Authenticity in RPGing

[clearstream]

And rather than "authenticity" I think that these games are built in a way to lead to an emergent story rather than a structured story. All of the players - including the GM - are participating in the structured improv game and so there can be an emergent story that nobody at the table had planned - including the GM. In a railroad game you don't have emergent story because the GM is guiding the story down a certain track. In a traditional sandbox game you get an emergent story, but the GM may not get the same level of surprise at the emergent story because of the level of planning they've already put into the game. They've put potential story elements into the world and then, while they may be surprised by how the players interact with them, they have some expectations. In an improvised game where planning is minimal everyone at the table participates as the story is built as you play and nobody is in control of the narrative at all.

A doubt in my mind about that is that in my copy of BitD I count about a hundred pages of overt background, and (to the game's credit IMO) almost every element is steeped in the narrative ink of a very specific world. In my copy of Stonetop, I've counted over 200 pages of overt background, and again much or most of the rest of the game text is very opinionated about what world we're in.

My doubt is as to how one cleanly separates out background prepped by game designer from background prepped by sandbox GM, so that we can differentiate the latter from the former in the specific ways you describe? As a GM who knows BitD's game text, I wonder how I avoid being unsurprised in the ways you have associated with sandboxes?

 

[billd91]

Thing is, a choice or decision may be immensely meaningful; only its meaning and-or impact doesn't become apparent until after the fact.

Sure, at the time it might look like a coin flip - e.g. which of two identical doors to open with no other info to go on. But when looked at in hindsight, choosing the door that led to stupendous treasure vs choosing the door that led to despair and disaster might be the most meaningful and life-altering choice that character ever made.

The flip side, of course, is that what seems a meaningful choice at the time might later turn out to be relatively unimportant.

That's a consequential choice, but not necessarily a meaningful one. The way I understand the use of meaningful here is the person making the choice knows, at least in general, what they are choosing between - fortune or tragedy. Absent that knowledge, the choice made at that time has no real meaning - though it may have eventual consequences. Basically, if you have to use hindsight to determine if the choice was meaningful or not, it wasn't really meaningful.

 

[Manbearcat]

A doubt in my mind about that is that in my copy of BitD I count about a hundred pages of overt background, and (to the game's credit IMO) almost every element is steeped in the narrative ink of a very specific world. In my copy of Stonetop, I've counted over 200 pages of overt background, and again much or most of the rest of the game text is very opinionated about what world we're in.

My doubt is as to how one cleanly separates out background prepped by game designer from background prepped by sandbox GM, so that we can differentiate the latter from the former in the specific ways you describe? As a GM who knows BitD's game text, I wonder how I avoid being unsurprised in the ways you have associated with sandboxes?

There is an easy answer to that.

The setting of neither Blades nor Stonetop are prescriptive. Outside of a very few particulars that encode premise (eg the supernatural apocalypse of Blades and the electroplasmic Lightning Towers and related and the general, corrupt, hierarchical disposition of the milieu), everything else is fundamentally contingent. None of those details exist to constrict the play space of either the GM or the player. They exist to encode general premise and as inspirational material for:

• Questions asked and answered during character creation and during play.
• Play loop framing broadly.
• Situation framing.
• Obstacle space rendering (including calculating Position/Effect and NPC Threat level in Blades)
• Consequence space rendering.
• All the many and varied and layers of player decision-space in both games.
• Threat relationships, manifestation, and evolution once they enter (if they even do) the imagined space (Downtime Faction/Setting Clocks in Blades and Threats entering > Portents and Doom ticking in ST).
• Using the maps and their relationships for spatial decision-making on Transport Scores in Blades and handling Perilous Journeys in ST.

