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

[Maxperson]

Yet what? The watcher isn't an element of the diegesis.

So it happens without the audience? It seems to me that the audience being required makes it an element. Without the audience to experience what happens in the fictional setting, nothing happens.

Rolling the d20 is a decision procedure. What does it represent? I don't see how it represents "the climb attempt". The climb attempt is happening whether or not the d20 is rolled.

The audience(the player) has to also experience the climb attempt. Without the audience(the player) no climb attempt happened. The mechanic is how the player experiences the climb attempt as a success or failure. In that moment the mechanic is a representation of the climb success or failure.

 

[Maxperson]

This doesn't conform to Sorensen's principle 3, though. Which was my point.

The offscreen is, by definition, not part of the diegesis. it hasn't been narrated.

Once again, since you missed it when you read the Oxford site and apparently again when I quoted it directly to you,

"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"

 

[Maxperson]

No. The mechanic is not our experience. Period. It is not in any way the thing in your head being imagined.

The thing being imagined doesn't happen without it. You can imagine a successful or failed climb check until you are blue in the face, but without the ability check the climb doesn't happen in the fiction, so there's no mutual experience. The mechanic is how you experience what happens in the fiction.

The dice are not in, nor of, your experience of the world. Dice are a mechanic which determines the answer "yes" or "no" depending on whether the resulting value, with various modifiers, is greater-than-or-equal-to some number, or less than that number, respectively. At no part of this mechanic did the character roll dice, look at numbers, compare totals, or verify; to them, it is simply an action, and the result is inherent and automatic. They know what the one and only result could be as it is happening. The dice do not do that. The dice don't say anything at all about WHY the answer is "yes" or "no". Just that it is "yes" or "no". (I say "yes" or "no" because different perspectives change what the result is in terms of success vs failure. E.g. if a wizard forces a bulette to make a saving throw, and the bulette "succeeds", then the Wizard "failed" to apply the effect; but if we cast it as "yes" or "no", then the question is more easily understood symmetrically: did the bulette avoid my attack? Did I avoid the Wizard's attack? yes/no.)

The dice are not a mechanic at all. The mechanic is roll a d20+str+prof. The dice are just dice.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

Creating a simulation isn’t authoring fiction it’s creating a simulation.

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 the core of map-and-key play - as running a simulation? I don't think that sheds much light on it - calling it map-and-key play seems clearer. But yes, using map-and-key to determine what situations to present is a distinct way of RPGing.

Let’s say I as dm create a dungeon with certain inhabitants, each with certain behaviors, etc. if my goal is to simulate what they do based on my prep and game mechanics then I didn’t simply create fiction, I created a simulation. Contrast with your runes example. There was no goal to simulate what the runes meant, only a goal to author what they meant.

But I don't see that it is essential to simulationist RPGing, particularly if that is being used in the way that @clearstream is using it in this thread, to describe play aimed at a type of heightened appreciation of subject matter.

I find that definition interesting but don’t really buy into it.

Any activity can be said to be done for heightened appreciation of the subject matter. It’s a terrible definition IMO.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The thing being imagined doesn't happen without it. You can imagine a successful or failed climb check until you are blue in the face, but without the ability check the climb doesn't happen in the fiction, so there's no mutual experience. The mechanic is how you experience what happens in the fiction.

Except it absolutely is not. You can absolutely imagine that. A bazillion times, even.

The one and ONLY thing the dice tell you is "yes" or "no" to the question "did I climb?" That's it. That's all they say.

You are simply wrong to assert that the dice are "how" you experience it. The dice are not in your brain. They are not in your eyes. They are not in your imaginings. They give information to your imaginings. But it is your imaginings that you experience. Not the dice.

The dice are not a mechanic at all. The mechanic is roll a d20+str+prof. The dice are just dice.

If we cannot even agree on "using dice" as a mechanic, there is no point in having this conversation. You are literally ignoring a thing that is a core, fundamental mechanic of the vast majority of TTRPGs.

 

[pemerton]

Now that is a good example.

Thanks!

