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

[pemerton]

Generally yes. In the cod-medieval standard fantasy world you need apprenticeship, training and support to be skilled at anything, so it’s more believable to build that into the world. It’s just less realistic to me for a monk to be some gal who did some training on the farm and has never been near a monastery.

I can accept this. But the flipside is, why does every monastic graduate look just like that?

The idea that you need training to master your ki/chi/focus is fine. Cool, even. But realising that via a uniform class build is (to me) a bit weird. Especially because a lot of the mechanics that characterise classes, in modern D&D at least, are really only metagame ones. For instance, in the metagame (that is, the mechanical play of the game) there's a difference between two attacks vs one target for (say) d6 damage, and one attack vs that target for (say) d12+1 damage. But in the fiction - where the action economy, rates of attack, hit point loss, etc are not literal elements of that fiction - those do things could be very much the same.

And the converse also applies. In my long-running 4e game, the fighter with Come and Get It was a polearm fighter. So a lot of the time, it made sense to think of his close bursts (including CaGI) and his Footwork Lure and other forced movement powers as him wrongfooting his foes with his polearm. There's no reason to think that a fighter who (say) was a dual hand-axe fighter, whose player used the CaGI power, is doing the same thing at all as far as the fiction is concerned.

 

[pemerton]

Yup, HP are a clock.

Careful with those controversial statements!

 

[pemerton]

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.

I tend to agree here with @Fenris-77: the measured event may exist in the fiction, but the measurement of it by way of a clock seems like a meta-device. Like a token on a map: the things that the map depicts may exist in the fiction, and the thing that the token represents (eg a character) may exist in the fiction, but the representational cues (the map and token) don't exist in the fiction.

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?

I think the identities involved are more straightforward in respect of sounds than things like watches.

For instance, if you - as GM, playing a NPC - thump the table as part of your portrayal of that NPC thumping the table, that would be a diegetic noise. But is the tabletop that you thump also diegetic? I'm not sure that the language of diegetic elements is used to describe (say) props vs real objects in film - if it is, then that would be the model to be adopted to talk about props and real objects (watches, tables, etc) in RPGing.

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?

Luke Crane had a blog post about this, when he was GMing BWHQ playing Basic D&D. The players' map was definitely being treated as a real object in the fiction, and hence diegetic in some sense.

(When one of the players asked what would have happened had the PC with the map fallen into some water, Luke apparently said that he would have taken the map into the shower.)

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.

I think the answer to that last question is obviously not. By definition, whatever event or thing occurs or exists in the fiction itself will be its own concrete self, and not an abstracted representation of itself.

(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.

I agree that the 4th wall in RPGing is more permeable/doubtful than in (say) film.

I don't think this affects the analysis of cases like the watch, the table and the map.

I do think it will affect consideration of what sounds made by the GM and the players, and what words they speak, are diegetic.

 

[John Dallman]

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.

In the only game I've played with clocks - Blades in the Dark - the clocks seemed to represent things happening in the fiction, such as time until your intrusion was discovered, but there was no rationalisation for the players or characters being aware of how long that would take. Maybe the GM should have been doing that, but they seemed to only exist as a mechanism for applying psychological pressure to the players. That rather undermined role-playing of the characters' feelings.

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.

If the modern editions work that way, OK. In the classic era (OD&D, B/X, AD&D) people were absolutely building significant NPCs with the same character classes as PCs, and making full use of those character classes. Some of us are still playing classic, in the same way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the modern editions work that way, OK. In the classic era (OD&D, B/X, AD&D) people were absolutely building significant NPCs with the same character classes as PCs, and making full use of those character classes. Some of us are still playing classic, in the same way.

Rhat was probably true in some cases with characters who seemed like they fit within the extent classes in OD&D, but even the designers of the game didn't seem to think that was important the moment it was inconvenient; at best they'd paste on additional special abilities (possibly from other classes as those propagated, or just ad hoc early on of if no extent class had what they needed).

 

[Blue]

If the modern editions work that way, OK. In the classic era (OD&D, B/X, AD&D) people were absolutely building significant NPCs with the same character classes as PCs, and making full use of those character classes. Some of us are still playing classic, in the same way.

Sure, and that's a perfectly valid mechanical choice in game systems where creating PCs isn't onerous on the GM (D&D 3.x I'm looking at you at high levels). I was only talking about the current edition of D&D when I mentioned it.

Though to reiterate, heroes being a cookie cutter isn't a trope in any fantasy genre that I'm aware, so that is more for rules ease than for any thematic alignment. Doesn't make it a bad rule, just a rule that could be stronger if NPCs creation served up both rules ease as well as reinforcing the tropes of the genre.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I can accept this. But the flipside is, why does every monastic graduate look just like that?

The idea that you need training to master your ki/chi/focus is fine. Cool, even. But realising that via a uniform class build is (to me) a bit weird. Especially because a lot of the mechanics that characterise classes, in modern D&D at least, are really only metagame ones. For instance, in the metagame (that is, the mechanical play of the game) there's a difference between two attacks vs one target for (say) d6 damage, and one attack vs that target for (say) d12+1 damage. But in the fiction - where the action economy, rates of attack, hit point loss, etc are not literal elements of that fiction - those do things could be very much the same.

