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

[AlViking]

Aren't they? Do you say this based on your own expert knowledge of runes in dungeons?

Eg do you not think an archaeologist might be better at conjecturing what some writing is likely to be about, before they read it, based on what else they can observe about it, its location, etc, than a non-expert?

I think that the runes meaning what they hope for is not affected one way or another by their knowledge of runes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's the point. No they don't.

I see nothing in the rest of your post to convince me your premise here is correct. Nor do I see the style of game as being relevant to my point, which has nothing to do with degree of simulation.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree. For determining the results? Yeah, it really doesn't matter. You have X% chance of success in either system.

But, how those elements come together? What those dice actually mean and how they interact? Yeah, that matters.

And I'm sorry but I still don't see it, and I don't think you've conveyed how its true in any meaningful way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Different modes of play have different principles and rules for agreeing what the characters can know. I can therefore say that under some set of principles and rules being followed, players will where appropriate refrain from pretending their characters know X.

As an aside, I suggest "diegetical" when describing mechanics.


Not quite. I'm saying that when determining what is diegetic while playing D&D, it's D&D's principles and rules that count. I may dislike them, and that is a separate matter from whether X has been properly established to be diegetic in D&D... i.e. in accordance with its principles and rules such that players of D&D agree to pretend their characters can know that X.


Incorporating a person into the lusory-means enables players to entertain as diegetic all sorts of things that may be effortful, even prohibitively so, to formulate as rules in text. Excision of any role for participant imagination in saying what exists in the imagined world winds up with a boardgame, not a TTRPG. I know you do not mean to take it that far... but where do you draw the line? Quite properly, you draw it according to your preferences.

Overall I am seeking to avoid any 'private' definition of diegetic. I could protest that "Were I playing D&D I would reject those principles and rules that allow DM to freely declare X is diegetic! So that X isn't diegetic for me, a player! Checkmate!!" Very well, but then I will be playing a variant of the game that better suits my ideas of satisfactory play. That has no bearing on whether those players who do put the principles and rules of D&D in force for themselves are capable of pretending that their characters know some X, that X being established by DM.

I don't know that it helps, but imagine that the rule I wanted to follow was X is diegetic, but only if that X was established on an odd numbered day by a person named Frank. I don't think a rule like that should have any bearing on groups following different rules for establishing their imagined worlds. Referring back to cinema, it's not the mechanics of prop-creation, set-dressing, script-writing or projection that make things seen on screen or heard in the auditorium diegetic or not, it's agreement in acceptance by actors and audience that they are. My friend Frank and I could sit down on an odd numbered day and achieve that in our RPG.

I guess I just feel like if something "is diegetic"--even "is diegetical"--then we should all agree it is so.

It should not be, "Well, to me, that's diegetical. But to Alex, it's not-diegetical. And to Pat, it's debatably-diegetical. And to Sam, it's diegetical on odd-numbered days of months, and not-diegetcal on even-numbered days, except February 29th, where it is diegetical only if it happens before noon, and not if it happens after noon."

That is, when we talk about diegetic music, that's...a thing everyone agrees on. Either the character in the film is experiencing that music, or they are not. That's...pretty much essential to what "diegetic" means, in-context. There isn't, and can't be, any subjectivity in whether the music is diegetic. It's possible to be factually mistaken, e.g. to have missed how the decrescendo in the music corresponds precisely to the moment where the character turns down the volume on their MP3 player (or whatever)--but it's not possible for Alex to assert that they feel the music is diegetic, while Pat asserts that it feels non-diegetic to them, and both are correct.

That seems utterly essential to what "diegetic" means. Why should that be abandoned?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All of them are viable in a general way is my point. Can it be your first example? If circumstances allow for it. Can it be the second one? If circumstances allow for it. The DM will narrate one response, but any of those that represent skill and fit the circumstances could be used.

...Yes, Max. And that's precisely my problem.

