Quote from: RandallS;388993Of course not, as they don't like 4e. However, many of them bought every 3.x item WOTC published. And some have just about every D&D item TSR or WOTC published prior to 4e. Some like me, do have the first three 4e books, but did not buy any more.

WOTC decided that the money of everyone who did like find the narrow focus of 4e to their taste wasn't any good. That's their decision, but considering the cost of continuing to make older edition material available as PDFs was very low and that terminating the D20 trademark license to allow 3rd party publishers to easily continue to support 3.x did not save them a penny, the business sense of their decision is highly questionable.

Bullshit. You guys were unhappy before they pulled the PDFs. You guys were unhappy that 4E wasn't going to be OGL. I don't think old PDFs and the d20 STL were going to make it any better. You guys would still be pissed.

If you guys were going to be pissed regardless, why should WotC try to please you?

Quote from: RandallS;388993Of course not, as they don't like 4e. However, many of them bought every 3.x item WOTC published. And some have just about every D&D item TSR or WOTC published prior to 4e. Some like me, do have the first three 4e books, but did not buy any more.

WOTC decided that the money of everyone who did like find the narrow focus of 4e to their taste wasn't any good. That's their decision, but considering the cost of continuing to make older edition material available as PDFs was very low and that terminating the D20 trademark license to allow 3rd party publishers to easily continue to support 3.x did not save them a penny, the business sense of their decision is highly questionable.

I don't know about the business sense of this succession of marketing decisions. If they had a clear goal that has been fulfilled in excess of their own expectations, it isn't clear to me.

What I do know is that I fit your profile of the first paragraph.

Quote from: Akrasia;388750In the sense that I've used different systems with the same group of players in which familiarity/unfamiliarity with the systems in question was not an issue (everyone was adequately familiar with both systems) and in which we liked both systems.  Yet, nonetheless, the mechanics of the systems played a role in the degree of immersion enjoyed by the participants.  That suggests to me that these experiences cannot be entirely 'explained away' by non-mechanics factors, as you seem to be suggesting.

Once again, there's nothing here for me to analyse and examine. If you think that, you are welcome to, but simply saying "I know all relevant factors and it was this one" without providing adequate information for others to decide if you are correct makes it extremely hard for other people to engage with your ideas in any serious way.

I, you may notice, try not to do that, and tell longer anecdotes about my play experiences because I try to give people a fair account of all relevant factors. I answer questions about them as well when people request further information. I find this makes my examples much more useful, both to myself and others.

QuoteNonetheless, it strikes me as simply obvious that mechanics plays a role in facilitating/impeding 'immersion', and that this simply cannot be reduced to factors such as liking/disliking the game systems in question.  LordVreeg's example of 'fate points' does a good job in illustrating this.  For some games I think that a mechanic of this sort is an excellent idea.  But it seems obvious that it is a disassociative mechanic.  Characters in the world do not stop and ask themselves: "Now that I've just had my arm chopped off, perhaps I should go back in time and force that goblin to swing his scimitar again?"

See my comments on genre-emulation to LVR.

QuoteIf your position is in fact that mechanics do not "play a particularly important role" as opposed to "no role at all", then I suspect that our disagreement is simply over the importance of the role played by mechanics.  I think that they play an important role, but other factors are important as well.  (I'm not sure on what the precise weightings would be.)

I think they do not play a particularly important role. I think that the role they play in causing or prevent immersion is not in any case intrinsic to them, but has to do with their application and use by individuals at the table. Since the rules don't exist in the game except in their application and use I don't see any discussion that tries to get away from discussing how they are applied and used in specific contexts as useful or particularly sound.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;388821But less than a page before writing this, you wrote: "I do think that there are mechanics that are not intended to mimic some feature of the world's physics and that offer incentives to players to react to them without requiring them to think about things from an in-character perspective."

Which is basically the same definition of "dissociated mechanic" that's been posted multiple times by multiple people in this very thread. So on the one hand you think there are dissociated mechanics; and on the other you claim they don't exist.

I don't think the mechanics I mentioned are properly called "dissociated mechanics" because I don't think they bear on immersion at all. I also think calling them "dissociated mechanics" falsely ascribes some sort of essential quality or property to them that they do not have. It is a semantic trick on your part, as most of your arguments surrounding definitions have been so far.