And the converse also applies. In my long-running 4e game, the fighter with Come and Get It was a polearm fighter. So a lot of the time, it made sense to think of his close bursts (including CaGI) and his Footwork Lure and other forced movement powers as him wrongfooting his foes with his polearm. There's no reason to think that a fighter who (say) was a dual hand-axe fighter, whose player used the CaGI power, is doing the same thing at all as far as the fiction is concerned.

Yes, no argument here. When. I think of classes as diagetic, I don't think of them as 1:1 or even 1:many matching with in-game "classes". There are some classes, like paladin, which lend themselves to a 1:1 match and in most class-based games I run there is a close match for paladins specifically. But even then a fighter/cleric hybrid could be known as a paladin in-game. My first 4E character was classed as fighter, but when I described him in LFR games, I'd call him a barbarian. Later an actual barbarian class came out, but I still called him a barbarian. So I'd be foolish to assert a mapping was exact!

Your point on skills is a very good one -- I do generally feel that the in-game "classes" are defined by their perceived effects (Esse est percipi) which is why the mapping is typically loose. In the real world, most people classed as "mathematician" have a degree or at least training for that class. A few do not -- but still the overwhelming likelihood is that a professional mathematician has been trained in that class. Similarly, a magician who learns spells from books, in my games, is overwhelmingly likely to have been trained in a class of "magician" or some variant.

So although I do state that classes are diagetic, it is because I lean on the part of the definition that states that characters in the fiction are able to interact with the diagetic elements. In my games, it would be reasonable to ask someone casting spells who trained them as a magician, or to ask someone focusing ki which monastery they went to: It is expected that there is some in-game element that underlies the character's perceived abilities, and the expectation is that it is some form of class definition.

For me, classless systems (which I enjoy!) actually are harder to make plausible. Useful heroic-level skills are rarely explainable by personal practice, books study or the like, so once you run an heroic-level campaign, you have to think of good reasons why a world-class surgeon spends a week's worth of XP and is suddenly a world class sniper (yes, I'm looking at you GURPS). One solution I like quite a bit was the concept of a class defining the cost of skills and abilities rather than a limit. Rolemaster was the first example of that I saw and it still resonates well: A fighter can easily gain a couple of ranks in "hit points" or sword skill, but it costs him huge amount of effort (XP) to learn even a minor spell. Downside -- much book-keeping.

 

[TwoSix]

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"!

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

 

[TwoSix]

Yes, no argument here. When. I think of classes as diagetic, I don't think of them as 1:1 or even 1:many matching with in-game "classes". There are some classes, like paladin, which lend themselves to a 1:1 match and in most class-based games I run there is a close match for paladins specifically. But even then a fighter/cleric hybrid could be known as a paladin in-game. My first 4E character was classed as fighter, but when I described him in LFR games, I'd call him a barbarian. Later an actual barbarian class came out, but I still called him a barbarian. So I'd be foolish to assert a mapping was exact!

Your point on skills is a very good one -- I do generally feel that the in-game "classes" are defined by their perceived effects (Esse est percipi) which is why the mapping is typically loose. In the real world, most people classed as "mathematician" have a degree or at least training for that class. A few do not -- but still the overwhelming likelihood is that a professional mathematician has been trained in that class. Similarly, a magician who learns spells from books, in my games, is overwhelmingly likely to have been trained in a class of "magician" or some variant.

So although I do state that classes are diagetic, it is because I lean on the part of the definition that states that characters in the fiction are able to interact with the diagetic elements. In my games, it would be reasonable to ask someone casting spells who trained them as a magician, or to ask someone focusing ki which monastery they went to: It is expected that there is some in-game element that underlies the character's perceived abilities, and the expectation is that it is some form of class definition.

For me, classless systems (which I enjoy!) actually are harder to make plausible. Useful heroic-level skills are rarely explainable by personal practice, books study or the like, so once you run an heroic-level campaign, you have to think of good reasons why a world-class surgeon spends a week's worth of XP and is suddenly a world class sniper (yes, I'm looking at you GURPS). One solution I like quite a bit was the concept of a class defining the cost of skills and abilities rather than a limit. Rolemaster was the first example of that I saw and it still resonates well: A fighter can easily gain a couple of ranks in "hit points" or sword skill, but it costs him huge amount of effort (XP) to learn even a minor spell. Downside -- much book-keeping.

Class-based and point-buy skill-based have opposite problems.

For class-based, it doesn't make sense that every person would learn every ability at the exact same progression. And for point-buy, it doesn't make sense that any person could learn any skill with no constraints.

That's why most systems split the difference; most level-based games have modular abilities and/or the ability to pick from a broader generic pool of abilities, and most skill-based games have abilities with prerequisites, or talent trees, or randomized skill-ups.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Class-based and point-buy skill-based have opposite problems.

For class-based, it doesn't make sense that every person would learn every ability at the exact same progression. And for point-buy, it doesn't make sense that any person could learn any skill with no constraints.

Though the latter gets less and less true in the modern period. I'd argue the bigger problem is some skills existing in a vacuum (i.e. not needing you to pick up certain other skills while having acquired it). This tends to become more of an issue the more splitty the skill system is, but it can happen even with pretty lumpy ones.

Archetypes as a default character creation method can handle some of this, since often certain skills are needed to pick up another skill, but not necessarily to advance in them further. If you split things out that fine, a General Physician had to get at least some Chemistry to pick up the skill at a signfiicant level in the modern period, but outside of a few specialties, they don't need to increase their Chemistry skill to increase their medical skill).