Diagetic Classes

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TristramEvans

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Awful pretentious-Scientology-sounding name aside, came across this interesting blog post about removing the class/level system from OSR

The term "Diagesis" is here used in reference to another blog post by Cavegirl that I'll quote first:

Cavegirl said:
Terminology - Diegetic vs Non Diegetic
In this post, I'm going to clarify and explain some terminology I use when discussing RPGs. It's going to be wordy and pedantic. It's also getting posted up because I made a quick post on twitter, people got the wrong end of the stick, and now I want to explain what I mean in more than 240 characters.

So.
Diegesis.


First, I'm going to give a definition of the term as it's used in film studies (which is where I'm stealing it from).
Diegetic (adjective): Actually taking place or existing in the fictional world depicted.

Non-diegetic (adjective): Not actually taking place or existing in the fictional world depicted, an external thing to the fictional world depicted that the audience percieves.
'Diegesis (noun)' has some accademic stuff attached to it, but I generally see it used to mean 'the concept of things being diegetic' or sometimes 'the fictional world that diegetic things take place in'.

So, for example. A scene's musical soundtrack is non-diegetic. John Williams wrote some music, an orchestra played it, and now that music is being played to the audience at the same time as we watch the scene. However: music coming from in the world is diagetic: a good example of this is when we see characters actually singing or playing instruments. Jessica Rabbit singing 'Why Don't You Do Right' in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is diagetic; in the fictional world she's literally singing that, whilst The Doors playing at the beginning of Apocalypse Now isn't: it's a soundtrack added for the audience.
Other stuff in films that's non-diegetic includes the credits, subtitles, voiceovers, slow-motion, all that stuff.

You can apply this to other mediums, too. In comics, the white boxes around panels are non-diegetic; the world doesn't exist enclosed in a little white square. In video games, your mini-map, control scheme, etc are all non-diegetic; they're contrivances to make the game work, not real things that exist in the fictional world depicted.
With me so far?


(As an aside, while this is technically academic language, I've seen it used plenty outside academia. I studied theoretical physics at university - until I ran out of money for tuition and got kicked out - so I never had any formal academic interaction with the terms. I picked them up from watching film & anime reviews on youtube. Anybody who pays much attention to film criticism and analysis has probably come across the terms.)


Anyway. This is an RPG blog, and I'm here to talk about RPGs. So, Diegesis in RPGs.

One thing I find attracts me to various games - notably Powered By The Apocalypse and OSR games - is that you first interact with things using the fictional actions of your PC to affect the fictional world. You treat the world as a real, consistent place, and the GM adjudicates what happens based off that.

I find it useful to talk about 'things that exist in the fictional setting' versus 'things that only exist for the players'. So, it's useful to me to steal terminology from film studies and talk about diegetic and non-diegetic elements of games. Diegetic things are things which exist or happen or are observable in the fictional world, while non-diegetic things only exist to the players, on an out-of-character level.


Here's some things that are diegetic in RPGs:
A PC's equipment.
A character's height, weight, eye colour, etc.
Alignments, probably; if you can cast 'detect evil' to know that that monster over there is objectively evil, then alignments are concrete forces in the game world, and your paladin being Lawful Good is a diagetic fact.
A wizard's spell-slots in D&D; a wizard can meaningfully talk about 'I have two spells left today, and they are Sleep and Spider Climb' without breaking the fourth wall.
Blood Points in Vampire the Masquerade; it's an observable (and generally understood) fact of the setting that you need to drink about a pint of blood each night to make up for the blood used to wake up, and if you don't you'll start starving, likewise that using your powers probably needs about a pint of blood.
Getting Turned On in monsterhearts. While its expressed through a slightly simplified game mechanic, it is a fact of the setting that a PC has experienced a stirring of erotic or romantic desire. Their response to this varies, and might involve more game mechanics, but the state of being Turned On is a real thing in the fictional world.
That some PCs are stronger than other PCs. Gronk the Fighter can lift heavier weights, hit harder, break down doors better, arm-wrestle better etc than Elzebeth the Wizard.
Being injured: the victim has - in the fictional world - been hurt, and might be bleeding, have broken bones, etc.



Here's some things that are non-diegetic in RPGs:
Dice rolls.
Numerical measures of things like HP, attributes, etc. Those are abstractions being used to quantify a more complex fictional thing for the purposes of game-play.
Experience points, inspiration, bennies, etc that give the player a resource to use on a meta-level that doesn't represent anything in-world.
Lines & veils over what content and themes will make it into the game.
Mechanics that allow a player to introduce content to the game, such as Stars Without Numbers's Connect skill, which gives a PC a chance to know an NPC they just met from before the game began, letting the player define what their relationship is like. There's a LOT of collaberative world building techniques and mechanics out there that do similar things.
Mechanics such as fate-points,
References to other media. A lot of old Paranoia adventures had PCs whose names were puns, took the piss out of other RPGs, and so on: these jokes are on the meta-level, for the players: a paranoia called Hamburg-ELL-R was not named by Friend Computer to be a reference to old macdonalds adverts, and nobody in the setting will get the reference.
Metaphors and themes of the game. For example, I'm in a V5 game where we're explicitly exploring ideas around power, control, and moral judgement; these things are gonna come up and be relevant. Our PCs, however, aren't aware that they're being used to discuss these themes; they're just people.
Character 'theme songs' and other inspiration.



