistent and don't allow for magic.
I think that's a fine statement for some games and some worldbuilding, but "Magic defies logic." is also fine, a world with magic does not necessarily need to be coherent. The fact that magic is what is making an otherwise coherent world incoherent is IMO, perfectly fine statement about the status of the world, and can provide useful framing towards the use and general social opinion on magic.

The problem I have with "magic is part of the natural order" is that no world-lore is ever going to integrate it so fully with otherwise IRL science as to actually make it "part of the natural order". At best they'll make it superficially part of the natural order, but as soon as you peek under the hood you'll find that it's not actually integrated at every level, it's just smoke and mirrors. Not that smoke and mirrors can't be enjoyable; but it's rather difficult to integrate magic to a high enough degree to satisfy the level of scientific knowledge I have. At some point most systems and DM's break down into "well, it's magic therefore XYZ happens instead of ABC."

Which is why I actually appreciate the approach of "magic defies logic". All that science stuff? It's still there for everyone who can't do magic. But all these magic people basically get a cheat skill to bypass the rules. That works perfectly fine for my brain. And then I'm not worried about peaking under the hood, because the scientific explanation still stands, and when it doesn't, "Magic is involved." resolves the issue. I'm no longer concerned with the specifics of how magic broke the rules(as I would be in a supposedly fully integrated system), only that it is magic and someone used it to do so. Which IMO, helps focus on the in-game problems we the party need to resolve.

[Kurald Galain]

The problem I have with "magic is part of the natural order" is that no world-lore is ever going to integrate it so fully with otherwise IRL science as to actually make it "part of the natural order".

I wonder if you've read Brandon Sanderson? He's very good at this part.

[Vahnavoi]

'Dissociated' doesn't mean 'bad', 'wrong', or 'unrealistic'.

One of these is not like the others.

To wit: realism in art is the pursuit of showing something as-is, without exaggeration, romanticization or undue abstraction. Part of that is attention to detail.

It ought to be obvious that mechanics that don't allow you to tell what is going on in detail are unrealistic. Really, Alexandrian's article about "diassociated mechanics" is entirely unnecessary to reach that conclusion, since most such mechanics exist clearly from the get-go to facilitate non-realist fiction tropes.

The real joke, of course, is that fantasy as a genre is at odds with realism to begin with, which is part of why Gary Gygax in the ancient era of AD&D explicitly told people the game's a fun past time, not a reality simulation. 4th edition D&D doesn't deserve particularly more flak in that regard.

---

EDIT: it's silly to defend D&D's magic system in this regard. You can, to this day, find the original designer's notes on why it is the way it is, and it pretty much boils down to "this is what Gygax and Arneson found makes an appealing resource management game", with minor lipservice paid to Jack Vance as well as Tolkien and Finnish mythology (etc.) for details of how it works. 2nd Edition AD&D and forward, TSR was actively against detailing magic because they didn't want anyone mistaking their game books for actual manuals on magic. WotC era D&D inherited all the flaws of that approach and then started adding entirely new ones; that lack of detail is why you have sorcerer and warlock as distinct base classes, for example. Only by omitting or obscuring the idea that a wizard might have their powers because of supernatural inheritance or pact with otherwordly powers (as the case often is in folklore and myth) could they take those basic-ass facets of wizardry, repackage them, then sell them to you as new base classes with variant game mechanics. To add insult to injury, "sorcerer" and "warlock" pretty much just mean "evil wizard".

And this why, today, when you show D&D players classic wizard characters like Merlin or Gandalf or Väinämöinen, you get them saying "well more like a sorcerer/druid/paladin/solar/whatever, not a wizard".

[PhoenixPhyre]

Which is why I actually appreciate the approach of "magic defies logic". All that science stuff? It's still there for everyone who can't do magic. But all these magic people basically get a cheat skill to bypass the rules. That works perfectly fine for my brain. And then I'm not worried about peaking under the hood, because the scientific explanation still stands, and when it doesn't, "Magic is involved." resolves the issue. I'm no longer concerned with the specifics of how magic broke the rules(as I would be in a supposedly fully integrated system), only that it is magic and someone used it to do so. Which IMO, helps focus on the in-game problems we the party need to resolve.

My problem with this is that by doing so, you cheapen and make a mockery of the science stuff. Science (well, a modern understanding of the world, really) and magic do not and cannot coexist. So you can't have both without making both meaningless. And it means that the ruleset/implied world will always have "magic beats everything and has no limits" as a foundational premise, which to me is antithetical to both good worldbuilding and good stories. It's Deus Ex Machina in a can. Need something done? Throw magic at it. Because magic can do anything and doesn't need to be consistent with itself or anything else. Just wave the "because magic" wand and poof, problems go away. No thanks.

My general stance is that surface phenomena of the secondary world are familiar to people on earth. Basic physical intuition still holds. As my early draft of the introduction section of my WIP system/setting says:


Players should be able to rely on *surface* similarity between the real world and the fictional one. Things will fall when dropped. Water flows downhill. Paper burns and fire hurts. Fire turns water to steam. If it looks like a cow, walks like a cow, and moos like a cow, it's probably a cow. Or at least close enough for any rational purpose. But the *reasons* why these happen are not at all guaranteed to be the same. The further and deeper you get into modern scientific understanding of the world, the less this will apply to the fictional world. A fire spell will burn flammable things...but not because of exothermic oxidation reactions. There might not even be oxygen, and fires might burn just fine even in a "vacuum"...if such a thing even exists. Atoms, molecules, cells, DNA--these sorts of things are not at all guaranteed to exist.

There is a reason why things work, and it will hold. Magic is self-consistent, and self-consistently part of the world. Spells are only one way to access magic.

This allows me, as a worldbuilder and DM (where I find myself 99.999999% of the time) to actually start being consistent. To start building those explanations into the fabric of the world. To have reliable predictions of what should happen when players take actions, to have reasons why some things happen and other things don't.

"Because magic", to me, is the ultimate disconnected mechanic. It's something that happens that has no possible explanation in the fiction of the world, because "because magic" isn't an explanation. It's a hand wave. Which means that the only way it can be approached is via the game rules. And that produces horrible incentives--it encourages rules lawyering, close-parsing of rules, weaponization of tiny differences in wording, "button pressing" (relying on pressing buttons on the character sheet instead of engaging with the world's logic), and a bunch of other things I find obnoxious. It also prevents me from building engaging worlds, because they're tightly coupled to the real world while also defying everything that makes the real world real. You end up in the uncanny valley really fast.

Better to discard the notion of "real world science" applying beyond just the surface and see where that takes you. Explore and build the parts that people start looking into. At least in my mind.

[False God]

There is a reason why things work, and it will hold. Magic is self-consistent, and self-consistently part of the world. Spells are only one way to access magic.
Again, there's a difference between saying it's part of the world and actually integrating it with the science of reality.

The important distinction comes from how you respond to players who look under the hood. Do they see a fully integrated system where magic and science cooperate and form a new basis for existence, or do they simply see a little tag that says "science and magic work together".

Because just saying they do without actually detailing up all the actual integration is exactly the same as saying "because magic". If the car runs, sounds like it has an engine, smells like it has an engine, but you pop the hood and there's nothing? That's "because magic". Or is there a fully working "magic engine" that you can trace from the magic gasoline to the magic combustion to the magical torque converter to the magical alternator, from start to finish?

Quite frankly, I don't expect game designers or DMs to have the comprehensive understanding of multiple fields of science and technology to be able to do that. Especially with a new unquantifiable energy source that has, apparently, existed throughout all of history.

TLDR: Saying "It's a natural part of the world." isn't good enough to actually make it so. Actually making it part of the natural world is an absurd amount of work.

[KorvinStarmast]

If the car runs, sounds like it has an engine, smells like it has an engine, but you pop the hood and there's nothing? That's "because magic". Or is there a fully working "magic engine" that you can trace from the magic gasoline to the magic combustion to the magical torque converter to the magical alternator, from start to finish? Actually, when you open that black box inside the engine compartment, you find a hamster{1}, a wheel, and a stack of speed pills. :smallyuk:

Quite frankly, I don't expect game designers or DMs to have the comprehensive understanding of multiple fields of science and technology to be able to do that. Especially with a new unquantifiable energy source that has, apparently, existed throughout all of history. Agree with the bolded part.
As to the edges of science where the search continues (dark matter, dark energy) there's room to improvise. :smallcool:
... and if you look inside the black box for any warp drive engine, you find a bigger, stronger space hamster.

[lesser_minion]

To wit: realism in art is the pursuit of showing something as-is, without exaggeration, romanticization or undue abstraction. Part of that is attention to detail.

The point of saying "dissociated doesn't mean unrealistic" is that complaints about dissociated mechanics aren't realism complaints. No one makes a character to inhabit a fantastical alternate reality in the hopes that the resulting experience will be exactly what they'd get from a walk in the nearest park.

[False God]

Actually, when you open that black box inside the engine compartment, you find a hamster{1}, a wheel, and a stack of speed pills. :smallyuk:
Agree with the bolded part.
As to the edges of science where the search continues (dark matter, dark energy) there's room to improvise. :smallcool:
... and if you look inside the black box for any warp drive engine, you find a bigger, stronger space hamster.

After a brief visit to Youtube earlier today, I wouldn't be surprised to see Link employing that exact engine design.

[NichG]

Previously I didn't object to the term 'realism' being used as a gloss for what I was getting at, but if we're specifically using this definition:



To wit: realism in art is the pursuit of showing something as-is, without exaggeration, romanticization or undue abstraction. Part of that is attention to detail.


Then I don't think realism is quite it.

It's less broadly philosophical to say it this way, but rather than talking about dissociation or realism or things like that I think its simpler to say, video games have certain commonalities of design by virtue of being programmed. Something feels video-gamey when it fails to deviate from those commonalities of design.

Things like dissociated mechanics, unrealism or realism, etc follow from those common design patterns but are not the reason for them in the first place. So they're not the thing that would be essential to the video-gamey feel, they're a post-hoc explanation of why we might enjoy or not enjoy a video-gamey feel.

[Telok]

Funny thing. Been writing a gonzo setting. Decided that magic, independent or as part of techno-magic engineering, is required for all FTL sensors, comms, artificial gravity, inertial manipulation (energy shields & dampers), reactionless stardrives, time manipulation (stasis boxes mostly), and "energy from nothing" type generators. That decision has had interesting, wide spread, unintended consequences.

