When playing a class-based fantasy RPG, are classes diegetic for you?

[Professor Murder]

I need a "depends on the class"
So most settings I craft, Paladins Yes, Fighters not so much, if that makes sense.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

A while back, clocks came up in a discussion that was also discussing diegetic things.

A clock that represents nothing that actually exists in the setting is clearly not diegetic. But what about a clock that is measuring something that character's can also measure? The measurement exists in both the setting and and the real world, so some people would claim the latter is diegetic, and there is certainly a case that can be made. But it's also the case that the physical representation of the clock being used in the real world isn't actually there, which suggests it is not diagetic.

Which leads to the question as to whether a prop or a representation of a thing (whether a close facsimile or an abstraction) counts as diegetic. This pocket watch, that I display to the group to show the players what the Count pulls from his pocket, does not exist in the setting. But if we consider the thing in the setting to be 100% identical, can it be considered so?

Or, a version far more likely to show up in many games: what about a player map that represents a PC map? What if we're talking about a map is made by a player, representing a map being made by a PC, that is taken away if the PC loses the map?

And then you have discussions like we're having in this thread (which we've had forever, long before people were using the word diegetic) -- do levels exist in the setting. Some people in this thread claim they do and they must (as you can identify a character's level by the spells they can cast), but this assumes that there is a literal 1:1 relationship between rules and fiction. In many cases, the things we use to represent something happening in the fiction are abstractions. Can something that is an abstraction be counted as diagetic.

Notwithstanding, even if you get people to agree on a definition for diagetic in this case, they'll continue to argue over whether it applies -- as some with be adamant levels really exist and others that they don't. And the two parties may, even as they adamantly refuse to believe the other side has a point, run games where this critical difference of opinion has zero actual impact on play.

(Generic) you may have some clear and obvious answer ready for each of those but, in my experience, opinions on all of these are going to vary strongly. Most are situations where there is simply no direct, objective correlation between these situations and one you'll find while reading a novel or watching movie, so simply trying to carry over a definition from one of those two fields isn't going to work.


Because the line between audience, author and the fiction/setting/action/narrative is completely different (many would even say that some of those terms are meaningless or misleading in the context of RPGs), as are the ways we interact with them. It is far harder to clearly establish where the fourth wall begins and ends when all parties can be constantly moving in and out of character, even in the course of a single, discrete conversation. The line between the fiction/narrative and the players is far, far less discrete in an RPG than in films and literature and there is not even any consistency within the hobby as to how those lines are drawn.

So in summary:

• The situation in an RPG is a lot murkier than it is for film and literature. A definition needs to cover ground not covered by the existing uses in those fields.
• Even if someone could hammer out a functional definition, it would be next to impossible to see it widely adopted and accepted, as the hobby is diverse and includes too many differing styles and opinions.
• The definitions of diegetic already differ between film and literature, because they're different mediums. Why would it be presumed RGPs don't need their own definition? If no new definition is needed, which of the two existing ones are you taking, and why not the other?

Thanks for this reply, it gave me a lot of food for thought! You raise some serious issues about the meaning of diegetic in RPGing.

After thinking it over, I think diegetic survives as a coherent concept but a somewhat narrower and less useful one than I thought.

Diegetic: a game element that represents something that exists in the fiction. The game element is the representation, the thing in the fiction is the referent. On one end this is binary: the referent either exists or not. However, if it does, the representation then has a quality. It can be gritty/high fidelity or abstract/lossy -- this is a spectrum.

HP represents character health, which is a real thing in the game world, which means it's diegetic. But it's a pretty lossy representation. Same thing with levels. They're a step function overlaid on a smooth curve of skill development. So not a great representation, but still diegetic.

Clocks are more interesting. That's a tricky one! My understanding (I've never actually played a game with clocks) is they're never supposed to be totally abstract. You are supposed to justify each tick in the fiction. So they're diegetic.

However there's something funky going on. Like 4e Skill Challenges you start with an arbitrary number of steps, and then keep making stuff up until you get through this structure. The referent is constructed around the representation. This is a important switch from trad sim RPGing and seems a bigger deal in terms of play preferences, but is logically distinct from diegeticity. If the Clock ticks represent things real in the fiction, they're diegetic, regardless of the direction of determination between the two.

I consider myself a trad simulationist and generally dislike mechanics that give players narrative control outside of the actions of their characters, and abstract structures that constrain the GM's narrative control without simulating anything. But I do appreciate the value of some non-diegetic elements -- like getting to play a Monk without having to explain how they ended up in Oakhaven village.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"Disproportionately likely" implies the existance of exceptions by its construction, you know.

