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

[Thomas Shey]

To be fair, the only “in-book” elements published at this stage were in the LBB/LWB. Holmes and the MM didn’t hit the shelves until 1977. Everything was pretty ad hoc at this point.

That's fair. Always seemed like the early Strategic Review stuff propagated better for some reason though (you saw plenty of Bards, Rangers and Illusionists, and no lack of the early SR monsters showing up. Maybe it was just timing.

 

[Lanefan]

That's fair. Always seemed like the early Strategic Review stuff propagated better for some reason though (you saw plenty of Bards, Rangers and Illusionists, and no lack of the early SR monsters showing up. Maybe it was just timing.

That, and there'd have been less "how well is this going to work?" thinking: at that point any new content was better than none and would be welcomed with open arms.

 

[aramis erak]

In this context there is, as the discussion that started this tangent was around when NPC classes first appeared and someone said they started in very early-era Dragon. My question was whether that would have been considered official at the time; it seems not, meaning those NPC classes were at best optional suggestions.

Once they hit Best of Dragon, however, everyone I knew in the early 80's considered BOD to be canonical, even if Dragon wasn't... as it was an "evergreen product" - that is, kept in print permanently like other rulebooks. Most of us didn't worry about canonicity with Dragon - if the GM had the issue, it was canonical. I had no prior experience with games with magazines, tho' I'd been wargaming/boardgaming for a couple years. So we mishandled it...

Dragon was the magazine from the publisher; in many ways, TSR's intent was immaterial, especially given that dragon was the source for all things errata... it was treated as official material by many. It took nuance to distinguish Sage Advice from Witch: A new NPC class. Especially with the anti-paladin article filling the obvious holes in the Paladin class' writeup.

 

[Lanefan]

Once they hit Best of Dragon, however, everyone I knew in the early 80's considered BOD to be canonical, even if Dragon wasn't... as it was an "evergreen product" - that is, kept in print permanently like other rulebooks. Most of us didn't worry about canonicity with Dragon - if the GM had the issue, it was canonical.

Different communities, then. We saw everything in Dragon (including Best of...) as optional at best. Some of it we adopted, maybe with modifications, and it became canon in our games; the rest of it we ignored and in a few cases laughed at. It wasn't until UA came out that we worried about what was "official", but by then we were kitbashing the hell out of everything anyway and we very much picked and chose what to adopt from UA.

Dragon was the magazine from the publisher; in many ways, TSR's intent was immaterial, especially given that dragon was the source for all things errata... it was treated as official material by many. It took nuance to distinguish Sage Advice from Witch: A new NPC class. Especially with the anti-paladin article filling the obvious holes in the Paladin class' writeup.

We ignored Sage Advice right from day one as many of the rulings were so bad.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Different communities, then. We saw everything in Dragon (including Best of...) as optional at best. Some of it we adopted, maybe with modifications, and it became canon in our games; the rest of it we ignored and in a few cases laughed at.

Same here. I think I leaned into White Dwarf more than Dragon in the early days.

I honestly don't think I've ever considered anything "canon" - I started modifying rules from the moment I encountered them. In fact, I'd argue that the entire notion of "canonicity" is a retrojection - everyone I knew was assembling a game from the pieces which they liked.

The cogent and comprehensible pieces, of course.

 

[bsss]

Voted no, as I submit that a class is a whole set of mechanics, game elements, branching choices, etc. wrapped up in a label. A big-W Wizard may be identified as a little-w wizard as a specific title in-world, but that can't make the class diegetic unless the concept of levels (and thus XP), spell slots, feat choices, and so on are also diegetic.

In-world, you could of course attribute common or uncommon attributes to a classification, and that classification can be 1:1 with a class, but I don't think the whole class bidirectionally shows itself in-world.

 

[Desdichado]

Depends on the game, but mostly no, I do not.

I also really dislike the faddish popularity of the word diagetic lately. What; did a bunch of Hollywood sound engineers flood the hobby in the last couple of years or something? That used to be the only place that label was used. Maybe a bit in academic discussions on literature. In gaming, we called stuff meta or in-game. Suddenly, those words didn't sound "intellectual" enough or something.

But yeah; especially considering that d20 games are what I played more than anything else, i.e., 3e. 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, d20 Modern, d20 Star Wars, etc. they're not in-game. Class labels are just labels applied to bundles of mechanics. This is most explicitly true in d20 Modern, but all of the games of that family were treated more or less the same that way.

 

[Fenris-77]

Meta and in game have the downside of being an enormously loaded duo. Meta especially. Sometimes different words help, and sometimes they are even more accurate (as diegetic is as compared to in-game).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, meta has a lot of negative connotations in the hobby. For some people its virtually a curse word.

 

[TwoSix]

Depends on the game, but mostly no, I do not.

I also really dislike the faddish popularity of the word diagetic lately. What; did a bunch of Hollywood sound engineers flood the hobby in the last couple of years or something? That used to be the only place that label was used. Maybe a bit in academic discussions on literature. In gaming, we called stuff meta or in-game. Suddenly, those words didn't sound "intellectual" enough or something.

But yeah; especially considering that d20 games are what I played more than anything else, i.e., 3e. 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, d20 Modern, d20 Star Wars, etc. they're not in-game. Class labels are just labels applied to bundles of mechanics. This is most explicitly true in d20 Modern, but all of the games of that family were treated more or less the same that way.

Being against language evolving is certainly a hot take.