D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[The Firebird]

When those people are actively not following the rules, yes, they can be dismissed.

I'm the poster in question, and I did follow the rules.

 

[Maxperson]

How can something exist for the audience without the audience being able to see any information about how a result occurred?

Again, would you play a video game which provided zero information about how the wheel fell off your car? WOuld that be simulationist in your opinion

Take a movie or TV show. A tremendous amount goes on behind the scenes that the audience(in general) knows nothing about. Yet movies and TV shows exist for the audience.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm the poster in question, and I did follow the rules.

And what I saw you post about how you played it showed that you didn't.

 

[The Firebird]

And what I saw you post about how you played it showed that you didn't.

Yes, you misread my statement.

 

[Hussar]

Take a movie or TV show. A tremendous amount goes on behind the scenes that the audience(in general) knows nothing about. Yet movies and TV shows exist for the audience.

And all that stuff? Not diegetic. Where the camera person is standing? Not diegetic. The props people who build the set and put stuff in it? Not diegetic.

So, what's your point?

Good grief. The definition of diegetic isn't rocket science. For something to be diegetic it must exist for BOTH the audience and the in world characters. That's what the term means. So, when the character turns off the radio and the music stops for both the characters and the audience, that would be an excellent example of diegetic. Note, most music in movies is NOT diegetic. After all, when the killer's theme music starts to play in a horror movie, it's not like that music is diegetic. But, when the little girls start singing the Freddie song and the characters in the movie can hear it, that WOULD be diegetic.

So, again, how can something be diegetic without the audience being able to see how results were achieved? If the music suddenly stopped for no reason, that wouldn't be diegetic. That music only exists for the audience, not the characters in the movie. @AlViking is apparently unable or unwilling to bother to learn what the term actually means and it is causing a break down in conversation.

A diegetic mechanic would look something like this. The characters come across a puzzle - maybe a code on a wall. The DM hands the players a handout that shows the code. The players try to decipher that code. But, the players aren't actually their characters who, frankly, are often significantly smarter than the players - sorry, not many of us have 18 or 20 Intelligences after all. So, the DM allows the player to make a couple of rolls based on their characters to give hints or possibly extra information about the code that helps the players to solve the code.

That would be an example of using diegetic mechanics. A non-diegetic way would be for the player to simply make a check and get the answer to the code. How did the character break the code? We don't really know. We just know that the character did. The character went from unable to read the code to being able to read the code without any real explanation or idea about how they did that.

Removing traps is often done this way. The PC finds a trap, the player rolls to disarm the trap and the trap is disarmed. How is the trap disarmed? No idea. Doesn't matter. We just know that the trap is now disarmed and no longer a danger. It's not diegetic at all. It's 100% in game world and opaque to the players.

 

[Lanefan]

Production values on the boxed set are really high. Comes with 5 copies of the core rules booklet for players.

Now that's just brilliant! Kudos to the publishers for that one!

 

[AlViking]

And all that stuff? Not diegetic. Where the camera person is standing? Not diegetic. The props people who build the set and put stuff in it? Not diegetic.

So, what's your point?

Good grief. The definition of diegetic isn't rocket science. For something to be diegetic it must exist for BOTH the audience and the in world characters. That's what the term means. So, when the character turns off the radio and the music stops for both the characters and the audience, that would be an excellent example of diegetic. Note, most music in movies is NOT diegetic. After all, when the killer's theme music starts to play in a horror movie, it's not like that music is diegetic. But, when the little girls start singing the Freddie song and the characters in the movie can hear it, that WOULD be diegetic.

So, again, how can something be diegetic without the audience being able to see how results were achieved? If the music suddenly stopped for no reason, that wouldn't be diegetic. That music only exists for the audience, not the characters in the movie. @AlViking is apparently unable or unwilling to bother to learn what the term actually means and it is causing a break down in conversation.

A diegetic mechanic would look something like this. The characters come across a puzzle - maybe a code on a wall. The DM hands the players a handout that shows the code. The players try to decipher that code. But, the players aren't actually their characters who, frankly, are often significantly smarter than the players - sorry, not many of us have 18 or 20 Intelligences after all. So, the DM allows the player to make a couple of rolls based on their characters to give hints or possibly extra information about the code that helps the players to solve the code.

That would be an example of using diegetic mechanics. A non-diegetic way would be for the player to simply make a check and get the answer to the code. How did the character break the code? We don't really know. We just know that the character did. The character went from unable to read the code to being able to read the code without any real explanation or idea about how they did that.

Removing traps is often done this way. The PC finds a trap, the player rolls to disarm the trap and the trap is disarmed. How is the trap disarmed? No idea. Doesn't matter. We just know that the trap is now disarmed and no longer a danger. It's not diegetic at all. It's 100% in game world and opaque to the players.

What is it that I don't understand? All the actions and reactions happen in the fictional world without outside metagame influence. Diegetic, despite your insistence, is silent on whether you know why something happens. You have nevertheless shown one source other than your repeated declarations that why something happens matters.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ultimately I feel the fundamental building blocks of the setting are my responsibility as a GM, and I don't need or want input on those.
Intelligent species certainly are pretty fundamental part of the setting for me. You said that you'd personally feel human only as the non-human species do not just add much. I feel that, and in the common approach where there are seven thousand species with vague and overlapping themes and not proper place in the world It will feel like that. So when I build the world, I have relatively limited amount of species, so that they can be thematically distinct, and that I can give them proper place in the world, to make them feel like they belong and that playing one means more than a funny mask.

