The Gaming Den

Swordslinger wrote:Yes. Having wounds implies sections of your body are getting outright destroyed. Now I don't care if you do happen to be the terminator, Superman or an everyday soldier, wounds are going to slow you down. Sitting there at 1 hit point where a cat's bite or claw could disable you should not be you walking around fine.

Maybe, but the wounds aren't necessarily crippling or even debilitating in any way. In any case, 0 Hit Points doesn't mean necessarily mean Death. 0 Hit Points generally means that you go unconscious. Any number of non-crippling actions can reduce you to that state.
So taking 50/100 hit points doesn't necessarily have to slow you down.

The two are inter-related. If Hit point loss doesn't come with wound penalties and it's supposed to be toughness based, that's dissociative.

We've already gone over this multiple times with multiple people.
If you're going to continue ignoring everything, then that's your problem.

We're talking about D&D and similar games here

Are we? I thought we'd moved onto general gameplay and mechanics. I guess not.
As a side note, 3E and 4E are both explicitly combined plot armor/durability systems. 3E also has the massive damage rule (which is terrible).

Red_Rob wrote: YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT DISASSOCIATED MEANS.

Disassociated means the mechanics cannot be described in the game world. Thats it.

Link to the definition? Dissociation just means that the two concepts are separated. Anything can be described in the game world as long as you're willing to go into the retard world of explanations, like assuming that characters are arbitrarily tough beings who are only inconvenienced when the final drop of blood is extracted. That's pretty dumb, but it's a "description" of the game world.

Novembermike wrote:Link to the definition?

The term was pretty much coined over by the guy at the Alexandrian (or rather, he popularized it). He used it to refer to the disconnect between the character's perspective and narrator's perspective. It has never had anything to do with 'realism.' Realism means fuck all. It is a separate discussion.

Novembermike wrote:Dissociation just means that the two concepts are separated.

You have this completely right, and in the case of dissociated mechanics the dissociation refers to the concept the player has and the concept the character has. You can totally have something 'dissociated' from reality, but that's not what we mean when we say dissociated. We are talking about mechanics that are dissociated from the game world.

Novembermike wrote:Anything can be described in the game world as long as you're willing to go into the retard world of explanations

It totally can, as long as you're willing to let the characters themself have those explanations.

HP as plot armor is dissociated as soon as riders are introduced, because the player sees, "weapons with riders [i.e.] poisons are more likely to hit my character, the rest occasionally get dodged completely using plot armor." While from the character's perspective, no such thing can be true. If it were true, his world would stop making sense, because it would mean poison made weapons more accurate.

Now, you could totally offer that explanation to the character, but that means it has to be a part of your game world. As in, you have to sit down and tell the players, "you're in a world where poison makes things more accurate, and your characters know this."

If you use the narrative to resolve something the player couldn't possibly grasp, you have in your hand a mechanic that is dissociated from the game world.

If your argument is, "I think people who are really tough and ignore pain are unrealistic," cool. I'm with you. So is flinging fireballs. If your argument is, "well, it must be dissociative because it's unrealistic," you're using dissociative incorrectly. It isn't sufficient that something not make sense, it has to be something the characters can't know/understand. And characters can know they're unrealistically, flat out ridiculously tough. They can brag about shrugging off an axe to the face. They can't talk about how poisons make weapons more accurate.

Wonderful. Now that that's out of the way.

I don't think Vancian casting is dissociated. It's easy to associate, actually, though when I first encountered it in the first Dragonlance series way back when, it seemed very, very strange. Regardless, when spells are cast, they are ripped out of whatever is used to contain them and into oblivion, whether it's a scroll or your memory. By dedicating more time to studying the same spell more often, you can retain it even after casting it, but it will get foggier.

An interesting side effect of this not represented in game mechanics is that a wizard could cast from his spellbook, at cost of being unable to memorize the spell again until it was replaced in the book.

I was under the impression that in older editions the pages of a spellbook *could* be used as scrolls.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:I was under the impression that in older editions the pages of a spellbook *could* be used as scrolls.

I hate being the 1e guy (only actually played the thing once) but:

Broken book of brokenness (pg 80)* wrote:In extremis, the DM may allow a character to cast directly from any sort of spell book just as if the book were a scroll. The book must be of appropriate sort so that the spell matches the profession of the caster, i.e. magic-user spell, magic-user spell book. The caster must be able to know and use the spell in question (Note that in this regard, reading directly from a spell book differs from the use of scroll spells.)

Direct casting of a spell from a spell book automatically destroys that spell. There is also a 1% chance per level of the spell that the spells immediately preceding and following the spell cast will likewise be destroyed. There is an additional 1% chance that the casting of a spell directly from a spell book will destroy the entire book.

