Authenticity in RPGing

[Bedrockgames]

From my perspective there's a certain raw emotion to less curated creative material. Jam bands, garage rock, small independent movies. That raw visceral emotion is what I tend to think of when I think of more authentic creative experiences.

I love improvisational music, there is a tremendous release in improv. But is it more authentic? Sometimes being authentic musically means sitting and introspecting about what you are trying to say. I don't think that kind of labor and thought makes the final result less authentic. Some of the most raw and visceral emotion I've been able to express musically came when I stopped letting my fingers do the thinking and really contemplated the music (in one instance I recall spending a full day thinking about one line of melody for example). Not attacking more improvisational music at all. I think both are potentially just as authentic though. To me, inauthentic music would be when that emotion you are expressing isn't real, or if the musical ideas you express don't genuinely excite you (for example playing to an audience but without any heart).

 

[Bedrockgames]

From my perspective games like Blades in the Dark or Sorcerer tend to encourage that sort of creative experience at the table because they incentivize taking creative risks at the table. It's less polished, but kind of more raw/visceral because no one knows where things are going to lead and the game's encourage us to not steer them.

And I think that is a much more clear expression of a case for these games than equating them with authenticity. If the priority is creative self expression, which is what it sounds like you are saying, then what is authentic to that is going to be different from a game where the priority is something like exploring a world or going on exciting adventures

 

[Lanefan]

Informed is a prerequisite for meaningful.
It is not a prerequisite for consequential.
Consequential is a prerequisite for meaningful as well.

Disagree.

Informed is a prerequisite for informed.
Informed might give better advice as to the scope and degree of consequences, thus also informing as to potential meaningfulness.
Consequential is a post-requisite for meaningful, to the point where they are synonymous.
Presence and-or degree of meaningfulness cannot be determined until after the consequences - if any - have arisen. This last is and remains true even if the decider is somehow unaware of those consequences.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, I wouldn't argue that meaningful and informed are synonymous, but I would argue that an uninformed choice is meaningless in the sense that we are discussing here. If you come to the proverbial T in the corridor and NOTHING is known about either branch, nor can be inferred, etc. then no meaningful choice of direction to take can exist, the whole exercise is pointless.

Not at all. In the moment there's nothing informing the choice, sure, but that has nothing to do with the choice's meaningfulness. Why's that? Because you can't know the meaningfulness of a choice until after - and sometimes a very long time after - it has been made and acted on.

If both branches of the T lead to empty dead ends then it soon becomes apparent after a bit of exploration that the choice was in fact meaningless. But if one branch leads to disaster and the other to reward the choice in hindsight becomes perhaps-hugely meaningful.

Another example: a character finds a lever in a wall. Choice is whether or not to pull it. No other information available. Consequence, unknown to the chooser, is that pulling the lever frees a prisoner elsewhere while not pulling it leaves said prisoner to starve. The chooser does not and cannot know the meaningfulness of the choice until-unless becoming aware of the existence of the prisoner and-or the connection with that prisoner's fate and the lever; yet the choice is still meaningful due to the simple fact it has consequences.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Disagree.

Informed is a prerequisite for informed.
Informed might give better advice as to the scope and degree of consequences, thus also informing as to potential meaningfulness.
Consequential is a post-requisite for meaningful, to the point where they are synonymous.
Presence and-or degree of meaningfulness cannot be determined until after the consequences - if any - have arisen. This last is and remains true even if the decider is somehow unaware of those consequences.

I tend to agree with this. I think the big problem with uninformed choice in an RPG is sometimes it may be meaningless if the GM is not presenting a real choice (for example if you have a fork in a road and no matter which direction you go, there is a dire elephant). For me the key here is the GM pinning down the moment a fork because present, what the consequences of different choices will be (and the fork is just an example it could be just as easily a social situation). A good campaign will have a mixture of different kinds of choices (some will be informed, some won't but they should all be meaningful). I think it is actually an important GM trait to became very conscious when choice is arising in the game (for me I usually immediately write things down the moment choice is in play so I am locked in to whatever outcome once the players make their decision). In life you don't always make informed choices. Sometimes the decision to take the bus rather than drive results in you getting in a car accident or not getting in a car accident. The choice was a meaningful one, in that it was very important, even if there was no way for you to decipher in advance that someone would run a light at Wyoma Square and T bone Bus 426.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m inclined to agree, but consider the following example.

Suppose we sit down to play Moldvay Basic. The DM puts a hex map of Mystara on the table, telling us that this is where the game take place, but they commit to using nothing but the game’s procedures and tables to determine what is there and what happens. They also commit to the principles of being a neutral referee, so they can’t put their thumb on the scale surreptitiously. Does the resulting play have authenticity?

If the answer is “no” or even just “not necessarily”, then there is an issue. “Railroad” was presented as the flipside of “authentic”, but I don’t think one could reasonably construe the above play as form of railroad.