The rules don't tell you SQUAT about which one is correct.

They are simply, flatly, absolutely, completely, utterly, SILENT.

That is what the problem is!

It's only meaningless if you choose to intentionally ignore the meaning.

That's rich.

If you are asking what in the fiction made your skill sufficient, then you come up with that answer. Maybe it was because your Uncle Lemmy used to take you hiking and taught you the basics of climbing. Maybe it was because you made a level and your proficiency went up due to practice and experience. I don't know. All I know is that if the roll was successful, the skill was sufficient to achieve success.

It's not my place as the DM to figure out why your skill is what it is. It's only my job to narrate what the success looks like.

......those two things are the same! By doing one you always, guaranteed, 100%, do the other!

Apparently you aren't reading very well right now.

And now insults? Yeah, we're done here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And I'm sorry but I still don't see it, and I don't think you've conveyed how its true in any meaningful way.

What does a simulation do?

It seems to me that the basic-english answer is, "It tells us how and why new things happen, when we put into it what things we already know about."

"How and why" precisely is what "simulation" does. We can't just wish that away by saying "well it's only for success so it's doing the only thing it needs to do".

 

[Enrahim]

While I accept the line of reasoning at a high level, it does not answer my question. X can be of the kind "worst possible failure" and "disastrous consequences" without that meaningfully reducing my options for what I can say X actually is. Subsets of an infinity may still be infinite!

I think my answer to @EzekielRaiden touched on this, but in a bit shallow level. I think this asks the relevant question so sharply it warrants a bit more investigation.

The problem posed is that even given all the constraints the narration and principles ensuring a mechanics to be "diegetical", we still have a enormous number of posible narations. How to chose one of them? The naive answer would be that it shouldn't matter, as all narrations has already been established to satisfy all relevant criteria. However as demonstrated by the example of "take the one you prefer" the methodology chosen here can still compromise the property of the mechanics being "diegetical".

This is indeed a non trivial problem. How to neutrally decide among such an huge number of options. I am proposing a human judge that try to stay neutral might be the best option we have available to us - not just in terms of speed and practicality, but indeed in terms of limiting bias/groundedness.

To take a couple of the alternatives - one is to add extra constraints via oracle until you after an exponential reduction are left with only one option. Even if we ignore the practicalities of narrowing down to the choice of words with this method, we still have the problem in that we introduce hard to reason about biases in our choice of questions, and the corresponding probability distribution we create.

Another might be to pick out a limited sample and select one of them randomly. Like pick 6 possible outcomes and roll a d6 to chose which to go for. Again we have the bias of choice, and again we could get into situations where we unintentionally introduces skews. For instance if someone using this method think it would be good to in general introduce an outlier in this set of 6 to give such outcomes a chance of happening.

Allowing a human to judge strongly limits the likelihood of such probabilistic issues to become visible. Indeed in terms of groundedness the unintentional order a human is likely to introduce compared to real randomness is likely highly preferable, though not fully ideal in terms of "diegetical"-ity.

I still think the mechanics can safely be called "diegetical". That the implementation of it has flaws in terms of human imperfections I think should not reflect back on the mechanics itself. This similar to the fact that no dice is perfect would normally not be taken into account when analysing the probabilistic features of a rulesystem.

Setting that aside, is there any causal explanation traceable in the text I cited for why Dance sometimes has the outcome "lust" and other times "wonder" or "telling a story" beyond the player intending that their skill use should have that effect?

This rules text would probably not pass muster in a turnament setting in this regard - but as an interpreting GM my reading of it is that the "desired emotional response" of the game text refer to the adventurer's desire, and as such it would be whoever is responsible for determining the adventurer's desire that at some point must provide information about which of these it is. That would typically be the player. Then it would typically be a responsibility of the GM to ensure nothing in the fiction narrated at any point prevents a diegetic causal explenation. A causal explanation need not actually be identified.