Societal dependence on FTL comms & sensors means you can often effectively hide stuff in null magic zones. Unlimited starship acceleration to c-fractional requires turning off shields & inertial dampers. Flat worlds (like Prachett's Diskworld) all have 1g and above average magic fields. Etc., etc.

Placing some limits and rules on your magic does interesting things. My setting ended up with several ways to block teleportation effects, couple of which don't require magic users. But trying to treat magic like modern physics or square the two just seems like a lot of heartburn and angst for little reward and a bunch of continual confusing assumptions.

Still, modern d&d magic is pretty stupid. Like shooting lightning blasts that can push hundred foot tall giants around & kill them but can't break a sheet of paper or move a loose feather for no reason but rule lawyer readings of the spells.

[Vahnavoi]

The point of saying "dissociated doesn't mean unrealistic" is that complaints about dissociated mechanics aren't realism complaints.
My point is that they very much are. All such complaints to date are based on missing representation of detail.


No one makes a character to inhabit a fantastical alternate reality in the hopes that the resulting experience will be exactly what they'd get from a walk in the nearest park.

But they regularly do expect a game experience to accurately and in detail portray those alternate realities so that they feel immersive and real to them; they want illusionary realism of unreal things, not letting the fundamental paradox of it get in the way of their wants.

[False God]

But they regularly do expect a game experience to accurately and in detail portray those alternate realities so that they feel immersive and real to them; they want illusionary realism of unreal things, not letting the fundamental paradox of it get in the way of their wants.

Yeah but what feels "real and immersive" varies from person to person. Some folks have extremely low bars and others extremely high and some folks are very fluid with what they'll accept based on what's being offered and who's doing the offering.

[Vahnavoi]

Yeah but what feels "real and immersive" varies from person to person. Some folks have extremely low bars and others extremely high and some folks are very fluid with what they'll accept based on what's being offered and who's doing the offering.

Irrelevant, the same applies to illusionary realism across the board. Photography raised the bar for paintings and graphic processors raised the bar for computer rendered images. Where the bar happens to be placed in the mind of a given person doesn't change the nature what they are complaining of.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Again, there's a difference between saying it's part of the world and actually integrating it with the science of reality.

The important distinction comes from how you respond to players who look under the hood. Do they see a fully integrated system where magic and science cooperate and form a new basis for existence, or do they simply see a little tag that says "science and magic work together".

Because just saying they do without actually detailing up all the actual integration is exactly the same as saying "because magic". If the car runs, sounds like it has an engine, smells like it has an engine, but you pop the hood and there's nothing? That's "because magic". Or is there a fully working "magic engine" that you can trace from the magic gasoline to the magic combustion to the magical torque converter to the magical alternator, from start to finish?

Quite frankly, I don't expect game designers or DMs to have the comprehensive understanding of multiple fields of science and technology to be able to do that. Especially with a new unquantifiable energy source that has, apparently, existed throughout all of history.

TLDR: Saying "It's a natural part of the world." isn't good enough to actually make it so. Actually making it part of the natural world is an absurd amount of work.

It's actually not so bad, as long as you do it recursively. Because really, most players don't have the interest in looking very far under the hood. And you can get away with a lot lower resolution than real-world science, because it doesn't have to mathematically model stuff.

You can also restrict what the in-universe people have access to. So if the players ask about something their characters can't perceive/explore...the answer is "you don't have any way of knowing." Any more than a normal person in the 12th century could know about molecular quantum mechanics. And since all the in-universe knowledge is uncertain, some uncertainty is allowable as well. It's the "you think it's like XYZ, but..."

Having some basic core principles and integrations is generally enough, with more getting added on an as-needed basis. If the core principles are solid, the rest tends to answer itself. At least that's my experience doing it.

Edit: and as a player, I assume (and expect others to assume) that real-world knowledge may or may not transfer over in any particular way. If it does? Great. But your character isn't a real-world scientist. No, you don't get that knowledge just by putting "wizard" on your character sheet. So trying to apply that in-game is the bad kind of metagaming.

Personally, I find most players who try to invoke "real world science" to fall into one of two categories, neither good:
1. People invoking half-understood, "lies told to children" High School-level "science", combined with science popularizers. That is, not actual science at all. Example: pouring water into a lock to open it by freezing.
2. People trying to flip back and forth between game mechanics and "science" to "exploit" the system. This is pure munchkinry and should just be ignored/sanctioned (the negative meaning) because it's fundamentally bad faith. Example: Peasant Rail Gun.

Other examples are possible, but much more rare.

Of course, in general I reject "realism" as a value in a fantasy world. I find "realistic" fantasy to be utterly unrealistic, because it assumes that in the presence of a major change (introducing magic), everything else stays basically the same (history, culture, politics, technological development sequences, etc). And that, to me, is utter nonsense, producing worlds that are uncanny valley in the extreme.

[False God]

Irrelevant, the same applies to illusionary realism across the board. Photography raised the bar for paintings and graphic processors raised the bar for computer rendered images. Where the bar happens to be placed in the mind of a given person doesn't change the nature what they are complaining of.

Ignoring everything that contextualizes a complaint is a pretty poor way to go about understanding that complaint.

[False God]

It's actually not so bad, as long as you do it recursively. Because really, most players don't have the interest in looking very far under the hood. And you can get away with a lot lower resolution than real-world science, because it doesn't have to mathematically model stuff.
That's just "magic did it" with extra steps.


You can also restrict what the in-universe people have access to. So if the players ask about something their characters can't perceive/explore...the answer is "you don't have any way of knowing." Any more than a normal person in the 12th century could know about molecular quantum mechanics. And since all the in-universe knowledge is uncertain, some uncertainty is allowable as well. It's the "you think it's like XYZ, but..."
If your player is questioning the presentation of your world, then your world is not internally consistent. It doesn't matter that the character can't see it, the necessity for consistent presentation isn't for the character, they don't exist, it's for the player.


Edit: and as a player, I assume (and expect others to assume) that real-world knowledge may or may not transfer over in any particular way. If it does? Great. But your character isn't a real-world scientist. No, you don't get that knowledge just by putting "wizard" on your character sheet. So trying to apply that in-game is the bad kind of metagaming.
Your character might very well be if the game is anything more modern than psuedo-medieval fantasy. Abusers aside, the presentation of an internally consistent world isn't for the character, it's for the player. It doesn't matter if the character doesn't understand how 2+2=fish, it only matters that the player accept it. If the player is constantly bumping into inconsistencies, then what you have is an inconsistent world.


Of course, in general I reject "realism" as a value in a fantasy world. I find "realistic" fantasy to be utterly unrealistic, because it assumes that in the presence of a major change (introducing magic), everything else stays basically the same (history, culture, politics, technological development sequences, etc). And that, to me, is utter nonsense, producing worlds that are uncanny valley in the extreme.
Well on that we agree at least, but then I don't know what we're arguing about. You're talking about integrating magic into science in a functional, believable, dare I say "realistic" way; and then telling me you're not worried about unrealistic settings?

Wasn't that what I said earlier? That "magic did it" is a fine argument? That the world only needs to be consistent in its answers, it doesn't need to be "realistic"?

I mean maybe I'm grossly misunderstanding something here, but attempting to integrate magic into IRL science certainly sounds like the intention is for a "realistic" outcome.

[lesser_minion]

My point is that they very much are. All such complaints to date are based on missing representation of detail.

There's the 4e minion rule -- "HP:1 (a missed attack never damages a minion)".

There is no setting in which a creature dying from being stabbed, or surviving a fireball spell, is a "realism issue". The reason it's dissociated is that the correct choice between fireball and wall of fire depends on how the DM chose to represent the orc horde you're fighting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's just "magic did it" with extra steps.


Disagree. It's "I have the general principles, but need to generate the specifics as needed." "Magic did it" denies that explanation is possible and that coherence exists.



If your player is questioning the presentation of your world, then your world is not internally consistent. It doesn't matter that the character can't see it, the necessity for consistent presentation isn't for the character, they don't exist, it's for the player.


No. The player questioning things means nothing more or less than the player is questioning it. Good faith, it means the player does not know the details. Which is totally fine. There is absolutely no justified assumption that players should know everything about the setting lest it be inconsistent. You and I don't know everything (or even more than a vanishing fraction) about the world we inhabit ourselves, and our access to the fictional world is even more tenuous and mediated by lossy mechanisms.

Coherence beyond a very surface level is for the DM, so they can decide what happens consistently. And going much further than that is absolutely unnecessary for anyone. As long as coherent basic principles exist and the details can be derived as needed.



Your character might very well be if the game is anything more modern than psuedo-medieval fantasy. Abusers aside, the presentation of an internally consistent world isn't for the character, it's for the player. It doesn't matter if the character doesn't understand how 2+2=fish, it only matters that the player accept it. If the player is constantly bumping into inconsistencies, then what you have is an inconsistent world.


People bump into what they believe are inconsistencies in the real world all the time and it doesn't bother anyone. People (yes, even scientists) don't individually understand more than a tiny amount of the real world. You have much higher standards for the fiction than you do for reality. And that's a you problem.



Well on that we agree at least, but then I don't know what we're arguing about. You're talking about integrating magic into science in a functional, believable, dare I say "realistic" way; and then telling me you're not worried about unrealistic settings?

Wasn't that what I said earlier? That "magic did it" is a fine argument? That the world only needs to be consistent in its answers, it doesn't need to be "realistic"?

I mean maybe I'm grossly misunderstanding something here, but attempting to integrate magic into IRL science certainly sounds like the intention is for a "realistic" outcome.

Realistic means of the real world. The fictional world should have versimilitude, it should have internal logic, but that logic does not and cannot be the same as the real world's logic. In principle, it should be possible to walk the chain of history and show how events followed from each other at least as well as we can do that in the real world (which is...really not that well, to be honest). But, critically, those events and technologies and cultures, etc don't have to have any particular resemblance to the real world (at least beyond the minimum we need to be able to relate). A world where summoning fire is easy and cheap may not develop technologically in the same pattern; a world where "iron" isn't the element Fe with its particular chemistry may develop "iron" technology well before copper or bronze, or not at all. The industrial revolution may not be possible, even with magitech--magic is part of the natural laws but that doesn't mean it's tractable and mechanizable (necessarily, but it could be depending on the system).