I would be happy to explain what kinds of mechanics I was referring to if anyone else is curious.

QuoteThis is true. You are repeatedly stated now that you are deliberately attempting to confuse the conversation by subverting the definitions of terminology which has (in some cases) been used with great success for more than a decade. This, in case we're unclear here, is what I'm defining as "deliberately miscommunicating".

You appear to love arbitrarily defining things. Since you don't appear to understand this, let me state it quite bluntly:

Arbitrary definitions by dickheads like yourself on the internet are worth nothing, even if you've managed to convince a handful of other dickheads that you're clever. A definition has to be shown to be sound when questioned, and you have not done that.

Instead, you've whined about how mean I'm being, you've complained that your e-buddies like your terms so they must be OK, and you've failed to answer any of the challenges to the definitions that I've raised.

QuoteAnd you've admitted that you're deliberately engaging in troll-like behavior by antagonizing Trollman (and since you're engaging in the same behavior with others, the admission extends beyond Trollman).

Congratulations, you have discovered this board allows personal attacks and acrimonious debate and it only took you three years of membership to do so.

Frankly, this argument has been going on for years now, and I don't deny that I don't take some of the more troglodytic intellects of this board all that seriously. You are now part of that august company, congratulations!

QuoteAnd you're simultaneously claiming explicitly contradictory things in alternating messages in order to sow more confusion.

I am rejecting your made-up, unsound terminology entirely and attempting to replace it with plain language statements about actual play and tentative suggestions for terminology which I will happily discuss and defend should they be challenged.

QuoteAnd after being politely asked to stop in this behavior, you have proudly announced that you're going to continue engaging in it.

So you're a demonstrated, self-admitted, and unrepentant troll.

So I'm doing wasting my time with you.

To everybody else: I recommend we all simply ignore Pseudo's trolling. It will probably be mildly entertaining to see how long he continues to post his nonsense if we all refuse to acknowledge it.

What a pretentious whiner!

If you can't defend your ideas when they are challenged, and must instead complain that the person challenging them is mean, you are simply intellectually bankrupt.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388751Too Broad?
Well, I did not make those up.  It's not my proposed definition.  Those were from Wikipedia, and the online dictionary.  I use the term because it has a previously defined meaning, and I don't want to be accused of creating a whole logical fallacy because I am basing a supposition on my own definitions.

Wikipedia is not a good source for definitions (though I don't mind it for facts). "Metagaming" as it currently stands isn't in most dictionaries, and I'd argue that it's actually an extremely vague neologism pretending to a level of precision that it lacks, especially since it's mainly used in a pejorative, not descriptive sense.  

Semantic imprecision is actually pretty common for pejorative terms, so "metagaming" as a term isn't unusual in having that property. The point of using a pejorative term, after all, is to insult and express disapproval of, not to accurately describe.

QuoteAnd when you say, "It also means that important out-of-character knowledge becomes metagaming instead of serving to enrich and inform the characters and the world itself.", well, yes this is certainly metagaming by definition.

I'm extremely troubled by the idea that knowing how the world works is "metagaming". We aren't even talking mechanically here, we're talking genre emulation. It strikes me that if simply knowing how the world works is metagaming, then there is nothing that is not metagaming, since it's unclear how the character's expectations of how the world works wouldn't also qualify as metagaming somehow.

After all, if the player's expectations and the character's expectations are identical or at least extremely similar, it strikes me that it would be more accurate to describe the situation as one of immersion, rather than the reinforcing of a distinction between the two (which so far is the minimal condition all definitions of metagaming proposed on this thread have agreed on).

QuoteHowever, I also agree with your use of the term about prioritisation, as there are all sorts of rules, especially in encounter and adventure design, that place the mechanical constrcution as a higher priority than in-game/setting logic.

Experience systems also tend to be more mechanically driven than motivated by in-setting logic, IMHO. That's not a hard and fast rule, of course.

In general, I find the systems that are least accounted for in the world tend to be ones that are not done at the table during a session, or at least not during the part of the session where the characters are being performed by players. Adventure design, leveling up, etc. all happen on their own, outside of performing the characters, and I don't think of them as directly bearing on immersion (though they may have secondary effects which do).