To clarify: this is not the same as the distinction between 'fluff' and 'crunch' (also expressed as flavour vs mechanics, lore vs rules, etc).

To repeat.
The distinction between diegetic content and nondiegetic content is not the same as the distinction between flavour and mechanics.

Why is this? Something can be a game mechanic and also diegetic. (See: blood points are a real thing in VtM, and so 'spend a point of blood to rise each night' is just... what happens in the fiction). Something could also be non-mechanical and not diegetic (for example "Changeling the Dreaming explores themes around loss of innocence, growing old, dementia, etc" is not a mechanic but not a diegetic fact, neither is "This game will not include rape or sexual assault, or any mention of those").


So why am I explaining this?
I think it's useful to be able to discuss if a game element is diegetic or not when discussing game design, and I've not really seen useful terminology for.
Mostly, these discussions use the terminology for fluff vs crunch, which leads to active confusion.

This area of gameplay/game design is one where even subtle distinctions in phrasing can dramatically alter meaning. I think it's useful to have a precise term that means 'this thing and only this thing' with no room for confusion or other common usages.

If you start thinking about things in terms of diegesis, you get the tools to explain and explore stuff nicely that you wouldn't otherwise. For example:
Are the powers a D&D 4th edition PC has diegetic or not? Do the different weapon strikes, moves, spells and so on represent distinct techniques a PC has been taught? Can a 4e fighter talk about the different techniques they use? Or are they a non-diegetic abstraction that simplifies the chaos of combat into maneagable gameplay? Or is it somewhere between the two?
Similarly, D&D 4e uses its 'bloodied' mechanic to take a previously non-diegetic mechanic (losing HP) and make it somewhat more diegetic; it's an in-fiction fact that when half of a monster's HP are gone, it's got visible injuries, blood everywhere, etc. It allows you to discuss a non-diegetic thing (how many HP has the monster lost?) in diegetic terms (is the monster bloodied yet?).
Is the symbolism in a game diegetic or not? As a audience, we know that a vampire feeding is a bit rapey. Could a toreador poet draw on that symbolism in their poetry, describing feeding using rape as a metaphor? Etc.
Can lines and veils be made diegetic? For example, there's a difference between 'this is a game where you won't encounter sexism' and 'this setting is completely gender-blind and no society sees any differentiation between genders; sexism is a meaningless concept in this setting'.
Can game mechanics be made diegetic? What happens if you take the idea of a 'class' in D&D and make it an obvoious measurable thing; so that you can cast 'detect barbarian' to tell if a PC is a barbarian, just like if you cast 'detect evil' to tell if they're evil.
This is something that I deal with a lot because a lot of my design goals centre around the boundries and blurry areas between diegetic and non-diegetic mechanics, ways to make a mechanic more diegetic, and ways to make non-diegetic mechanics at least parallel diegetic things (for example, gold-for-xp is non-diegetic, but it parallels a PCs diegetic desire to get rich because being rich is nice. Likewise most systems which reward XP for specific achievements). Discussion and design around 'can we make this mechanic more diagetic' and 'can we represent this diegetic phenomenon with an elegant abstraction' are some of the areas I'm most interested in.
(as an example: whenever a Wounded Daughter ressurects, she's left robbed of some of her potential, a little more withdrawn and a little more bitter and resentful. She's somehow lesser, and although she can grow past that, it's a serious and unpleasant thing: representing this by a debt of XP that she won't benefit from expresses it in a neat, simple way; the XP is an abstraction for the more diegetic idea of the PCs rich inner life being eroded.)
These are all conversations we can be having already, but the use of the terminology allows us to be more precise and better understand what's being said.


Lastly: is using academic terminology to discuss RPGs gatekeeping? I'm pretty sure it isn't.
As I've said earlier, I have no academic background in this sort of thing, and picked the term up from youtube. This isn't something I'm familiar with because I've got the privilege of a liberal-arts education. I'm not even particularly posh or anything, I just watch too many youtube videos.
On top of this, I do think that tabletop RPGs are kind of lagging behind other media in terms of analysis. Even in terms of interactive media, there's far more discussion for videogames and larps than there is ttrpgs. We basically have the Forge and that's it. Treating the subject matter as something that you can discuss in depth with technical language isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I'm having a deep technical discussion with another RPG writer about this stuff, having the precise language to describe what I mean is useful.
Hell, if somebody uses a term I don't recognise I can just ask them to define it.
The expectation that all discussion around a medium should be accessible to new players without much grounding in the discussion is unreasonable; it keeps the discussion at a shallow level. Some discussions are gonna be in-depth and require a good understanding of the subject matter, and they're not gonna be easy to grock until you've been in the field for a while. Expecting discussions to dumb-down and avoid academic language so everybody knows what's going on will - in practice - just stifle more in-depth discussion.

Anyway, there you go:
Diegetic & Non-diegetic as terms for RPGs. Now go forth and use them in conversation, it will make you sound clever and help explain your thoughts better.
 
