Authenticity in RPGing

[Campbell]

So, I think there are levels to this stuff:

It's not that any given game, technique or individual choice we make is either authentic or inauthentic in the creative sense. It's that it might be more or less authentic. For a creative choice to be as authentic as possible I think the following should be true:

1. It comes from a place of genuine curiosity. We all need to be interested in these particular characters and this particular setting. We have not hold on too tightly to our conception of things and really consider the choices we make.
2. It is done with a willingness to be vulnerable. We all have to be willing to kill our babies and not treat the elements we are responsible for as if we own them. We have to willing to genuinely follow things where they lead instead of trying to control the process.
3. The focus is on process/journey and not the results. Trust the process and the people you are playing with. Be willing to take risks and try not to drive things to particular ends.
4. It is not performative. The choices we make should come from curiosity and vulnerability, not a desire to set up set pieces or cool moments. If our process is good more often than not things will work out. When we play earnestly those moments feel earned.

The less these things are true the less authentic it is in a creative sense. The more these things are true the more authentic the choice is in a creative sense. Technique, play culture and systems can all impact this stuff. It's not like black and white though. We all make allowances for the medium and other competing needs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Does that sound as authentic as the players taking actions and gaining information and then deciding what to do next or how? It doesn't to me.

Both from the Three Clue rule but also just knowing how Justin Alexander speaks about running games, this is something you are expected to do using the three clue rule. There is advice in there on players coming up with their own ways of finding evidence and the GM giving that a reasonable hearing. It is also expected that the players are going to decide what actions to take and where to go. Nothing about the three clue rule prohibits the players from finding out by other means where a suspect lives, and then going to their house and interrogating them directly: even if the GM hadn't foreseen that as a possibility. I do stuff like this all the time using the three clue rule. You never know what players are going to do and they will often come up with ingenious ways to find clues, ways of finding clues you didn't even think about but when they bring it up, you realize might be present somewhere. He says in the article it is not meant as a straight jacket, it is just a safety net to avoid chokepoints.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That seems like an overly broad definition of railroad to me. If "there is a killer in this mystery adventure, and the GM has decided who and what that killer is, and what evidence that killer left" is a railroad, then I don't think we have a functional definition of railroad.

Such investigative type adventures are very susceptible to railroading. They tend to be linear and many elements are predetermined. It takes some real effort to work against these elements pushing things a specific way.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. But these things lend themselves to railroading. I think the three-clue rule does as well. I agree with you that it’s not always the case, that there are other things the GM can do to shift it.

But that isn't the three clue rule. Nothing about the three clue rule means no matter what you do 'this will be the conclusion".

I don’t really see how a rule designed to get the players to draw the conclusion the GM wants them to make isn’t one that leans toward railroading.

Again, I’m not saying it’s absolute. But do you see how there’s an element of that in there?

That is fair but I have never met a GM who told us we couldn't do something because of our alignment (at most they let us know a certain action could lead to an alignment shift, but never had anyone clamp down and say you can't take action X).

Ugh I have, though it was many years ago and we were all pretty young and unpolished as players/GMs. I still see people bring that kind of stuff up from time to time.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Such investigative type adventures are very susceptible to railroading. They tend to be linear and many elements are predetermined. It takes some real effort to work against these elements pushing things a specific way.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. But these things lend themselves to railroading. I think the three-clue rule does as well. I agree with you that it’s not always the case, that there are other things the GM can do to shift it.

Again I would have to emphasize that a large portion of the people Alexander was writing to at the time, were very interested in avoiding railroads. I actually picked up investigations as an alternative to things like railroady adventure paths because it offered a much more open structure and much more freeform way of the players engaging the adventure. For me the Three Clue Rule was a big part of making that happen at a my table.

Some of the stuff he was reacting to was focused on more linear type scenes in investigations. I just don't see it as lending to more railroading. It is simply about making sure there is a good speed of information for all of the features of the mystery. In fact if you read the whole article he pretty much talks about how a mystery isn't supposed to be about following a bread crumb trail. He is pretty much advocating for the opposite of a linear mystery adventure.

Now perhaps a mystery adventure done in this way is too constrained for your taste. That is fair. I can't tell you what you should think about a particular adventure approach or structure. But it isn't a railroad.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don’t really see how a rule designed to get the players to draw the conclusion the GM wants them to make isn’t one that leans toward railroading.

Again, I’m not saying it’s absolute. But do you see how there’s an element of that in there?

I really do not see it. Because when he says conclusions he is literally just talking about the key details at the heart of the mystery (who the killer is, what their nature is, etc). I don't see what is railroady about deciding key details about a villain and then making sure that information is findable in the adventure. It does presuppose that the players are interested in engaging the mystery but that is because he is trying to give a tool for doing a successful mystery.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I quite agree with this in the Quantum Monster sense; where the GM is meta-changing things behind the scenes in direct reaction to what the players/PCs do. In my view a GM doing this risks making the whole game inauthentic, not just the here-and-now choice.