QuoteThe piece on genre emulation is well written and certainly raises a valid point.  It is a metagaming mechanic.  No way around that.  But if a mechanic aids genre emulation but is metagaming, do these two facts cancel in terms of the immersive quality?  Maybe they do.  AS 2-Fishes mentions, and rightly, and as I have also said, there are more ingredients than just the rules in creating immersion.

I think this is just the pretzel logic of some of these terms tangling itself up here. I think we can get out of this not by trying to arrange the terms correctly, but by throwing out a lot of them and rejigging the few that are left.

In this case, I wouldn't want to describe mechanics or OOC knowledge that aid one in portraying one's character in the world as "metagaming". I think the use of that term just confuses the issue by importing ideas attached to the term that are not in the things themselves.

I had no idea 'troglodytic intellect' referred to such prodigious eloquence and extraordinarily coherent thought!

Off to the Alexandrian to see if there's a page on how cave dwelling can help me achieve this level.

Quote from: Doom;389078I had no idea 'troglodytic intellect' referred to such prodigious eloquence and extraordinarily coherent thought!

Off to the Alexandrian to see if there's a page on how cave dwelling can help me achieve this level.

If you find discussions of RPG theory as it currently stands "extraordinarily coherent", you oughta be arrested by for abusing the language.

The vast majority of it, of which this thread is no exception, begins by arbitrarily defining terms, finding two to four people who agree with you on what the term means, and then pretending that this is a widespread consensus.

The second step involves pointing to the definitions and demanding all debate take place within the space they demarcate, with no discussion of foundational issues (Is this a good term? Does it accurately describe things? Does it lead to absurd conclusions?).

The third is to whine and complain when others challenge you and to speak only to the echo chamber.

That was what the Forge did, it's what happened with storygaming, the OSR, and now the Immersion people. I have had the same argument with each group in turn, and I'm sure I will have the same argument with whatever proselytic mongoloid horde comes riding over the horizon tomorrow.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;388823Or where does 4E fit into that? It is set up as a "roleplaying game" in terms of purpose, but generally uses narrative/dissociative justification for its mechanics as opposed to the simulationist/associative justification of mechanics in most games on the "roleplaying games" side of the spectrum you describe.

I think it's a mistake to equate narrative mechanics with dissociated mechanics. The former are always the latter, but the latter are not always the former.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;388827When what you want from a game is not cinematic action, 4E isn't that good of a game, particularly because unlike earlier editions of D&D 4E is focused like a laser on what it aims to do.

Also an interesting topic: The 4th Edition designers picked a "sweet spot" and consistently aimed the game to hit that sweet spot over and over and over again. It pretty much goes without saying that if their "sweet spot" was also your sweet spot, then 4th Edition is going to be awesome for you. And it's equally obvious that if it wasn't your sweet spot -- or if you actually liked the variety to be found in previous editions -- then 4th Edition was going to be less appealing to you.

But here's where the question becomes interesting: Was it a good thing for the industry's gateway game to abandon broad appeal in order to increase its appeal to a narrower demographic?

I would argue no. I think it's bad for the industry.

I'm just going to ignore your misuse of the term "immersion" under my new policy of ignoring that sort of thing.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388884As for the distinction between "roleplaying" and "storytelling" - I think that any role playing game worth its salt is going to include both. In games with GMs, the GM pretty much has to take on a full authorial hat most of the time. But the players have to do that too, at least during chargen. While there are a couple of lifepath based character generators out there which are played through entirely in the first person - those are rare. And deservedly so in my opinion.

Good point regarding the inherent dissociation of most character generation mechanics. A few interesting thoughts:

(1) Not all associated mechanics are necessarily roleplaying mechanics (which clarifies an error in my previous thinking). For example, character generation mechanics in which you roll 3d6 in order for ability scores are arguably associated mechanics -- they model the completely random generation of any person's natural talents.

(2) Although most character generation mechanics are dissociated, it's comparatively rarer (at least in traditional RPGs) to see actual narrative mechanics. There are exceptions, of course. (HeroQuest, for example.) But robust narrative-based character generation systems are more typically found in narrative-based games.

Which is perhaps unsurprising, but it might be interesting to see what happens if you created a strongly narrative-based character generation system and wedded it to a strongly roleplaying-based game system.

