Search results

What do you mean by "running a simulation"? When Gygax wrote the Greyhawk Gazetteer, or Tomb of Horrors, he wasn't running a simulation. This is just authorship. Are you describing the use of those notes to decide what situations to present to the players based on where their PCs are - which is...

Yet what? The watcher isn't an element of the diegesis. (Unless the film breaks the fourth wall - like in the credits of School of Rock, where Jack Black says to both the students and the audience "I do not know that guy" - although my memory is that at that point there is not actually a...

But once they are established, there is then a chance to dodge. We work out the first set of things by rolling the chance to throw on target. We work out the second thing - dodging, given those other things - by rolling to dodge. (Speed is a weird case, because even in RQ the damage is rolled...

I'm not sure what you mean by "giving meaning in a non-authorial ways". I'm also not sure what you mean by "fictional meanings". Is this an example? (I borrow it from Hilary Putnam): walking along the beach, I see the name "Ted" scrawled in the sand. I assume that someone called Ted, or someone...

According to Wikipedia, Diegesis (Greek διήγησις "narration") and mimesis (Greek μίμησις "imitation") have been contrasted since Aristotle. For Aristotle, mimesis shows rather than tells, by means of action that is enacted. Diegesis is the telling of a story by a narrator. But I think you're...

What was being simulated was exploration of a weird dungeon, looking for answers to omens and portents. I don't see how talking about some different, hypothetical event bears upon the actual game play that I described. I have been repeatedly told, in this thread, that - because of the...

The mechanic is not a part of the fiction, and so by definition cannot be diegetic. More generally, if X represents Y, and Y is part of the fiction, it doesn't follow that X is part of the fiction. And not all parts of a mechanic in a RPG are representational. What does the d20 roll represent...

Once the spear has been thrown, and is on target, the fact that it was easy or hard to throw it on target is irrelevant. The spear is heading towards its intended victim. Their ability to dodge it is independent of how difficult that initial throw was.

The question rests on a false premise, that it is the GM who "has people roll".

A character looks at the ceiling and asks "Are there any cobwebs?" The GM needs to provide an answer. Unless the GM's notes indicate cobwebs, the GM has to answer "no" - because principle 3 forbids the GM from adding to the imagined world non-diegetically. The same would be true for the...

And I am in the same position with respect to hp attrition combat and stop-motion turn-taking action economy. If we are talking about simulationist mechanics, those mechanics are radically non-simulationist. The former is just a clock, not a model of anything. And the latter violates temporality...

My claim was about chances. When a spear is in flight, heading towards a target, that target's chance to dodge the spear does not depend upon the skill of the spear thrower. The spear thrower's impact on the situation ended once the spear entered flight heading in a certain direction.

As I understand it, the term "diegetic" is used to try and talk about the relationship between events that occur as part of a process of narration or performance or (perhaps) authorship and events that occur in the fiction that is narrated/performed/authored. Some events in the fiction are...

Sure, but some posters in this thread have posted about "diegetic mechanics": eg

I'm not sure what you mean by "player agency within the fiction". The players aren't part of the fiction, are they? They are authors of it. I'm also not sure what you mean by "foregoing fiction" - do you mean something like preceding fiction or established fiction?

This is from the Sorensen manifesto: 2. Restrict the non-diegetic means by which the world can be changed. Characters and systems can, obviously, affect the fictional world. As they move through and act upon the world, the world changes to reflect those actions. These changes can occur as a...

If simulationism is understood simply in terms of the experiences you've talked about - immersion, noesis, investigation, etc - then I don't think I see any need for separation in all cases. Investigation may require separation - although we could say that the Traveller players explore the...

I'm not going to argue criticism with you - my handle on it is modest. But if by "diegesis" we mean simply what happens in the world of the fiction, then by definition there can be no diegetic mechanics. And there will be very few diegetic resolution processes even if they're non-mechanical -...

The widespread view in this thread appears to be that, of necessity, those episodes of play could not be or involve simulationism because of the role of the player in contributing to the shared fiction. It's interesting that your view is different!

I don't think this is correct. If the music is diegetic and is (say) coming from an instrument, then the characters (like the audience) can conjecture that the player stopped playing. This is a fairly common trope/motif to generate suspense. And typically the answer will be revealed in...