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

[Maxperson]

That's not what diegetic means. For something to be diegetic is has to exist for the audience AS WELL. Simply being observed within the fiction does not make something diegetic. Again, take a minute to look up the term "diegetic music". If something in the narrative exists for the audience but not for the characters in the story, it is not diegetic. If something exists purely in the narrative but not for the audience, it is not diegetic. Hearing the internal monologue of a character is diegetic, because it exists for both the audience and that character. But, the theme music for that killer in a horror movie isn't diegetic because it exists for the audience but not the character.

For a mechanic to be diegetic, it has to exist FOR THE AUDIENCE as well as the character. Simply existing in the narrative isn't diegetic.

Nothing in an RPG that includes players can't exist without the players. It MUST exist for the audience and the fiction or they aren't playing the game.

 

[Maxperson]

Moving back to this because this caught my eye.

If you want a more sim leaning example of skills from D&D, you'd have to go back to 2e Non-weapon proficiencies or thieves skills (either would work). The reason you fail a check on either of these is because you lack the skill to succeed. Your thief is climbing a wall and you roll the percentile check - a failure means that that wall is too difficult for you to climb. You don't get to reroll in most cases. We are told, by the system, why you failed - you were not proficient enough to succeed at this task. Until your skill increases, you may not try again.

No crumbling rocks. No cut ropes. No being hungry. You failed because your skill wasn't high enough. And note, it's only a measure of your skill because typically, there are no modifiers to the check. If you want to open a lock, or climb a wall, or move silently, you have a percentage chance of success that is entirely from your character. Success or failure is 100% (or at least 99%) because of the skill level of your character.

That's what a simulationist leaning skill system looks like. It actually provides some information about why you succeeded or failed and doesn't require the DM to simply "make naughty word up" to justify success or failure after the fact.

DMs narrated slipping, crumbling rocks, etc. back then, too. And the percentile die to succeed is no different than a d20 to succeed. In both cases any rocks, ropes, etc. are added by the DM, not the skill in question. In both cases the climber failed purely due to skill according to the mechanics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay...

So when I said I think it's best for GMs to leave a "beyond the horizon" space where things aren't fully fleshed out, why was that a problem?

Depends on the things. You and I have different ideas of what's important to nail down. And I suspect we always will.

 

[Maxperson]

For that to be diegetic, the characters in the movie would have to react to the music stopping. We might not know why the music stopped, that's true, but, there would need to be a source of that music in the fiction (a radio, someone singing, whatever). It would be non-diegetic if the music suddenly stopped, the characters make no reaction to the music stopping and it is never explained - IOW, it doesn't actually exist in the world of the story.

So, again, for it to be diegetic, it needs a tiny piece of information explaining why it stopped. For example, the characters are in a bar, there is music. The characters walk out of the bar. The music stops when the door closes. Diegetic. Why did the music stop? There is no way to hear the music anymore for the character or the audience. Even if the music is just muffled because the door closes, that would make it diegetic. No problem.

But there is no way to end diegetic music in a story without making it clear to the audience why the music stopped.

"diegesis​

(adj diegetic) A term used in narratology (the study of narratives and narration) to designate the narrated events in a story as against the telling of the story. The diegetic (or intradiegetic) level of a narrative is that of the story world, and the events that exist within it, while the extradiegetic or nondiegetic level stands outside these. In narrative cinema, the diegesis is a film's entire fictional world. Diegetic space has a particular set of meanings (and potential complexities) in relation to narration in cinema as opposed to, say, the novel; and in a narrative film, the diegetic world can include not only what is visible on the screen, but also offscreen elements that are presumed to exist in the world that the film depicts—as long as these are part of the main story."

diegesis

"diegesis" published on by Oxford University Press.

www.oxfordreference.com

That fits every definition or writing on diegesis that I've seen. It doesn't have to be music to music so that the audience and the fiction are simultaneously matched up exactly. It just has to exist in the fictional world and for the audience.

It's not just what is experienced. It includes things assumed to exist in the movie. For instance, in the Predator, we don't see any submarines, but they can be assumed to exist in that fictional world offscreen, so submarines would be diegetic.