I think that the more instances of this kind of stuff in play, the less authentic play will be. I believe that’s what @pemerton meant in the OP.

I don't agree in cases where it's already set that each choice leads to, say, nothing (the two dead ends off the T, for example); here the choice is perfectly authentic, but ultimately turns out to be meaningless.

I don’t know about that. There’s nothing true about the decision, right? No elements relevant to a character, no clues about what’s down each path, no hint at consequences, no actual consequences… hard to see what’s authentic about it. Seems mostly like bad design.

I'm not 100% on board here, in that IME many players/PCs are more than capable of arriving at a different and-or "erroneous" conclusion even after getting all three clues; and then chasing that red herring to the ends of the setting and back.

That said, I'm not that big a fan of leading them by the nose at the best of times; given the choice between that and them getting stuck on something because they missed or misinterpreted a clue or some info, I'd rather they get stuck and have to figure it out - or, even, abandon it; as that's another quite realistic option.

Sure, it’s not a certainty. But it’s certainly steering things. It may not be a hard right turn, but it’s at least a little nudge to the wheel.

It reminds me of something I was thinking about in regard to a campaign of Spire that I just wrapped up with my group. I made sure that any and all prep I did was about the situation now and the players involved, and never ever planned anything sequentially. I never committed to what was next for the PCs. Never anything like “once the PCs realize that the corpse fruit is being alchemically turned into the drug ambrosia, then they will confront the retroengineers responsible” or “once they speak to Trill the addict in Threadneedle Square, then they’ll go to The Sisters’ compound”.

Investigative adventures can be difficult to not sequence like that. I think if the GM has steps in mind…this will happen and then this which leads to that… that’s problematic (if we’re valuing player freedom and that sort of thing). The GM shouldn’t be deciding what’s next.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hillfolk is very good at drama series emulation. I've really enjoyed the sessions I've had with it. I ran it once and played in it a number of times. Running it was pretty cool. I ended up cludhing my own combat system onto it for a wuxia campaign, and used the methods for scenes (which is what most of the campaign entailed) for the rest. A lot of wuxia gets treated as a 50+ episode drama series and I wanted to go for that. It succeeded quite well. If you want a game that would make for a very good Breaking Bad, Babylon Five, or I, Claudius campaign, Hillfolk is a good choice in my opinion.

I see the three clue rule as a way of preventing choke points in an investigation. Its just a method for avoiding the classic "What if the players miss a crucial clue" problem (which not everyone thinks is a problem, but if you find it to be one either the three clue rule or the approach taken in Gumshoe are both quite good solutions, from two entirely different angles). I don't think anything about the three clue rule squelches significant decisions.

I think the three clue thing is deeper than that. If you HAVE to salt clues all over the place like that, then I think there's a kind of play going on that is pretty limited in what it can do in terms of character exploration.

 

[Umbran]

For heaven's sake - uninformed does not equate to meaningless!

Uninformed means that the meaning of the subsequent events does not arise from the act of choosing.

If the GM has a selection of rooms, and, as characters walk through the dungeon, the GM rolls a die to choose what room is next, clearly, the players are not actually making a choice. If no choice is made, that choice cannot be meaningful.

Same situation, but the GM hands the die to the players - again, they are not making a choice, so there is no meaningful choice.

Same situation, but the GM hands a piece of paper to the players, with 5 random letters on it, and tells them to choose. The letters are free of semantic content, so there is no relevant thought process to choose one over another. If there is no relevant thought process, the determination is arbitrary - no different than a random choice, which we have already determined is not actually a choice, and so has no meaning.

 

[aramis erak]

That is fair but I have never met a GM who told us we couldn't do something because of our alignment (at most they let us know a certain action could lead to an alignment shift, but never had anyone clamp down and say you can't take action X).

I've done so occasionally in traditional games... but only due to a forcibly changed alignment or a magic weapon. In the case of magic weapons, always with an Ego test.

I've seldom needed to...

 

[pemerton]

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.

For me, what those RPGs - with all their variations in details of technique, principles, etc - is authenticity. That players and GMs make genuine choices, in play, that say something - individually and, if it's working properly, together.

hawkeyefan, thanks for the kind post!

Where I referred to genuine choices that say something, you've referred to choices and actions mattering. There's overlap in our two formulations, but maybe not strict synonymy. With my use of "saying something", and also my use of authenticity as a key notion, I think I might be putting more emphasis on a particular way that things can matter - their role in expression, revelation etc in a type of interpersonal, creative context.

Does that make sense?