Edit: I think I misread your question. No I do not think the game text provides any aid in producing such a causal explanation. But the outcomes presented do not present me with any particular challenges with seeing possible causal explanations based on my experience as a human being - so the game text hardly need to provide me such support.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What does a simulation do?

It seems to me that the basic-english answer is, "It tells us how and why new things happen, when we put into it what things we already know about."

"How and why" precisely is what "simulation" does. We can't just wish that away by saying "well it's only for success so it's doing the only thing it needs to do".

I just think that to the degree you can reasonably expect the system to tell you that, expecting the randomizer to be the part doing that lifting is fundamentally unreasonable. That's not what its for. Its to represent the parts of the situation that are too fine and varied to be defined up-front. If those up-fronts don't give you an idea of what precisely happened (or other elements of resolution such as hit location) to a degree that's satisfactory for you, you either want a system that is finer grain than you're using, or or someone needs to decide it outside the system.

(As a reminder, if you think I'm one of the people who considers that has to automatically be the GM you're confusing me with someone else).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So I think it is usefull to look at D&D (and most rpgs) as a toolkit for "building" a game.

And I just see this as, frankly, legitimizing Extremely Lazy Design. I don't really have a whole lot to say to the preceding stuff, because it all ultimately hinges on this specific problem. I think a game that is being sold to people shouldn't be "and now it's your job to actually build a game out of this", unless it is explicitly sold as a build-your-own-game product.

D&D hasn't been that since at least WotC editions. I'd argue it hasn't been that since 2nd edition, given certain turnarounds Gygax had that bled into the game design, but whether that's true or not is a philosophical debate I'm not interested in right now.

This narration takes into consideration the skill levels. It go out of it's way to make sure the narration was made so that it honors the outcome of each individual check, while maintaining in fiction causality in light of the diegetic skill capabilities of the participants involved.

If the roles had been reversed, it would have hardly been neccessary to narrate sorcerer being distracted, nor that the druid happened to look into the forrest. The purpose of the narration appear to be exactly what would be required for this instance of mechanic use to be "diegetical".

But this just makes the whole thing circular. The narration takes the form it did because of the skills, but now you're saying we know it must be about skill because of how it was narrated--you've inverted the causation to conclude that it did the right thing. That's circular logic.

I would like to add I am not sure why you would find a problem with such "retroactive" narration? The narration happens to have constraints on the end situation of the narration, but among all the other constraints on narration I fail to see how this particular kind should be particularly problematic? There are no causality issues as seen from the fiction. I could possibly see how this could be a issue in terms of immersion, but I don't think it is widely reported as such?

I don't have a problem with this sort of thing. I find it perfectly acceptable.

But you, and others, have specifically brought up the problem of retrocausal situations. Hell, it literally just came up in a conversation I had with someone else. The idea that the failed lockpicking roll "creates" the person walking down the hallway to find it. That's exactly what is happening here. The failed perception roll creates the distractedness of the character--but that distractedness had to have been the cause of the bad result, not the effect of it.

Such retrocausal resolution is something most offensive to pretty much everyone I've spoken to who advocates vociferously for simulation.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I just think that to the degree you can reasonably expect the system to tell you that, expecting the randomizer to be the part doing that lifting is fundamentally unreasonable. That's not what its for. Its to represent the parts of the situation that are too fine and varied to be defined up-front. If those up-fronts don't give you an idea of what precisely happened (or other elements of resolution such as hit location) to a degree that's satisfactory for you, you either want a system that is finer grain than you're using, or or someone needs to decide it outside the system.

(As a reminder, if you think I'm one of the people who considers that has to automatically be the GM you're confusing me with someone else).

I'm not necessarily saying that the dice specifically need to do that.

I am saying that, for the kind of simulation being laid claim to here, that D&D is claimed to produce, some kind of mechanic does need to do it. And no, I don't accept "GM says" as a "mechanic" for this purpose.