It does, fair enough. This is still an argument using popularity as a value metric, however, and you know I don't care for that and will argue against it.

 

[overgeeked]

HP represents character health, which is a real thing in the game world, which means it's diegetic. But it's a pretty lossy representation. Same thing with levels. They're a step function overlaid on a smooth curve of skill development. So not a great representation, but still diegetic.

Clocks are more interesting. That's a tricky one! My understanding (I've never actually played a game with clocks) is they're never supposed to be totally abstract. You are supposed to justify each tick in the fiction. So they're diegetic.

However there's something funky going on. Like 4e Skill Challenges you start with an arbitrary number of steps, and then keep making stuff up until you get through this structure. The referent is constructed around the representation. This is a important switch from trad sim RPGing and seems a bigger deal in terms of play preferences, but is logically distinct from diegeticity. If the Clock ticks represent things real in the fiction, they're diegetic, regardless of the direction of determination between the two.

One way to square this is remember that HP is a clock. Different scales of clocks work in different ways. Your fighter’s 54 HP is still a clock. Successful attacks reduce that clock by some amount and when it hits zero, you’re out. A fire that’s put out after four successful skill checks is also still a clock. It’s a question of scale and granularity. But they’re both still clocks. Just like losing a lot of HP should represent a character suffering scrapes and bruises and blood loss…a building on fire represented by a clock should visibly weaken as the clock is ticked down. They’re not fundamentally different things. You’re just more used to one than the other.

 

[Blue]

Depends, but hopefully not. Because I can't think of a subgenre of fantasy where the heroes being cookie cutter is one of the tropes or archetypes. But if there was one then I'd be for it.

Let's look at D&D. We know that the classes are not in-world because there are NPCs with the same name that don't follow the same rules. The Druid from the MM way back in 2014 was just the first of these. We can further see it, though in the negative, because not a single NPC in any adventure or monster book uses the player-facing PC creation rules.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It does, fair enough. This is still an argument using popularity as a value metric, however, and you know I don't care for that and will argue against it.

It wasn't an argument. It was an observation with a minor analysis about why its common.

 

[AlexofBarbaria]

One way to square this is remember that HP is a clock. Different scales of clocks work in different ways. Your fighter’s 54 HP is still a clock. Successful attacks reduce that clock by some amount and when it hits zero, you’re out. A fire that’s put out after four successful skill checks is also still a clock. It’s a question of scale and granularity. But they’re both still clocks. Just like losing a lot of HP should represent a character suffering scrapes and bruises and blood loss…a building on fire represented by a clock should visibly weaken as the clock is ticked down. They’re not fundamentally different things. You’re just more used to one than the other.

They're different in several ways that seem important: 1) HP represents a state, clocks a process, 2) HP always represents the same thing (character health) while clocks represent anything, 3) the ways characters lose HP are defined and known, with clocks you're not even supposed to think ahead of time of what would logically advance the process, 4) in play HP mostly functions as a resource readout to support tactical decisions, clocks function as a pacing tool, 5) HP is a universal stat (all PCs and enemies have it), clocks are applied by judgement call, 6) HP is usually discovered through interaction (start fighting a monster, learn how tough it is), clocks it's upfront.

They're both tracks that go up and down, but interacting with a clock involves a lot more authorship than beating down a creature. You don't have to invent fictional milestones while reducing HP. With clocks you do have to.

In fact, thinking about clocks more, I have to take back what I just said: "You are supposed to justify each tick in the fiction. So [clocks] are diegetic." -- I was thinking about the ticks but not the clock itself. The clock structure itself is not diegetic.

 

[overgeeked]

They're different in several ways that seem important: 1) HP represents a state, clocks a process,

Clocks are a game mechanic. HP is one example of that mechanic.

2) HP always represents the same thing (character health) while clocks represent anything,

Because clocks are a game mechanic while HP is a singular example of that mechanic.

3) the ways characters lose HP are defined and known, with clocks you're not even supposed to think ahead of time of what would logically advance the process,

The ways you can lose HP are diegetic. Anything that is reasonable within the fiction that would hurt or fatigue a character could potentially reduce your HP. The stuff in the books that reduces HP are examples, yes. But they're not the sum total of all possible ways to lose HP. Likewise, anything that could reasonably reduce some other instance of a clock, say a house fire, the number of days until an event, etc will reduce that specific clock.