There is also diegetic literature, in which it would be impossible for the experiences to match up exactly. Music in the book would not be music heard by the audience, but since the audience can imagine it, that would be diegetic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

in a similar situation to two other posters earlier in the thread (twosix and someone else i believe it was) i actually see this in the opposite way, it's much more justifiable IMO that someone somewhere in some small corner of the world managed to cultivate some new source or application of power in a way not seen in a setting than it is to have a whole new species that literally nobody has ever heard of before be sprung out from over the horizon, if a species exists in a setting then there's a good likelihood that it's at least known about, people get around, i'd find the idea odd that there was a civilization that just so happened to exist in isolation from [main gameplay location] right up until this point.

Certainly not.

The Americas had been interacting--limitedly--with Europe and Asia for centuries, possibly millennia. Nobody knew that buffalo existed. Nobody in the Americas knew that horses existed.

Distant lands can have Strange Things.

Or consider, for instance, ginkgo trees. Today, there is only one species (Ginkgo biloba), from a single genus--and, indeed, the "only one left" goes up all the way to the division/phylum level. Two hundred million years ago, there were dozens of such species and they were distributed worldwide. Today? The solitary surviving species of this entire classification of plants grows wild only in a small region of China; the only reason we know of it worldwide today is because humans liked the colorful, interesting leaves so much, we planted them elsewhere for decoration. Coelacanths were thought to be extinct for decades until we found living specimens. Hell, we thought kiwi were extinct for a good long while, until we found out no, they aren't, they're just very good at hiding from people because people almost drove them to extinction.

It's eminently possible that a species can exist, survive, perhaps even thrive in various forms of isolation from the world around it. Even sapient species. Homo floresiensis, aka the "hobbits", lived undisturbed on an island in Indonesia until about 50,000 years ago.

All you need is the right kind of isolating environment and local sustainability. Even without an isolating environment, it really truly is only in the past like 300-400 years that humans have even begun to have a good idea of what is beyond their local region. Remember, the ancient Greeks (ca. 500 BC) genuinely believed there were dog-headed people just a couple thousand miles east of them. Egyptians in the following thousand years likewise believed that dog-headed people existed; the Coptic St. Christopher, for example, was held to have had two dog-headed attendants who were fiercely loyal to him. And that's stuff that should've been verifiable even to them--it's not like India was inaccessible to the Greeks, Alexander tried to conquer it.

So...no, I don't buy the idea that a distinctly medieval-stasis world where knowledge gets lost easily and even folks who DO travel rarely go more than 1500 miles from their place of birth. (That's about the radial extent one could expect from a very well-travelled Roman during the time we would call the "Roman Empire", reaching the British Isles, Scandinavia, most of Egypt, parts of the Levant, etc. Even if you put a similar circle centered on Baghdad, often the cultural if not political center of Golden Age Islam, it barely gets you Pakistan, to say nothing of India proper--and that 1500-mile Baghdad circle only has like ~20% overlap with the previous!)

When an ocean can separate one continent from another, there can be all sorts of stuff going on in one area that would be difficult if not impossible for folks in another continent to learn about. But a single lost boat, or an explorer's ship that crashed? That's quite plausible.

Edit:
And, to turn some of the most recent arguments around on this, does this mean you thus think that divine characters shouldn't be forbidden in Athas? That, say, spellfire thus has to exist in, say, Eberron, where the gods are distant and must be taken on faith even by their worshipers? Seems to me that that enforces or requires much more significant cosmological considerations than "there's a guy out there who has a kinda dragon-y face and scales on his body".

 

[pemerton]

What happens in that fictional space of the game must originate from the players of the game. If you reject that then nothing can ever be considered diegetic, I'm not even sure the word simulation has any meaning any more.

Since nobody defines it that way unless they're doing it to say "Hah! You're wrong!" I'm not too worried about it. On the other hand, a player hoping that runes lead to an exit to the dungeon and then the hope comes true because they rolled well is not diegetic. The character in the fiction did not interpret the runes the player decided what they wanted them to be.

The character in the fiction did interpret the runes: they studied them, and worked out what they said.

At the table it's true that the GM didn't just tell the player what the runes say: rather, a resolution process was used. But if you are agreeing that this matters to the diegetic nature of a resolution process, then I think you are agreeing with @Hussar: diegesis concerns the relationship between events the audience experiences, and events in the fiction.

