What is a "Narrative Mechanic"?

[pemerton]

Suppose that I am a man and english speaking, and my character is a woman and sylvan speaking. We take my human male-voice english-language speech acts to be (say) elven female-voiced sylvan-language speech acts. They're evidently not, but they do supervene. My character surely does not experience my english-language wordings.

The language one is interesting. When I watch (say) Troy, clearly the characters are talking to one another, and in that sense the dialogue is diegetic (cf, say, Orson Welles' narration in The Magnificent Ambersons).

But am I to suppose that they are talking in English, or in Homeric Greek, or in some earlier dialect of Greek?

I think I first consciously encountered this question watching films set in World War II, where some of the characters are clearly, in the fiction, speaking in German, but in the performance are speaking in English. Presumably it also arises in Star Wars, but I didn't think of it as an issue for that film until some time well after I viewed it.

Different films obviously handle this differently - I have a memory of one film, maybe with Jimmy Stewart in it (though my memories could be getting confused) in which the opening scene has a poster or newspaper in a Central European language but then it blurs into the same thing in English, an indication that we the audience are to treat English as standing in for whatever language the characters are "really" speaking.

Less sophisticated is, say, Hogan's Heroes, where I really don't think there is a way to make sense of which conversations take place, within the fiction, in English and which take place, within the fiction, in German.

RPGing uses a variety of techniques here. Your example is analogous to Troy, and so I think the dialogue is best regarded as diegetic, although rendered by the performers in a language other than the "true" fictional language. On the other hand, when the GM says to the players, none of whom is playing a PC who speaks Orcish, "The Orc addresses you in gruff tones in a language you don't understand" we have non-diegetic narration.

Some of the most thoughtful advice on non-diegetic RPG narration, in my view, is found in Vincent Baker's relatively brief GMing advice in In A Wicked Age.

I say that my character Jo jumps. I should think that Jo experiences jumping, but Jo surely doesn't experience my saying that Jo jumps. Therefore my capacity and acts as player in that regard are no more diegetic than if I rolled dice: both represent something in world without being that something.

Your action declaration is player-side non-diegetic narration. As I said in my post that you replied to, the player's statement "I jump" or "I fly" is not a diegetic event.

The narration represents something in the world only in the sense that it describes it, as a particular instance of the general phenomenon of using language to describe things.

Rolling dice, on the other hand, doesn't represent in the same way. It's not a description of anything, nor some other sort of natural or non-natural sign of any imaginary thing. The outcome of the roll is a number, which is a sign. Whether or not it represents anything in the fiction will depend on the details of the RPG being played.

Thus I'm speculating that any game element that has a supervenience relationship with stuff in game world can be said to be diegetic (or more accurately, I'm agreeing with your earlier intuition that it isn't a useful term.)

I think the relationship you are looking for is is a sign of, not is in a supervenience relationship with.

And this makes a classic D&D saving throw "non-diegetic" in your derived sense: the number on the dice is not a sign of anything in the fiction; it is just a number to be correlated with a chart to steer the ensuing narration.

 

[clearstream]

Taking it as a premise that this stress payment correlates with something in the fiction - let's say, very roughly, exertion by the character, then I asked: when did the character exert themself?

Option (1): in the "now" of the fiction, ie when the events of the flashback are now recalled.

Option (2): in the "past" of the fiction, ie when the events of the flashback occurred.

Well, I do agree that it is hypothetically incurred in the past, but consider this case. In the flashback I take four stress (2 for the flashback and 2 for pushing myself) and cross off my last box. I take trauma. It's practically impossible to apply that to all my character actions in the time falling between the flashback and present!

Hence, I assert that we effectively follow the player's timeline, and not the character's, in applying stress.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As a side note i think the reason inspiration never became super popular in d&d is because of that.

That's certainly my problem with it.

 

[billd91]

However, fate points are also more central to the system - You can go forever in D&D without spending Inspiration, and do just fine. But you aren't expected to be very successful if you don't spend Fate Points. You get a few of them to work with, and they refresh at least every session, so even if the GM forgets to Compel, you have at least those few to work with. Hoarding Inspiration for that one time you need it contributes to it getting forgotten.