Which leads to the "Diagetic" classes that the blog RiseUpComus proposes here:

D&D has never been super clear whether its class paradigm is diegetic or non-diegetic. Is a monk an ascetic martial artist from Kara-Tur or a generic template for someone who fights unarmed? The more editions that passed, the less specific it seemed. On the other hand, 3E’s prestige classes always seemed very specific and diegetic. You weren’t just a fighter, you were one of the Cormyrian army’s Purple Dragon Knights. This was fun in theory but wasn’t successful. It never mattered what your character did or said in the game, only that their Intimidation and Rope Handling were 9+ or whatever.

When I discovered OSR-style play in G+, I was thankful to get away from builds, level planning, feat acquisition and such. If I gained a knighthood during play, I was excited for whatever the GM said that meant.

But what if...

Diegetic Classes for the Wilderland

That would be no good,” said the wizard, “not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary). That is why I settled on burglary —especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar. So now let’s get on and make some plans.
- The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Levels aren’t diegetic. Get rid of them.
Traditional classes aren’t particularly useful either. Get rid of those, too.

In the Wilderlands, there are various organizations, tribes, cults, and sects. Membership in these organizations grants certain benefits. These are called classes.

When you speak to a member of an organization, they will (almost always) tell you what you what quest you need to complete to join their ranks. This is never tied to your statistics; this is always some thing your character must do in the world.

If you join a class, you gain some boon. This is some discrete and useful ability.
(This may be thought as being roughly analogous to a single template in the GLOG.)

You begin your career as an adventurer with no classes. Adventure and earn them in play.
Some classes are mutually exclusive. For example, you may never be both a Knight of the Grail and a Blackguard.

The classes listed below are explicitly appropriate for the Wilderlands setting. Your game world should probably have different ones. Write some up and let your players discover them. (Hint: Look at the level titles and concoct a few based on those.)

Berserk
Quest: You must slay, skin, tan, and create a coat from the hide of a dire animal.
Boon: If you wear your dire coat, but no actual armor, you may choose to fly into a berserker fit. While in this fit, you may only perform Melee attacks, but you gain damage resistance 2. This fit only ends when every creature who has attacked you is dead or you are.

Bravo
Quest: You must challenge and best another bravo in a fair duel.Thereafter, as a bravo, you must accept any fair challenge from any duelist.
Boon: You gain +2 to hit.

Burglar
Quest: You must join the Burglar’s Guild, whose membership dues cost 1 Treasure.
Boon: At any point, you may declare that you go sneaking. This allows you to go dramatically off-stage. Later, if you are not present in a scene and it’s at least somewhat plausible that you could have snuck there, take 1d4 damage to arrive on the scene dramatically. If you go sneaking and all tension evaporates, you may rejoin the scene by slinking out of the shadows. This does not cost HP.
Note: You cannot be both a Burglar and have Knightly vows.

Champion
Quest: You must make an oath of service to a lord from your realm and hold them as your liege.
Boon: You gain 1d8 additional HP.

Druid
Quest: You must make an appropriate sacrifice to Green Gods at the Tree of Faces inside the Myrkvith Forest. The Tree of Faces hungers for many strange things, but nothing more than the decapitated heads of orcs, who despoil trees. Thereafter, you may not carry works of iron.
Boon: When you apply one of the nine sacred herbs for healing, your ministrations heal 1d4+1 points of damage (instead of 1).

Knight Errant

Quest: You must slay a monster and present its head to the Folkmoot. If they accept your offering, they will dub you a Knight Errant. .
Boon: If you have not told a lie since the last new moon, you may ask “Is what they just said true?” in response to any statement from an NPC. The GM will answer you honestly. You may do this once per day.
Note: You may not be a member of two orders of knighthood at the same time

Knight of the Green
Quest: If you drop to exactly 0 HP and recover, you may thank the Green Gods for their blessing and dedicate yourself to their cause.
Boon: You (and everyone you are with) may travel through forest hexes as if they had a road.
Note: You may not be a member of two orders of knighthood at the same time. You may not worship two pantheons at the same time.

Loremaster
Quest: If you find an ancient book of lore, the GM presents you with a sudoku puzzle with runes instead of numbers. You must solve this puzzle out of character.
Boon: You may now spend a dungeon turn to read any runes you encounter.

Ranger
Quest: Write an in-character field journal documenting 15 hexes
Boon: You may use a Camp Action to scout nearby. You investigate a specific location in your hex or an adjacent one. Thereafter, you may ask the GM three specific yes or no questions about something you’d know having infiltrated that location, e.g., “Is this door trapped?” “Is this room guarded?” “Is the wizard’s bedroom on this level?” “Do the bandits have bows?” “Were the orcs green-skinned?”

Skald
Quest: Best a supernatural creature in a riddling contest
Boon: When you bid lore, you may ask a follow up question for free.

Skinchanger
Quest: Skinchangers put on a cloak of hide from the animal whose shape they wish to take. The ritual needed to create this magical cloak is known to few, but you know a rumor of at least two: Grimbold the Berserk of Northmark and Alianora of Svanlindale. Seek either of them out to learn this art.
Boon: If you don your cloak of hide, you may take on the shape of an animal. In this form, you gain no new stats, but you may leap, climb, slither, bite, swim, or fly as a beast.