TLDR - Along with xp triggers and Agenda, they define they premise of play. They help all the participants make decisions about content introduction but they neither bind me as GM nor does anything (except what has been established) mandate what can be gleaned during Info Gathering actions, DTA LTPs, intra-Score Flashback/Study/Survey/Consort or specific playbook moves in Blades nor Know Things/Seek Insight/Keep Company/specific playbook moves in ST. Same goes for the nature of Threats (their fiction and gamestate implications) entering play whether it be a Tier 4 Demon of Seduction (named Lillith) entering play as possessing the Rival of a PC in a Blades game nor a Demonic patron of a twisted Hillfolk tribe possessing an NPC Follower in Stonetop after a 7-9 Pull Together move result (where the NPC was sent into the field to retrieve a supplied wagon left out in the field by the PCs on a prior Adventure). Premise, prior fiction, xp triggers, agenda/principles all do the heavy lifting there and then move results + the fiction of the book inspires and helps fill out the fiction (Marshedge exodus of horse breeding family as Opportunity on Spring move, dangerous Hillfolk tribe of The Steplands at the center of the family disappearance, dark entities and chaos/savagery vs order/civilization as thematic opposition, Homefront at risk as premise).

TLDR x 2 - LOL at my TLDR being just as long/involved as my READ!

 

[MarkB]

Authenticity is subjective. If I know that something was established as objectively factual in the game's fiction before being revealed to me as a player, and I manage to correctly work out that fact from context and act upon it intelligently in-character, that, to me, feels more authentic than if I as a player declare something as factual, and whether or not it turns out to be right is determined by a dice roll.

 

[Manbearcat]

Authenticity is subjective. If I know that something was established as objectively factual in the game's fiction before being revealed to me as a player, and I manage to correctly work out that fact from context and act upon it intelligently in-character, that, to me, feels more authentic than if I as a player declare something as factual, and whether or not it turns out to be right is determined by a dice roll.

So I'll readily admit that I could be wrong here, but I think @pemerton 's interest in the usage of "authenticity" for his thread here is supposed to be something about originality and creative curiosity creating an emergent quality of discovery to setting/character through play vs the art of giving shape/form to setting/character by way of pastiche/skillfully deploying performative tropes and mapping preconceptions.

So I think what you're talking about is a different axis of "authenticity", like a priority for successfully controlling the gamestate as a player of Skilled Play Puzzle-Solving vs Skilled Play in Tactical Resource/Play Procedure (dice pool marshaling, limited resource deployment, risk assessment in tactical gambits etc) management.

I can see why you might go there. Interestingly, to some folks (possibly a lot), Puzzle Solving probably feels more like the former in the top paragraph (originality and creative curiosity creating an emergent quality of discovery). I'm not sure that it is inherently so, but it probably feels like that to a lot of folks whereas tactical gambits (like skillfully assessing risk > stipulating a helpful/interesting thing > marshalling resources to make it so) feel more rote and S.O.P (we've done the math and now its just imparting the subroutine upon play) and therefore "shallow."

Kind of like are master Chess players discovering new things with creative curiosity and original gambits very often when contrasted with (say) master Pictionary players (if such a ranking existed...some folks are clearly waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better at Pictionary than others so there is an effective ranking if not an established metric for a league or whatever)? I have neither a reflexive nor well-considered answer to that, but it wouldn't surprise me that if you polled a ton of folks that their off-the-cuff response would be "Pictionary players all the way."

Ok, I do have a thought. Pictionary probably feels more akin to "Go" in terms of total number of parameters and orientation/interaction of parameters (therefore employing creativity and experiencing discovery at a considerably higher rate than Chess). Whether it is or not, I don't know.

Does this sort of demonstrate what @pemerton is getting at in terms of creation of a working fiction via discovery of character/setting vs intentional instantiation of it by way of observing and mapping pre-existing stuff (pastiche, tropes, preconception)?

 

[Umbran]

Authenticity: the property of being authentic. Authentic: issuing from and being true to the self; thus, revealing (something about, some aspect of) the self.