Here is how Oxford Languages, via Google, defines "diegetic":

(of sound in a film, television programme, etc.) occurring within the context of the story and able to be heard by the characters.​

The general concept pertains to a thing that is experienced by those who are observing/experiencing the fiction (the audience) that also occurs within the fiction. @Hussar's example has been music in a movie that is coming from a radio. That contrasts with music that is not part of the fiction - eg most of the music in Star Wars.

I think the best example of a diegetic RPG resolution process that's been offered is Hussar's example of the map, or the puzzle square, being handed by the GM to the players. This is something the "audience" - the players - are experiencing which is the same as what the characters are experiencing (they, too, are studying the map or the puzzle). Rolling dice can never be diegetic in any literal sense, as the players experience the dice but the characters don't. Because of this, I'm not 100% sure how the metaphoric extension of "diegetic" to RPG mechanics is supposed to work, but clearly it has to pertain to the relationship between the game participants (and their real world experiences) and the events in the fiction (and whether those real world experiences are in some fashion part of the fiction).

Clearly, the resolution process for the reading of the strange runes isn't "diegetic", in that (a) the process of authoring the fiction, that works by having the participants accept the output of a resolution process, is (b) not something, nor a correlate or representation of anything, that the characters in the fiction experience. But then neither is a GM's decision that, as a result of a failed climb check, a PC falls or their rope is cut by a sharp rock or whatever: that decision, which is an event in the real world, is not something that correlates to or represents anything in the fiction. Which is at least part of what I take to be @Hussar's point.

It seems obvious to me that in the spear case Y depends on X. In the spear case, P(Y|~X) is 0; there cannot be a dodge if the spear is not thrown. Not so in the runes case, where they may be a way out regardless of whether they are read.

Likewise we can reasonably say "the spear throw caused the character to dodge (or to fail to dodge)". But that construction doesn't work for the runes.

My post was not about in-fiction causal dependencies; just about the dice rolls. In particular, that bundling two things - one dependent on a skill and one independent of a skill - into a single roll adjusted by the skill is not an unusual thing in a RPG.

Yes, but those things are unrelated to the simulation! Furthermore, you are not merely combining odds of several things you are completely supplanting outcomes causally connected to the things the numbers being used to draw the odds measure, with those causally unconnected to them, as it seems that there is no possibility of on outcome where the character simply fails to read the runes.

You can use mechanics like you this, even though I find it a tad confused, but it is a game after all. But it is not a simulationistic mechanic then!

I don't assert that it is a simulationist mechanic. But by some measures - eg the idea that simulationist play is about a certain sort of experience - it is consistent with simulationism, that is, the focusing of attention on a particular bit of the fiction.

On the "supplanting": I go back to the spear case. Once the spear is in flight and on target (as determined by the skill of the thrower), the chance of the intended victim to dodge is not a function of the thrower's skill. It depends on their reactions/reflexes and their speed/agility. (I'm deliberately choosing a spear rather than a gun shot for this very reason - because the spear can be dodged once in flight. I'm not sure either way about arrows.) Yet in most versions of D&D, the two things - accuracy of throw, and success of dodge - are bundled into a single roll.

It also produces some variations from other systems. Let's suppose that skill bonuses are a (rough) measure of skill. So +8 to hit is twice as skilled as +4 to hit, etc. In D&D, if the bonus to hit (added to the roll) and the bonus to dodge (subtracted from the roll) are equal and are both doubled, the chance to hit remains the same. Whereas consider RQ: a 40% bonus to attack and to dodge produces a 2/5 * 3/5 = 6/25 chance to hit. Double those to 80%, and the chance to hit is 4/5 * 1/5 = 4/25. That is, the chance of a hit has reduced by a third (from 6 to 4 chances in 25). This is why RQ can tend to produce whiffy combat. But it also shows that the idea of a simple correlation between the numerical bonus and "how good" a character is at a thing doesn't work - it depends on how the bonus is factored into the details of a resolution system.

 

[Hussar]

Nothing in an RPG that includes players can't exist without the players. It MUST exist for the audience and the fiction or they aren't playing the game.

That's where you are 100% wrong.