(3) OTOH, some character generation systems have succeeded in incorporating associated roleplaying mechanics. For example, the enlistment system in Traveller: In choosing which service your character will enlist in, the mechanics are requiring you to make a choice as if you were your character.

Quote from: Imperator;388886They are not useful to me, and I have only seen them used in imaginary Internet wars.

It's the imaginary Internet wars that are the worst. I still have vivid hallucinations about the Pelican vs. Unicorn World War of 1997.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;389087It's the imaginary Internet wars that are the worst. I still have vivid hallucinations about the Pelican vs. Unicorn World War of 1997.

:D

Quote from: RandallSOf course not, as they don't like 4e. However, many of them bought every 3.x item WOTC published. And some have just about every D&D item TSR or WOTC published prior to 4e. Some like me, do have the first three 4e books, but did not buy any more.

This. I was a long-time purchaser of 3x products, and at the same time was looking for something new in games like Iron Heroes and such. If the game had been different I would have bought pretty much all of it just like last time... or at least all the stuff I thought was any good (I skipped the completes after the fourth one, as they repeated themselves in their topics and lacked core classes... just an example).

So... yeah... they made a game I wasn't particularly interested in, I picked up the corebooks and found that out, and off to the used bookstore they went, hopefully to be bought by someone who would get some use out of 'em.

If I criticize 4e, it's not because I'm looking for something to hate. There is no sinister ulterior motive. It's just because the material is not to my taste.

If I say 4e is losing a customer with me, they're losing a customer with me. And a relevant one. It's kind of silly to dismiss every customer lost because they didn't like the game as irrelevant because they don't like the game. That's like saying people who like the game are irrelevant to it's success because they like it.

This forum was pretty pro-D20 before the announcement, or at the very least 3x didn't generate the same hate 4e does. So it might make sense to consider that there's actually something different about 4e (even if it's just advertising or politics).

Quote from: Peregrin;388501You mean like how Arneson used to do with lots of games before he applied the concept to Chainmail?

Call me when someone invents Chess the RPG.

I wish i knew how to multiquote to put your comment in context.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegToo Broad?
Well, I did not make those up. It's not my proposed definition. Those were from Wikipedia, and the online dictionary. I use the term because it has a previously defined meaning, and I don't want to be accused of creating a whole logical fallacy because I am basing a supposition on my own definitions.

Wikipedia is not a good source for definitions (though I don't mind it for facts). "Metagaming" as it currently stands isn't in most dictionaries, and I'd argue that it's actually an extremely vague neologism pretending to a level of precision that it lacks, especially since it's mainly used in a pejorative, not descriptive sense.

Semantic imprecision is actually pretty common for pejorative terms, so "metagaming" as a term isn't unusual in having that property. The point of using a pejorative term, after all, is to insult and express disapproval of, not to accurately describe.

*sigh*  Now this is a stupid circle to have to walk in.

Pseudoephedrine, I'd really do a little more research before assuming that those of us using the term 'Metagaming' are all in the wrong, and accusing us of semantic imprecision.  I'm frankly frustrated as hell trying to move into a real debate and having 80% of your position being, " I don't agree with a very basic and well documented term, and I don't really want to so I'm just going to stonewall on it."
You could always just admit you don't know what you are talking about, or ask the other posters what they think, instead of telling me (and everyone who has used the term in this way, which is a boatload of us) that I don't know what I am talking about.


Well, not that this is worth the time or anything, but I can see that you certainly haven't done the work, by your last couple posts.  It is far too easy to claim 'terminology', and 'pretzel logic', and far too hard to go check around and see what a fucking term means.  Here is a very quick cut and paste from the search, "metagame RPG"

 Metagame
Technically, any game-related concerns that are not part of the game itself, such as out-of-character or rules discussion, but more often used in reference to a player who uses knowledge not possessed by their PC to their advantage (in which case it has a negative connotation).
http://www.gnomestew.com/tools-for-gms/gnomenclature-a-diminutive-rpg-glossary#m

metagaming  act of using outside or previously gained knowledge within a gaming universe for personal gain or advantage
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=metagaming

Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game.
http://dictionary.babylon.com/metagame/