Thus, I can reject realism while still demanding that the world is coherent. And I reject trying to integrate magic into IRL science. I reject the idea that the two can coexist at all. IRL science and magic are fundamentally incompatible. To have one is to reject the other en toto. There will be something scientific, a set of laws that describe the behavior of the fictional world, because that only relies on a base level of predictability. But they may not look or act anything like our IRL processes. They may even be contingent on the observer and act differently for different people. As long as that's predictable, there can be "laws of nature". But this rejects "realism" (any appeal to the real world) entirely.

[Vahnavoi]

Ignoring everything that contextualizes a complaint is a pretty poor way to go about understanding that complaint.

You didn't bring any new context on the table just by observing individual variance. Show me one case, one argument about "disassociated mechanics" that isn't about missing detail, and then you're at least arguing the right point.

No, @lesser_minion, 4th edition's minion rules don't suffice. Why? Because they tie to the kerfuffle about hitpoints. The entire mechanic is based on hitpoints being non-realist from the get-go, what you point out follows from that as much as anything else. EDIT: also classifying characters as minions who die in one hit is very obviously non-realist fiction trope, come on now.

---

@PhoenixPhyre:

Verisimilitude, the semblance of truth, is just a fancier word for an individual's sense of realism. Because again: realism isn't simply of the real world. It's about representing things as is, without exaggeration, romance or undue abstraction. Everything you say about internal logic and coherence is the pursuit of illusionary realism of unreal things.

Actual opposites to realism are also opposite to verisimilitude: romance, exaggeration, abstraction. The people who want those don't want semblance of truth, they want something else: semblance of their favorite fiction, irony, humour, speculation, etc..

Note that I still agree that realism and fantasy are at odds. But you aren't rejecting realism so much as a very specific form of magical realism that disagrees with your own verisimilitude.

[Kurald Galain]

My point is that they very much are. All such complaints to date are based on missing representation of detail.

Yeah but what feels "real and immersive" varies from person to person.
I get the impression that Vahnavoi is talking about "realism" in the sense of "internal consistency" (aka verisimilitude); whereas False God is talking about "realism" in the sense of "things that can happen in the real world". That's not the same thing, and it's an ambivalence that comes up quite often in these forums.

Disassociation breaks versimilitude, pretty much by definition. Disassociation does not mean that whatever ends up happening could not happen in the real world.

[KorvinStarmast]

I get the impression that Vahnavoi is talking about "realism" in the sense of "internal consistency" (aka verisimilitude); whereas False God is talking about "realism" in the sense of "things that can happen in the real world". That's not the same thing, and it's an ambivalence that comes up quite often in these forums.

Disassociation breaks versimilitude, pretty much by definition. Disassociation does not mean that whatever ends up happening could not happen in the real world. How does suspension of disbelief fold into this conversation, given the direction that it is headed?

The Primary/Secondary world model for speculative fiction always requires at least a bit of that - suspension of disbelief - with a general premise among Spec Fiction authors being that requiring too much 'isn't playing fair' ... but I may be drifting too far off topic with that line of thinking.

[Kurald Galain]

How does suspension of disbelief fold into this conversation, given the direction that it is headed?
Suspension of Disbelief is primarily about internal consistency, and secondarily that the setting "acts like reality unless specifically noted otherwise".

Meaning that disassociations are rather jarring to many people's suspension of disbelief (hence the controversy) and "things that couldn't happen in real life" are generally fine if you establish them early on as part of the setting.

[Vahnavoi]

How does suspension of disbelief fold into this conversation, given the direction that it is headed?

It's another way to talk about where you place the bar. For realist art, I prefer to talk of degree of accuracy instead, which is the inverse. (The more willing a person is to suspend disbelief, the less accurate a work has to be, so on and so forth.) For non-realist art, it isn't that simple, because I find disbelief is automatically suspended for common genre conceits, and breaking them can cause a more dramatic drop in suspension regardless of that break's relation to realism.

[Tanarii]

The usual reference for associated vs dissociated mechanics is from The Alexandrian (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). To whit:

Quoting the Alexandrian twice in one thread doesn't make him any more correct.

[gbaji]

I ended up making human belief (humans are pretty much the only sentient race in my setting), and allowing perception to affect reality. People can breath fine in dungeons without airflow because people don't understand concepts like CO2 buildup and O2 depletion, and thus those effects are overwritten by a persons belief that they are breathing just fine. Lacks never run out of fish without some sort of natural disaster because everyone knows where the best fishing holes are and thus there are always fish to catch there.

This has negative effects too, Like when people get worried that their town is cursed, or a monster is stalking the night, then that can bring about curses or monsters to attack that town. It's also why advanced martials can do the impossible. They have slowly started to believe that they can do these impossible things if they put enough effort in. As their faith in their abilities increases there abilities themselves increase.

That's actually a pretty cool setting concept.


As someone with Chronic Minmax Disease, I don't feel like mastery of character planning is something that should be the biggest deciding factor in a fight (or second, or even third). In my perspective, if a character without any special abilities can't reliably win against a minmaxed character through a higher tactical mastery at least half the time, then I'll be frustrated when building for it, and playing it. A player should be able to get better at the game and have it matter. But if they've messed up their build by not taking a required, expected special ability, then no amount of improvement in the game matters. All they can do is kill their old character and roll up a new one.

What I was talking about is less minmax character design/creation and more about power/ability scale over the range within the game itself. The idea being that if you start with what "works by default", then you establish the norm for the game setting. Then, you add powers/abilities/skills/whatever which allow characters to "break the rules" (or just mitigate the "normal" effects a bit). And I was following that up with the observation that if your default conditoin is "you can fire into melee with no minuses or chance to hit a friend", then you can't also have any feats or skill effects that make "firing into melee without hitting a friend" something that can happen.

And yeah, I get your point that depending on where the starting point of your power scale is, this may not be a huge consideration for regular gameplay.



I disagree, in large part because "magic".

One of D&D's problems, which I think if I'm reading people right are actually saying is a feature not a bug, is that is treats magic like science. It's repeatable using the same formula, every time, exactly. And I'm not sure where people get this from the RAW, but fundamentally one wizard's version of fireball summoning flame from the elemental plane of fire and another wizard's version using IRL combustion rules and a little bit of magical energy to turn guano and sulfur into a magic grenade are, IMO, absolutely reconcilable in that it's magic. You're using magic to create a specific result without having to follow the normal rules of the world.

I think this might boil down to what people mean by "science". I suspect that to many in the "science and magic can't coexist" camp, they are interpreting "science" to be "how things work in our world". So since magic doesn't exist, therefore magic is in opposition to science. Got it. It's axiomatic since "science" is "how things work when there is no magic".

I don't use science that way. Science is simply the consistent measureable repeatable way to determine "how the world works". It has nothing at all to do with what the specific rules actually are. It merely tests how things work, and allows us to learn how to repeatably obtain desired results. Science and magic absolutely can coexist in this model. In the "science" of D&D magic, wizards can wave their hands around, toss some materials into the air and create various effects. That's "how the world works", and is scientifically reproducable. Ergo... science.

Why does this matter? Because having that concept that "methodology matters" and "rules matter", allows us to create a more "realistic" (well, internally consistent maybe?) world to play in. For example, whether fireballs work by summoning fire from the elemental plane of fire, or they work by transmuting some base materials into a massive ball of fire directly matters a whole lot. What if you find yourself in some pocket dimension/dungoen where planar summoning is blocked? If I'm in a spot where I can't summon an elemental from the plane of fire, I presumably can't cast a fireball (if that's how fireballs work).

So yeah. Knowing "how things work" actually does matter.



What I meant was that if you use this fissure ability on a thin stone floor, the floor isn't actually affected. No one falls through, the effect is purely cosmetic. Sure, a power that only works on "earth" and not on stone floors could be coherent. But I'm thinking of things like the VFX in various MMOs (e.g. the Warrior from FFXIV, who smashes the ground and causes cracks...but will never break through thin ice doing that. Because the world is a backdrop not an actual thing and that ability only hurts enemies.).

Yup. And I suppose we could call that "videogamey", or "unrealilstic" or whatever. But yeah. If our "rules for the world" include things like "how hard is stone?". And "how hard is ice"? And "if you break stone or ice it changes its shape in <consistent ways>". And in such a world, a spell or effect that "creates a massive crater/fissure/whatever and <has some direct effect in the area>", but then disappears completely one round later becomes problematic. It's perfectly valid as a game mechanic. But it sure feels a lot less "realistic" to me.

And a lot of such effects are purely because the designers wanted a flashy/showy effect, but want to balance it for combat only. So you create this thing and it has an effect on enemies in the area, doing damage, knocking people down, etc, but you don't actually want people to use it to break through the floor, or the ice, or whatever. Presumably there are other spells and abilities that do just that but don't also do damage, so... balance, right?

That's a pure preference thing, but my prefernces tend away from those sorts of systems and those sorts of effects. If you have a spell that disrupts the floor and creates a fissure, then that's what it does. Period. Any damage or knockdown is because any effect that created a fissure under someone's feet would have the exact same effect. I start by defining "how the world works". And part of that will include something about "what happens if a fissure opens under your feet". So rules for reacting quickly, and maybe leaping to safety. Rules for falling. Rules for knockdown. Those are in the game. The spell creates a fissure, and we just apply the rules. Done.

That's my preferred method. And certainly, it can be tricky to model the wide variety of spell effects in most games to something like this. But some games do make at least some effort on this (um... often by just not having spell descriptions like that). Others really lean in the other direction.



"Because magic", to me, is the ultimate disconnected mechanic. It's something that happens that has no possible explanation in the fiction of the world, because "because magic" isn't an explanation. It's a hand wave. Which means that the only way it can be approached is via the game rules. And that produces horrible incentives--it encourages rules lawyering, close-parsing of rules, weaponization of tiny differences in wording, "button pressing" (relying on pressing buttons on the character sheet instead of engaging with the world's logic), and a bunch of other things I find obnoxious. It also prevents me from building engaging worlds, because they're tightly coupled to the real world while also defying everything that makes the real world real. You end up in the uncanny valley really fast.

Better to discard the notion of "real world science" applying beyond just the surface and see where that takes you. Explore and build the parts that people start looking into. At least in my mind.

Agree. And I think the problem is associating "science" with "real world" in the first place. Your alternate game world, complete with magic, and dragons, and elemental planes, can and should also have its own "science". Science is just a consistent set of rules that define how the world works. And I think any world, game or otherwise, benefits from that a lot.