Sorcerer
Quest: On a night of the new moon, open one of the barrows of Northmark and plunder the Treasure you find there. If you survive the encounter, you will surely be called a sorcerer.
Boon: A sorcerer may cast one the spells of wilderlands for each item of enchantment they hold.

Wizard
Quest: You must pay 1 Treasure and spend a Downtime Action to take classes at the Tower of Grammarye. Each time you do this, you learn the lore of one of the noble herbs.
Boon: Each time you gain this class (which may be done up to nine times), you are shown a row in the chart which represents the combinations of herbs into magical reagents. You may prepare these reagents as a Camp action.
 
Earthdawn is a good example of a game where just about everything is diagetic.

"I'm a fourth circle Warrior" is literally something your character can say meaningfully within the game.
 
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Which leads to the "Diagetic" classes that the blog RiseUpComus proposes here:

D&D has never been super clear whether its class paradigm is diegetic or non-diegetic. Is a monk an ascetic martial artist from Kara-Tur or a generic template for someone who fights unarmed? The more editions that passed, the less specific it seemed. On the other hand, 3E’s prestige classes always seemed very specific and diegetic. You weren’t just a fighter, you were one of the Cormyrian army’s Purple Dragon Knights. This was fun in theory but wasn’t successful. It never mattered what your character did or said in the game, only that their Intimidation and Rope Handling were 9+ or whatever.

When I discovered OSR-style play in G+, I was thankful to get away from builds, level planning, feat acquisition and such. If I gained a knighthood during play, I was excited for whatever the GM said that meant.

But what if...

Diegetic Classes for the Wilderland
That would be no good,” said the wizard, “not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary). That is why I settled on burglary —especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar. So now let’s get on and make some plans.
- The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Levels aren’t diegetic. Get rid of them.
Traditional classes aren’t particularly useful either. Get rid of those, too.

In the Wilderlands, there are various organizations, tribes, cults, and sects. Membership in these organizations grants certain benefits. These are called classes.

When you speak to a member of an organization, they will (almost always) tell you what you what quest you need to complete to join their ranks. This is never tied to your statistics; this is always some thing your character must do in the world.

If you join a class, you gain some boon. This is some discrete and useful ability.
(This may be thought as being roughly analogous to a single template in the GLOG.)

You begin your career as an adventurer with no classes. Adventure and earn them in play.
Some classes are mutually exclusive. For example, you may never be both a Knight of the Grail and a Blackguard.

The classes listed below are explicitly appropriate for the Wilderlands setting. Your game world should probably have different ones. Write some up and let your players discover them. (Hint: Look at the level titles and concoct a few based on those.)

Berserk
Quest: You must slay, skin, tan, and create a coat from the hide of a dire animal.
Boon: If you wear your dire coat, but no actual armor, you may choose to fly into a berserker fit. While in this fit, you may only perform Melee attacks, but you gain damage resistance 2. This fit only ends when every creature who has attacked you is dead or you are.

Bravo
Quest: You must challenge and best another bravo in a fair duel.Thereafter, as a bravo, you must accept any fair challenge from any duelist.
Boon: You gain +2 to hit.

Burglar
Quest: You must join the Burglar’s Guild, whose membership dues cost 1 Treasure.
Boon: At any point, you may declare that you go sneaking. This allows you to go dramatically off-stage. Later, if you are not present in a scene and it’s at least somewhat plausible that you could have snuck there, take 1d4 damage to arrive on the scene dramatically. If you go sneaking and all tension evaporates, you may rejoin the scene by slinking out of the shadows. This does not cost HP.
Note: You cannot be both a Burglar and have Knightly vows.

Champion
Quest: You must make an oath of service to a lord from your realm and hold them as your liege.
Boon: You gain 1d8 additional HP.

Druid
Quest: You must make an appropriate sacrifice to Green Gods at the Tree of Faces inside the Myrkvith Forest. The Tree of Faces hungers for many strange things, but nothing more than the decapitated heads of orcs, who despoil trees. Thereafter, you may not carry works of iron.
Boon: When you apply one of the nine sacred herbs for healing, your ministrations heal 1d4+1 points of damage (instead of 1).

Knight Errant
Quest: You must slay a monster and present its head to the Folkmoot. If they accept your offering, they will dub you a Knight Errant. .
Boon: If you have not told a lie since the last new moon, you may ask “Is what they just said true?” in response to any statement from an NPC. The GM will answer you honestly. You may do this once per day.
Note: You may not be a member of two orders of knighthood at the same time

Knight of the Green
Quest: If you drop to exactly 0 HP and recover, you may thank the Green Gods for their blessing and dedicate yourself to their cause.
Boon: You (and everyone you are with) may travel through forest hexes as if they had a road.
Note: You may not be a member of two orders of knighthood at the same time. You may not worship two pantheons at the same time.

Loremaster
Quest: If you find an ancient book of lore, the GM presents you with a sudoku puzzle with runes instead of numbers. You must solve this puzzle out of character.
Boon: You may now spend a dungeon turn to read any runes you encounter.