After all, we have no idea why that attack missed. The system provides zero information. Nor does the damage actually provide any information other than the final blow that kills an opponent. The information is completely opaque. It doesn't exist for the players at all. All we know is that after a fairly unspecific amount of time, you won the fight. We have no real idea how you won. We have very little idea of what actually happened. It's not diegetic at all.

After all, if it was diegetic, you would have information all the way along. Maybe not lots of information, but some. The character is climbing, the character is on the ground in a bloody mess. Nothing in between, as far as the mechanics are concerned. No diegetic information.

-----

Ohhh, wait. Hang on. I just realized what you said.

NOTHING in an RPG that includes players can't exist without the players. So, every part of a game world that the players are unaware of does not exist until such time as the players become aware of it. There is no "living world" because anything without players doesn't exist.

Thank you for that.

 

[Hussar]

DMs narrated slipping, crumbling rocks, etc. back then, too. And the percentile die to succeed is no different than a d20 to succeed. In both cases any rocks, ropes, etc. are added by the DM, not the skill in question. In both cases the climber failed purely due to skill according to the mechanics.

Nope. Because the die roll ONLY takes the character's skill into account. There are no DC's. You open that lock, climb that wall, solely on your skill. There's no rocks, ropes or anything else. A DM that added those is ignoring the simulation. And, nor are you allowed retries. If I fell because of a broken rope, I could certainly retry. I could retry if there was a crumbly rock.

But the system does not allow me to retry. Because the system tells me that my skill is not enough to climb this particular thing. Nothing to do with any outside elements. Only my skill. I failed to hide in shadows, not because the baddies had really sharp eyes, but because my skill was insufficient. It was insufficient regardless of the observer. And, again, I can't try again. Why not? Because I lack the skill to succeed in this instance. If I become more skilled? Then I can try again.

That's what simulation looks like. When the mechanics provide answers as to how and why a result occurred.

 

[Maxperson]

That's where you are 100% wrong.

After all, we have no idea why that attack missed. The system provides zero information. Nor does the damage actually provide any information other than the final blow that kills an opponent. The information is completely opaque. It doesn't exist for the players at all. All we know is that after a fairly unspecific amount of time, you won the fight. We have no real idea how you won. We have very little idea of what actually happened. It's not diegetic at all.

After all, if it was diegetic, you would have information all the way along. Maybe not lots of information, but some. The character is climbing, the character is on the ground in a bloody mess. Nothing in between, as far as the mechanics are concerned. No diegetic information.

-----

Ohhh, wait. Hang on. I just realized what you said.

NOTHING in an RPG that includes players can't exist without the players. So, every part of a game world that the players are unaware of does not exist until such time as the players become aware of it. There is no "living world" because anything without players doesn't exist.

Thank you for that.

Not quite. The DM brings the living part of the world in via rumors, events, etc. Also, the DM is a player, but not a Player. The rest of the world exists in his imagination, which gives it existence. It's just not all shared.

 

[pemerton]

Who say there have to exist a meaningfully analytical category related to the concept of simulation?

I have taken that to be a premise of the exercise that you and @clearstream are engaged in, of discussing what makes RPG play "simulationist".

Oh. I almost misread you there. I first tought you were talking about general play of the rpg, but you are apparently talking about the particular instant of play. This changes my answer.

<snip>

I don't think it is possible to take @clearstream 's concepts of simulationistic experiences and usefully translate that to a way to label an isolated moment of play as "simulationistic".

I believe it might be possible to look at certain instances of play, and look for simulative value in them. I am afraid we are far from having the kind of framework needed in terms of common langue to get good traction on that project, tough.

My notion of looking at how rules can support a given simulation was an attempt at starting a conversation I tought might lead in a direction usefull for such a purpose

Experiences occur during moments of play. If some extended period of play is supposed to be simulationist, in virtue of the experiences that it contains, then presumably we can point to candidate experiences.

I've pointed to a rules framework - namely, Marvel Heroic RP and a fantasy hack of it- that supports simulative experiences: immersive and noetically satisfying ones. But there seems to be a widespread consensus, of which you are a member, that the moment of play, the play overall, the rules, etc were not simulationist. I'm trying to work out what that consensus is based on.

