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

[EzekielRaiden]

Doubts about what outcome should be imagined include deciding whose preferred or proposed outcome the group will agree to. That can be met in ways other than process-simulation.

Okay....

I don't see how that is relevant when the topic at hand is "process" sim...?

 

[pemerton]

in d&d players don’t just achieve their intent (whatever it may have been) with an action declaration on a success. They succeed at a particular task.

I don't think this is a very accurate description of how resolution in 4e D&D works.

And I don't think it's accurate for combat in any version of D&D, where success on a roll to hit triggers a damage roll. which depletes the opponent's hp, taking the overall situation closer to the player's intent of defeating the opponent. Whereas what task has been achieved, by succeeding on a to hit roll, is something the game (quite deliberately, as explained by Gygax back in 1979) doesn't address.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think the DM in the second imagined sample of play has broken any rule in D&D. In both cases the outcome was uncertain and narratively interesting. Characters didn't do anything non-diegetic.

My sense is that this sort of thing would be reasonably uncommon in 5e D&D play. Whether or not it breaks any rules is something for those more familiar with the rulebooks to answer.

It doesn't break any rule of 4e D&D (assuming the appropriate translations of the technical terminology are made). I posted an example, upthread, of the use of Insight in a skill challenge which was - in structural terms - basically the same as the Strange Runes.

 

[pemerton]

In the case of one person telling a story my understanding is that it is relatively well defined and accepted what "diegetic" means?

That is it should be a reasonable test for a proposed definition of diegetic in context of TTRPGs, to see if this definition reduces to match the well established definition in that edge case?

Suppose we take this approach. Then there is absolutely nothing "non-diegetic" about the runes case, or the startled cook, or anything else that has been discussed in this thread. Because each involves the introduction of fictional elements (along the lines of telling a story) but mediated via a resolution process and allocation of participant roles (which is what makes it a RPG rather than just group storytelling).

 

[pemerton]

I know why it matters to you: you're playing a game where a principal goal is for the players to (i) learn what obstacles/challenges has placed into the setting, and (ii) overcome them.

That's not the issue.

Your post just upthread of this one, together with the rest of this post, strongly imply that this is exactly the issue:

It doesn't really matter that a player made the decision instead of a GM, it was such an obvious "Get out of jail the dungeon free" card that it wouldn't make sense in the established fiction to me.

It feels like the player was allowed to cheat, the runes being directions to the exit are something they could not have possibly known ahead of time and also make no sense in the fiction.

I mean, you use the language of "cheating" and "get out of jail free" - your whole complaint is about the way the challenge is structured and overcome.

You are not factoring in that it is not map-and-key play. There is no map of the dungeon. There is no tracking of the position of PCs (or NPCs) on a map. The fact that the PCs are lost is expressed by them being burdened with a complication, Lost in the Dungeon (rated at d12). The way for the PC to become unlost is for their player to reduce that complication by taking actions that reduce it. Reading Strange Runes and having them reveal ways out is exactly the sort of thing the game expects. It's not a game of solve-the-GM's-puzzle or overcome-the-obstacle-set-by-the-GM.

As for your claim that it makes no sense, that's obviously not true. Consider what @clearstream posted, for instance:

"The runes seem at first hopelessly obscure but then you make out symbols for warning and undeath... and for light! It's got to be the tunnels going East that you should follow."

And obviously there are many other ways, too, in which runes could reveal a way out of the dungeon. For instance, they could reveal that the room is the 8th chamber, and the PC knows - from their study or experience - where the 8th chamber is in relation to the dungeon entrance (Gandalf uses this method in Moria).

Etc.

EDIT:

Of course I'm going to play along and go the wrong way but that makes it less enjoyable.

See, here is where you assume map-and-key play.

If the Lost in the Dungeon complication steps up from d12 to d12+, then the player doesn't need to "play along". The player is out of the scene ("stressed out" by the complication). As GM, I can approach that however I like (obviously within the bounds of the shared fiction, good taste, etc). For instance, I could narrate that they wake up a prisoner of the Dark Elves. Or I could describe them wandering lost through the tunnels for days or even weeks, and then frame a scene in a dungeon room that seems to me like it will be interesting and fun.

Etc

 

[clearstream]

I think your use of ‘significant’ is a major weakness. How is significance determined?

Yes, I think it is a weakness of process-simulation too, but it's not unanswerable. Game designers and consumers of their texts determine what is "significant", which may be influenced by acquired knowledge about their subject.

That is, if I assert the meaning of runes are significant but what causes a fall is not then is that process sim?

Upthread I wrote that the Cortex System satisfies definitions of process-simulation. In order to see what might refute that, I'm entertaining the notion that processes can be both para-diegetic and diegetical.