This is probably one of the main reasons (if multiple) that inspiration often gets forgotten. It's not particularly central to the game play and it becomes easy to forget about and use, even if you have it.

By contrast, other attempts in the d20 family to have similar, player-invoked mechanics have done better in my experience - Force points in the various d20-based Star Wars, and even the Hero points that were part of the optional rules for 3e. While neither was entirely central to most characters (Force users excepted, obviously), they were common enough that players were more aware of them and used them more frequently than inspiration.

 

[FrogReaver]

And this makes a classic D&D saving throw "non-diegetic" in your derived sense: the number on the dice is not a sign of anything in the fiction; it is just a number to be correlated with a chart to steer the ensuing narration.

While it’s a bit abstract saving throws do correspond to something in the fiction - your chance of the effect landing (taking into account your ability to avoid it and the effects ability to land, often based on the stats of another creature).

 

[Umbran]

This is probably one of the main reasons (if multiple) that inspiration often gets forgotten. It's not particularly central to the game play and it becomes easy to forget about and use, even if you have it.

By contrast, other attempts in the d20 family to have similar, player-invoked mechanics have done better in my experience - Force points in the various d20-based Star Wars, and even the Hero points that were part of the optional rules for 3e. While neither was entirely central to most characters (Force users excepted, obviously), they were common enough that players were more aware of them and used them more frequently than inspiration.

Yeah, I wound up with a simple house rule that increased Inspiration use - an Inspiration Pool.

The pool is physically visible as a stack of chips on the table.

The pool maximum is one per character. If anyone earns Inspiration, it goes into the pool, and with party agreement, anyone can spend a point of the pool. Some groups would fail on that last, but my folks have no issue. With this, I get folks using Inspiration every sesssion.

 

[Umbran]

While it’s a bit abstract saving throws do correspond to something in the fiction - your chance of the effect landing (taking into account your ability to avoid it and the effects ability to land, often based on the stats of another creature).

In the case of Dex saves, sure. But for an Int, Wis, or Chr save, sometimes it doesn't necessarily correspond to any natural bit of narration in the fiction. What, exactly, does a character do when making an Int save? Beat their head against the wall repeating, "Mary had a little lamb..."?

There are some mechanics that can be adiegetic in a practical sense, because the narrative is moot for the function of the mechanic. If, when making a saving throw, the GM asked, "How do you want to try to resist this effect?" and based which Save was used based on that narration, saves would be clearly diegetic.

 

[billd91]

Yeah, I wound up with a simple house rule that increased Inspiration use - an Inspiration Pool.

The pool is physically visible as a stack of chips on the table.

The pool maximum is one per character. If anyone earns Inspiration, it goes into the pool, and with party agreement, anyone can spend a point of the pool. Some groups would fail on that last, but my folks have no issue. With this, I get folks using Inspiration every sesssion.

We definitely saw more use of it when it was doled out as a poker chip or as a die (I have sparkly d20s that I can hand across the table if someone's got inspiration - they hand it back when they use it). But going virtual has made that a bit harder, of course.

 

[clearstream]

While it’s a bit abstract saving throws do correspond to something in the fiction - your chance of the effect landing (taking into account your ability to avoid it and the effects ability to land, often based on the stats of another creature).

Yes, I was thinking that from a wargaming perspective dice rolls are taken to represent real factors that the game abstraction is insufficiently detailed to capture. Therefore the roll is representing stuff that is indeed going on in world... and often folk do narrate it as such!

 

[clearstream]

In the case of Dex saves, sure. But for an Int, Wis, or Chr save, sometimes it doesn't necessarily correspond to any natural bit of narration in the fiction. What, exactly, does a character do when making an Int save? Beat their head against the wall repeating, "Mary had a little lamb..."?

There are some mechanics that can be adiegetic in a practical sense, because the narrative is moot for the function of the mechanic. If, when making a saving throw, the GM asked, "How do you want to try to resist this effect?" and based which Save was used based on that narration, saves would be clearly diegetic.

Say an Int save to see through an illusion (one of the more common Int saves) or resist a psychic attack. I feel like it is easy to see how that narrates into the fiction, i.e. is diegetic. As for what to picture exactly, obviously one draws from comic book frames... gritting teeth, must... resist... etc