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

[The Firebird]

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.

I know. I am saying that your claim, "X is independent of Y", does not follow when X causes Y.

 

[AlViking]

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 perhaps implied, but are not narrated/performed/authored - eg the moment of conception of a minor character who appears only on one page of a novel or in one shot of a film- and so are not diegetic.

Anything that happens in the fiction and is only in the fiction is diegetic. If the minor character exists in the fiction they are diegetic.

Some events in the narration/performance/authorship - eg a storyteller clapping their hands to get the audience's attention, or a filmaker using music to establish mood - are not events in the fiction.

Correct, the voice of the omnipotent narrator "They did not know what was to come..." or the Jaws theme music is not diegetic because it doesn't exist in the fiction.

On the other hand, the camera crew or the director of a film are neither diegetic or non-diegetic, they exist in order to bring the story to life for the audience.

Some events in the narration/performance/authorship - eg reciting dialogue, singing a song that is sung in the fiction - are also events that occur in the fiction.

In a literally narrational medium, there are events that are part of the narration/performance/authorship - eg describing what happens - that are not part of the fiction: no one in the fiction is narrating the weather, for instance - eg it rains without anyone saying "it is now raining". But those descriptions correlate to those events.

If a character in D&D casts Control Weather and causes rain it is diegetic because the character caused it. But events don't have to be under the control of or created by the characters in the story. If it's raining in the fictional world, it's diegetic.

Are those descriptions diegetic? I defer to @Hussar on the way critics approach this issue: but my intuition inclines towards "no", because if mood-setting music is not diegetic (even though it helps the audience appreciate the story) then I'm not sure how description, the function of which is to help the audience grasp and appreciate the story, is diegetic.

As per my post just upthread, Sorensen's manifesto doesn't talk about mechanics or resolution processes being diegetic. It talks about changes to the fiction being diegetic - ie there is to be no authorship unless it is giving voice to in-fiction causal processes.

That is a very demanding requirement.

I don't see how this is hard. Look it up in the dictionary, diegetic is clearly defined "existing or occurring within the world of a narrative rather than as something external to that world". The GM playing theme music, not diegetic. People hearing mysterious music of an unknown origin as they wander through the woods, diegetic. The GM narrating what's going on, using dice to resolve uncertainty, the player saying what the character does? Neither diegetic or non-diegetic, those things have to happen in order for there to be a game, much like the cameras and director for a film. But changes to the fiction of the world? From the player side it's because the characters make it happen. From the GM side they're either reacting to what actions the characters did or what they said. There are many other things that the GM also narrates because it's a living world with other events, NPCs and creatures also coming into play.

Not being diegetic, not being simulationist is not a negative. If the player can accumulate meta-points and spend those meta-points to change the fiction in some way they find beneficial or more interesting, go for it. If the GM wants to use fail forward techniques where failure means something other than "nothing happens", if the players and the GM are constantly adding to the fiction of the world, all sorts of things can happen in game that are not diegetic, not simulationist. If the people at the table are enjoying the game then it's working.

I just prefer a more simulationist approach. As GM I am creating the world and populating it but once the session starts I stick to what I had established as much as possible. As a player I want my impacts on the world to be limited to what I say and do, no meta-points for me.

 

[bloodtide]

Again, a straw man. Before Tolkien, "elf" meant something like Thumbelina or Tom Thumb. That's a dramatic shift: human-sized, immortal, powerfully magical, blessed by divine beings, remnants of a better and brighter age, etc. Maybe instead of inventing things to show how others are stupid, it would be better to actually respond to the arguments I make.

I'm not sure your point here.

For more then the last 50 years nearly everyone has agreed on what the basic generic elf is and looks like and all that. There is an accepted general consensuses. Even all the people that say "My elves are different and special" have to go off that base.

And, sure, you can do some variations on the base. But not too far, as there is a very obvious line that you should not cross. And if you do, you are just making a whole other thing. And once you start saying "well anything and everything" is a single word....that word becomes meaningless and pointless.

So, you could have teiflings that hatch from chicken eggs.....well, except those are not teiflings, they are some new creation. Why not just give them a new name?

Oh, so NOW not everything will fly? Now GMs don't have absolute power and the freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want?

I would never say that...

. Clearly, Bloodtide not only accepts but highly approves of what Tolkien flagrantly changed with only the slimmest of mythological support--snippets and fragments and heavily suspect records. Why is it then unacceptable to do that now? Tolkien isn't somehow uniquely permitted to rewrite mythology in ways that suit him. I quoted his own Mythopoeia for a reason: "We make still by the law in which we're made."

I can see some people are jealous they can't change the meaning of a word for a whole world, but I would tell them to not give up! Write your novel! Take a word or two and make it mean what you want it to mean. Maybe everyone worldwide will read it and then do it.

To say a Tefiling is born from from an angel is just silly. What is the point? You can say Giants are one inch tall, but again that is just silly.

 

[Maxperson]

He fell because he was not skilled enough. Why can't he try again if the rock crumbled? Why can't he get another rope and try again? That's the part you're missing. No retries. You failed because your skill was not enough. Heck, I don't even NEED a rope to climb. You've just added that in because it's convenient.