Multiple posters in this thread have pointed to examples of play from Burning Wheel as not being simulationist. You appear to do so here, with your reference to Circles tests and Wises tests.

But by @Enrahim's and @clearstream's accounts in this thread, those episodes of play are simulationist because (i) they foster immersion and (ii) they foster understanding and appreciation of the subject matter of the shared fiction.

I do not want to be associated with that claim.

For one thing, it is far from obvious to me that (i) and (ii) is applicable to the situation.

Another thing is that (ii) appear to be (modified) GNS, which I do not like being mixed into the context of clearstream's experiences.

My (ii) is taken straight from @clearstream. See, as just one of probably a dozen or more examples, this post, which you "liked": D&D General - [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

When you say that (i) and (ii) are not applicable, are you saying that I am wrong in saying that various examples of play I've described fostered immersion and fostered understanding and appreciation of the subject matter of the shared fiction? Because I was there and I know that they did!

The obvious attempt of such a translation is "Can a player have one of the simulative experiences in this moment of play?". However with such a criterion even then play of making a move in tick tack toe could be labeled "simulationistic". Two players might be playing as a side activity to pass the time waiting for their turn while playing a highly immersive rpg, and tick tick toe is so second nature to them that they can perform the moves without breaking immersion. This just as many report rolling a dice is not immersion breaking for them.

I think that comparing the play of MHRP to (say) a side-game of noughts and crosses is pretty ridiculous. I am not suggesting that the moment of play I described is simulationist despite what happened during it. I am suggesting that it ticks the boxes for immersive and noetic satisfaction because of the game play that occurred during it.

So if it nevertheless does not count as a simulationist experience, or a constituent element of a simulationist experience, why not?

I speak more to the specific mechanics in dispute. Depending on how often and fundamental those mechanics come up would depend on how simulationist I think it is. I don't know the game well enough to answer that.

But why do those mechanics undermine simulationism in RPGing? What makes (say) the GM deciding, or the GM rolling on a table (an encounter table, a "strange runes table", etc), more simulationist than working out who is met, or what the facts in the fiction are, by rolling a Circles test or a Wises test?

I don't think I've seen an answer to this question. (I've suggested one, but because it draw on Ron Edwards's ideas about "simulationism" it's been rejected by most other posters.)

The point of noting this is? Are you wanting to pit me against them? Are you just trying to say my definition may be wrong? To show that simulationist is a not well defined and agreed upon term? Because I agree it's a not well defined term that multiple people use different ways.

I'm also fairly certain that both of them are using simulationist more holistically than a single experience. I'm not. I believe we can look down to individual mechanics and instances and determine what if anything they simulate. Though I also believe we could classify a game as more or less simulationistic than another based on how many such mechanics and instances they have (including taking into account the negative space examples (X thing actively hinders simulation), which might be even more important here).

I am simply trying to understand what you, or anyone else, means by "simulationism".

I've said before that simulation is about intent. That we could have 2 ficitonal outcomes be identical and one be simulation and the other not. So the first question is, what simulative intent did your player have for establishing the stash of gold? I would count something like extrapolating that Drow likely have a treasure stash as simulative. It would be akin to asking the DM the question of, do I see a Drow treasure stash here, a detail he may have not considered (likely should have) and thus could correct if it was deemed extremely probably such a thing should exist given the rest of the fiction/genre/etc. As an example of what I would not count, trying to establish the existence of the treasure so the character could have a cool defining moment in running off with it.

The player, as his PC, wanted gold and took it as obvious that the dark elves would have some. Hence the player declared the action that he did: my recollection is that he tricked one of the drow into taking him to the gold, and then he stole it. I don't know whether or not you count that as a "simulative intent".

I'm sure the player also thought it would be fun to have his PC steal the gold: doing things that are fun is a pretty common motivation in RPGing, in my experience.

The second question though is how the mechanics map to the fiction. In this case the mechanic is one of simply authoring. On a success the player authors X where X can be any of a broad array of possibilities that falls within some relatively small set of constraints. The runes could have summoned a powerful ally. The Drow may have taken prisoner some powerful being. Etc. Attempting to enumerate ways mechanics map to the fiction

A) External cause - if the goal of play is to simulate the player being their character then they should as the player only effect the fiction through their character. While reading the runes would count, establishing what they runes mean (or influencing that by establishing it on a success) would be out. Making a single ability that essentially does both is as far as I can tell design intended to obscure that this is actually occurring. The more External Cause occurs the more simulative the game is.