I don’t actually know what the answer should be. Intuitively, such a sandbox approach suggests an orientation of play towards basking in the setting. However, since the setting is unknown until it is revealed, it seems like how the characters react should say something about them.

I don't know, maybe @pemerton can say something about that. I think you cannot really judge by simply naming a system and positing some fairly broad style of play within it? This is all not a system-dependent thing, not exactly. I do still think that character exploration and engaging with the character-as-played, and allowing for genuine development of such in a way that feeds back into play is pretty much key. Its not going to be clear cut in all cases, by any means, IMHO.

Going back and rereading the OP (this is something people should do more, IMHO) I see that there is a contrast drawn specifically between what I would generally consider primarily narrativist play and railroady "GM is presenting a story" kind of play. Again, there's not some perfectly clear demarcation there. As for "what is a sandbox?" I think its still not going to be a clean 'this' or 'that'. Obviously in your scenario above the characters can explore Mystara. That could be their major activity. What are the players doing though? Are they making choices that are significant to the characters? Or maybe more interesting, do they have choices that represent different possible paths of character development, and genuinely different outcomes in terms of who the PCs are and what becomes of them?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not at all. In the moment there's nothing informing the choice, sure, but that has nothing to do with the choice's meaningfulness. Why's that? Because you can't know the meaningfulness of a choice until after - and sometimes a very long time after - it has been made and acted on.

If both branches of the T lead to empty dead ends then it soon becomes apparent after a bit of exploration that the choice was in fact meaningless. But if one branch leads to disaster and the other to reward the choice in hindsight becomes perhaps-hugely meaningful.

Another example: a character finds a lever in a wall. Choice is whether or not to pull it. No other information available. Consequence, unknown to the chooser, is that pulling the lever frees a prisoner elsewhere while not pulling it leaves said prisoner to starve. The chooser does not and cannot know the meaningfulness of the choice until-unless becoming aware of the existence of the prisoner and-or the connection with that prisoner's fate and the lever; yet the choice is still meaningful due to the simple fact it has consequences.

We'll just have to hard disagree. See, I cannot imagine how one would call a choice 'meaningful' when we can go back and say "well, at the time you made this choice, if the two branches had been swapped, there's no reason you would have made the opposite choice." Its just a meaningless roll of some dice. If my choices are no better than that, no more informed than that, then you've reduced my entire experience to nothing but random chance. Nothing is more meaningless than just rolling some dice and getting told what happens next.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I tend to agree with this. I think the big problem with uninformed choice in an RPG is sometimes it may be meaningless if the GM is not presenting a real choice (for example if you have a fork in a road and no matter which direction you go, there is a dire elephant). For me the key here is the GM pinning down the moment a fork because present, what the consequences of different choices will be (and the fork is just an example it could be just as easily a social situation). A good campaign will have a mixture of different kinds of choices (some will be informed, some won't but they should all be meaningful). I think it is actually an important GM trait to became very conscious when choice is arising in the game (for me I usually immediately write things down the moment choice is in play so I am locked in to whatever outcome once the players make their decision). In life you don't always make informed choices. Sometimes the decision to take the bus rather than drive results in you getting in a car accident or not getting in a car accident. The choice was a meaningful one, in that it was very important, even if there was no way for you to decipher in advance that someone would run a light at Wyoma Square and T bone Bus 426.

Again, I hard disagree. There's no point to an experience where you simply make arbitrary choices, they aren't choices at all! I might as well not even be there, I, as a player had no part in this at all, anyone or a d6 could have done the same thing and it would have made no difference! It can mean nothing to me.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We'll just have to hard disagree. See, I cannot imagine how one would call a choice 'meaningful' when we can go back and say "well, at the time you made this choice, if the two branches had been swapped, there's no reason you would have made the opposite choice." Its just a meaningless roll of some dice. If my choices are no better than that, no more informed than that, then you've reduced my entire experience to nothing but random chance. Nothing is more meaningless than just rolling some dice and getting told what happens next.

I agree with you, but this is at least partly a semantic disagreement. It think "informed choice" is better term than "meaningful choice" if that's what one means, as it is less ambiguous.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree with you, but this is at least partly a semantic disagreement. It think "informed choice" is better term than "meaningful choice" if that's what one means, as it is less ambiguous.

Yeah, I am definitely not trying to die on any semantic hills myself Honestly, there's no reason to outlaw T intersections in dungeons either just because we sort of randomly pick a direction. It is not something that's going to rise to a level of significance in the scheme of play where I would think of it as problematic. As @Lanefan says, we make random 'choices' every day. I just don't think they really count for anything in the scheme of things. Sure, IRL you might say "gosh I wish I'd caught the next bus." You don't berate yourself for that kind of thing though, because we know it just has no component of 'free will' in it that is significant.