He can't try again because Gygax didn't want do overs. Someone who is skilled at carving here in the real world and who slips and ruins the carving, can try again and again and again. It's the same with climbing the rock wall at a rock climbing place. If you fall, you can do it over and succeed next time, or the time after, or...

The lack of do overs in 1e has nothing to do with skill, despite what Gygax may have claimed.

 

[Faolyn]

That is not what diegetic means. That is actually the opposite of what diegetic means. Again, I'm sorry, but, you are just wrong here. You really, really are just wrong. If something only exists in the narrative an not external to the work, then it is not diegetic. That's the opposite of what that word means.

Look up the term diegetic music. The reason we cannot make any progress here is because you are straight up wrong. Can someone please help me out here? Apparently I'm not explaining this clearly enough and I'm really unsure how to be clearer.

Wikipedia: Diegetic music, also called source music, is music that is part of the fictional world portrayed in a narrative (such as a film, show, play, or video game) and is thus knowingly performed or heard by the characters.<a href="Diegetic music - Wikipedia"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a> This is in contrast to non-diegetic music, which is incidental music or a score that is heard by the viewer but not the characters, or in musical theater, when characters are singing in a manner that they would not do in a realistic setting.

So, you're wrong, Hussar. Diegetic music is something that exists within the fiction of the movie. The fact that the audience can hear it is incidental, and it happens that way because of how we, the audience, experience movies. If a character in a book plays music, we, the reader, can't hear it, but it would still be part of the fictional world portrayed in a narrative. Likewise, in an RPG, I can describe my PC or an NPC as playing music, but unless I actually turn some music on for real, the music only exists in the fictional world of the game and can't be heard by the players sitting at the table.

Or in other words, if a character in a movie is playing a piano, that music doesn't stop being diegetic if the only person watching the movie is Deaf.

That being said, we're talking about RPGs, which are inherently interactive. So lemme look online a bit...

From Pathika: Diegesis as it is currently used in the tabletop RPG community follows its use in film theory: things that exist in an imagined world set forth for the audience, as opposed to things that may be shown to the audience but which do not exist in that world.

The article goes on to discuss the difference between diegesis, abstract, and mechanics. For instance (in discussing Moldevay's D&D), Class may or may not be diegetic. For instance, someone with the Cleric class may or may not be an actual member of a priesthood. In another instance, moves in a PbtA game are often diegetic, particularly those that require the GM to truthfully answer questions.

There's a similar article on Cavegirl's Game Stuff.

Cannibal Halfling Games talks about diegesis vs. mimesis, and the problems with making mechanics for fictional elements, and how that's generally limited to what the designer thinks is realistic.

From Map And Key: The discussion is about diegetic leveling in 5e, which basically boils down to having to do something to justify getting new abilities as you level up, rather than just getting them all at once. A variant on the old training rules, but more interactive than just paying a bunch of money.

This thread on RPG Pub does the same, but with a wee bit more detail.

From Bragman's Sidequests: This post is about diegesis, metagaming, player/character separation, and table talk.

So, Hussar, while I haven't been paying too much attention to this particular side-thread--since it's been mostly nitpicking definitions--it doesn't seem like you're using the term correctly. Or at least not in the way it's commonly used in RPGs. The only reason something exists in both the narrative and the real world is because we, the viewers, need to experience it in some way. It's not actually required that something exist in both to be diegetic.

 

[Faolyn]

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".

Nobody in the real world could fly or teleport like they can in a D&D world.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

You never did answer if you would have people roll if the sign was written in a language they could read...

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Yes we do. I showed you what the math said.

 

[Maxperson]

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 - eg as soon as a player describes their PC doing something, the mechanics creates or constitutes an event that is not part of the world of the fiction.

The mechanics represent the act that is occurring in the fiction. The character is climbing. The climbing mechanics support that fictional climb, so can be called diegetic mechanics. The mechanic is tied to the skill of the climber in the fiction.

The actual roll of the die by the player would not be diegetic, but the mechanic of roll a d20+str+prof would be since it's intertwined with the fictional event.

 

[clearstream]

The mechanics represent the act that is occurring in the fiction. The character is climbing. The climbing mechanics support that fictional climb, so can be called diegetic mechanics. The mechanic is tied to the skill of the climber in the fiction.

I worry this will rest on cherry picking and lead to unsustainable complexities. What I mean by the former is that if it supposed that there are "diegetic mechanics" and "non-diegetic" mechanics, how are players as characters and players as audiences supposed to keep track of which is which? What if some players around the table perceive a mechanic as diegetic and others perceive it as non-diegetic?

What I mean by unsustainable complexities includes, what if a mechanic is made up of supposedly diegetic and non-diegetic parts? It would seem to require precise deconstruction of each mechanic to excise the latter and pay regard only to the former. But I don't think players are normally doing anything like that during play.

The actual roll of the die by the player would not be diegetic, but the mechanic of roll a d20+str+prof would be since it's intertwined with the fictional event.

This is an example of what I mean above. It demands a precision of perception by players so that as characters they selectively experience only the diegetic parts while ignoring the non-diegetic parts. That in itself is circular: those parts of a mechanic that a player experiences are diegetic because they experience them... which is what makes them diegetic.