Both of these sound like they apply to Quacks of Quedlinburg. The player mat is shaped and designed to look like the cauldron in which your character is brewing their potion (skeuomorphism), and the player physically adds their components to the swirling cauldron as they craft their brew each round (diegesis).
I love a discussion of diegesis! I just wanted to add that ttrpgs are fertile territory for this, i.e. text presented as in-universe as opposed to explicitly telling you how to play a game.
Triangle Agency is a good example, presenting itself as a manual for a ‘field agent’ with oblique references to playing a game.
My own solo module for Mothership, Thousand Empty Light, is another example. This one’s presented as a corporate handbook, expecting the player to infer how to apply the rules.
I think there’s loads of potential still to explore!
Would you say that, on ttrpgs for example, just having to rest ou use magic to heal is a kind of “light diegesis”, in contrast to “I spend one point of healing surge”?
You should check out Spellcaster / Waving Hands by Richard Bartle (yes, THAT Richard Bartle - rules here: http://www.gamecabinet.com/rules/WavingHands.html ). Wicked learning curve but very deep magical-duel game that was really well balanced considering all the different things you could do. Basically each turn you'd write down one of six gestures that you could make with each of your hands, and then if one of your hands completed the right series of gestures you'd cast a spell of some kind. By the rules as written, you'd do this by writing down your move for the turn and then revealing and resolving simultaneously, but in theory players who know the game well enough could play simply by making gestures at each other in real time (could even be done with computer assistance if someone wanted to make this for, say, Kinect).
And, of course, LARPs are by their nature 100% diegetic.
Is Bonaparte at Marengo an example of this? I realize the gameplay is not the same as being Napoleon or his generals, but the maps and colored sticks look like a real period representation you could imagine Napoleonic-era generals poring over. I am a big fan of this type of design, where the boardgame elements seems to be OF the universe they are describing, rather than a window into it.
My game has amplifiers with knobs you move to track your stats. And of course they go to eleven. It also has an on/off switch to indicate the absence or presence of a condition. It was the one design element I insisted on and cranking your knobs up is was more fun in a Rock and Roll themed game than tracking them any way else.
Skeuomorphism?
Oh good lord.
Both of these sound like they apply to Quacks of Quedlinburg. The player mat is shaped and designed to look like the cauldron in which your character is brewing their potion (skeuomorphism), and the player physically adds their components to the swirling cauldron as they craft their brew each round (diegesis).
I love a discussion of diegesis! I just wanted to add that ttrpgs are fertile territory for this, i.e. text presented as in-universe as opposed to explicitly telling you how to play a game.
Triangle Agency is a good example, presenting itself as a manual for a ‘field agent’ with oblique references to playing a game.
My own solo module for Mothership, Thousand Empty Light, is another example. This one’s presented as a corporate handbook, expecting the player to infer how to apply the rules.
I think there’s loads of potential still to explore!
Would you say that, on ttrpgs for example, just having to rest ou use magic to heal is a kind of “light diegesis”, in contrast to “I spend one point of healing surge”?
You should check out Spellcaster / Waving Hands by Richard Bartle (yes, THAT Richard Bartle - rules here: http://www.gamecabinet.com/rules/WavingHands.html ). Wicked learning curve but very deep magical-duel game that was really well balanced considering all the different things you could do. Basically each turn you'd write down one of six gestures that you could make with each of your hands, and then if one of your hands completed the right series of gestures you'd cast a spell of some kind. By the rules as written, you'd do this by writing down your move for the turn and then revealing and resolving simultaneously, but in theory players who know the game well enough could play simply by making gestures at each other in real time (could even be done with computer assistance if someone wanted to make this for, say, Kinect).
And, of course, LARPs are by their nature 100% diegetic.
Is Bonaparte at Marengo an example of this? I realize the gameplay is not the same as being Napoleon or his generals, but the maps and colored sticks look like a real period representation you could imagine Napoleonic-era generals poring over. I am a big fan of this type of design, where the boardgame elements seems to be OF the universe they are describing, rather than a window into it.
My game has amplifiers with knobs you move to track your stats. And of course they go to eleven. It also has an on/off switch to indicate the absence or presence of a condition. It was the one design element I insisted on and cranking your knobs up is was more fun in a Rock and Roll themed game than tracking them any way else.