*i.e. Unearthed Arcana

DSMatticus wrote: HP as plot armor is dissociated as soon as riders are introduced, because the player sees, "weapons with riders [i.e.] poisons are more likely to hit my character, the rest occasionally get dodged completely using plot armor." While from the character's perspective, no such thing can be true. If it were true, his world would stop making sense, because it would mean poison made weapons more accurate.

That assumes characters fight enough poisoned weapons to make the connection. But yeah, you're right plot armor (or really D&D hit points in general) can be dissociative.

But lets face, it either way you get the entire game has tons of dissociative things that make that distinction seem totally minor. Lets take a look at them:

• Round Structure: Move and hand off an item in a relay style each round. The item travels super fast in 6 seconds. But the characters are supposed to see this happening in real time.
  
  DR/AC system: Both of these can involve an attack: Not penetrating or bouncing off, and you have no idea which is which necessarily. Your attack could fail to penetrate an iron golem because of its DR, or it could "miss" because of its natural armor. In one case you're better off swinging harder (power attack), in the other case, swinging harder actually hurts you.
  
  Auto-rangefinder: Your characters automatically seem to know exactly how far everything is in combat, to the point that they can measure their 400 ft range attack spell to the exact maximum range. Characters are supposed to be in the thick of combat fighting for their lives, yet they play as though they're master tacticians with tape measures.

With all this crap associated with D&D in terms of dissociative mechanics, it's silly that you're making a big deal of plot armor hit points. The whole system has much bigger offenders.

Autorangefinder is actually relatively simple, it's the cheepest method used by golf ameatures to determine how far from the pin they are. Given the common height of the flag pin they can determine how far they are by how it compares to something extended at a short distance from their eyes. Most golfers use a pair of binoculars with markings but you could also use your outstretched arm and thumb. Like flagpoles, heights in D&D are generally really close together, far more so than in real life. I haven't done the math, but I think you could get a good distance system using "rule of thumb." (Literally.) Remember the D&D system has a quantum distance unit of 5' (the square) so getting distance down to a few squares is more than enough to maintain the association.

Chamomile wrote: I don't think Vancian casting is dissociated. It's easy to associate, actually, though when I first encountered it in the first Dragonlance series way back when, it seemed very, very strange. Regardless, when spells are cast, they are ripped out of whatever is used to contain them and into oblivion, whether it's a scroll or your memory. By dedicating more time to studying the same spell more often, you can retain it even after casting it, but it will get foggier.

Sounds like a nice spell system, although it's not Vancian.

Halloween Jack wrote:

Chamomile wrote: I don't think Vancian casting is dissociated. It's easy to associate, actually, though when I first encountered it in the first Dragonlance series way back when, it seemed very, very strange. Regardless, when spells are cast, they are ripped out of whatever is used to contain them and into oblivion, whether it's a scroll or your memory. By dedicating more time to studying the same spell more often, you can retain it even after casting it, but it will get foggier.

Sounds like a nice spell system, although it's not Vancian.

It isn't? That sounds exactly like the vancian system.

NOT TO INTERRUPT THIS THRILLING BACK-AND-FORTH ABOUT DEFINITIONS, BUT THE "CAT ATTACK KILLS YOU" IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH HP; IT'S A PROBLEM WITH THE CAT. CAT ATTACKS SHOULD NOT DO ANY DAMAGE. I REALIZE THAT SOMEONE IS GOING TO ARGUE ABOUT THIS BECAUSE CATS CAN BE REALLY NASTY WHEN PROVOKED, BUT PLEASE PREEMPTIVELY SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH AND REALIZE THAT THE SYSTEM WE'RE TRYING TO MODEL IS ONE WHERE DAMAGE REPRESENTS SOMEONE HITTING YOU WITH AN AXE, NOT A CAT BATTING AT YOU.

Solitary cats should be able to hurt you if and only if you are already at zero hit points.

well, or the cat Crit Hits you, and then you crit fail a save vs gm is being a dick roll

That's a DM ability, not an inherent RAW cat ability, though.

Psychic Robot wrote:NOT TO INTERRUPT THIS THRILLING BACK-AND-FORTH ABOUT DEFINITIONS, BUT THE "CAT ATTACK KILLS YOU" IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH HP; IT'S A PROBLEM WITH THE CAT.

Actually it's a problem with the integer minimum of hit points and damage. One can argue for fractional damage and one can also argue that you should have a minimum number of hit points so that the average person isn't knocked out by a single minimal damage hit. The real problem came from the notion that a lot of early deisgners wanted this to be the case for the magic-user.

It's one of the reasons why a very popular house rule was your first level used max HP.