[False God]

I think this might boil down to what people mean by "science". I suspect that to many in the "science and magic can't coexist" camp, they are interpreting "science" to be "how things work in our world". So since magic doesn't exist, therefore magic is in opposition to science. Got it. It's axiomatic since "science" is "how things work when there is no magic".

I don't use science that way. Science is simply the consistent measureable repeatable way to determine "how the world works". It has nothing at all to do with what the specific rules actually are. It merely tests how things work, and allows us to learn how to repeatably obtain desired results. Science and magic absolutely can coexist in this model. In the "science" of D&D magic, wizards can wave their hands around, toss some materials into the air and create various effects. That's "how the world works", and is scientifically reproducable. Ergo... science.

Why does this matter? Because having that concept that "methodology matters" and "rules matter", allows us to create a more "realistic" (well, internally consistent maybe?) world to play in. For example, whether fireballs work by summoning fire from the elemental plane of fire, or they work by transmuting some base materials into a massive ball of fire directly matters a whole lot. What if you find yourself in some pocket dimension/dungoen where planar summoning is blocked? If I'm in a spot where I can't summon an elemental from the plane of fire, I presumably can't cast a fireball (if that's how fireballs work).

So yeah. Knowing "how things work" actually does matter.

Sure, but what I'm saying is that "magic" provides many paths towards making something work. A mage who uses magic to create magical effects by summoning the elements from another plane may indeed find themselves in trouble in certain situations, just as a different mage who uses "IRL science" will find themselves in trouble when they run out of components.

My point was more that "IRL" science provides a single approach to get specific results and magic, by bending, bypassing, or breaking the rules could provide multiple approaches. The world only needs to be internally consistent insofar as that it maintains that magic only provides one alternate route (the exact method to cast fireball) or that magic provides multiple routes. Thats the only element of internal consistency thats necessary.

[gbaji]

Sure, but what I'm saying is that "magic" provides many paths towards making something work. A mage who uses magic to create magical effects by summoning the elements from another plane may indeed find themselves in trouble in certain situations, just as a different mage who uses "IRL science" will find themselves in trouble when they run out of components.

Both are "science" though. That's the point I'm trying to get accross here. Science is just the existence of a consistent, repeatable, "how things work" set of rules. That's it. If the "science" says that fireballs form by summoning fire from the plane of fire, then that's how it works.

And yes, there can be multiple ways to achieve the same effect. But that is also not a distinction between science and magic. There are multiple ways to do most things. That certainly does not require the presence of "magic".


My point was more that "IRL" science provides a single approach to get specific results and magic, by bending, bypassing, or breaking the rules could provide multiple approaches. The world only needs to be internally consistent insofar as that it maintains that magic only provides one alternate route (the exact method to cast fireball) or that magic provides multiple routes. Thats the only element of internal consistency thats necessary.

I think you are stil progressing from a belief that "science" means "the way we do things here on Earth", and therefore the existence of any other way to do something is "magic" and exists "outside of science". Um... that's not what science means.

And yes. There are quite often many many different ways to do something. Let's say I want to move a box from my house to your house. Science only tells me that the box has mass. It has objects in it that also have mass. Mass interacts with other things in specific ways. At the end of the day, whether I'm picking it up, loading it into my car, driving over, and then putting it in your house, or waving my fingers and teleporting it is irrelevant. The same exact thing is being done. Neither is more "magical" than the other (most D&D settings would find my car to be "magical", right?). A teleport spelll moves a specific amount of stuff (mass) in very specific definable ways. My car can move a specific amount of stuff (mass) in other specific definable ways.

Why is this relevant? Because regardless of the method used to move the box, the box should otherwise behave like a box in every other way. It should not suddenly become massless simply because it can be teleported. It should not cease to follow the otherwise present "rules" involving "boxes" in the world. Yet, I've seen many people declare things like "boxes have weight" to not be important anymore because "magic exists". Um... No. it's easy to see this with the example of teleporting a box, but what about the fissure spell mentioned earlier? So the "ground" ceases to have the normal propoerties of "ground" simply because a spell is involved. If the spell creates a fissure, then it creates a fissure. Done. Fissure created, with the effects that a fissure in the ground would normally have. That's how you have a "consistent/realistic magic system". If the fissure only affects the people in the AE at the time it was cast, has no effect on the actual ground at all (or any non-enemy objects on the ground), and disappears once the spell effects are done, then that's pretty freaking unrealistic and inconsistent (and dare I say it: videogamey).

The world and everything in it should behave in consistent predictable ways even when magic exists. Heck. If you have magic in a game, that's a strong reason to make even more "rules" to make sure things make sense and don't spiral into ridiculousness. But that's just me.

[Vahnavoi]

@gbaji: yes, much of the issue comes from equivocating different definitions of "magic" and different definitions of "science" to support what is primarily a cultural and literary trope. This is largely because Western people redefined "magic" to mean "nonsense" at a point in history largely just to argue what they were doing is different from what non-Western people were doing. This harms discussion of realism in arts too, when people take realism to narrowly mean contemporary scientific realism.

In anthropology and in everyday English, "magic" means the art or practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature. Anthropologists have forwarded the notion that this does not really differ from "science" or "technology" except in idiom.

Of course, this just reinforces PhoenixPhyre's point about "because magic" being the ultimate disconnect, it is so because of the redefinition mentioned in the first paragraph. "Magic" in fiction is anything impossible, an empty space for an author to fill with whatever fits their whim this Tuesday, completely losing sight of what it is and has been in practice.

[NichG]

Really the word 'physics' should be used here rather than 'science'.

Science is a methodology for finding increasingly good approximations of the things which remain consistently true about how the world works. It isn't the things which were found themselves. You could apply that methodology to anything really. Whether you'd get something usable from doing so would depend on the nature of what you were trying to study - if there's something repeatable, even if thats under some transforms or abstractions, you might be able to find it. More importantly, if you have a belief or bias that something should work repeatably a certain way, you've got a way to prove yourself wrong and abandon that belief that is at least somewhat robust to being clever enough (e.g. too clever) to convince yourself of things.

Magic can be the physics of a fictional world. The study of magic could be the science of that world's societies, but the underlying phenomena of magic itself would not be 'the science', that's 'the physics'.

[Talakeal]

I don't think anyone is capable of making a game that is a perfect simulation of either reality or a fictional world, and I know Phoenixophyre has an extremely high bar for the level of detail required for versimilitude.

Personally, I don't think that it is the "realism" or even consistency that makes as a mechanic disassociated, but rather whether it exists on the simulationist layer at all. For me, disassociated mechanics are things like fate points and bennies that don't even try and have an in character explanation.

But I suppose if you look close enough, all abstractions and simplification done for ease of play are disassociated on some level, so maybe we need to redefine it as a spectrum rather than an absolute?

[Vahnavoi]

Personally, I don't think that it is the "realism" or even consistency that makes as a mechanic disassociated, but rather whether it exists on the simulationist layer at all. For me, disassociated mechanics are things like fate points and bennies that don't even try and have an in character explanation.

I'm going through pain here to get people to notice that simulation - the attempt to represent and imitate something - is fundamentally a realist concern. Which is why Gary Gygax in 1st Edition AD&D books used the term "reality simulation" as a contrast point to the game-like design of (A)D&D. Mechanics that don't even try to have an in-character explanation are non-realist for exactly that reason.

Fate points make an excellent example for another reason, since they usually exist to allow for dramatic and romantic genre conceits that would not otherwise follow. Usually this is spelled out right there in the game rules, stating they are given to character larger than life so they can stand out.


But I suppose if you look close enough, all abstractions and simplification done for ease of play are disassociated on some level, so maybe we need to redefine it as a spectrum rather than an absolute?

It's always been a spectrum, hence measures like degree of accuracy and suspension of disbelief. Perfection in art is aspirational, not a requirement. In visual arts, this is typically taught to people at the start: your piece has a specific viewing distance, it only has to look good when viewed at that distance, it doesn't have to hold up if someone glues their nose to it.

[Telok]

For me, disassociated mechanics are things like fate points and bennies that don't even try and have an in character explanation.

Well, some few games do "fate points" with actual in-game convepts of fate, probability, or destiny. Heart of Darkness does that with the rerolls & destiny. But you're right, most games don't even bother with so much as a fig leaf.

Adding one to your disassociation pile: Paranoia's 25th ed has "perversity points" the players can use to adjust their rolls and other player's rolls. Regained by making the RL players laugh, giggle, or snort soda out their nose (and an option to regain by letting the player decide to have character quirks screw them over). Absolutely disassociated from anything in the game world, but it drives behavior in the game that reinforces the themes and adds to the fun of the game.

So disassociation isn't inherently bad, it's just the game's metagame layer implemented in the rules in a way that isn't reflected in the characters & setting fiction layer.

Still, for my personal definition I'm gonna stick with using TVTropes video game categories as checklists. Might actually make a checklist some time if I can get the uninterrupted time when other projects at a stopping point.

[gatorized]

If the combat sequences look like I'm watching people play Mario Smash Bros? It's videogamey. Big flashy attacks, powerups, things exploding out of nothing, extra stuff appearing and doing "things" on the battle field? All videogamey to me.

Imagine hating fun lol

[gatorized]

on the other hand, there are versions of d&d where martials hit with a weapon, and versions where each move they make has weird names that they have to call in advance like some anime characters. those are definitely more videogamey.

i'm unsure on positioning. i'd say a videogame is more likely to give importance to positioning, because it's a lot better at tracking position.

As opposed to casters, where each move they make has a weird name that they have to call in advance like some anime characters.

[Kurald Galain]

But I suppose if you look close enough, all abstractions and simplification done for ease of play are disassociated on some level, so maybe we need to redefine it as a spectrum rather than an absolute?
Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world.

[oxybe]

As opposed to casters, where each move they make has a weird name that they have to call in advance like some anime characters.

And then we have THIS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNqxWTsUIjs)
-moves getting called out
-colour commentary
-musical leitmotifs
-drama a plenty
-enjoyed by thousands upon thousands

All done by professional athletes that happened to take skill proficiencies in performance.

And if you're not a fan of the more scripted WWE, have the UFC version of the peanut gallery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvSWZPDf1Eg).

Having moves being called out is an IRL time-honoured martial arts tradition. If not by the user, then by the spectators, dang it!

[Jakinbandw]

Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world.

This makes sense to me. Though judging intent can be hard.