Related things: responsibility (for what you bring to the table, for the self that you reveal), vulnerability (of the self that is revealed), honesty (to oneself, to the others at the table), forbearance and mutuality (we're all here together, all doing this thing, all taking these risks).

Look, I'm a GM, not a qualified group counselor. I am not running a game to get the players to "reveal truths". I'm running a game so they can have some entertainment, and maybe a momentary escape from whatever is weighty in their lives. This is true whatever style of game I am running.

I mean, this sounds like it ought to be part of Session Zero - "And in this game, we will reveal truths about ourselves to each other." See how many show up for Session One after that pitch.

 

[aramis erak]

Good point! Unfortunately, the OP didn't use the term "meaningful choice," but instead used "genuine choice." So it's hard to ascribe that technical meaning to the OP when it wasn't even used.

That said, I don't think that meaningful choice (in the technical sense) is something that is a specific feature that differentiates how "non-GM drive RPGs" work. As you correctly point out, meaningful choice is available in GM-driven games as well.

Authentic choice is used in some UK education paper for the same meaning.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Authentic choice is used in some UK education paper for the same meaning.

I mean, sure. If we are to assume that the OP was not inventing new pejorative jargon, and was not using the jargon that people already used ("meaningful choice"), but was instead borrowing jargon that is occasionally used in UK eduation papers ... maybe? Color me unconvinced.

The whole point of jargon (technical language) is that it allows people to be precise with the use of fewer words. This is the exact opposite; it is obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation.

Good times!

 

[MarkB]

So I'll readily admit that I could be wrong here, but I think @pemerton 's interest in the usage of "authenticity" for his thread here is supposed to be something about originality and creative curiosity creating an emergent quality of discovery to setting/character through play vs the art of giving shape/form to setting/character by way of pastiche/skillfully deploying performative tropes and mapping preconceptions.

So I think what you're talking about is a different axis of "authenticity", like a priority for successfully controlling the gamestate as a player of Skilled Play Puzzle-Solving vs Skilled Play in Tactical Resource/Play Procedure (dice pool marshaling, limited resource deployment, risk assessment in tactical gambits etc) management.

Hmm, not really. I talked about successfully figuring out something that exists in the gameworld, but it's not about the puzzle-solving in itself, it's about whether I'm inhabiting my character and figuring things out from their perspective using the information at hand, versus in some form playing both my character and the world around them, creating that world rather than exploring it.

The latter feels less authentic because it pulls the focus back from the perspective of the character I am playing - I'm telling their story more than experiencing it.

It's not that it's worse or anything - I've both played and run FitD games and had a great time doing so - but that sort of collaborative story-forging comes at the expense of actually experiencing that story purely from a character's perspective.

 

[aramis erak]

I mean, sure. If we are to assume that the OP was not inventing new pejorative jargon, and was not using the jargon that people already used ("meaningful choice"), but was instead borrowing jargon that is occasionally used in UK eduation papers ... maybe? Color me unconvinced.

The whole point of jargon (technical language) is that it allows people to be precise with the use of fewer words. This is the exact opposite; it is obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation.

Good times!

That the conceptual link was made by myself, and is relevantly close to the consistent use, shows that, intentional or not, the term is being used in a way that is not inconsistent.
Your lacking the knowledge of the professional jargon bears little to nothing on Pemerton's lack or non-lack of the technical terms. They're a clade of terms meaning roughly the same as Pemerton's use. And the technical versions show the term to not be opinion in the way "I don't like your avatar" or "D&D sucks" are.

Look, I'm a GM, not a qualified group counselor. I am not running a game to get the players to "reveal truths". I'm running a game so they can have some entertainment, and maybe a momentary escape from whatever is weighty in their lives. This is true whatever style of game I am running.

I mean, this sounds like it ought to be part of Session Zero - "And in this game, we will reveal truths about ourselves to each other." See how many show up for Session One after that pitch.

Yes, the GM skillset is much closer to kindergarten teacher than to therapist.