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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9715863" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I'm not Hussar, but no, that would not pass muster for me. By that standard, everything is always diegetic so long as we can sufficiently retrofit it to have been diegetic all along, and that's pretty obviously A Problem.If I may, let me give you an example of something I have advocated many times in other threads, and called "diegetic" without being particularly challenged over it. Specifically, when I have advocated against fudging, by recommending that one make one's intrusions diegetic.That is, I have a big beef about fudging. Since I know not everyone uses the word in the same way, when I use the word, I mean, "secretly modifying rules-results (e.g. ignoring dice, adding or subtracting values, etc.) to fix a specific result, concealing this from the players, and preventing them (as much as one can) from ever discovering it." I consider this inherently deceptive (you are, after all, making the players think the rules are being followed when they aren't), and I see it as genuinely negating the ability to learn from the consequences of one's choices. I know this view is controversial and I really don't want to debate about this in this thread, please understand that I am using this solely to give an example of diegetic gameplay which people have not previously contested re: diegetic-ness. Cool? Cool.My proposed alternatives to fudging, in order from most to least preferable (but also most-prep to least-prep) are: 1. Building stuff into the world itself in advance, that supports your intrusion into the rule resolution; 2. (this is the important one) "make it diegetic" by having your intrusion be an observable phenomenon, at least in principle; or 3. Clearly specifying (whether before or after the roll, but preferably before) that the results you aren't comfortable with are off the table, and something else will happen instead.That #2 technique, which I have many many times called "make it diegetic", refers to NOT simply secretly electing to ignore the rules when it suits you, but making any such event part of the world. It's not just that the goblin priest managed to ignore that lucky crit that should've killed it after only one round--somehow, a terrifying power has clearly "spared" (in a most gruesome way!) the goblin priest, powering him even through wounds you KNOW are lethal. It's not just that the monster got a crit on the brand-new player and would've killed their character outright in the middle of their very first session--clearly some kind of providence saved them. But who? What? We'll have to find out!Here we can see the clear separation, and how I am advocating for the removal of that separation. Despite being an interference with the rules, fudging is inherently not diegetic. It's not part of the world--it's pretending that the world actually is one way when the rules clearly and reasonably (as in, no "abstraction was stupid, stick with the world" retort here) say the world should be a different way. When you make it diegetic, and specifically diegetic and reasonably discoverable (meaning, the PCs don't need to roll three consecutive nat-20s to find out--the chance of discovery is reasonably high), you hard avert basically every problem I have with fudging. Now, even though the rules are no longer entirely sacrosanct, we can tell that the GM interfered. We can see it, and we can now account for it--the GM can't just invoke this any time it suits, it's a part of the world, one that perhaps could be mitigated or even subverted to the PCs' aid.That is what making a mechanic diegetic looks like. A milquetoast statement like "when the roll is a success, give narration that makes sense" is....not that. It's not enough. The GM may be speaking diegetically (their narration usually is meant to be accurate to the world regardless!), but the preceding mechanical expression is not diegetic.</blockquote>

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