Swordslinger wrote: DR/AC system: Both of these can involve an attack: Not penetrating or bouncing off, and you have no idea which is which necessarily. Your attack could fail to penetrate an iron golem because of its DR, or it could "miss" because of its natural armor. In one case you're better off swinging harder (power attack), in the other case, swinging harder actually hurts you.

Natural armour is extra fun with plot HPs. A miss hits the creature (but thwacks it in its natural armour), a hit (high roll) means it dodged but spent plot HPs.
Welcome to the mirror universe.

I think GURPS gives armour both an 'AC bonus' and damage reduction, but yeah...Never liked armour based AC. I suppose you could visualise it as a difference between armoured plates you need to get between, and completely contiguous armour that you have to try to cut through, but its a stretch.

CCarter wrote: Natural armour is extra fun with plot HPs. A miss hits the creature (but thwacks it in its natural armour), a hit (high roll) means it dodged but spent plot HPs.
Welcome to the mirror universe.

Well that's the thing, I'm not arguing that plot armor isn't a little dissociative, but I'm saying it's just one minor dissociation in a system that's already heavily dissociative, so it's not even a big deal.

I think GURPS gives armour both an 'AC bonus' and damage reduction, but yeah...Never liked armour based AC. I suppose you could visualise it as a difference between armoured plates you need to get between, and completely contiguous armour that you have to try to cut through, but its a stretch.

GURPS damage is actually very good for not being dissociative. Armor provides DR, shields basically add to your defense to block or dodge attacks.

Hit points on the other hand represent body volume and mass, not any kind of plot armor or supernatural toughness. Every attack in GURPS basically is designed to easily describe something in the narrative.

Because GURPS is so realistic like that, it's poor for describing super powered heroes.

Swordslinger wrote: Because GURPS is so realistic like that, it's poor for describing super powered heroes.

Nah, you just need unkillable, DR or ridiculous amounts of strength. I mean, a character with 50hp, 30 hardened DR with "wears no armor" and Unkillable 2 (Achilles Heel: Kryptonite) has most of the toughness stuff that Superman does, depending on the writer. If you're trying to do something more along the lines of Captain America or Spiderman it gets even easier since you just need a more basic level of DR, a high strength and maybe some kind of regeneration.

Swordslinger wrote: Well that's the thing, I'm not arguing that plot armor isn't a little dissociative, but I'm saying it's just one minor dissociation in a system that's already heavily dissociative, so it's not even a big deal.

"It's already bad, so it should be fine to make it worse" doesn't strike me as a great design rationale.

I believe people fall along a sort of continuum as regards ability to suspend disbelief. At one end, you have the Runequest or Harnmaster jerks and at the other end you have people who don't think about contradictions too much and so will consider any sort of system reasonable.
What's interesting though, is that this predicts 4E people actually belong to a couple of differrent groups: the people who think 4E completely makes sense somehow, and the people who consider D&D to have never made sense.
My guess from the sales figures (the old 6 million players vs. 1.5 million figures) would be that the system shifted from about 80th percentile as regards suspension of disbelief to about the 20th percentile. Most RPGs are happy to believe their fighter has 75 hit points and describe 8 hp as 'just a scratch' to them, but going to dying and then getting them back your HP from warlords yelling at you is sufficiently more dumb to pose a problem, however you try to justify this. And they aren't likely to notice/care about natural armour being different from DR (first time I've ever heard anyone even bring this one up, in a long time on teh internetz)

I've actually ran with house rules where armor was DR. Well, half and half; full plate was +4 AC, 4 DR, every fifth point of natural armor got turned into 1 DR. It was for a more gritty, low-fantasy E6 type of campaign.

I really just need to find a good gritty, low-fantasy RPG. My efforts to turn E6 into what I want have been exhaustive and not very successful.

DSMatticus wrote:I've actually ran with house rules where armor was DR. Well, half and half; full plate was +4 AC, 4 DR, every fifth point of natural armor got turned into 1 DR. It was for a more gritty, low-fantasy E6 type of campaign.

I really just need to find a good gritty, low-fantasy RPG. My efforts to turn E6 into what I want have been exhaustive and not very successful.

Try GURPS. Use the light rules to start add in the more complex ones as people get more accustomed.

DSMatticus wrote:I've actually ran with house rules where armor was DR. Well, half and half; full plate was +4 AC, 4 DR, every fifth point of natural armor got turned into 1 DR. It was for a more gritty, low-fantasy E6 type of campaign.

I really just need to find a good gritty, low-fantasy RPG. My efforts to turn E6 into what I want have been exhaustive and not very successful.

I can't vouch for it personally, but I've heard that ripping the mechanics out of the old WEG d6 Star Wars makes a great viking game (you probably also have to reflavor the mechanic skill and so forth). That could work.