[Tanarii]

All done by professional athletes that happened to take skill proficiencies in performance.You broke the forums a little using the word professional in that sentence :smallamused:


And if you're not a fan of the more scripted WWE, have the UFC version of the peanut gallery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvSWZPDf1Eg).Which is why it's always necessary to mute the commentators when watching sports.


Having moves being called out is an IRL time-honoured martial arts tradition. If not by the user, then by the spectators, dang it!
It certainly is in Shaolin-based forms in the media.

But having names for basic kicks, punches, and other maneuvers is actually necessary for communication. Which is what said announcers are trying to do. You don't see a UFC fighter yelling "Spinning Cut-Eyebrow Kick" as they execute it.

But in terms of D&D and derivative games, all spellcasting requires communicating which small bundle of highly specific rules are to be used.

Whereas hitting someone with a stick is almost always: I attack! And then roll to do some damage. But some do require naming them to execute a few e.g. Grapple! Shove! Divine Smite! Flurry of Blows! and of course the all time classic: Sneak Attack!

So, like, yeah, most TTRPGs already have martial doing anime attack maneuver call-outs. It's just the ones with boring martial combat almost always involve spamming the same Attack button.


Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world.
Yes, that sounds far better that the Alexandrian definition.

Sadly it's become a meme at this point that 4e powers are disassociated mechanics. When they were instead mechanics with a system rule defining that in 4e, there was a fluff/mechanics divide and you were explicitly allowed to change the fluff. Note that this makes it the only edition of D&D that has that as a rule, so it does stand out.

Nor are 4e skill challenges, or other older D&D game structures, disassociated mechanics.

If you want actual disassociated mechanics, start by looking at Narrative TTRPG systems. Not 4e.

[Just to Browse]

Quoting the Alexandrian twice in one thread doesn't make him any more correct.

By the gods, what a dastardly plan. To link something multiple times in order to make it seem more correct? If you find such a foe as this, ride to me with great haste, and we shall take up arms against them together. I admit that I have not found anyone who has ever done this over the course of this entire thread or in any other thread I have ever visited on this forum. But if you believe a foe such as this exists, then I believe you, and so I shall be ever-watchful.


But I suppose if you look close enough, all abstractions and simplification done for ease of play are disassociated on some level, so maybe we need to redefine it as a spectrum rather than an absolute?


Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world.

I agree with bits of both of these. I would point to something like the level-based damage scaling of a cantrip like firebolt. There's an overt association here: a more powerful mage can use more powerful magic, which is reflected in a larger number of dice... but this breaks down when a character who devotes their adventuring career to swordfighting picks up a cantrip from Magic Initiate or a 1-level dip, since they receive the same damage bonuses at the same levels. I think that's an example of association / dissociation lying on a spectrum.

[PhoenixPhyre]

By the
I agree with bits of both of these. I would point to something like the level-based damage scaling of a cantrip like firebolt. There's an overt association here: a more powerful mage can use more powerful magic, which is reflected in a larger number of dice... but this breaks down when a character who devotes their adventuring career to swordfighting picks up a cantrip from Magic Initiate or a 1-level dip, since they receive the same damage bonuses at the same levels. I think that's an example of association / dissociation lying on a spectrum.

You can actually explain that fairly well in keeping with the rest of the system. The core idea is that higher level characters have stronger souls. This is shown both by HD and proficiency. So a higher level character can put more oomph into these cantrips. And can't even *not* put more energy into it, since for whatever reason you can't throttle a cantrips.

Of course, I believe that all D&D magic isn't incredibly well tied to the fiction except ex post, so :shrug:

[Kurald Galain]

Sadly it's become a meme at this point that 4e powers are disassociated mechanics.
That's because many of them are. 4E is by no means the only game that has disassociations, but because it has "a fluff/mechanics divide and you were explicitly allowed to change the fluff" it attracts substantially more of them than any other RPG I can name.


Nor are 4e skill challenges, or other older D&D game structures, disassociated mechanics.
SCs are a good example of disassociation, as it can lead to a situation where the PCs have accomplished their task but still need to roll a few more successes. I'm well aware that good DMs don't actually play them that way; but RAW? Yeah, that's a clear disassociation.


this breaks down when a character who devotes their adventuring career to swordfighting picks up a cantrip from Magic Initiate or a 1-level dip, since they receive the same damage bonuses at the same levels. I think that's an example of association / dissociation lying on a spectrum.
Yeah, that's another good example.

[KorvinStarmast]

Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world. For D&D 5e, that leads me to the Lucky feat and the Divination Wizard's 2d level ability to change a roll. Am I following you here?

[Kurald Galain]

For D&D 5e, that leads me to the Lucky feat and the Divination Wizard's 2d level ability to change a roll. Am I following you here?

Yes, I'd agree with that.

[Tanarii]

For D&D 5e, that leads me to the Lucky feat and the Divination Wizard's 2d level ability to change a roll. Am I following you here?
Why? Both represent something happening in the game world. In one case that a character has abnormal luck, and for the second that the character can divine the future.

If you want a divorced 5e mechanic, it is Inspiration. That's pure player meta-currency rewarded for player actions, not tied to the character at all.

[Kurald Galain]

Why? Both represent something happening in the game world. In one case that a character has abnormal luck, and for the second that the character can divine the future.
Because the fluff is completely unrelated to what the mechanic actually does. "Seeing the future" doesn't map to "twice per day and without an action cost, you can replace a die roll by a prerolled die".

Everything has fluff. Just because something has fluff doesn't mean it's not disassociated.

[Segev]

Because the fluff is completely unrelated to what the mechanic actually does. "Seeing the future" doesn't map to "twice per day and without an action cost, you can replace a die roll by a prerolled die".

Everything has fluff. Just because something has fluff doesn't mean it's not disassociated.
The conceit here is that, in having seen this moment coming, you know to take advantage of it.

It actually tracks really really well to how I have seen it used; the most common usage is to plan a turn ahead of time — sometimes even before the encounter starts — with the intent to use it.

"...and we can nail him with suggestion because he's going to roll a 4 on the die," for example. Sure, that line is the player saying it in the game terminology, not the character saying it in the terms he'd use, but the point is that the set number allows the player and character to predict the future success or failure of an action and plan for it.

Yes, it can be used in more emergent circumstances, but I have found it to be rarer than using it in established plans. Even if those plans are only a round ahead of time and shouted on the battlefield.

And when it is more emergent, it's a flash of insight the PC has that this is that moment he foresaw and he takes some sort of action to make it come out in his or his party's favor. Or he already took such an action, setting it up for thus moment.

[kyoryu]

It's even easier than that. "I saw which way the orc was going to dodge, so I was able to smack him."

It's how a lot of short-term precognition works in movies.

[Tanarii]

Because the fluff is completely unrelated to what the mechanic actually does. "Seeing the future" doesn't map to "twice per day and without an action cost, you can replace a die roll by a prerolled die".Yes it does.


Everything has fluff. Just because something has fluff doesn't mean it's not disassociated.
What matters is if it's purely meta-currency purely at the player level (disassociated; often also narrative) or represents something for the character in world (abstraction). Those are two separate things.

[KorvinStarmast]

What matters is if it's purely meta-currency purely at the player level (disassociated; often also narrative) or represents something for the character in world (abstraction). Those are two separate things. To me, the fact that the luck (from lucky feat) is applied after the player has seen the die roll result, and then on the basis of that number makes a decision, is what led to me to think that it was more meta... but maybe I am overlaying 'meta' and 'disassociated' too closely here.

Which is why I asked.

FWIW, I don't feel the same way about the halfling ability, since no decision comes.
In practice, the nat 1 is simply rerolled. (I mean, why wouldn't you re roll it? Never seen it not be re rolled)

[kyoryu]

What matters is if it's purely meta-currency purely at the player level (disassociated; often also narrative) or represents something for the character in world (abstraction). Those are two separate things.

There's an interesting idea that I think you're hinting at - is all of the information about the action contained within the game world? Regardless of how "realistic" or "explainable" something is, can the characters in the game world derive an understanding of the rules, based purely on the information available to them?

Most meta-point systems fail this. GURPS Luck fails this (it's based on sessions/the real world clock). D&D Inspiration fails this as well.

Daily martial abilities pass this, however. Regardless of the mechanism, regardless of the why, a martial character could realize that certain techniques can only be used a single time per day in actual combat. That is testable and understandable. All of the information is available to the character.

[Segev]

To me, the fact that the luck (from lucky feat) is applied after the player has seen the die roll result, and then on the basis of that number makes a decision, is what led to me to think that it was more meta... but maybe I am overlaying 'meta' and 'disassociated' too closely here.

Which is why I asked.

FWIW, I don't feel the same way about the halfling ability, since no decision comes.
In practice, the nat 1 is simply rerolled. (I mean, why wouldn't you re roll it? Never seen it not be re rolled)

It isn't something the character "is doing," no, but it's a quality of the character. From the character's perspective, he isn't choosing to roll an extra die; he's just getting lucky and succeeding at something that he perhaps shouldn't have. That saving throw he failed against that fireball is saved by him happening to trip at just the right moment in just the right way.

[Talakeal]

Because the fluff is completely unrelated to what the mechanic actually does. "Seeing the future" doesn't map to "twice per day and without an action cost, you can replace a die roll by a prerolled die".

I would say that the good luck does have a fluff explanation, but the invocation of good luck is dissasociated at the player level as it is purely controlled at the table level rather than by any sort of decision that the character is making.


Everything has fluff. Just because something has fluff doesn't mean it's not disassociated.

Everything except for marks. :p

[lesser_minion]

A dissociated mechanic causes a split between the decisions a player makes and the decisions their character makes. Your character doesn't decide when their luck kicks in, so it's dissociated.

'Dissociated' doesn't mean that the mechanic is bad -- hit points have persisted in D&D for nearly five decades and spread to many other games and media. Nor does it mean that the mechanic doesn't make sense, or can't be made to make sense -- you can only do a particular sword move once per day because it needs the right kind of opportunity. Easy. What makes that dissociated is that you're choosing when that opportunity happens.

'Dissociated' can mean 'bad' if it takes you out of the game by damaging immersion or creating incentives to metagame.

[Tanarii]

A dissociated mechanic causes a split between the decisions a player makes and the decisions their character makes. Your character doesn't decide when their luck kicks in, so it's dissociated.Nope. If the character decided it wouldn't be luck.

