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

[clearstream]

But yes! This does in fact mean that essentially every mechanic used in D&D isn't diegetic and almost certainly can't be made so. That shouldn't really be a surprise. We are still primarily using slight variations of mechanics invented around 50 years ago primarily to let some wargamers get up to some silly shenanigans with swords and sorcery. They weren't meant to be diegetic at all; they were simply meant to be adequate to get useful information across.

All or almost all D&D mechanics can easily be made diegetic: I simply pretend my character can know about them. Rather than saying as player that my character says "I'm going to climb this wall" or just sets about climbing, I say as player that my character says "I will roll a d20 modified by my Strength ability and Athletics proficiency against the DC to climb this wall" or just rolls d20, adds the appropriate modifiers and compares that with the DC.

My character could have lengthy in-world conversations about the mechanics. The d20 at the table could be taken as a prop associated with a diegetic d20 that my character carries in their pocket, ready to roll.

 

[Enrahim]

I think DL shows the strengths of an integration between scenario and PCs.

Doing it DL style, with the same person authoring both elements, makes sense. If the players are going to author the PCs, and the scenario is meant to speak to them, I think there are issues with outsourcing DL-style authorship to the GM. I actually think this is where different approaches to play - say, BW-style or AW-style - show their strengths.

Indeed. See my second mode - where the characters is the game.

 

[Maxperson]

RQ combat provides an example

A hit location table is associated with each creature. Modifiers to things like dodging are associated with what characters are carrying. Strike ranks are associated with weapons and actions. But no one should picture that just because statement of intent and movement of non-engaged characters are processed before melee, missile and spell resolution, that's how combat plays out in the world.​

If we're saying game mechanics are diegetic, which parts of the RQ combat game mechanics are diegetic? Non-engaged characters do move in the fiction (something characters can know) but to ease processing they do that in phase 2., before melee, missile and spell resolution. From the RQ combat mechanics text

It is always necessary to realize that, although these phases are taken in turn, the activities they address occur more-or-less simultaneously​

​

We're not supposed to picture everyone standing frozen, swords raised etc, while non-engaged characters run around. But how do we know which is which? It's because we've already decided on what is diegetic in the fiction, and then because we've decided that we're circling back to the mechanic and annotating some parts of it as diegetic.

And that does no effective work at all, because we never picture that characters are aware of game mechanics! Other than in deliberate parody, characters do not have conversations like "I'm going to roll my Strength (Athletics) to climb this wall." All it means to say that a game mechanic is "diegetic" is that it is associated with something that is diegetic. And that is fine: it is perfectly useful to talk about game mechanics as having more or less abundant, direct, or high fidelity associations with things that are diegetic.

The problem is that people are trying to look at RPGs like they are movies when they are not.

Aristotle identified mimesis and diegesis. Mimesis was when the story was shown to you as in a play, where diegesis was when the story was narrated to you and wasn't visual.

Movies and TV changed that. It's visual, like mimesis, but because the camera work and editing force the view to focus on the aspects of the story the director wants you to focus on, it's considered to be a form of narration, so the visuals became diegetic when experienced by both the audience and the characters, and non-diegetic when only experienced by the audience.

RPGs change that even further. Most of the game has no visual, but some parts do, such as terrain and figures. Even then those things don't include all the details that our character's experience with the terrain and creatures. It's also not experienced solely through the narration and visuals, but also through mechanics. The mechanics being a direct part of how the event is experienced and also part of the to the event in the fiction makes that mechanic diegetic.

Without the use of the mechanic, no event occurs for the character in the fiction to be experienced by the player. The mechanic is part of what is happening in the fiction. Without the climb check mechanics, there is no climb happening in the fiction.

So like the change to diegesis with the advent of film, where visuals can now be said to be diegetic because of how it can be perceived as narration, mechanics can also be said to be diegetic because of how they are the same as the event the character perceives. No mechanics, no climb. Yes mechanics, yes climb.

Aristotle couldn't conceive of movies and TV, nor could he conceive of modern RPGs. Things change and what is or is not diegetic has to change with them.

 

[Maxperson]

In TTRPG, players are (also) the audience. That simplifies things because it means that if the actor knows it, the audience knows it.

I don't see how that changes anything. Yes the player is also the actor, but neither are the character in the fiction. Just because the player/actor knows something, doesn't mean that the character does, and vice versa. Though to bring out something that the character knows that the player/actor doesn't informs the player/actor of that thing so both are aware in that moment.

 

[clearstream]

Without the use of the mechanic, no event occurs for the character in the fiction to be experienced by the player. The mechanic is part of what is happening in the fiction. Without the climb check mechanics, there is no climb happening in the fiction.