Let me start my argument with a good, solid definition of metagaming.  In role-playing games, a player is metagaming when they use knowledge that is not available to their character in order to change the way they play their character (usually to give them an advantage within the game), such as knowledge of the mathematical nature of character statistics, or the statistics of a creature that the player is familiar with but the character has never encountered. In general, it refers to any gaps between player knowledge and character knowledge which the player acts upon.
http://chalybsanimus.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/why-metagaming-is-bad-or-and-just-how-does-your-character-know-that-pal/

Metagaming, in this context at any rate, refers to one of two things. First, as referred to in Shelly's book, it can refer to anachronisms and otherwise out of place statements and actions. Second (and generally more commonly) it is used to refer to allowing the math of the rules, or knowledge that the character could not possibly have, to impact actions the character takes in game.
http://lordsoftyr.com/node/880

Metagame by definition is a that you play a game and have an advantage in it because of information from external sources;

definition of meta-gaming – meta-gaming often refers to having a character act on knowledge that only the player has access to
http://www.roleplaygateway.com/the-nightingale-ooc-modern-murder-mystery-t36664.html

Our definition of "meta-gaming" is: The use of information your character has no feasible way of knowing.
http://www.ultiaris.com/rules.html

What Is Metagaming?
Metagaming is a pretty generic term, but applied to role playing games it refers to having your character act on knowledge they do not have.
http://www.therpgsite.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=389143

Metagaming is when you use OOC information to benefit your IC position
http://www.therpgsite.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=389143

Metagaming is when you use any sort of information that was gained OOC (Out of Character) to use IC (In Character)
http://secondliferoleplay.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/metagaming/

Metagaming
 In simple terms, it is using out-of-game information, or resources, to affect one's in-game decisions.
http://www.exaria.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rules_of_Conduct

Metagaming: A Definition  taking Out of Context information for your own gain,
http://sbep.wikia.com/wiki/SBEP-Roleplay

Metagame
 Meta-game mechanics are actions by the players which do not represent a corresponding action by the PC -- such as drama points spending.
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/glossary.html

Metagame
To calculate success/failure of an action by reviewing character stats and game mechanics, as opposed to acting based on character personality and what the ‘character’ knows.
http://rpg.geekdo.com/wiki/page/RPG_Glossary

Metagamer
A roleplaying personality type.
A gamer who uses outside knowledge or rules knowledge to game advantage.
http://www.rpg.net/larp/papers/glossary.html

Metagame
Technically, any game-related concerns that are not part of the game itself, such as out-of-character or rules discussion, but more often used in reference to a player who uses knowledge not possessed by their PC to their advantage
http://willforshire.forumakers.com/general-dnd-discussion-f3/rpg-glossary-t40.htm

Metagaming: Bringing OOC knowledge into an IC situation
http://www.roleplaygateway.com/rpg-terms-glossary-t4220.html

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine In this case, I wouldn't want to describe mechanics or OOC knowledge that aid one in portraying one's character in the world as "metagaming".

Sorry you feel that way.  But using OOC knowledge in playing your character is metagaming.  period.  we can talk about what that means or what it affects, but that is the RPG definition of the word.

Quote from: beejazz;389159It's kind of silly to dismiss every customer lost because they didn't like the game as irrelevant because they don't like the game. That's like saying people who like the game are irrelevant to it's success because they like it.

Especially when every dm you lose as a customer means that you probably lose an entire group of 5-6 people as customers as well.

D&D isn't like other games or media products.  It technically has a genre, but not really, and by right of it's position in the market kind of has the position of having to be "all things to all people", or at least have enough to offer everyone that the can find their own fun with it.

With a horror game, for instance, you don't do much thinking about people who don't like horror most of the time (unless that's your goal, the "for the rest of us" approach).  You just make a horror game, and hopefully it's one horror fans will like.  Same with a SF game or a generic game, or whatever.  They have particular kinds of fans, that's who you mainly shoot for.  

D&D is different.  It's the big boy on the block.  Everyone plays D&D, and that brings with it a host of expectations, and while you certainly can't meet all of them, if you want to maintain that universality, you need to make a game flexible enough and diverse enough to keep the big tent big.  

But 4e didn't do that.  4e said, "This is how the game is supposed to be played, this is the style, if you don't like it, fuck off."

It should not be any surprise to anyone that some people responded poorly, and either walked on the game, or felt betrayed by a game that had previously been pretty accepting.