4) in play HP mostly functions as a resource readout to support tactical decisions, clocks function as a pacing tool,

What are HP if not a pacing tool?

5) HP is a universal stat (all PCs and enemies have it), clocks are applied by judgement call,

No, HP are not universal. They only apply to that which would reasonably have HP. HP are applied and reduced via judgement call. Whether that judgement call is in the design of the thing ahead of time or in the moment at the table doesn't matter.

6) HP is usually discovered through interaction (start fighting a monster, learn how tough it is), clocks it's upfront.

That entirely depends on the game and the referee. Most games since D&D 4E have gone out of their way to suggest not calling out clocks, rather sticking with the fiction. And there's me, for example. I never tell my players "This is a clock, you can reduce that clock by means of X or Y..." I tell them what the actual fictional situation is and it's up to them to interact with it. "The house is on fire, what do you do?" If they run, they run, avoiding the clock. If they try to put the fire out, they're interacting with a clock mechanically, but we always stay with the fiction. "The fire is out in this room, but the two adjacent rooms are ablaze..."

They're both tracks that go up and down, but interacting with a clock involves a lot more authorship than beating down a creature. You don't have to invent fictional milestones while reducing HP. With clocks you do have to.

If you want to have HP represent anything more substantial than a binary conscious/unconscious state, you'll need to decide what those ticks represent. In D&D, for example, they don't mean anything in the fiction until they run out. But a lot of people still give them flavor. Even the books suggest doing more than speaking in mechanical terms. "That's five damage..." is boring and best avoided. "You swing and slice into the orc's arm, a spray of blood coats the nearby wall..." is pure descriptive authorship and fictional milestones.

In fact, thinking about clocks more, I have to take back what I just said: "You are supposed to justify each tick in the fiction. So [clocks] are diegetic." -- I was thinking about the ticks but not the clock itself. The clock structure itself is not diegetic.

Exactly. The clock itself is a mechanical structure. The ticks are mechanical representations of some fictional thing in the world, i.e. diegetic.

How many rations do you have? That's another day of travel, be sure to mark your rations. That's a clock.

How many arrows do you have? That's another two attacks with your bow, be sure to mark your arrows. That's a clock.

Pick a thing in the world that's measurable and changes, i.e. goes up, goes down, goes up and down, etc. Mechanically, that's a clock. Hell, the DMG uses clocks for loyalty and renown. Again, the only difference between clocks and HP is D&D players are more used to HP than clocks, despite HP, rations, arrows, time, levels, fires, structural integrity of buildings, etc all being different kinds of clocks.

I started with B/X and have played more AD&D than any other edition, so things like ability scores and levels going both up and down is something that I'm quite used to. So seeing both as just another clock isn't a leap for me at all. It's just common sense.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yup, HP are a clock.

 

[pemerton]

For most games, my answer is a clear "No". Classes exist as metagame options to give players tools to build their characters, without the need for calculation required of a free-pick point-buy system. All of the elements of the class can be reskinned to fit the player's concept. Some elements of the cosmology of magic, extrapolated from PC abilities, will probably be elements of the setting, but NPCs will usually/often have distinct approaches from the PCs.

That being said, I have been experimenting for the last few years with setting concepts wherein concepts like class, levels, and experience points are observable diegetic elements, and I do enjoy the "LitRPG" feel it's been giving to those games.

At first I was going to click "Love". And then I read the second paragraph and was going to click "Bamboozled". So I compromised on "Like"!

The last class-based game I played was 4e D&D. I think it is a clear exemplar of your point about classes being metagame structures for players. The other class-based game I play occasionally and think about more than is rational is classic D&D (B/X, AD&D etc). Gygax makes it clear in his PHB and (to a lesser extent) DMG that classes are a collection of functional roles that players can choose from, in order to orient themselves to overcoming the challenges that the game poses. Eg to play a cleric is to choose to engage the game by way of a supportive/restorative/protective function; to play a fighter is to choose to engage the game by engaging in combat and feats of mighty-thewed physical prowess; to play a MU is to choose to engage the game by way of using magic; etc.

But there are other parts of the classic game that push against this: for instance, the use of classes to characterise NPCs too (there are no players of NPCs choosing a functional role to meet the challenges posed by the game!). This can be seen as just a convenient shortcut for giving NPCs stats and bundles of spells. But it is at least an incipient incoherence in the game, I think. 4e D&D flirted with this incoherence in its DMG, by having templates for building classed NPCs. But that idea seems to have been largely dropped, to the benefit of the game in my view.