Ranger
Quest: Write an in-character field journal documenting 15 hexes
Boon: You may use a Camp Action to scout nearby. You investigate a specific location in your hex or an adjacent one. Thereafter, you may ask the GM three specific yes or no questions about something you’d know having infiltrated that location, e.g., “Is this door trapped?” “Is this room guarded?” “Is the wizard’s bedroom on this level?” “Do the bandits have bows?” “Were the orcs green-skinned?”

Skald
Quest: Best a supernatural creature in a riddling contest
Boon: When you bid lore, you may ask a follow up question for free.

Skinchanger
Quest: Skinchangers put on a cloak of hide from the animal whose shape they wish to take. The ritual needed to create this magical cloak is known to few, but you know a rumor of at least two: Grimbold the Berserk of Northmark and Alianora of Svanlindale. Seek either of them out to learn this art.
Boon: If you don your cloak of hide, you may take on the shape of an animal. In this form, you gain no new stats, but you may leap, climb, slither, bite, swim, or fly as a beast.

Sorcerer
Quest: On a night of the new moon, open one of the barrows of Northmark and plunder the Treasure you find there. If you survive the encounter, you will surely be called a sorcerer.
Boon: A sorcerer may cast one the spells of wilderlands for each item of enchantment they hold.

Wizard
Quest: You must pay 1 Treasure and spend a Downtime Action to take classes at the Tower of Grammarye. Each time you do this, you learn the lore of one of the noble herbs.
Boon: Each time you gain this class (which may be done up to nine times), you are shown a row in the chart which represents the combinations of herbs into magical reagents. You may prepare these reagents as a Camp action.

The concept is brilliant. I try to make things as diegetic as possible, even in a classless system. For example in Mythras, you have weapon styles, which include certain weapons, and some cultures and careers have them. I only allow for diegetic weapon styles, in other words, a type of actual training you have received. In Primitive or Barbarian cultures, for example, you’re definitely going to learn some weapon styles, you wouldn’t have made it to adulthood without them.
 
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Awful pretentious-Scientology-sounding name aside, came across this interesting blog post about removing the class/level system from OSR

The term "Diagesis" is here used in reference to another blog post by Cavegirl that I'll quote first:


Don’t want to derail, but...

The concept of diegesis, especially when used by people talking about Narrative RPGs is that they’re only using diegesis partially from the position of assuming narrative stance. For example, the whole point of the PbtA system and why it is so popular is that the primary narrative control is delivered through the 7-9 result and almost without exception the options referred to in the choices the player may choose from are diegetic things. They are results that could happen within the diegesis and contain or reference diegetic objects.

However, that doesn’t mean they represent a Diegetic Choice, ie. one that the character would be aware of and can make.

So if every object, item, or action present in a choice is diegetic, but the choice is not, is the mechanic diegetic? I say no. Fate, PbtA, et al. have as their main methods of narrative control, mechanics that allow for a non-diegetic choice.
 
I'm still trying to figure out PbTA. The pledge manager for Kult Divinity Lost's latest KS just opened up and I have the opportunity to pick up a hard copy of the core rules, but the only thing holding me back is that I'm worried about the switch to a system based on AW. The whole "Moves" thing really bothers me, and I can't yet get a feel how easy it will be to excise them entirely from the system and run it as a traditional RPG. I can't tell how much the metamechanics entwine the game. We have posters arguing here only recently that PbTA are conceptually closer related to OSR games than narrative RPGs, but I'm skeptical about that. My experience as a player in a DW game was that it wasn't a storygame, but there still seemed to be this metamechanic framework imposed over gameplay, and oddly immersion-breaking conceits like only players roll. But there also seems to be those really engaging elements that I guess would describe as "Diagetic" now that I know the term, especially in the playbooks

It all seems - perhaps ironically, considering the author - "incoherent", like it's trying to be two types of games at once.
 
My impression of PbTA is that the moves are how you resolve things. You should in theory be able to do anything and link it to a move to resolve, just as in a traditional game you might say ok "I jump from the bridge onto the back of that truck" and the GM tries to work out what skill you need to roll.

Whether it always works out that way in practice I'm not so sure.
 
I'm still trying to figure out PbTA. The pledge manager for Kult:grin:ivinity Lost's latest KS just opened up and I have the opportunity to pick up a hard copy of the core rules, but the only thing holding me back is that I'm worried about the switch to a system based on AW. The whole "Moves" thing really bothers me, and I can't yet get a feel how easy it will be to excise them entirely from the system and run it as a traditional RPG. I can't tell how much the metamechanics entwine the game. We have posters arguing here only recently that PbTA are conceptually closely related to OSR games than narrative RPGs, but I'm skeptical about that. My experience as a player in a DW game was that it wasn't a storygame, but there still seemed to be this metamechanic framework imposed over gameplay, and oddly immersion-breaking conceits like only players roll. But there also seems to be those really engaging elements that I guess would describe as "Diagetic" now that I know the term, especially in the playbooks

It all seems - perhaps ironically, considering the author - "incoherent", like it's trying to be two types of games at once.
Well, reading a lot of what Baker wrote back in the day, “Forgie” games we’re getting further and further away from the diegesis, ie. an entirely meta set of mechanics that determined who got narrative control. In other words, play the game to find out who tells the next piece of the collective story.