Sure… I personally almost always play humans when I play in a game, though every now and then I make an exception. But when I GM, I don’t just get rid of all the other options.

So no, adding more species is not a minor thing, nor is it something I am willing to do at the point when the campaign is supposed to soon begin.

This is why I’m suggesting you involve the players at the start, before things are set. So it’s not about adding a new race. Get their input so that you have consensus on your restrictions. These means that whatever curated list you come up with is one everyone is already aware of and has had a chance to offer input on.

What the other PCs will do is of course ultimately a choice for their players, but what the general attitudes in the world are certainly is an artistic choice by the GM.

Yes, but as I said, I can’t comment on it without knowing more about the reason. @Lanefan has now elaborated a bit, and what he’s said is pretty standard stuff… his world and the challenge of adding things and so on. The original “artistic choice” is still unclear other than it relates to a bit of setting lore about a war between elves and drow that resulted in the drow fleeing underground. Very standard stuff when it comes to D&D.

So what I would consider if this was me… how much does that lore about war between elves and drow inform play? How much does it matter? Is it actively informing events in the game? Is it just a bit of background flavor? Must it have all played out exactly as commonly understood?

For me, the purpose of the setting is to provide a framework for play. So how does any given element do that? How important or influential is it to play?

Fair; but given that my setting's history includes a long-ago globe-spanning war betwene elves and Drow that eventually drove the Drow underground, I'm cool with it.

And how does that ancient lore inform play?

When one bans Tieflings from 4e or 5e one is simply dropping a species that already exists in the rules as written. Pretty trivial, in terms of DM-side effort required to strip them from both the rules and the setting.

When, conversely, I'm asked to add Tieflings to my system, which does not already include them in the rules as written and never has (I don't even have them written up as a monster), the amount of rules work required on my part is anything but trivial, after which I then have to find a way to fit them into the setting as if they were always there.

Sure, but that’s a stat block and then maybe like a PC creation entry. Seriously… that’s like a few minutes of effort.

As for the lore, that may take a bit more… but it also shouldn’t be too much. Have you left any unknown regions? Continents across the sea? Forgotten valleys?

And then of course… it’s fantasy so there could be any number of fantastic reasons. Planar travel. Pocket dimension colliding with the prime. A lich shrunk their city and put it in a bottle. And so on.

I have learned to look at these moments as opportunities rather than as disruptions. I’m uninterested in maintaining the status quo.

Adding Drow would be easier as I could just extend and tweak the rules that already exist for Elves.

But if your setting had a war between drow and elves they already exist in the setting, no?

 

[Hussar]

What is it that I don't understand? All the actions and reactions happen in the fictional world without outside metagame influence. Diegetic, despite your insistence, is silent on whether you know why something happens. You have nevertheless shown one source other than your repeated declarations that why something happens matters.

Because that's not what diegetic means. It simply isn't. For something to be diegetic it has to exist for both the characters in the story and the readers/viewers OF that story.

So, again, it's not diegetic if the wheel all of a sudden falls off from the character's car without the player knowing something about how that happened. Because in order for that result to occur, the process has to be visible to the audience. The music stops because the character turns off the radio. We know exactly why the music stopped. Why do we know that? Because it's diegetic. Non-diegetic music usually stops to indicate a new scene of some sort. It doesn't exist for the characters.

Something cannot be diegetic without the audience knowing at least in part, why it occured. It's simply not possible to be diegetic without that information. They don't have to specify it in the definition because it's impossible otherwise.

Can you give me an example of a diegetic scene from a movie or TV show where the audience would be completely without any information about how the results of actions in that scene occurred? I've given several examples of how my definition is required in order for something to be diegetic. How it would be impossible to be diegetic without the audience knowing how the results occurred. You keep claiming that it's not necessary in order to be diegetic, but, so far, have failed to provide any evidence other than a failed reading of the definition of diegetic.

 

[pemerton]

You have a rune reading skill, then perhaps difficulty of the runes. Then from these you draw the odds of runes being good or bad. These things are not related.

As I posted upthread,

Let's suppose that there is an X% chance of the character being able to read the runes, which is not independent of the character. And then there is a Y% chance of the runes being <this rather than that>, which is independent of the character. X and Y can be combined to produce a Z% chance, which is not independent of the character.

This is what D&D does this in at least some combat resolution: there is an X% chance of the character throwing a spear on target, which is not independent of the character. And then there is a Y% chance of the target dodging the spear heading towards them, which is independent of the character. X and Y are combined to produce a Z% chance, which is not independent of the character.

In addition, here are some of the relevant relations:

*The GM has announced a "strange runes" scene distinction: this makes the runes salient.

*Reading the runes is obviously related to the runes being salient.

*The runes being interesting is also related to the runes being salient.

*Revealing a way out of the dungeon is one way for the runes to be interesting.​

There are relations between things that can matter in RPGing, that are not merely imagined causal and constitutive relations between imagined entities and events.