To build on it: is the use of the reaction roll to establish backstory seen as a concession to playability, or a good/creative thing?

It's hard for me to recall my beliefs/orientations of 30+ years ago, but I tentatively suggest that in RM play it would be considered a concession. Whereas MHRP (just to pick on one game) treats it as a good/creative thing.

Here's a non-mechanical example from MHRP, to illustrate how it embraces in-play creation of backstory; it is a Milestone for Wolverine:

OLD FRIENDS, OLD ENEMIES
1 XP when you declare someone an old ally or foe.​

Wolverine's player is encouraged to come up with backstory during play, and is awarded an XP for doing so.

A further question is whether this is at odds with simulationism. I take one consequence of @clearstream's posts to be that it is not.

 

[Maxperson]

Except it absolutely is not. You can absolutely imagine that. A bazillion times, even.

So if you say you going to try and climb the wall, and you imagine it being successful, the DM has to honor that in the fiction because you imagined it? Sorry, but no. The DM will ask you to make the check before you can be successful or fail, unless of course the outcome is not in doubt. But this discussion presumed doubt since we are discussing the d20.

The one and ONLY thing the dice tell you is "yes" or "no" to the question "did I climb?" That's it. That's all they say.

They say you succeeded or failed in your skill with climbing. The fiction shows the success or failure of your character's skill at climbing in the fiction.

They are the same. And without the mechanic, you have no success or failure in the fiction.

You are simply wrong to assert that the dice are "how" you experience it. The dice are not in your brain. They are not in your eyes. They are not in your imaginings. They give information to your imaginings. But it is your imaginings that you experience. Not the dice.

I never said the dice are how you experience it. The mechanic is the pathway. Until you succeed or fail with the dice, nothing you imagine matters because it didn't happen in the fiction. After the mechanic plays out and the DM narrates it, your imagination will match the mechanic result.

If we cannot even agree on "using dice" as a mechanic, there is no point in having this conversation. You are literally ignoring a thing that is a core, fundamental mechanic of the vast majority of TTRPGs.

d20+modifier is the core mechanic. The actual 20 sided die is just a die that sits there and looks neat. It is not a mechanic. If I give one to my son and he rolls it because it's nearly round, no mechanic is engaged.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So if you say you going to try and climb the wall, and you imagine it being successful, the DM has to honor that in the fiction because you imagined it? Sorry, but no. The DM will ask you to make the check before you can be successful or fail, unless of course the outcome is not in doubt. But this discussion presumed doubt since we are discussing the d20.

They say you succeeded or failed in your skill with climbing. The fiction shows the success or failure of your character's skill at climbing in the fiction.

They are the same. And without the mechanic, you have no success or failure in the fiction.

I never said the dice are how you experience it. The mechanic is the pathway. Until you succeed or fail with the dice, nothing you imagine matters because it didn't happen in the fiction. After the mechanic plays out and the DM narrates it, your imagination will match the mechanic result.

d20+modifier is the core mechanic. The actual 20 sided die is just a die that sits there and looks neat. It is not a mechanic. If I give one to my son and he rolls it because it's nearly round, no mechanic is engaged.

The mechanic is how you experience what happens in the fiction.

The mechanic is just like our ears. It's how we experience what is happening in the fiction.

You can't see that when you roll a climb check that it represents(along with proficiency and strength) the climb attempt?

It's the path player used to experience the climb being done by his character.

At the time of the roll the meaning is already there and the roll represents the in fiction event.

You, in fact, did.

 

[The Firebird]

Thanks!

To build on it: is the use of the reaction roll to establish backstory seen as a concession to playability, or a good/creative thing?

It's hard for me to recall my beliefs/orientations of 30+ years ago, but I tentatively suggest that in RM play it would be considered a concession. Whereas MHRP (just to pick on one game) treats it as a good/creative thing.

Here's a non-mechanical example from MHRP, to illustrate how it embraces in-play creation of backstory; it is a Milestone for Wolverine:

OLD FRIENDS, OLD ENEMIES​

1 XP when you declare someone an old ally or foe.​

Wolverine's player is encouraged to come up with backstory during play, and is awarded an XP for doing so.