So PbtA has the goal of having the game be internal to the story, not external. Roleplay your characters, do what they would do, and the GM uses the rules to determine what choices are presented to you based on what you roll. The most common result on 2d6 is the 7-9 result, in which the GM lets you determine what happens. Usually a partial success, or some form of full success with a complication.

The mechanic is invoked by action in the diegesis and the results are made evident in the diegesis. It is the choices themselves that are frequently non-diegetic because no one in the diegesis can make those choices.

To what degree the choices are non-diegetic will tell you “how narrative” that PbtA variant is.
 
Another thing to keep in mind is, you can “flush the narrative” in most PbtA games by simply having the GM choose the 7-9 result or roll the dice.

Of course then you have the whole Player Roll thing, which might be a non-starter as well.
 
I'm generally not fond of fate points/bennies/luck... but the Luck in DCC does feel diagetic to me, something the PCs could be aware of an push when necessary.

Earthdawn is a good example of a game where just about everything is diagetic.

"I'm a fourth circle Warrior" is literally something your character can say meaningfully within the game.
My reading of Mythras Classic Fantasy is that it's somewhat similar, in that 'classes' and 'levels' are actually cults/brotherhoods/guilds that PCs attain ranks within, along with concomitant responsibilities.
One thing I felt missing from Earthdawn, at least the way our group played it, was the lack of any association with other members of your Discipline, except when it came time to find a trainer. It seemed like it should be more of a presence in the game.
 
Fascinating. I think that the immensely non-diegetic aspects of D&D are what bother me a lot about the game.

I've been wondering if there was a way to "hack" D&D to be classless, by making some traditional class features diegetic.

My mind's reeling with the possibilities...
 
I'm not sure I follow all that much why classes are a particular issue here - at least along this axis. Class are just a means of representation aren't they? Skills and attributes are just as much non-diagetic.
 
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The PbtA player doesn't decide what happens on a 7-9 result in every instance, and even when they do they are picking off a list, not creating fiction. Sometimes the GM decides, it depends on the move. It's not much like FATE points, for example.

I do love the idea of shifting 'classes' in a diagetic direction. It reminds of WHFRP, and I can think of a bunch of ways it could be very cool.
 
Have you had a look at the Player's Move list here?
Your impressions of that might be the easiest way to get a feel for whether you'd like it.


OK, this is what is breaking my brain about that list.

In an atypical RPG, all of those seem like they could be summed up as:

(15+) - critical success - things go just as you planned
(10-14) - partial success - the GM may describe a complication or unintended consequence
(9-) - failure

so what am I gaining from the Moves? Or what am I losing from leaving them out?
 
OK, this is what is breaking my brain about that list.

In an atypical RPG, all of those seem like they could be summed up as:

(15+) - critical success - things go just as you planned
(10-14) - partial success - the GM may describe a complication or unintended consequence
(9-) - failure

so what am I gaining from the Moves? Or what am I losing from leaving them out?
Not much really I think. In a certain sense PbtA games are just rules light games where you roll 2d6 + Stat with the three result levels breaking down like you have. Often the text beneath is essentially just suggestions for what "partial" for example might mean for that situation. So a "move" can be seen as nothing more than suggested outcomes. This is why the games are sometimes said to be training wheel games for GMs.

As CRKrueger said most PbtA games can have the narrative element removed by making the GM roll instead of always being player facing. Some PbtA games are more explicitly narrative as all the move's outcomes exert narrative control like picking who dies or similar.
 
OK, this is what is breaking my brain about that list.

In an atypical RPG, all of those seem like they could be summed up as:

(15+) - critical success - things go just as you planned
(10-14) - partial success - the GM may describe a complication or unintended consequence
(9-) - failure

so what am I gaining from the Moves? Or what am I losing from leaving them out?
The moves can describe the result states differently as appropriate for the move in question. Sometimes the player gets one or more general results off a a list, sometimes the GM chooses. It's one of the more interesting design spaces to monkey around with IMO. You could just use the basic mechanic and generate the failure and partial successes on the fly. Personally, I think it's useful for players to have some idea of what the outcomes will be when they attempt an action though. The game usually pushes results in the direction of success with consequences, which the math in your post doesn't, so that's a factor too.
 
Tristram I should add that Kult is "unusual" for PbtA games in that it uses 2d10 + Stat rather than 2d6 + Stat.

The +Stat makes either a Success or Partial Success more likely than failure to a degree significant enough to change the feel of the game. In Kult it will typically be 80% say.
 
Ahh, 2d10, now it makes sense. Interesting.
 
The moves can describe the result states differently as appropriate for the move in question. Sometimes the player gets one or more general results off a a list, sometimes the GM chooses. It's one of the more interesting design spaces to monkey around with IMO. You could just use the basic mechanic and generate the failure and partial successes on the fly.

my experience (granted this is personal preference and playstyle to an extent) is that any gain from more complex individualized mechanics is tempered against a forced break in the game to purely interact with the rules. In some cases, a player can simply say what they want to do, and the GM interprets that as the appropriate Move, but others the player has to stop roleplaying and go throgh a list of questions or options. And I'm personally skeptical as to whether the drawbacks of the metamechanics are compensated for by the codified options.