A disassociated rule is a mechanic that has no tie in-world to the character. Luck is an in-world tie, since it's the characters trait. Pulling off a maneuver once per encounter is still an in-world tie, since the character is taking an action. Those are just abstractions.

An inspiration point that is a reward for the player doing a thing, then used to benefit the character, has no in-world tie. A narrative currency point that allows the player to control the scene (not the character) is a disassociated rule.

[Kurald Galain]

the invocation of good luck is dissasociated at the player level as it is purely controlled at the table level rather than by any sort of decision that the character is making.
Precisely.


Everything except for marks. :p
Yeah, that was probably the most visible example because it starts straight from level one and multiple classes use them :smallamused:
It's funny because one of the early splatbooks basically has the devs admit that they couldn't think of coherent fluff for marking, either.


An inspiration point that is a reward for the player doing a thing, then used to benefit the character, has no in-world tie.
The issue with that definition is that inspiration also has an in-world tie. Namely, you gain the inspiration because your character did something cool (which is an in-world tie) and you spend the inspiration to have your character succeed at something else (which is another in-world tie). So your definition is just too narrow (and by a broader and more practical definition, I do agree that inspiration is disassociated).

[gbaji]

Imagine hating fun lol

I never said that things that are "videogamey" aren't fun. Just "different". And for me personally, I'm looking for different things in RPGs (most of the time) than in other games. When I run a TTRPG, I do prefer to make the game setting and system feel "real", so that the players can better immerse themselves into the roles they are playing. I personally find that easier to do if the rules and methodologies are very consistent and "make sense" to myself and to the players.

But yes, I absolutely understand and agree that different group of players are going to have different preferences. There is no "right" or "wrong" here. Was merely trying to clarify what I meant by a term I used (which, of course, gets complicated because the same term is used in a zillion different ways as well, so there you have it).


Rather, it's the opposite: an abstracted rule is one that tries to model part of the (in-game) world and sometimes fails at it. A disassociated rule is one that does not model part of the in-game world.

I'm leaning pretty well into this set of definitions. But yeah, as some have pointed out, this can leave meta concepts off in an odd area. I think that also just becomes subjective. Some meta concepts may be seen as "abstract/associated" by some, but disassociated by others. Having abilities that are usable X/day, for example, if they are abstrracted as "your character has a pool of mystical energy they draw on to do <whatever>", then that's an absolutely fine in-word abstraction. If it's just "we need to limit things for game balance reasons, but there's no in-world explanation" this might fall into disassociated mechanic teritory though.

Some rules, like say dice pools in Shadow Run, are at least in theory abstractions of "you're X tough, or Y agile, or Z capable" at various things at any given time. Rules like this absolutely do not need to be perfect simulations to work mechanically, and still feel like they are "in-world" to me. Others may be more arbitrary though. But again, that can be quite subjective.


You can actually explain that fairly well in keeping with the rest of the system. The core idea is that higher level characters have stronger souls. This is shown both by HD and proficiency. So a higher level character can put more oomph into these cantrips. And can't even *not* put more energy into it, since for whatever reason you can't throttle a cantrips.

Of course, I believe that all D&D magic isn't incredibly well tied to the fiction except ex post, so :shrug:

Yeah. That's an artifact of hp/level based progression anyway. In order to balance out any skill/ability/spell/whatever you do at any given level, said thing has to scale to that level in terms of effect. And yes, as you say, this is somewhat baked into the game system itself. I suppose we could call that an "abstraction" for that reason.

Having played in systems that don't have level based progression, it is much easier to address "new skills/abilities/powers" in. There's no scaling hps or levels, or resistance. So that spell/cantrip being used by a beginning spell caster is exactly as powerful as one picked up later by a highly exerienced swordsman. There's no need to adust anything. Of course an equivalentlly experienced spellcaster will have moved on to more powerful spells, just as the experienced swordsman can presumably do lots more with a sword than a bare beginner could. But in terms of the mechanics of the actual effect itself? No need to make any modifications.

[Tanarii]

The issue with that definition is that inspiration also has an in-world tie. Namely, you gain the inspiration because your character did something cool (which is an in-world tie) and you spend the inspiration to have your character succeed at something else (which is another in-world tie). So your definition is just too narrow (and by a broader and more practical definition, I do agree that inspiration is disassociated).
You gain inspiration by properly roleplaying a personality trait, ideal, bond, or flaw. It's a reward for player activity, not character activity. It's pure meta-currency. There is no in-world tie in.

[lesser_minion]

A disassociated rule is a mechanic that has no tie in-world to the character. Luck is an in-world tie, since it's the characters trait. Pulling off a maneuver once per encounter is still an in-world tie, since the character is taking an action. Those are just abstractions.

The entire reason that dissociated mechanics might be a problem is that using them is something that happens out of character. So while you're free to call it what you want, your 'abstraction' seems to walk very like a duck. And it quacks like one.

[Kurald Galain]

You gain inspiration by properly roleplaying a personality trait, ideal, bond, or flaw. It's a reward for player activity, not character activity. It's pure meta-currency. There is no in-world tie in.
It has exactly as much (or as little) "in-world tie in" as the Lucky feat... which is why I call both of them disassociated. I don't get why you insist on calling one ability with "no in-world tie in" associated and anothre ability with also "no in-world tie in" NOT associated.

[Tanarii]

The entire reason that dissociated mechanics might be a problem is that using them is something that happens out of character. So while you're free to call it what you want, your 'abstraction' seems to walk very like a duck. And it quacks like one.
That's almost all TTRPG rules. That's why this definition of disassociated mechanics doesn't work.

Disassociated mechanics are ones that don't reflect / map to anything in-world to do with the character. That means they're most often narrative meta currency, or (like 5e inspiration) a currency rewarded for player actions that can be spent to benefit the character.


It has exactly as much (or as little) "in-world tie in" as the Lucky feat... which is why I call both of them disassociated. I don't get why you insist on calling one ability with "no in-world tie in" associated and anothre ability with also "no in-world tie in" NOT associated.The character is lucky. There's an abstract representation of an in-world character trait. This is not a disassociated mechanic.

The player is roleplaying well. They get rewarded inspiration for doing something at the meta level. This is a disassociated mechanic.

[False God]

The player is roleplaying well. They get rewarded inspiration for doing something at the meta level. This is a disassociated mechanic.

Yeah but... By nature of the fact that PC is made up and has no ability to act for themselves, they can't be rewarded with inspiration.

It's easily fluffed by the same trick on each end: the DM is playing "the world and everything in it" and the Player is playing the PC. "The world" is awarding Fate/Destiny/Luck/whatever to the PC for the quality of their actions. "Good roleplaying" translates to a more living, breathing character, and "the world and everything in it" wants more of that. It's still the DM giving the Player something for player actions, but it's associated due to fluff and framing.

Yes, you could say "Well that's not how the rules frame it!" which is true, but fluff is fluff for a reason, it's flexible, variable, open to be altered and ignored at the whims of every table. But a lot of "the rules" frame things in very mechanical terms and tables and the people at them are expected to fluff things up in actual play. A player declaring "I use 5-Finger-Death-Punch to deal 10d10 damage." is disassociated, not because of the specific wording of the mechanic, but because of the fluffing(or lack thereof) on the part of the player.

Tables and the people at them can make things more or less associated, and as "Role Playing" is right there after "tabletop", it's rather expected that DMs and Players should be fluffing things, I mean, that's what roleplay is! Flavorful fluff added to make a more believable, immersive and enjoyable experience.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah but... By nature of the fact that PC is made up and has no ability to act for themselves, they can't be rewarded with inspiration.

It's easily fluffed by the same trick on each end: the DM is playing "the world and everything in it" and the Player is playing the PC. "The world" is awarding Fate/Destiny/Luck/whatever to the PC for the quality of their actions. "Good roleplaying" translates to a more living, breathing character, and "the world and everything in it" wants more of that. It's still the DM giving the Player something for player actions, but it's associated due to fluff and framing.

Yes, you could say "Well that's not how the rules frame it!" which is true, but fluff is fluff for a reason, it's flexible, variable, open to be altered and ignored at the whims of every table. But a lot of "the rules" frame things in very mechanical terms and tables and the people at them are expected to fluff things up in actual play. A player declaring "I use 5-Finger-Death-Punch to deal 10d10 damage." is disassociated, not because of the specific wording of the mechanic, but because of the fluffing(or lack thereof) on the part of the player.

Tables and the people at them can make things more or less associated, and as "Role Playing" is right there after "tabletop", it's rather expected that DMs and Players should be fluffing things, I mean, that's what roleplay is! Flavorful fluff added to make a more believable, immersive and enjoyable experience.

Personally, that's why this definition of "disassociated" doesn't work very well for me. It doesn't pin anything down--any mechanic can be described as associated or disassociated without actually changing it.

For me, the more salient feature is "is there a clear description of the connection between <action> and <fictional world, including narrative so far> that doesn't cause dissonance/discrepancies/contradictions with other established facts?" If so, it's associated. If it's purely game layer and all reasonable attempts to associate it with the fiction create Bad Things or don't work...then it's disassociated. Although it's really a spectrum--the easier it is to come up with sane linking descriptions, the more associated. And the reverse as well.

Of course, that means that there aren't many purely disassociated mechanics. I could absolutely see some kinds of purely narrative mechanics being disassociated--the ability to declare a fact about the scene by paying metacurrency. It's something happening purely at the game layer that is inserted into the fiction from outside, rather than something the characters are doing. In a non-Toon game, having the ability to "conveniently" have metal chairs to whack your opponent with that instantly disappear (or any other Toon-like hammerspace done purely for comedic effect type of thing) are pretty heavily disconnected from most worlds--the tonal shift is tremendous and the implications are severe for any in-universe explanation. Etc.

[kyoryu]

Personally, that's why this definition of "disassociated" doesn't work very well for me. It doesn't pin anything down--any mechanic can be described as associated or disassociated without actually changing it.

Also a given person may find mechanics associated/dissociated. Martial dailies/encounters is a perfect example. That maps reasonably closely, to me, to actually doing athletic things. I've heard high level athletes say the same thing. It's not a perfect match, for sure, but it's better than a lot of things in D&D.

So for someone to say it's not realistic at all, and have others say it is (and yes, I understand they're two different arguments) gets to the point that it's not really realism that's the issue. It's whether or not it agrees with your idea of what is realistic, which is quite different.