Suppose the game text for climbing were excised from D&D. I would nevertheless be quite able to imagine my character climbing in the fiction. Here is that text for reference

While you’re climbing, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in Difficult Terrain). You ignore this extra cost if you have a Climb Speed and use it to climb.​

​

At the DM’s option, climbing a slippery surface or one with few handholds might require a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check.​

The purpose of the game text for climbing isn't to make it possible to climb in the fiction. Its purpose is that, because I want to climb in the fiction, I'm interested in how fast I can climb and whether that could fail or become complicated. Game mechanics are teleological: their purposes precede their design.

The following might help to see this

Player (speaking of their character) "I will climb the wall"
GM "Yes. Now you are at the top of the wall"

That sequence is perfectly permissible in the latest version of D&D.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All or almost all D&D mechanics can easily be made diegetic: I simply pretend my character can know about them. Rather than saying as player that my character says "I'm going to climb this wall" or just sets about climbing, I say as player that my character says "I will roll a d20 modified by my Strength ability and Athletics proficiency against the DC to climb this wall" or just rolls d20, adds the appropriate modifiers and compares that with the DC.

My character could have lengthy in-world conversations about the mechanics. The d20 at the table could be taken as a prop associated with a diegetic d20 that my character carries in their pocket, ready to roll.

Let me rephrase.

Made diegetic in a way that simulationist players would accept.

I had taken it as given that, since this conversation has been about that, that would be assumed. Anything can be made diegetic by fiat, that's not really an answer. Making things diegetic without fiat is much trickier, and is clearly what AlViking was talking about.

 

[AlViking]

The camera is non-diegetic, right? As is the movie screen, the projector, and the auditorium. What is diegetic is that which the actors in the movie as their characters can pretend they experience, and the audience can share in that pretence.

Similarly the author, drafts, editor and book non-diegetic. Any outside influences aren't diegetic.

Of course, I might be missing what you and @EzekielRaiden are debating. Apologies if so!

I don't consider the camera diegetic or non-diegetic because it is not concerned with the story being told in any meaningful sense. It's the mechanism and part of the medium used to tell the story, it is unrelated to the fiction of the story. The camera is not part of the narrative, it captures the narrative. That's conflating the means by which we create and share the narrative with the narrative itself.

 

[clearstream]

Let me rephrase.

Made diegetic in a way that simulationist players would accept.

I had taken it as given that, since this conversation has been about that, that would be assumed. Anything can be made diegetic by fiat, that's not really an answer. Making things diegetic without fiat is much trickier, and is clearly what AlViking was talking about.

Thank you for clarifying. I would narrow it to something like "Made 'diegetic' in a way that process-simulationist players would accept."

 

[Maxperson]

Suppose the game text for climbing were excised from D&D. I would nevertheless be quite able to imagine my character climbing in the fiction. Here is that text for reference

While you’re climbing, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot (2 extra feet in Difficult Terrain). You ignore this extra cost if you have a Climb Speed and use it to climb.​

​

At the DM’s option, climbing a slippery surface or one with few handholds might require a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check.​

The purpose of the game text for climbing isn't to make it possible to climb in the fiction. Its purpose is that, because I want to climb in the fiction, I'm interested in how fast I can climb and whether that could fail or become complicated. Game mechanics are teleological: their purposes precede their design.

I don't see that changing anything. If that mechanic exists, you still can't climb without it, making it a part of the fictional climb. The only way the PC is climbing without a mechanic being part of the fictional climb is for there not to be any mechanic at all.

That means that yes, you can imagine your character climbing the wall. And he does, because there's no mechanic to say otherwise. You could also say he walks up to the clouds. And he does, because there's no mechanic to say otherwise.

To remove all mechanics from the fiction, you have to remove all mechanics that are used to resolve fictional things. At that point, though, it's not really a roleplaying game. It's a storytelling game with the DM and players just spouting stories at one another, mixing them together.

 

[AlViking]

I mean, I don't think I can disagree here with particularly vigorously. With HP we can basically argue about whether they are non-simulationistic or just weakly simulationistic. I think that with my approach where they are always associated with some sort of actual injury they qualify for the latter. With common approach where they're just some nebulous plot armour and a character could be missing a significant chunk of the HP without even knowing it they're probably the former. And yah, turn taking is pretty much just a gamist convenience.



So I don't think deciding what the runes really mean is a simulation regardless of who does it. But once it is somehow decided then we can have simulation about the character reading them by comparing their rune reading skill to the difficulty of the runes, with possible outcomes of successfully reading them, failing to read them and perhaps some middle results of understanding some of them.

That you you have numbers that supposedly simulate the character skill and the difficulty of the runes but then draw from them odds of something unrelated to the either what makes it a clear non-simulation. Like you could have rules that perfectly simulate armour piercing capabilities of a Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifle, but if you use those to determine the chances of rain in Spain it is not any sort of a simulation.

As Sorensen says "When the dragon reaches 0 HP and dies, it does not die because it reached 0 HP: it dies because it has suffered so much damage it cannot endure further. Your game’s abstractions are representative, not authoritative."