Hyperdiegetic is a word to describe the stuff in a creative work that is unexplained but implies a larger setting. Well-known examples of hyperdiegesis include:

“Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.”

Blade Runner

“You fought in the Clone Wars?” “Yes. I was once a Jedi knight, the same as your father.”

Star Wars

When you open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, roll+weird. 

Apocalypse World

Obviously, these have been retconned out of existence by a plethora of sequels, coined by Matt Hill, although I found it here and snipped the quotes down, because you can read it yourself and because this isn’t a critical analysis, it’s me riffing on an idea.

…the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text…

Matt Hill, Fan Cultures

…world is built throughout the series by accumulating and reiterating details. Mentions of people, places, and events suggest a complete world with a long history….

Matt Hill, Defining Cult TV

I’m going to talk about it in the context of DIY elfgames, particularly modules and setting. Hyperdiegetic information in movies can be intended to seed connections for future instalments (like in the early Marvel Cinematic Universe or in the many Star Trek TV series), but also they can be stand-alone comments meant to provide a sense of vastness. More uniquely in TTRPGs, it is actively intended to be a gap the table fills at play.

Now I love hyperdiegetic information, as a personal preference, in my modules and settings. But I also notice that among many referees there’s an allergy to it. I see people repeatedly complaining “it doesn’t explain who so and so is”, or “if this name doesn’t refer to someone in the module, it shouldn’t be included”. Now, obviously, I disagree with this preference, but it’s a preference and it’s valid. M John Harrison didn’t feel as generous — he called it the clomping foot of nerdism, but I think in TTRPGs in particular this clomping foot is often justifiable. Let’s explore (I asked a few friends who write games and modules) where this impulse comes from, and whether how to battle the inclination in ourselves or embrace it.

I encountered issues with the problem of hyperdiegetic detail in the excellent series of zines, Ben L’s Through Ultan’s Door, and I described it thusly:

I fear the lack of clarity — “why are the baths bloody?”— for me would result in a kind of improvisation paralysis, where the lack of information in the presence of a much larger and growing world, would make me hesitant to create my own answers for fear of contradicting something that I don’t remember or hasn’t been written yet.

Me, here

So, I’m less receptive to hyperdiegetic information because if they make up the wrong thing it could ruin something that might be already existing in the world, may come in a future instalment, or might break the narrative or ruin a tension. Zedeck Siew suggested that this means you’re at risk of creating “interruptions to the fabric of the world rather than evolutions (because the author is not present at the table)”. There’s a solution to this to be had at an authorial level: That’s flagging hyperdiegetic information. Zedeck suggested using page references in order to flag hyperdiegetic information by omission, rather than the clumsier method of saying “this is hyperdiegetic”.

Diegetic information may be misleading. Chris McDowall suggested that the “fogginess of information” in TTRPGS — the fact that the referee is playing the part of all of the senses of the players — can result in hyperdiegetic information becoming confusing noise, due to the difficulty players have in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information. For example, the use of names of places or people who aren’t immediately relevant to the plot, might distract the players from the module or adventure at hand. Perhaps this throwaway line from Crown of Salt might cause the players to diverge on a quest for the second blade, for example: “An identical copy of the Blade of the Forgotten King.”

A third concern is that a referee who lacks confidence improvising, or is a very inflexible subscriber to the Blorb approach to running adventures, will not like it if there is not a fact to look up in the almanac or in the appendix or wherever. I once ran a Dragonlance campaign, a world I’m very familiar with with an incredibly thorough wiki site. There’s certainly a pleasure to participating in that kind of always-a-right-answer play. But I think absolute fears of not knowing the right answer plays against the strengths of DIY elfgames in general. This acknowledgement of improvisation of the world as a special strength of the hobby goes back to its earliest days:

…total and absolutely perfect information will [not] be needed, but a general schema is required. From this you can give vague hints and ambiguous answers…the interaction of judge and players shapes the bare bones of the initial creation into something far larger […] adventuring breathes life into a make believe world…

Gary Gygax, AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide

I was hoping to draw some principles from these fears, to best choose where to place our hyperdiegetic information, to get maximum bang with minimal allergic reactions, but now I realise that my initial ideas about those principles are wrong. I think we might have to fight our instincts here. It’s turned from a writing advice post into a running and playing advice post. Surprise!

Support your improvisation. Nobody is good at improvisation out of the box. You need to stock your pantry: Refer back to products you already have. Read other people’s stuff. Blogs. Books. Keep a pile of unused modules. Read them, remember them. Build your collection of generators and support documents. Something has been written for everything. More than 1 module comes out per week these days, so you often don’t have to write something new if you pay attention to the broader hobby. Steal shamelessly. You’ll have something available to you that way, when you’re forced to improvise: It’s just glorified stealing, so pack your pockets with gold. And making this easy is useful because…

Sandbox play is about detours. If you go off book, embrace it. Go find that second blade. Make it the treasure of the bonus dungeon. Add additional rumours. Bespoke character driven adventure is part of the dynamism and collaborative nature of the hobby. If you support your improv, it’s a blessing and not a curse to be sent off the beaten track.

Naively theorise. Part of the resistance to hyperdiegesis is the increasingly interconnected world we live in; Amanda P points out that most of the time, an adventurer in a fantasy world is living in a world filled with things they don’t know or understand.

…they met by chance in an inn or tavern and resolved to journey together to seek their fortunes in the dangerous environment, and that, beyond the knowledge common to the area, they know nothing of the world…

Gary Gygax, AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide

As players we should live in that naivety. We often want to create experts — “I’d know about this” is a regular refrain. Lean instead on “I have no idea what that means, let’s figure it out”, rather than asking the referee. The referee can and should correct mistakes in understanding of information; but this naïveté contributes to theorising. Adventurers should embrace their naivety, and delve deeper anyway, building their theories. Encourage your players to do the same: The referee doesn’t always have to improvise the answer, the players can theorise one; ask them “You don’t know. What do you think the answer is?”; this resolves the previous issue of fear of painting yourself into a corner, because you’re wondering about reality rather than imposing reality.

Embrace the retcon. When you do interrupt reality accidentally, don’t hesitate to fix it. Hyperdiegetic information should be used to set up a larger world, which means you could get it wrong. We’re almost always playing in a world unlike ours: A great change in our history or geography can be explained by great magic, alien technology easily. But even in a campaign without these world-changing, time-breaking possibilities, you could realise your reality is brainwashing or propaganda — stuff that happens in real life. Make it an event, every time you figure you got something wrong. A crisis on infinite Oerths, perhaps. Embrace it as part of the dynamism and collaborative nature of the hobby.

[I’m realising now that I don’t have a word for the strange, lopsided collaboration at the core of DIY elfgames. That will be a future post, I suppose.]

Yeah, that’s it, I think. The hobby is better off using hyperdiegetic information. I think we should learn to embrace it, both as referees and as players, and we can do it by changing our angles of collaboration in various ways.

Idle Cartulary

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