And I think that's really what triggers people more than anything else - things not working the way that they expect them to. That might be the mechanics, or the process, or any number of a different things. Even the layout - I think a lot of the complaints come from the fact that 4e nixed the 'mixed mechanics and fluff' presentation model in exchange of the more M:tG-esque "mechanics are mechanics, and the fluff is separate" model.

Things not being the way people expect them to be causes this kind of dissonance and strong emotional reaction.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Also a given person may find mechanics associated/dissociated. Martial dailies/encounters is a perfect example. That maps reasonably closely, to me, to actually doing athletic things. I've heard high level athletes say the same thing. It's not a perfect match, for sure, but it's better than a lot of things in D&D.

So for someone to say it's not realistic at all, and have others say it is (and yes, I understand they're two different arguments) gets to the point that it's not really realism that's the issue. It's whether or not it agrees with your idea of what is realistic, which is quite different.

And I think that's really what triggers people more than anything else - things not working the way that they expect them to. That might be the mechanics, or the process, or any number of a different things. Even the layout - I think a lot of the complaints come from the fact that 4e nixed the 'mixed mechanics and fluff' presentation model in exchange of the more M:tG-esque "mechanics are mechanics, and the fluff is separate" model.

Things not being the way people expect them to be causes this kind of dissonance and strong emotional reaction.

Very much agreed. This whole thing smacks of the common "define <word with negative meaning> as the set of things I don't like" issue. Conflating subjective judgements with objective truth. Subjective is not bad. Not liking something is 100% fine. But it lacks a certain...force...when arguing about it online that more objective "it's <bad thing>" verbiage has.

Edit: oh, and yeah. Mismatched expectations and experiences cause lots of issues, often at the sub-rational level. Because you didn't really know you expected X, so when you got Y it just felt bad. And then the rationalizing part of your brain kicks in and says "Y feels really bad, so there must be a reason...". All very normal and natural, but not incredibly helpful for actually designing things until you realize that the root is a mismatch of expectations and experience. So framing things differently and setting proper expectations is super important. If the game is about people who die at the drop of a hat and aren't likely to change anything...don't sell it or talk about it (in the rules) as if it's a shonen power fantasy anime game. Or vice versa. Ability titles, for whatever reason, seem to have the most "pinning" or expectation-setting effect. Even though they're the least tied to actual mechanics.

[kyoryu]

Very much agreed. This whole thing smacks of the common "define <word with negative meaning> as the set of things I don't like" issue. Conflating subjective judgements with objective truth. Subjective is not bad. Not liking something is 100% fine. But it lacks a certain...force...when arguing about it online that more objective "it's <bad thing>" verbiage has.

Edit: oh, and yeah. Mismatched expectations and experiences cause lots of issues, often at the sub-rational level. Because you didn't really know you expected X, so when you got Y it just felt bad. And then the rationalizing part of your brain kicks in and says "Y feels really bad, so there must be a reason...". All very normal and natural, but not incredibly helpful for actually designing things until you realize that the root is a mismatch of expectations and experience. So framing things differently and setting proper expectations is super important. If the game is about people who die at the drop of a hat and aren't likely to change anything...don't sell it or talk about it (in the rules) as if it's a shonen power fantasy anime game. Or vice versa. Ability titles, for whatever reason, seem to have the most "pinning" or expectation-setting effect. Even though they're the least tied to actual mechanics.

Another thing is that obviously different things usually work better than things that look the same but aren't. If you look at something and it's obviously different, you are aware of that and think about. When things look like things you expect to work one way, but actually work differently? That's where you run into the biggest problems.

Note that most CCGs have the cost in the upper right corner - that's what people expect. And if you are going to put the cost somewhere else, don't put a number in the upper right.

Edit:

And, 100%, people need to get used to "subjective is okay" (and also, a better definition of "subjective" than "meh, whatever, meaningless"*). You don't need to "prove" any opinion. "I don't like AEDU for martials" is a cromulent opinion and can't really be argued with. "AEDU for martials is bad because it doesn't work anything like real life" is object, but paradoxically, far more open for argument.

(*Subjective doesn't have to mean "just opinion". It can absolutely mean that it can be evaluated only within a given context. You can't argue whether a hammer or screwdriver is better... but put it within a given context and you can absolutely discuss which is better.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Another thing is that obviously different things usually work better than things that look the same but aren't. If you look at something and it's obviously different, you are aware of that and think about. When things look like things you expect to work one way, but actually work differently? That's where you run into the biggest problems.

Note that most CCGs have the cost in the upper right corner - that's what people expect. And if you are going to put the cost somewhere else, don't put a number in the upper right.

Edit:

And, 100%, people need to get used to "subjective is okay" (and also, a better definition of "subjective" than "meh, whatever, meaningless"*). You don't need to "prove" any opinion. "I don't like AEDU for martials" is a cromulent opinion and can't really be argued with. "AEDU for martials is bad because it doesn't work anything like real life" is object, but paradoxically, far more open for argument.

(*Subjective doesn't have to mean "just opinion". It can absolutely mean that it can be evaluated only within a given context. You can't argue whether a hammer or screwdriver is better... but put it within a given context and you can absolutely discuss which is better.)

Very much agree. I think a lot of the issue that die-hard 3e players had with 4e was that it was similar, but (maybe unfairly) different in what felt like a bait-and-switch way. The 4e!Wizard said wizard, and had abilities with standard wizard labels on them...but wasn't what they expected from a Wizard. Similarly, I've found that people with long-standing habits in 3e often hit a rock with 5e--mechanics that have the same name or, on the surface, should act the same don't actually do so. So when they import their expectations and habits...bad things happen and they (fairly or not) blame the game.

And yeah, de gustibas non erat disputandum. Plus context--"is a pitchfork better than a soup spoon" doesn't have an answer without it. But if you're pitching hay bales...one works a lot better. Same for eating soup, just in the other direction. And for things like TTRPGs, a lot of that context can be different from person to person even at the same table.

[Kurald Galain]

I think a lot of the issue that die-hard 3e players had with 4e was that it was similar, but (maybe unfairly) different in what felt like a bait-and-switch way.
Yes, and in addition to that, there's a bait-and-switch when an ability's name or flavor text says one thing, and the rules text says another.

Like, if a spell is called Finger Of Death then you might expect it to kill things? In both 4E and PF2, this spell instead deals a rather unimpressive amount of damage, a similar amount to every other (non-striker) spell at that level (about 60-70 damage, at a level where the average monster has over 210 hit points).

Perhaps the game doesn't need save-or-die effects, but what it certainly doesn't need is effects that are described as save-or-die but in practice don't actually do that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes, and in addition to that, there's a bait-and-switch when an ability's name or flavor text says one thing, and the rules text says another.

Like, if a spell is called Finger Of Death then you might expect it to kill things? In both 4E and PF2, this spell instead deals a rather unimpressive amount of damage, a similar amount to every other (non-striker) spell at that level (about 60-70 damage, at a level where the average monster has over 210 hit points).

Perhaps the game doesn't need save-or-die effects, but what it certainly doesn't need is effects that are described as save-or-die but in practice don't actually do that.

I'm fairly forgiving of overblown ability names. For a couple reasons--
1) naming things is one of the well-known-hard-problems. "Finger-of-doing-some-damage" just...well...doesn't do the trick. And Finger of Death can kill you. It's not guaranteed, but it wouldn't be guaranteed even if it said "on a failed save you drop to 0/die". Because it can fail to go off.
2) overblown, over-the-top ability names are a genre staple.

My big issue is with names that don't actually fit. 5e's dispel magic is a key example--it doesn't dispel magic generally, it dispels some spell effects. It doesn't affect magic items, creatures created by magic (ie skeletons) unless they say it does (the Animated Armor being one of the few that does), doesn't do anything about the copious amounts of magical-but-not-spell effects out there, etc. Or at least requires DM interpolation to do anything. Same with antimagic field's description, which, if taken seriously, would be super bad. Because one of the founding principles of 5e's magic system (such as they are) is that background magic is a fundamental part of everything. So cutting stuff off from that means Bad Things Happen (of the "regular stuff stops working, physics breaks down" variety). Heck, it doesn't even stop a dragon's breath, despite that being explicitly small-m magical. Which requires a whole Sage Advice chunk about it to make any kind of sense.

Really, dispel magic should have been something like (and naming is hard) unpick dweomer or undo spell. And antimagic field needs to lose that text about "This area is divorced from the magical energy that suffuses the multiverse."

[lesser_minion]

That's almost all TTRPG rules. That's why this definition of disassociated mechanics doesn't work.

All of this comes back to the decisions you make while playing. Obviously the rules themselves don't exist in-character. But the decisions they lead to can.

[kyoryu]

Yes, and in addition to that, there's a bait-and-switch when an ability's name or flavor text says one thing, and the rules text says another.

Like, if a spell is called Finger Of Death then you might expect it to kill things? In both 4E and PF2, this spell instead deals a rather unimpressive amount of damage, a similar amount to every other (non-striker) spell at that level (about 60-70 damage, at a level where the average monster has over 210 hit points).

Perhaps the game doesn't need save-or-die effects, but what it certainly doesn't need is effects that are described as save-or-die but in practice don't actually do that.

I'd argue that the bigger problem is that in previous editions it did a very different thing. It WAS a save-or-die. It absolutely was "if this lands, you die". It wasn't "damage".

So 4e decided that save-or-die was bad. Okay, fine. But they felt that it was iconic enough to keep, but they fundamentally changed it to fit in the new paradigm. And then people looked at "Finger of Death" and thought "oh, I know how that works" and it didn't. That causes a jarring disconnect.

If 4e had been the first D&D edition, I don't think that it would have had that level of jarring disconnect.

Much like "saving throws". When they went to attack rolls for spells, fine. But to keep something as iconic as "saving throws" but make them do something completely different just is asking for trouble.

[Kurald Galain]

And then people looked at "Finger of Death" and thought "oh, I know how that works" and it didn't.

There are plenty of death spells in fiction, such as Avada Kadavra. If you label a spell "finger of death" and it doesn't cause death, then you should have called it something else, regardless of what any other edition did with it.

[Vahnavoi]

Non-indicative nomenclature is the bane of all fields that accumulate jargon. D&D has it bad for variety of topics, and D&D hobbyists occasionally manage to double down on it even when there's no need.

[Telok]

There are plenty of death spells in fiction, such as Avada Kadavra. If you label a spell "finger of death" and it doesn't cause death, then you should have called it something else, regardless of what any other edition did with it.

