Diegetic Character Options

Last year I wrote about about backloading complexity, specifically applied to skills. In response, Jeffro wrote an excellent post about extending that idea to magic-users; in Jeffro’s Infocom-inspired system, magic-users begin with only one spell, read magic, and must discover all other spells by finding scrolls. This is also a way of backloading complexity (because the players of magic-users do not need to know what the various spells do before the game starts or choose between them), but it is something more as well. It is diegetic in the sense that it ties the game mechanics to in-game events and situations. It is meaning first.

I think this principle can be extended even further. What if learning new skills or feats required finding a teacher or some other quest? For example, if you want to learn the mounted combat feat, perhaps you need to complete 1d4 missions with the local cavalry, and maybe you must journey to the steppe barbarians to learn mounted archery. Under such a system, feats would become a form of treasure, or at least an adventure hook.

Why not use this approach for race as well? Elves could be available as PCs once Elf-Land has been discovered. This is the way that Evan plans on handling reptoids in his Uz setting. Other nonhumans could also be accessed in this manner. In a sense, this is similar to the idea of “unlocking” options in video games. To take this to the logical extreme, what if you could play any race if you could convince one of them to first be a retainer (riffing off the traditional idea of being able to promote retainers to full PCs)? Thus, want to play a dragon? You first have to find and make friends with one. It would provide a nice incentive for parley, too. And give the referee an opportunity to show through play how a given species behaves in the particular setting.

One could even imagine having almost nothing at the beginning, and discovering everything through play (even class). Some modes of zero level play approximate this ideal, but in reality most of these systems allow players to plan things out and just make them wait for it (which is why I think many people don’t like zero level play). What I am laying out here is a stricter idea how zero level is usually played, as spells or other mechanical bits may be entirely unique to a given campaign (though the two ideas could be profitably mixed).

This structure privileges exploring game worlds over exploring mechanical options. Players might not even know what feats were available until they have experienced the game! I realize this kind of game is not for everyone (there seems to be a sizeable contingent of players that groove on character optimization, if forum post volume is anything to go on), but I think this is a mode I would enjoy both as player and as referee. Exactly where one draws the line between character creation options and diegetic options is a matter for individual groups and referees to decide upon together.

16 thoughts on “Diegetic Character Options

  1. DrBargle

    Tying character advancement to what they actually do in-game was one of the cool things about the WFRP1e career system (and I guess 2e, though I’m less familiar). If you wanted to gain access to the advancement opportunities offered by the ‘judicial champion’ career, you had to become a judicial champion. I’m still of the opinion the career system would make a great motivating mechanic for a sandbox game – though I’ve yet to really give it a go.

    But, on the downside, the system did lead to players looking through the career system and working out the smallest number of steps needed to get to the kick-ass advanced careers.

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    1. Brendan

      That sounds like a great idea. You could make up your own careers using the published ones as guidelines to avoid the character optimization aspect. I just recently read the 1E Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay book for the first time and found it very inspirational. I hope to be able to actually play it some time.

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    2. richard

      Or maybe best of all, you could design unique careers with your players as they come up. I really love this aproach… and am only now realizing that it’s kinda what I do all the time. The big destabilizing element being TPKs or even individual characters being removed from play. So you befriended an elf and he died, and now the player decides to play his sister – sure, no problem, right? And the rest of the gang can play elves too if they want, and now we meet elf 1’s ex-wife, nemesis, annoying grandson etc.

      Is the same thing true of dragons? Or do you have to unlock a new one?

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    3. DrBargle

      If the D&D game we recently started runs long enough, I plan on opening up all the crazy non-human classes from the GAZ and PC series as appropriate. Leprechaun? Goblin? Centaur? Ogre? Fine, once the party needs new PCs and the in-game situation permits.

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  2. Roger the GS

    Some of the “unlocks” would only make sense in a long-running campaign – although they would provide tasty consolation prizes in case of character death.

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  3. Josh D.

    That sounds like great fun to me! It does however go directly to the question of what the game should be about. I big part of the struggle I have had with my group is that I have several players for whom character optimization *is* the game.

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    1. Brendan

      Yeah, that can be a tough problem to solve. At some level, players do need to be on the same wavelength. That’s one of the great things about the recent wave of gaming over the Internet: you can advertise exactly the kind of game you want to run, and there is a good chance that enough likeminded players will be interested, too. There is something special about actual over physical over-the-table play though, so I don’t think videoconference gaming is a complete solution.

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  4. Lasgunpacker

    I find the idea of “unlocks” sort of metagame-y, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It could be better to make only the next step in the chain known though, to prevent pre-planning, and the resulting disapointment when the character snuffs it opening a box in the wizard’s house.

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    1. Brendan

      In game it would probably be like “if you want to get another elf you have to either find an elf wanderer and hire her or go back to Elf-Land” (or whatever the circumstances are). So hopefully it wouldn’t feel too much like metagame. I’m planning on running some G+ games sometime soon using some of these principles, so we’ll see what the player reaction is like.

      What do you mean by next step in the chain?

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    2. richard

      sigh. I should always read to the end before commenting 🙂

      As a DM I like not knowing what this new class will be able to do at higher levels. Let them get there and have interests!

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  5. John

    I’ve been doing something kind of like this for the ACKSPC material; the mage has been learning dark secrets from forgotten tomes recovered from the necromancer academy, the dwarf earned access to berserker henchmen for “meritorious service to Armok”, and so forth. It’s been fun, and hunting down spells is now very much a concern.

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