Authenticity in RPGing

[kenada]

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.

Like I said, I’m inclined to agree with you, but I see a gap between the two things being contrasted. Is the OP only contrasting these two things (out of many), or are they it? That’s why I chose the example I did. Moldvay Basic was particularly convenient because it does have tables and procedures that can be used to discover as you play, but it’s not a game one’d expect to be put in the same bucket as PbtA or FitD games.

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?

I think there’s something more fundamental happening in the OP rather than “authentic” being just a euphemism for “narrativist”. If the characters set out to discover what’s out there, then they can’t also help but discover something about themselves as they face adversity. That seems to be exactly what @pemerton is saying in his second post explaining his use of authenticity.

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

 

[SteveC]

My take on this comes from something that Johnny Carson told Jay Leno about having a successful comedy sketch: you buy the premise, you buy the bit.

This is such an important part of gaming when you're running something like an adventure path: you have to get the players to buy into the game's premise or you will never have any fun. Once you do that, you can give them a ton of agency (that's the term I would use rather than authenticity) but still use an adventure.

For my example: I ran Curse of Strahd recently and the players had to buy into the premise of adventure in Barovia, which is a locked-down environment where you can't just pick up and leave. Further, the group ran into Strahd who invited them to dinner in a week. That meant that the group had a time limit on the things they were going to be able to do before going up to Castle Ravenloft. If they weren't okay with that, they would not have had a good time in the game at all.

Once I established those groundrules, I just let them go and explore. They encountered the different villages and decided to figure out what was really going on. They could go anywhere and do anything (which includes some level inappropriate areas) within those limits. It worked exceptionally well.

One of my players it turned out really doesn't like horror games. After a few sessions, it became obvious that this wasn't the campaign for them, and we agreed to play in the next one together. That's the key: I got everyone to buy into the game and then they just rolled with it. The one player who just didn't like where the game was going was just not a good fit for the game.

So I see that as agency, but it's a very different sort of thing than, say, a PbtA game where I wouldn't have had something like the adventure to work with.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Like I said, I’m inclined to agree with you, but I see a gap between the two things being contrasted. Is the OP only contrasting these two things (out of many), or are they it? That’s why I chose the example I did. Moldvay Basic was particularly convenient because it does have tables and procedures that can be used to discover as you play, but it’s not a game one’d expect to be put in the same bucket as PbtA or FitD games.


I think there’s something more fundamental happening in the OP rather than “authentic” being just a euphemism for “narrativist”. If the characters set out to discover what’s out there, then they can’t also help but discover something about themselves as they face adversity. That seems to be exactly what @pemerton is saying in his second post explaining his use of authenticity.

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

Yeah, I'm not saying that I think (and I have no position on what @pemerton thinks) about Moldvay Basic or general sandbox play in terms of where it falls in his analysis. I think its just hard to say based only on "I'm running a sandbox" how that call would be made.

Lets think about, say, Dungeon World, in terms of being a game that is presumably intended to 'likely produce' the sort of play @pemerton is talking about. You could certainly set a DW game in Mystara. Although there is, at a larger scale, a pretty complete map, it still has a lot of blank spaces in it. In DW Mystara you'd notably create FRONTS and their associated THREATS and whatnot. These are dynamic constructs that evolve independent of the PCs. I could imagine a pretty sandboxy Basic game with similar elements. However the details are probably nailed down more in Basic in terms of each environment (dungeon, whatever). Usually, IME, with DW these things are fairly loosely described, or even generated more-or-less on the fly as things come up. I think the main difference is that DW pretty heavily specifies the sort of player/character facing play that it intends, whereas Basic discusses things more in terms of procedures and logistics and such. So, a DW game is a bit more likely to focus on the interplay between the Fighter and the Thief, where the Basic game is likely to focus a bit more on how many torches and rations they have left.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

Again, I think even if just comes down to you making a 50/50 call, the choice is meaningful because the consequences were death. I agree it isn't an informed choice. But it is a very real choice and it wasn't a meaningless choice in way it would have been had, were this an RPG, the GM simply said 1 in 2 chance, which ever direction you choose a car T bones you, because in that instance which direction you choose doesn't matter at all, in the former instance which direction you choose very much mattered (it wasn't a puzzle to crack, your choice may come down to a whim on your part, but it mattered). And that is a very far end of the extreme of the choice not being informed. Most choices will fall on a spectrum (another example you may have some indication things are a miss: i.e. you hear on the radio a bank got robbed three blocks from Wyoma Square to something even more informed like you see series of bad omens the closer you get to the bus). But I think even when the choice is essentially made in a vacuum there is a large difference between one where your choice is going to result in disaster or a normal day; and one where your choice has no input into that. The former I would label a meaningful choice.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...but I wouldn't troll people by using the accepted definition of authentic to refer to games, and using inauthentic to refer to other games.

Mod Note:

Everyone: in the interests of keeping conversations civil, how about NOT accusing people of trolling in thread? If you think someone is trolling, report the posts you feel instead of adding fuel to the fire by making public accusations.

 

[kenada]

Yeah, I'm not saying that I think (and I have no position on what @pemerton thinks) about Moldvay Basic or general sandbox play in terms of where it falls in his analysis. I think its just hard to say based only on "I'm running a sandbox" how that call would be made.