"Finger of Ten Goblins Throwing One Pound Rocks" doesn't have quite the same ring to it, no. At least Power Word Kill is still semi-respectable, even if it's mostly an npc spell these days.

[gbaji]

Also a given person may find mechanics associated/dissociated. Martial dailies/encounters is a perfect example. That maps reasonably closely, to me, to actually doing athletic things. I've heard high level athletes say the same thing. It's not a perfect match, for sure, but it's better than a lot of things in D&D.

Yup. And I think these can also be somewhat on a scale too though. I'd still put that in as an abstraction, but not disassociated. It's an abstraction of the idea that high stress phyiscal moves take a toll on the body and require some recovery time before attempting again. And sure. We could abstract in a more detailed way and instead of having "X/day", say something like "requires X hours of rest to recover from this move" (and perhaps even some healing spells/potions that could speed this up even). But those are just details of abstraction. It's still a reasonable abstraction IMO.

And yeah, we always have to be aware of the need of game balance versus realism as well. But you can lean more towards the disassociated side the more you are weighting "game balance" over "realism" though.


And I think that's really what triggers people more than anything else - things not working the way that they expect them to. That might be the mechanics, or the process, or any number of a different things. Even the layout - I think a lot of the complaints come from the fact that 4e nixed the 'mixed mechanics and fluff' presentation model in exchange of the more M:tG-esque "mechanics are mechanics, and the fluff is separate" model.

Things not being the way people expect them to be causes this kind of dissonance and strong emotional reaction.

Uncanny valley, more or less. Or just "broken expectations". Though sometimes, I just think it's a matter of competing assumptions about terminology as well. Which could be resolved with better definitions in game.


My big issue is with names that don't actually fit. 5e's dispel magic is a key example--it doesn't dispel magic generally, it dispels some spell effects. It doesn't affect magic items, creatures created by magic (ie skeletons) unless they say it does (the Animated Armor being one of the few that does), doesn't do anything about the copious amounts of magical-but-not-spell effects out there, etc. Or at least requires DM interpolation to do anything. Same with antimagic field's description, which, if taken seriously, would be super bad. Because one of the founding principles of 5e's magic system (such as they are) is that background magic is a fundamental part of everything. So cutting stuff off from that means Bad Things Happen (of the "regular stuff stops working, physics breaks down" variety). Heck, it doesn't even stop a dragon's breath, despite that being explicitly small-m magical. Which requires a whole Sage Advice chunk about it to make any kind of sense.

I agree with the point you're making, but not sure I agree with the example. This falls into the "competing assumptions about terminology". And what's funny is that I've seen this exact conflict come up many times (even in this forum about this comic). Folks thinking that an AMF would somehow deactivate Xykon, for example. But this depends on a misunderstanding/confusion over what most games (and certainly D&D) mean when they say "magic", specifically within the context of what you are dispelling.

To me, magic is "what is making/sustaining a change in the world right now". Once the change is made/complete/permanent, it's now "reality", and not magic. And sure, this gets confusing when you consider that things created via magic may themselves show up under detect magic (cause they are magical in origin). But they aren't actively (magically) making changes to reality. A dominate spell on someone is actively/magically affecting them, so you can dispell that. A mage armor spell is actively/magically generating a protective shield around someone, so you can dispell that. Seems pretty straightforward to me. And since the spell affects active magic at that moment it's cast, you can't use it to prevent spells from being cast and taking effect Again. Seems pretty clear. If I've created a magic item, the "magic" used in the creation of the item has already passed. The item now "is". There's nothing to dispell. The item isn't changing, nor does it only exist for the duration of some other effect that is sustaining its existence.

I guess we could also point to this as a balance thing, where "stuff that you had to spend exp points to create can't just be waved away with a spell that doesn't cost exp to cast". The whole "stuff with a duration can be dispelled" is a pretty easy distinction to make IMO and "fits" thematically. I get that there can be confusion over the name, I guess. But to me, this has alwasy been quite clear, and I've often been surprised at people not understanding why AMF can't deactivate undead (for example).

[Jakinbandw]

Thinking about it, my system's biggest disassociated mechanic comes at the start of combat. The GM marks down the starting zones for the PCs and their opposition, and then each player adds a zone to the map that the GM can veto. I wrote this mechanic in, because I wanted GMs to be free to have fights start anywhere, and I noticed that players often seemed kinda bored while waiting for the GM to think up, than draw out the zones to make proper battle map. It was a way to keep players involved, rather than leave them sitting bored for too long. In practice, I also found it made map design easier on the GM, as it required less in the moment creativity to make more interesting maps.

It's completely disassociated, because it doesn't represent anything the character could interact with. I'm not sure if it's something I'll keep. It's another thing that players have to be taught, and while in my tests it's been useful, I worry that the benefits aren't worth the extra effort, and disassociation.

I'm actually curious on what the people here think. I have a rough idea of what rules light, or people coming from more narrative focused games would think, but I'm not sure how more traditional gamers would see this.

[KorvinStarmast]

Non-indicative nomenclature is the bane of all fields that accumulate jargon. D&D has it bad for variety of topics, and D&D hobbyists occasionally manage to double down on it even when there's no need. Tell me about it. When writing (or revising) doctrinal material in the military, the core guidance is "say what you mean and mean what you say" but the unique and contextual meaning of some terms (words and phrases) usually requires a glossary. And we don't always get one, although the DICNAVAB (Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations) was sometimes helpful.

[ComicSansSeraph]

When it does something I personally dislike but I already used "immersion-breaking".

[kyoryu]

Thinking about it, my system's biggest disassociated mechanic comes at the start of combat. The GM marks down the starting zones for the PCs and their opposition, and then each player adds a zone to the map that the GM can veto. I wrote this mechanic in, because I wanted GMs to be free to have fights start anywhere, and I noticed that players often seemed kinda bored while waiting for the GM to think up, than draw out the zones to make proper battle map. It was a way to keep players involved, rather than leave them sitting bored for too long. In practice, I also found it made map design easier on the GM, as it required less in the moment creativity to make more interesting maps.

It's completely disassociated, because it doesn't represent anything the character could interact with. I'm not sure if it's something I'll keep. It's another thing that players have to be taught, and while in my tests it's been useful, I worry that the benefits aren't worth the extra effort, and disassociation.

I'm actually curious on what the people here think. I have a rough idea of what rules light, or people coming from more narrative focused games would think, but I'm not sure how more traditional gamers would see this.

If you're concerned about it being disassociative, do something like this:

1. Start with a/several zones for PCs to start with, as you do now.
2. Let each player propose a new zone to start with, along with a description of how they/the party could get there
3. Based on what that would take, come up with a difficulty and appropriate skill to get there.
4. If they fail, they must start in the regular zone (something got in their way and they had to retreat to the party).

[Aquillion]

For 4e in particular, it's important to point out that the fact that it felt like a videogame was by design. WotC intentionally designed it with videogame-like mechanics that were difficult to play via tabletop (https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) because they wanted to push D&D Insider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%26D_Insider), especially the VTT it was intended to get, which they hoped would eventually become a D&D MMORPG.

For complicated reasons, the 4e team had to convince Hasbro that they were going to make a lot more money than tabletop games (even D&D) normally do, and making the end-goal "produce a MMO" (or something effectively similar to one, since Hasbro didn't have the rights to make a D&D MMO at the time) was the only way they could accomplish that. Hence, everything about 4e was built with that in mind.

Then the VTT fell through and the whole thing fell apart, leaving us with a game that was intentionally designed to be painful to play without a VTT component that didn't even exist...

[Silly Name]

Yup. And I think these can also be somewhat on a scale too though. I'd still put that in as an abstraction, but not disassociated. It's an abstraction of the idea that high stress phyiscal moves take a toll on the body and require some recovery time before attempting again. And sure. We could abstract in a more detailed way and instead of having "X/day", say something like "requires X hours of rest to recover from this move" (and perhaps even some healing spells/potions that could speed this up even). But those are just details of abstraction. It's still a reasonable abstraction IMO.

I think the dissociation comes from treating athletic feats as discrete and separate things a character can do. A professional weight-lifter will be exhausted by partecipating in a competition, and I know they can't lift up as much weight as they theoretically can an infinite number of times per day, as they have to recuperate... But that also means they're exhausted, and aren't going to run a 200m sprint after lifting 150Kg.

But if I can do that in a game, it feels weird - I'm too tired to deadlift again until I rest, but I'm also still capable of doing other physically exerting things... why? How? Those mechanics cease to map onto reality if we abstract them too much instead of, I don't know, tying them to a stamina system of sorts.

[KorvinStarmast]

For 4e in particular, it's important to point out that the fact that it felt like a videogame was by design. WotC intentionally designed it with videogame-like mechanics that were difficult to play via tabletop (https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) because they wanted to push D&D Insider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%26D_Insider), especially the VTT it was intended to get, which they hoped would eventually become a D&D MMORPG.

For complicated reasons, the 4e team had to convince Hasbro that they were going to make a lot more money than tabletop games (even D&D) normally do, and making the end-goal "produce a MMO" (or something effectively similar to one, since Hasbro didn't have the rights to make a D&D MMO at the time) was the only way they could accomplish that. Hence, everything about 4e was built with that in mind.
It appears that they are trying to do that again, with the D&Done thing they are looking to release in 2024, purchase of DDB, and their VTT of the future being something coming "soon" ...

[False God]

For 4e in particular, it's important to point out that the fact that it felt like a videogame was by design. WotC intentionally designed it with videogame-like mechanics that were difficult to play via tabletop (https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) because they wanted to push D&D Insider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%26D_Insider), especially the VTT it was intended to get, which they hoped would eventually become a D&D MMORPG.

For complicated reasons, the 4e team had to convince Hasbro that they were going to make a lot more money than tabletop games (even D&D) normally do, and making the end-goal "produce a MMO" (or something effectively similar to one, since Hasbro didn't have the rights to make a D&D MMO at the time) was the only way they could accomplish that. Hence, everything about 4e was built with that in mind.

Then the VTT fell through and the whole thing fell apart, leaving us with a game that was intentionally designed to be painful to play without a VTT component that didn't even exist...

Your talk of it being "difficult" and "painful" to play without a VTT is hyperbole not even supported by your article.

I've heard a lot of complaints about 4E, but this is the first time I've ever heard someone say its mechanics were hard to play at the table.