B) Specific fictional result - More simulative mechanics specify not just that something happens but what that thing is. This goes toward success with complication implementations. Random encounter roll came up Orcs, as opposed to random encounter DM choses for some non-simulative intent. And yes, this also applies toward hp, hp is not as simulative as many non-hp systems (but 1. hp isn't devoid of all simulative properties and 2. some aspects of 'more simulationist' can in practice be sacrificed for gameplay concerns while still maintaining a high degree of simulationism).

C) DM as Mechanic - this can be either, it wholly depends on the DM's decision process. His decision process may either be simulative or may not.

D) More than Plausible - a minimum to simulation (and maybe rpging in general) is the low bar of plausibility. Greater simulation would entail either weighting the probabilities appropriately or if choosing an event then choosing the one that is by far one of the most plausible.

E) Mechanic Description Matches Fiction - Example: a skill for your characters ability to pick locks should only directly affect whether you pick locks. If employing that skill does more than that then it's less simulative than one that does.

F) Intent - I spoke about this above but why you are doing something matters, not just what

G) Accuracy - Mechanics/processes that are more accurate in their results (actual and probabilistic) are more simulative.

Can anyone think of any others?

I would say that games featuring more features having more of these properties are more simulative than ones that don't.

My issue with your "player only affects the fiction through their character" criterion is that it is applied selectively. Upthread the weather has been discussed: only because the player has their PC step outside does the GM bother to narrate some weather; so that is the player affecting the fiction in a way that does not correlate to their character's in fiction causal powers.

So something needs to be said about why GM intermediation - the GM narrates gold as prompted by the player, for instance - yields simulation, when a process initiated by the character but not mediated by the GM does not. I mean, suppose a player in classic D&D plans out the building of their castle, following the stronghold building rules found in one of those classic rulebooks. The player draws the maps, works out the cost based on the various lists and charts, etc: to me this seems to be an obvious instance of simulationist play. Eero Tuovinen would classify it in that way. But it is not mediated by the GM. And it involves the player dictating events external to their PC: the efforts of the hirelings they have hired to build the place; the absence of earthquakes or storms that undo those efforts; etc.

If simulationism is confined to something along the lines of: learning, via the play of one's PC, about the elements of the fiction as narrated and/or extrapolated by the GM, then I can see why GM mediation becomes central. But that seems like only one mode of simulationism - it doesn't capture the stronghold building example at all, for instance.

I've been thinking in terms of "separate" from player-character. That can include GM and system, but also other players, references, separated cognitive processes...

As I've posted upthread and reiterated in this post, I don't see why there is any relationship between "simulation" and "separate from the player". Playing referee-less Classic Traveller is pretty simulative - it combines elements of Tuovinen's dollhouse (the starship and crew, travelling from world to world) with elements of mechanical simulation ("purist for system"; Edwards also identifies "setting-creation and universe-play mechanisms" as a mode of simulationist play: The Forge :: Simulationism: The Right to Dream)

Obviously some modes of play require separation from the player: eg GM story hour, or setting exploration where the GM is the one who "channels" the setting. But these don't exhaust simulationist play.

When we look at the stronghold building example, it's not ever separation from the player's play of their character: the player drawing up the maps, calculating the cost etc is representing the decisions that their PC makes. But this doesn't stop it being simulationist play, even though it is not mediated by a GM or any resolution process.

The idea of "simulationist" is there is always weather. The DM doesn't need to determine it if the PCs are not in a position to observe it, because a human DM is not omniscient. That's why it is a simulation of reality, and not the reality itself.

Likewise there is no need to determine what the runes say until the PCs try to read them.

The PC reading the runes doesn't cause them to say anything, any more than the PCs stepping out the door causes it to rain. (That is, it is no more "Schroedinger's runes" than it is "Schroedinger's rain".)

Now can someone tell me why, to count as a simulation, it has to the the GM who decides, or rolls on the random table, or whatever?