A model of immersion

[Telok]

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a new power at (just about) every level" paradigm, not swapping them out means you'd have this catalog of useless, superseded powers.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

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

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

[Waddacku]

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

Accurately predict immersion

The OP's claim is that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why immersion matters more to some than others

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

Why 4e shatters immersion for some

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

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

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

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

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

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

What 4e did wrong.

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

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

-----

Clear as mud?

[JNAProductions]

Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?

[Tanarii]

Druids with just PHB2 is similar, though they get multiple options for beast form powers nearly all the time.

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

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

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

[Quertus]

Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?

CRPGs have always bothered me as not being RPGs.

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

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

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

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

EDIT:

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

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

[Telok]

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

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

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

[Quertus]

Quertus, do you have any other examples of TTRPGs you feel are mislabeled?
Or is it just 4th Edition D&D?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is not an RPG

4e D&D

One of these things is not like the others.

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

[Cluedrew]

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

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

[kyoryu]

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

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

Accurately predict immersion

The OP's claim is that

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

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

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

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

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

Why immersion matters more to some than others

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

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

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

Why 4e shatters immersion for some

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

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

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

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

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

Agreed. That's kinda the point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What 4e did wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have several solutions to this paradox.

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

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

The others are, frankly, rather insulting.

CRPGs have always bothered me as not being RPGs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Telok]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PhoenixPhyre]

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

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

[Quertus]

@kyoryu - yeah, I figured I had misunderstood something: you're not normally the type to make 4 points, then only address 3.

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

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

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

[KorvinStarmast]

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

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

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

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

[Tanarii]

I was thinking about this and came to the startling conclusion that I'm not sure I know what immersion[1] feels like.

It's definitely the state of pulling you out of the game. Other than that, opinions vary.

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

Well, it's real simple: it's a rule that, if you're role-playing, if you're making decisions in character,

• if you don't believe reality works that way, it will never come up;
• if you believe reality works that way, reality works that way.

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

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

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

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

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

They are rules whose scope is inherently mindful of Flow.

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

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's definitely the state of pulling you out of the game. Other than that, opinions vary.

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

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

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

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

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

[icefractal]

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

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

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

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


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

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

[Tanarii]

I guess I've never been in that state at all. My head is always in both places.

Four cups of coffee helps. 😂

[PhoenixPhyre]

Four cups of coffee helps. 😂

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

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

[Telok]

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

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

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

[Quertus]

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

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

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

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

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

[Satinavian]

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

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

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

[Cluedrew]

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

You are OK with drown healing but even just the modifier distribution of 4e* is out of the question? I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

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

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

[kyoryu]

@kyoryu - yeah, I figured I had misunderstood something: you're not normally the type to make 4 points, then only address 3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Quertus]

Let's take this from the top

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

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

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

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

Really?

On the subject of immersion:

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

What did you mean by the bolded bit, then?

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

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

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

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

Agreed. That's kinda the point.

Hmmm… which part of those two paragraphs was the point? For reference,

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example,

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

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

Or this much longer bit:

Spoiler: space walrus

Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We probably disagree here. What's the context?

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

Yeah, this would be a pretty fundamental disagreement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lol. Great visual.

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

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

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

We have several solutions to this paradox.

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

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

The others are, frankly, rather insulting.

We've got some language issues here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing to add here.

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

Again with "reality".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[KorvinStarmast]

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

FWIW, in TSR D&D a lot of extra power, IME, came from various magical items as one grew in level, survived and found various stuff.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But for the most part humans in D&D are considered, by the fiction, to be "normal humans". Just extremely talented ones.

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

[KorvinStarmast]

They're explicitly super heroic.

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

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

That said, I mostly agree with your post.

[PhoenixPhyre]

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

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

That said, I mostly agree with your post.

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

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