Personally, I think it's useful for players to have some idea of what the outcomes will be when they attempt an action though.

I'm confused by this - wouldn't the possible outcomes be common sense? And if not, wouldn't that suggst the outcomes in the game don't match the assumed reality of the gaeworld?

The game usually pushes results in the direction of success with consequences, which the math in your post doesn't, so that's a factor too.

huh? I copied the math exactly from the Moves linked
 
Tristram I should add that Kult is "unusual" for PbtA games in that it uses 2d10 + Stat rather than 2d6 + Stat.

The +Stat makes either a Success or Partial Success more likely than failure to a degree significant enough to change the feel of the game. In Kult it will typically be 80% say.


That's an interesting choice for a horror game...hmmm, will need to think about that
 
my experience (granted this is personal preference and playstyle to an extent) is that any gain from more complex individualized mechanics is tempered against a forced break in the game to purely interact with the rules. In some cases, a player can simply say what they want to do, and the GM interprets that as the appropriate Move, but others the player has to stop roleplaying and go throgh a list of questions or options. And I'm personally skeptical as to whether the drawbacks of the metamechanics are compensated for by the codified options.
I haven't had any issues with it. It flows pretty naturally in play for me. You don't have to play very long before those are internalized. The game also collapses back onto the base mechanic quite successfully.

I'm confused by this - wouldn't the possible outcomes be common sense? And if not, wouldn't that suggst the outcomes in the game don't match the assumed reality of the gaeworld?
You can run it like that, sure. It depends on what I'm after. Failure and complications are where the GM gets to make their moves, and that also works pretty smoothly in practice. The lists are generally pretty diagetic in that they tend to index the PCs desired outcome anyway.

huh? I copied the math exactly from the Moves linked
Sorry, I didn't realize that Kult was using 2d10. I thought it was a rough translation to d20. Nothing to see here, move along...
 
That's an interesting choice for a horror game...hmmm, will need to think about that
Since "Partial Success" is the most common and comes with minor complications it kind of leads to an accumulation of minor annoyances until they combine into something fatal/bad. There was a good example from RPG.net:
On balance, characters succeed with complication most of the time. Again, this builds up a currency of minor problems that you can accumulate into a bigger consequence. Example: during play one character accumulated several minor consequences, none of which interfered with her actions at the time. A door that has to be slightly forced- better fix that lock soon. An old gun that jammed once. A car that has problems starting. Nothing major until PC goes home after being on the run for weeks to gather an important item she now realises holds the secret to her freedom (and the truth about her husband's cult activities). When in the apartment, she realises the door cannot be closed properly. The gun is completely jammed, and the car left out on the street for weeks won't start. And there's somebody in there with her. Tiny details in Kult accrue enormous power over time.

In my experience PbtA games can be run in two different modes that you've basically already identified. Players roll themselves and pick from the move list or the GM rolls and makes up something appropriate. The former is the default, but with to my mind very little effort one can move to the latter where they become rules-light trad games where people tend to succeed with accumulating minor setbacks.
 
Ultimately this may just come to personal preference or "gaming aesthtic" I suppose. My style of GMing is probably internalized after 30+ years, so my PoV just butts up hard against mechanics enforcing a different approach.
 
Ultimately this may just come to personal preference or "gaming aesthtic" I suppose. My style of GMing is probably internalized after 30+ years, so my PoV just butts up hard against mechanics enforcing a different approach.
In my experience when people have seen these games their first reaction is often "couldn't the GM just make up the consequences" and I think it's a natural one. The explicit list of outcomes is really to facilitate GMs having very delineated outcomes or so that the rolls can be player facing with the usual claim being that this makes them easy to run for GMs and gives a game fairly consistent in quality and genre adherence with the players having a more active than average role.

Since I doubt you're interested in this and you've already pointed out how the whole thing could be easily made into a traditional game, it's probably more a question of how interested you are in the setting content since run in the typical GM-adjudicated manner it's a fairly uninteresting light 2d6 system.
 
In my experience when people have seen these games their first reaction is often "couldn't the GM just make up the consequences" and I think it's a natural one. The explicit list of outcomes is really to facilitate GMs having very delineated outcomes or so that the rolls can be player facing with the usual claim being that this makes them easy to run for GMs and gives a game fairly consistent in quality and genre adherence with the players having a more active than average role.

Since I doubt you're interested in this and you've already pointed out how the whole thing could be easily made into a traditional game, it's probably more a question of how interested you are in the setting content since run in the typical GM-adjudicated manner it's a fairly uninteresting light 2d6 system.

The original Kult was one of my favourite RPG/settings in the 90s, though I found it got significanty watered down with each subsequent edition

It was a very "90s" setting though with the whole "secret World of...darkness" that the normies can't percieve/don't know about, and the special few fight a secret war...
 
The original Kult was one of my favourite RPG/settings in the 90s, though I found it got significanty watered down with each subsequent edition
I'd say this edition is genuinely dark and horrific and not at all watered down. That general consensus of people who did have complaints about the setting getting weaker is that this edition reverses the trend. It's also not "edgelord" dark I should add and teases out the themes of setting more (e.g. gnosticism).

