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

[Thomas Shey]

D&D, like CT-77, is a genre engine. Specific to a genre (later eds really more a subgenre), but not to a singular setting.

That's the thng, I think you're using "genre" too broadly here in both cases. You can make an argument that they're covering subgenres, but if so the subgenres are pretty ruddy narrow when compared to the genre as a whole. D&D as originally depicted wasn't even heroic fantasy (some elements looked like that, but others failed the sniff test) and Traveller wasn't even hard SF. They were both too specific. I'd call them setting shadows; they weren't extensive enought to be setting support, but they had settings implied by their specifics and anything outside of that was going to look progressively more odd without changing those rules in one way or another.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I guess the crux of the matter is this question: are the game terms themselves a necessary part of the diegetic-ness? Certainly your dialogue makes complete sense, but is that "enough"? Another way, is it clear (and does it have to be clear) that Falstaff is talking about taking (in game terms) a level of Rogue? Falstaff could be talking about taking (in game terms) Skill Focus (Move Silently). And, Falstaff didn't actually say either of those things, so are those things truly diegetic?

Look again - he specifically references "climb walls" as well as stealthy and-or graceful movement, making it obvious he's after more than just a skill focus.

And if, when he asks Rochelle to train him, he puts it something like "If you can get me roughly to the point you were at when you fisrt started adventuring, that'd be great; I think that's all I need." then boom - that's "train me to 1st level" as a character would say it. (this all assumes, of course, that whatever guild Rochelle belongs to is OK with her training outsiders, etc., but that'll be different at each table)

The other key and IMO very important element here is that Falstaff's training for his new class is also explained in-fiction, he doesn't just become a 1st-level Rogue overnight for no obvious reason and without any in-character forethought.

My opinion is that for the game concepts to be diegetic, their appearance in the world of the narrative would have to be clear and discrete, but maybe I'm reaching too far into what needs to be discussed in in-world language.

If you want the actual terms such as class names and level numbers to be consistently used in order to make those concepts in-character, that might be asking a bit much.

 

[Lanefan]

Wrong.
'78 sees two very tied to setting: Starships and Spacemen (FGU - their would-have-been-licensed-but-couldn't-afford-it Trek game), and RuneQuest.
'76 saw Empire of the Petal Throne, which was VERY tied to its setting. We also get Metamorphosis Alpha, again, tied to its setting of the Starship Warden.

Harn, another game and setting all in one, also came out pretty early if memory serves.

 

[aramis erak]

Harn, another game and setting all in one, also came out pretty early if memory serves.

Your memory doesn't. Hârnmaster 1 is 1986. Earliest Hârn setting stuff is 1983.
See Hârn

 

[pemerton]

Sure, I don't think we're differing much here on concept. I'm just happy to assign that definition to "diegetic" as a term of TTRPG jargon.

<snip>

A diegetic class is more about the flow of character conversation, if statements like "We need healing, let's go ask that guy with a holy symbol over there, he looks like a cleric." are statements that make sense within in-character channels as opposed to metagame channels.

This prompted a few thoughts:

* Does he really look like a cleric? With heavy armour and a mace? (Yes, I'm showing my edition biases here, but I hope my point comes through nevertheless.)

* Is "cleric" as it is used here more-or-less interchangeable with "priest" and/or "divinely inspired healer"? At least for my part, I can easily imagine "cleric" being adopted as a bit of in-fiction jargon inspired by the real-world class name; but I wouldn't therefore infer that every NPC cleric is an instance of the cleric class used for PC building. I'd need a bit more context - eg in AD&D the NPC probably is built using the cleric class (this is at least strongly implied by the MM entry for "Men" and by the DMG Appendix C encounter tables), but in 4e they probably wouldn't be.

* It generally wouldn't occur to me to think of that bit of player dialogue that you set out as being metagame simply in virtue of mentioning clerics. In the same way that we might imagine the character isn't really speaking English but some other language, with this being an English rendering of their speech (and so "diegetic" in the same way that the dialogue in Casablanca is diegetic even though we'd have to assume that most of it "actually", in the fiction, takes place in French), so I would be equally happy to accept that while the player says "cleric" - because that is the word that D&D players use to describe divinely inspired healers - the character might be saying something else. This thought combines with my previous one to reinforce my view that the mere in-character mention of a cleric leaves it open whether the classes of PC building are genuine and discrete elements of the fiction.​

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Look again - he specifically references "climb walls" as well as stealthy and-or graceful movement, making it obvious he's after more than just a skill focus.

And if, when he asks Rochelle to train him, he puts it something like "If you can get me roughly to the point you were at when you fisrt started adventuring, that'd be great; I think that's all I need." then boom - that's "train me to 1st level" as a character would say it. (this all assumes, of course, that whatever guild Rochelle belongs to is OK with her training outsiders, etc., but that'll be different at each table)

The other key and IMO very important element here is that Falstaff's training for his new class is also explained in-fiction, he doesn't just become a 1st-level Rogue overnight for no obvious reason and without any in-character forethought.

If you want the actual terms such as class names and level numbers to be consistently used in order to make those concepts in-character, that might be asking a bit much.

If class is “diegetic” why not levels too?

 

[Fenris-77]

If class is “diegetic” why not levels too?

Because that's silly?

 

[Thomas Shey]

If class is “diegetic” why not levels too?

Mostly qualitative versus mostly quantitative.

It gets easier and easier for classes to be diegetic the more specific it is, and the more abilities are either walled off with it, or associated conceptually in-setting.

Or, of course there's the Earthdawn situation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because that's silly?

Silly to you maybe. For me it depends on how the class and it's organization is diagetically depicted.

 

[Fenris-77]

Silly to you maybe. For me it depends on how the class and it's organization is diagetically depicted.

No, the player facing aspects of class, which can't be avoided, make the idea of class as diegetic completely nonsensical.