We've already discussed the diegetical character of game mechanics. As near as I can make out, it means that on deconstructing the text I can associate some abundance of elements with things I deem to be significant in the imagined world. I accept what I take to be the sense of @Enrahim's proposal, which includes that the procedural chains from inputs to outputs have such associations and follow and ideally enhance my appreciation of the causal chains I understand (or learn) to be associated with the phenomena.​

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Para-diegetic is a term I'm coining to mean that working the processes around the table puts me in mind or gives me the feeling of whatever I'm pretending happens in the imagined world. Thus it is possible to find noetic satisfaction in the para-diegetic qualities of a game mechanic. I think some mechanics will more strongly achieve that than others, remembering always that this is a quality of the process of enacting the mechanic around the table. It is not about any effects doing so might have on play beyond that. Notwithstanding that the diegetical qualities of a game mechanic would presumably encourage experiencing its para-diegetic qualities, and some posters have testified to these qualities driving certain played-experiences.​

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Process-simulation can seem to focus on what I discern in the text rather than played-experiences. I gave the example of Redbook C&S to support that notion. It's not that I think folk who enjoy process-simulation fail to have simulative-experiences. Rather I think process-simulation is just one account of how such experiences may be achieved. My disagreements in that regard are that I find it is not the only account. I observe that the focus on the game mechanics text can fall flat for many players, who find that more detailed text is not productive of simualtive-experiences in play (and they are able to cite various shortfalls, such as the inability of designers to pay the cost of covering all imaginable circumstances and outcomes, or players to enact them.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Would you agree that RPG with absolutely no player input or rules would reduce to the activity of one person telling a story?

Yes. This is one of the reasons why I don't have a particularly positive opinion of the typical way the "traditional GM" role is presented. Because that's exactly what it looks like to me. Player input is irrelevant outside of coloring within the established lines. You get to decide if your roses are red or white or yellow or maybe green if you're feeling adventurous.

In the case of one person telling a story my understanding is that it is relatively well defined and accepted what "diegetic" means?

Sure. I also don't really consider it to be a game anymore, so there are no mechanics.

That is it should be a reasonable test for a proposed definition of diegetic in context of TTRPGs, to see if this definition reduces to match the well established definition in that edge case?

Not really. By having taken it to such an extreme, you have removed it from the space of games and firmly planted it in the space of stories.

I have not really grasped your suggested definition of diegetic, so could you help me understand it better by explaining how it would be evaluated in light of the above?

Well....as noted, it can't. Because I don't think the above is a game anymore.

For something to be a game, as opposed to a story (no choices, you just experience it) or a puzzle, you need:

• Multiple (2+) genuinely distinct choices, which potentially lead toward (local*) victory conditions and loss conditions
• Relevant stakes will be set, and (local) victory or loss conditions will preserve/enhance them or harm/weaken them respectively
• The players are able to make reasonably-informed decisions about which choice to take
• The players can learn, from the consequences of each choice, which choices are better or worse to make in the future, meaning, the consequences that arise from these choices are solely the function of what choice the player made, the information they genuinely could have known (even if they failed to actually seek/discover it), and the rules of the game (including dice randomness)

A campaign which railroads players--visibly or invisibly--dramatically harms these elements, sometimes different ones depending on the specific technique used (e.g. the fourth point is severely harmed by illusionism, while the first point is severely harmed by any form of railroading). It is uncommon to cause so much harm that any given point is completely eliminated outright, but plenty achievable to cause so much harm that the result is only barely a game at all anymore within large chunks of the experience.

By these lights, something that goes as far as you have described genuinely exits game territory entirely. It is no longer a game. It is a story being experienced ("witnessed" is the term I've used previously) by the players. The GM has control over a great many things, and thus needs to exercise that control extraordinarily carefully. Changes to the rules or the input information should not happen--ever--during a time when the players are making decisions on the basis of that information, unless the players are given a real, reasonable chance to learn of the change (meaning, as I've said before, no "you must get three nat-20s in a row" BS--this needs to have a fairly good chance of success, if it isn't said outright.) Hence my previous example of the GM eliminating fudging by making their intrusion into the game-space diegetic: it's not a secret manipulation of the game concealed from the players and sustained as a pretense of a consistent world with consistent rules, it's a detectable, understandable, potentially even quantifiable and controllable change, the discovery of a new rule that new choices can regard when they're being made.

So...I can't answer the question as you've asked it. The thing you have presented isn't a game, given what I think a game needs to be, so the answer is "whether it achieves diegesis is not relevant to games doing so".

*"Local" here because people hate saying you can ever "win" anything at all in D&D, even though that's ridiculous. You can win combats. You can "save the day" and thus successfully complete a "quest". You can acquire the treasure you sought, or clear your name, or whatever. These are local win conditions. They are things that might happen or not happen, where you desire them to happen. Likewise, local failure states abound.

 

[pemerton]

How is simply declaring what runes mean (contingent on a success) actor stance instead of author stance? How is poking and prodding at the GMs world author stance instead of actor stance?