A further question is whether this is at odds with simulationism. I take one consequence of @clearstream's posts to be that it is not.

It depends a lot on the implementation. How much world building is happening because of the roll? I think it varies from GM to GM, but many OSR ones would consider a good creative thing.

Others might run it as "the roll only sets the disposition of the monster towards the PCs". I'd guess those would consider it more of a concession.

 

[pemerton]

2) not all fiction requires an author (individual or committee). Fiction can also be generated by simulation, by system, essentially by processes that map real world occurrences (say rolling dice) to fictional occurrences without human intervention to the fictional meaning.

Examples would help here, because I'm not sure if the things you're thinking of are the things I'm thinking of; but I don't think I agree.

Following Vincent Baker and Emily Care Boss, I will call those real world occurrences cues.

A cue can prompt game participants to accept something as part of the shared fiction. I think that's the main reason for using them. But the cues don't, in themselves, create the fiction. The participants have to actually accept the cues' deliverances. Fudging, re-rolling etc shows that this doesn't always happen.

Now if your point is that cues can be used to prompt acceptance of fiction that the participants wouldn't create through their own authorial efforts, I agree. In fact, Baker says that this is the only reason to use game rules:

Here's what I'd say: if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better. . . .

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's . . . No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

If you don't want that . . . then live negotiation and honest collaboration are a) just as good as, and b) a lot more flexible and robust than, whatever formal rules you'd use otherwise.

The challenge facing rpg designers is to create outcomes that every single person at the table would reject, yet are compelling enough that nobody actually does so.​

The references to playing by the rules and agreeing to abide by the rules' results and nobody actually rejecting outcomes highlight that the outcome yielded by the cues still has to actually be taken up by the participants to enter into their shared fiction.

The watcher isn't an element of the diegesis.

So it happens without the audience? It seems to me that the audience being required makes it an element. Without the audience to experience what happens in the fictional setting, nothing happens.

I don't follow this at all.

I mean, yes it's true that there can be no audience experience without an audience. But the audience are not elements of the story they experience. The point of talking about diegesis is to focus on the telling of the story, not the uptake of the story. And as @hawkeyefan has posted, one noteworthy use of the adjective "diegetic" is not describe phenomena that accompany the telling of the story that are also elements within the story, such as (some) sounds and music.

The audience(the player) has to also experience the climb attempt.

No they don't.

I mean, in a movie (or a book, for that matter, but I think it is more likely to occur in a movie), the audience might see the character at the bottom of the cliff, getting ready to climb (chalking their hands, tightening the laces on their boots, etc); and then the next shot has the climber scrambling over the top of the cliff, red in the face and with sweat on their brow. The audience has not experienced the climb, and the climb is not part of the diegesis. It has been elided.

As per my reply to @hawkeyefan not too far upthread, this sort of thing is very common in RPGing. Not every moment and every activity is presented to or imagined by the game participants. Lots of events are elided. For instance,

*The PC is in a small sailing boat at the docks, intending to sail to the island 20 miles off the coast;

*The player declares "I set off!";

*The GM calls for a roll (in some systems this would be a Sailing check; in others a check on some other skill - eg maybe a DEX check modified by proficiency with the vehicle);

*If the roll succeeds, the GM then narrates "after a few hours of smooth sailing, you arrive at the island".​

The actual journey across the water has not been narrated, and hence was not experienced by the audience - the game participants. They elide it, and turn their attention to what matters to them, namely, the events that occur once the PC lands on the island.

Of course if the roll had failed, then things might be different. Even then, though, there would likely be some ellision: eg "Things are smooth for the first hour or so, but then <GM narrates something going wrong>".

Without the audience(the player) no climb attempt happened. The mechanic is how the player experiences the climb attempt as a success or failure. In that moment the mechanic is a representation of the climb success or failure.

But there is no representation of anything. The d20 roll tells the participants - who have agreed to abide by its outcome - whether or not the character succeeded in their attempted climb. It doesn't show the climb happening, or narrate the events of the climb.