Lets think about, say, Dungeon World, in terms of being a game that is presumably intended to 'likely produce' the sort of play @pemerton is talking about. You could certainly set a DW game in Mystara. Although there is, at a larger scale, a pretty complete map, it still has a lot of blank spaces in it. In DW Mystara you'd notably create FRONTS and their associated THREATS and whatnot. These are dynamic constructs that evolve independent of the PCs. I could imagine a pretty sandboxy Basic game with similar elements. However the details are probably nailed down more in Basic in terms of each environment (dungeon, whatever). Usually, IME, with DW these things are fairly loosely described, or even generated more-or-less on the fly as things come up. I think the main difference is that DW pretty heavily specifies the sort of player/character facing play that it intends, whereas Basic discusses things more in terms of procedures and logistics and such. So, a DW game is a bit more likely to focus on the interplay between the Fighter and the Thief, where the Basic game is likely to focus a bit more on how many torches and rations they have left.

A point of clarification. The map in my example is a map of Mystara, but there is no key. It’s like the map of Duskvol in Blades in the Dark where it has some but is otherwise a blank slate. A hex might have e.g., a forest, but the only way to know what’s there is to go discover it.

I admit my example is somewhat contrived. I think you’re going to run into the limits of the procedures and tables in B/X pretty quickly. However, it’s meant to be a thought exercise. If we subject ourselves to these constraints, particularly that we avoid setting the parameters of play in advance, what kind of play results?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, I think even if just comes down to you making a 50/50 call, the choice is meaningful because the consequences were death. I agree it isn't an informed choice. But it is a very real choice and it wasn't a meaningless choice in way it would have been had, were this an RPG, the GM simply said 1 in 2 chance, which ever direction you choose a car T bones you, because in that instance which direction you choose doesn't matter at all, in the former instance which direction you choose very much mattered (it wasn't a puzzle to crack, your choice may come down to a whim on your part, but it mattered).

But if it is a blind choice on a whim, it is effectively random. It is just that the method of randomisation is blindly picking a direction rather than a die roll. But it's the same thing really.

And that is a very far end of the extreme of the choice not being informed. Most choices will fall on a spectrum (another example you may have some indication things are a miss: i.e. you hear on the radio a bank got robbed three blocks from Wyoma Square to something even more informed like you see series of bad omens the closer you get to the bus). But I think even when the choice is essentially made in a vacuum there is a large difference between one where your choice is going to result in disaster or a normal day; and one where your choice has no input into that. The former I would label a meaningful choice.

Yeah, it is true that in practice it is common that the choices are not completely uninformed, they might just be poorly informed.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I felt that the OP was fairly clear. I also don't think it’s nearly as contentious as some have taken it.

There are methods that promote authentic play. Authentic meaning that these choices and actions taken matter.

There are methods that don’t promote that kind of authentic play. Railroading, the three clue rule, and the like. These lead to choices and actions that don’t have all that much impact on play.

I don’t really get who would disagree with this. I feel like disagreeing with it means that folks can share examples of railroading that somehow allows for the kind of authenticity that’s being talked about.

Can anyone provide such examples?

 

[Bedrockgames]

But if it is a blind choice on a whim, it is effectively random. It is just that the method of randomisation is blindly picking a direction rather than a die roll. But it's the same thing really.

I think it matters for how the game feels and it matters because you know when you make the choice it could be important. If the GM is just assigning a random die roll to determine what is beyond the door, my feeling as I make that choice is totally different, and my feeling of hindsight as another poster pointed to is also different. I get what you are saying, you can say "well its basically a coin flip" but the fact remains the outcomes are very different because you chose to go left, or you chose to go right (or chose to drive or chose to take the bus). It is certainly not an informed choice. I wouldn't argue against that. And a litany of uninformed but meaningful choices is probably not a good foundation for an adventure or an entire campaign.

Yeah, it is true that in practice it is common that the choices are not completely uninformed, they're just poorly informed.

I think my ideal campaign is going to be a mix along that spectrum with a number of fairly informed choices. But I do like my occasional "T sections" too. They add different things to the game (uninformed choice add an excitement, a sense of tension and danger, and they lead to other important choices like how you approach the door, what protective precautions you take, etc). So even an uninformed choice can add to fun in that way (particularly through the excitement of the unknown and the tactical decisions it can lead to). But you wouldn't want every single decision in a game to be that. Once in a while, sure. Much of the time I would expect to be able to make more informed choices.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There are methods that promote authentic play. Authentic meaning that these choices and actions taken matter.

I think we can agree that there are methods that lead to more meaningful, more informed, and more whatever choices in play (but I think posters would also have a number of disagreements on what methods are best, what systems are best). If the OP just means approaches that lead to choices that matter; maybe say that? At least that is a better starting point for a discussions so we aren't talking circles around the word authentic (which I think does warrant a bit of the push back it has received here). Authentic doesn't really strike me as the best word choice (even outside this discussion I think the term 'authentic' gets way overused for things and it tends to cloud what is really being offered on the table). And I also think some of the lack of clarity is around what the OP means by GM driven adventures and what a broad canopy that is (most I am sure would agree a railroad limits choice and leads to less meaningful choice, I think fewer would agree that the three clue rule leads to less meaningful choice for instance).