I am using the terms in the only sense I'm familiar with:

• In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.
• In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)

The player of the Cunning Expert determines his PC's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have: knowledge that there are strange runes in the dungeon, which - being a Cunning Expert - he can interpret.

The player of the "overcome the challenges set by the GM" game determines decisions and actions based on their own priorities as a player, namely, (i) identifying what those challenges are based on the knowledge that the GM will have placed them somewhere in the setting and situation, and then (ii) trying to overcome them.

 

[Pedantic]

I think you are laying out the case well if we indeed had been looking at the player mailing a decission about what outcome they prefered. However consider the following interpretation of the situatuation:

The characters find the runes. The player of the runes expert is asked what their character thinks the runes might be when observing them from afar. The player is the natural authority to ask such a question, and it ask about a here and now state - the mental state of the expert. No causality concerns are being violated here as far as I can see?

Now the expert's frame of mind is established as a fact in the fiction. The expert then proceed to read the runes. The potential outcomes of this action should take into account previously established fiction. The expert's frame of mind is such an established part of fiction. Further the expert's level of expertise seem relevant for determining how important this established part of the fiction should be in terms of determining outcome. No escape from fiction or break of causality happening yet.

Now the limitation of the shape of the rules present themselves. The single roll is only able to select among 2 different outcomes. That is that among the wast number of imaginable outcomes of reading the runes only two of them can be selected as possible at this stage. This is an enormous active colapse of any in-fiction probability distribution. How to decide which two outcomes to chose? Further remember that this roll is not in the game presented as determining success or failure, but to determine between a favorable and unfavorable outcome.

I have as such a really hard time seeing how you can justify not having the runes being read as the way the expert thought they might being one of the two possible outcomes. It would make sense that this is aligning with the side that is increased in probability by high skill. The other outcome the game appear to delegate to GM's discretion, but likely with some guidelines. (Edit - it could in particular be that the negative outcome should align with lower skill. In this case runes meaning something else than the expert expected seem to satisfy this criterion)

So here we do have a causality issue. A decission made outside the game collapsed the possibility space i the fiction in a way that cannot be accounted for in the fiction itself. But how is this different from the GM choosing exactly what to narrate on a success or failure in D&D?


And note, when ask about their character's assessment, the player could come with a corrupt answer. But a GM could also come with a corrupt answer to any of the judgement calls they are making. For purpose of analysis this game appear to assume players to be held to the same standards as a GM i this regard. As such this would be outright cheating the game, and not something that should be needed to be taken into account when analysing the game as it is meant to be played.

I wanted to jump back to this point, because I think it's where a significant element was moved outside the thing under question. The whole point about constraints on what outcomes are possible is that it allows the player to have preferences and exert themselves toward achieving them. One of the underlying goals of the whole design is to allow players freedom to try and achieve specific outcomes by leveraging their decisions. It's why I keep talking about "immersion" as moving that player state as close as possible to the character decision-making state.

It's not incidental that a player can try and string a series of actions together to get a specific outcome, and is unconstrained in how they make their choices, it's the whole point. That is a design feature, and not to include that, to set additional constraints on what the player is allowed to want or what their goal must be action to action, is to be lacking that. Once you require the player to respect the fiction in this nebulous way, instead of offloading that task to the mechanics such that their actions must fall within those norms, you're stripping away their ability to try and make the best possible choices. The point is to move the burden of avoiding a "corrupt" answer as you put it, outside the realm of player decision making in the first place, thus that whatever inputs a player provides can be honest attempts to bring the game to their desired state.

 

[Enrahim]

I wanted to jump back to this point, because I think it's where a significant element was moved outside the thing under question. The whole point about constraints on what outcomes are possible is that it allows the player to have preferences and exert themselves toward achieving them. One of the underlying goals of the whole design is to allow players freedom to try and achieve specific outcomes by leveraging their decisions. It's why I keep talking about "immersion" as moving that player state as close as possible to the character decision-making state.

It's not incidental that a player can try and string a series of actions together to get a specific outcome, and is unconstrained in how they make their choices, it's the whole point. That is a design feature, and not to include that, to set additional constraints on what the player is allowed to want or what their goal must be action to action, is to be lacking that. Once you require the player to respect the fiction in this nebulous way, instead of offloading that task to the mechanics such that their actions must fall within those norms, you're stripping away their ability to try and make the best possible choices. The point is to move the burden of avoiding a "corrupt" answer as you put it, outside the realm of player decision making in the first place, thus that whatever inputs a player provides can be honest attempts to bring the game to their desired state.

I agree with your analysis. However I guess you agree that what you describe is one spesific design philosophy? This might be extremely common, but I do not think it is an universal requirement. After all the DM is a participant in the game, and I know I enjoy myself as such even though I cannot reap the benefits of a game designed according to this philosophy for myself.