Given what you've said I think you'd very much enjoy the setting material but you'd be gutting the system. There's a roughly 170 page setting chapter, so basically is it worth that with coffee table book art.
 
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yeah, the price isn't bad for just a setting book and what I've seen of the art is impressive
 
If you're going to get rid of classes and levels why even play D&D?

This is when it seems to me the OSR would just be better off giving up their obsession with 'fixing' D&D and just playing Pendragon, RQ/Mythras, Stormbringer or WFRP (or hell Freebooters on the Frontier or White Hack!).

Also confusing as I've seen Cavegirl make the (to me very weak) argument for using a D&D base because it is something 'everyone' is familiar with. But if you remove class/levels that much vaunted 'familiarity' is lost.

To me a perfect example of the weakness of game mechanic design in the OSR, where their ignorance of other games and the wider history of rpgs has them constantly reinventing the wheel.
 
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If yoh're going to get rid of classes and levels why even play D&D? This is when it seems to me the OSR would just be better off giving up their obsession with 'fixing' D&D and just playing Pendragon, Rq/Mythras, Stormbringer or WFRP.

Well, I mean, rguably a game that fixed the "issues" with D&D (some of us have) but was still mechanically backwards compatible with the vast amount of resources produced for the OSR has some specific value
 
Well, I mean, rguably a game that fixed the "issues" with D&D (some of us have) but was still mechanically backwards compatible with the vast amount of resources produced for the OSR has some specific value

I guess but if you strip class/level from D&D is conversion any easier or more difficult than converting to a different system?

At that point it seems to me the issue is determing an appropriate power level and converting monsters/NPCs. NPCs will still be an issue and monsters exist outside class/level.
 
I guess but if you strip class/level from D&D is conversion any easier or more difficult than converting to a different system?

At that point it seems to me the issue is determing an appropriate power level and converting monsters/NPCs. NPCs will still be an issue and monsters exist outside class/level.

I don't think the concept of an appropriate power level exists in the OSR.

Presumably the stats for monsters/NPCs wouldn't need to be converted at all, since they are based on elements outside of class/level - hit dice, stats, etc.
 
Everyone's a fighting man. Therefore, no one is. Classes abolished.
Add percentile skills, Runequest style.
 
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I don't think the concept of an appropriate power level exists in the OSR.

Presumably the stats for monsters/NPCs wouldn't need to be converted at all, since they are based on elements outside of class/level - hit dice, stats, etc.

I find the claims of 'no balance' in the OSR overstated and not particularly convincing based on my personal experience and historical reality. The classic dungeoncrawl has notions of level vs. opposition baked in via dungeon depth/level no matter the claims of partisans plus of course the clear level range indicated on all the classic modules.
 
I don't think "no-blance" and "level appropriate encounters" are synonymous concepts, and I don't know anything about the dungeon levels = character level thig, first I've ever heard of it. And I wasn't aware modules produced for OD&D (was there any?) had level specific requirements on them.

But monsters in OD&D (or TSR D&D in general) were not defined based on levels. And most NPCs are either classless or can be directly related to a character class.

So to go back to the original query - it seems to me that, if all else is the same (how hit points or hit die work/how combat and skill rolls are resolved/how magic works, etc), the switching around of classes doesn't require any conversion work whatsoever. A strong monster is still going to be the exact same level of strong, the mechanical interactions of the system with other parts of the system are all going to be the same, pretty much everything is the same except the presence of class levels. So how that is comparable to converting material to WFRP or RuneQuest, I just can't see at all.
 
I find the claims of 'no balance' in the OSR overstated and not particularly convincing based on my personal experience and historical reality. The classic dungeoncrawl has notions of level vs. opposition baked in via dungeon depth/level no matter the claims of partisans plus of course the clear level range indicated on all the classic modules.
There is definitely truth to that statement. Keep in mind that a lot of D&D players only play variations of D&D. The OSR is a reaction to D&D 3E and 4E, where the balancing of mechanics became most constraining. When they talk about no balance, they are talking more about throwing away the heavy-handed guidelines in 3E and 4E. D&D is a game where you absolutely have to think about balance because of the enormous power curve over the course of leveling.

I like OSR D&D, but if I want to really not think about balance, I'll run something like BRP or Savage Worlds, where there is a much smaller power curve. I find both of those systems are much easier for sandbox play than D&D.

I don't think "no-blance" and "level appropriate encounters" are synonymous concepts, and I don't know anything about the dungeon levels = character level thig, first I've ever heard of it. And I wasn't aware modules produced for OD&D (was there any?) had level specific requirements on them.

But monsters in OD&D (or TSR D&D in general) were not defined based on levels. And most NPCs are either classless or can be directly related to a character class.

Monsters and treasure were arranged by dungeon level in OD&D. Dungeon levels and character levels don't correspond exactly, as there were 10 character levels and dungeons had 6 levels. Still, going one level deeper was a way of encountering stronger threats and bigger rewards. It was actually more diegetic, as the players could make decision based on the level of the dungeon that they were on. It was a different kind of balance than a 3E GM designing all the encounters so that the players would probably win.

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