Authenticity in RPGing

[pemerton]

A question that raises for me is that supposing a player has an aim of exploring/expressing personal authenticity, and writes a belief that they do not have "I will always choose the right-hand path!" How can they pursue a belief that they do not have authentically? It requires them to choose actions (for their character) that they would personally not choose. It seems to require inauthenticity.

You've set up a needlessly strong case to raise your supposed paradox.

Go back to the GM's narration of the PC coming to a T-intersection. The player knows that there is no T-intersection - it's just imaginary! So how can they authentically reason about it? Hence authentic RPGing is per se impossible!

The dissolution of the paradox in my case also dissolves it in your case: the player is creating, and imagining. And in doing so is able to (or, at least, may aspire to) express themself authentically.

 

[pemerton]

I am not sure why you would think less of the potential for authentic play with situation 1.

I don't. I'm offering an actual empirical diagnosis of a certain pattern of RPG play: when the players assert that what they are doing is right/warranted although "the cosmos" (via the GM) labels it evil, their understanding of their circumstance is typical an instance of (2) - like Nietzsche, they reject the labels the cosmos is placing upon them - rather than (1).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't. I'm offering an actual empirical diagnosis of a certain pattern of RPG play: when the players assert that what they are doing is right/warranted although "the cosmos" (via the GM) labels it evil, their understanding of their circumstance is typical an instance of (2) - like Nietzsche, they reject the labels the cosmos is placing upon them - rather than (1).

I think its more likely to be an instance of 1 "yeah, guys we're going to have to get our hands dirty here, we can't let these orc children grow up! I know its murder, but its us or them!"

 

[Umbran]

I think its more likely to be an instance of 1 "yeah, guys we're going to have to get our hands dirty here, we can't let these orc children grow up! I know its murder, but its us or them!"

Anybody just watch The Orville, Season 3, Episode 9?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Every time I play a solo, GM-less RPG it turns into a total railroad.

 

[pemerton]

I’m expect folks may share examples of play that may contradict the idea. I think I view such methods as having a tendency toward limiting authenticity rather than a certainty.

Do you think it’s more the latter?

I think my views here are probably a bit harder than yours! That's in part because I'm still waiting for the play examples that will contradict the idea. Mostly when I see accounts of node-based design, the three clue rule and similar techniques they are all about ensuring that a certain set of situations, and/or consequences, comes to pass. The players don't provide the stakes of, or the motivations for, the action that is the focus of play.

I’m thinking of my recent Spire campaign. I absolutely initiated the game with an investigation. The PCs were members of a clandestine revolutionary organization (this is always the default premise for the game), and they were tasked with finding out what had happened to another cell of their group that had been wiped out by the powers that be.

So the initial idea is that they were to solve this mystery… what had the previous group learned or been up to that got them pinched and killed? Very similar basic set up to any number of games… I can imagine Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green having a similar set up, or any game where the PCs are members of/employed by an organization.

However, I didn't really care if that mystery ever got solved. All I really wanted was for the PCs to go to the district in question and start investigating. Once they did that, they’d become embroiled in all kinds of things that were going on, and they’d make bonds there that would influence how they’d act and view things and so on.

I wasn’t concerned with maintaining the initial mystery and to keeping the game about that “adventure”.

That doesn't sound like "three clue" or "node based" play.

 

[aramis erak]

I think its more likely to be an instance of 1 "yeah, guys we're going to have to get our hands dirty here, we can't let these orc children grow up! I know its murder, but its us or them!"

Anybody just watch The Orville, Season 3, Episode 9?

Ep 5 has a good one, too..
Ep 8 is very much a "get the hands dirty here" moment...
Ep 9 is Seth finally making the big message a sledgehammer upside the head.
There are so many "dirty hands" moments

Spoiler: The Orville s3e5

The concert for deniability for returning Topa to female, and Isaac doing the surgery.

Spoiler: The Orville s3e8

Raiding an ally's base to stop them from doing what their law requires, and one's own prohibits.
The Union realizing that the Moclan either must change or leave, and doing it, even tho' it risks survival of the quadrant, if not the whole galaxy

Spoiler: The Orville s3e9

The Moclan being forced by Teleya (Michaela McManus) to accept a female in cocommand...
Admiral Perry (Ted Danson) Betraying the union... because he doesn't believe killing all the Kaylon to be genocide, let along unacceptable Genocide
The Union's Anti-Kaylon device, built by Kaylon defector Isaac (Mark Jacson) & Kaylon-hating Ens. Burke (Anne Winters)...
the Union asking the Kaylon to help recover/destroy the device...
The Kaylon agreeing
Ens Burke's valor...
The Kaylon joining the union...

If one hasn't seen it, The Orville is a great show! It is, however, in the classic SF mode of being a commentary on the writers' collective views of modern society...
Episodes 6, 8, & 9 of season three all show themes of getting the hands dirty to do the right thing... different ways..
I've had sessions hit that level of emotional impact... not many... but a few.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, alignment by itself isn’t an issue. And it can certainly be the inspiration for meaningful play.

<snip>

It wasn’t always terrible, but it could stop a player from doing what they felt the character would do based on a two word descriptor that’s pretty wide open to interpretation.

In the early days, when we DID use alignment, maybe back in the '70s and early '80s, I seem to remember thinking of it as more of an in-setting thing. In other words the GODS interpret the actions of the PCs and make calls as to what THEY think about it, and that's reflected in the alignment on the character sheet.

<snip>

if a GM is impartial on that score they COULD use alignment in a pretty story-driving way.

Here's Vincent Baker from DitV (pp 143-4):

In most RPGs with religious content, the GM arbitrates the characters’ morality. The GM plays God (or the gods) as an NPC, giving and withholding moral standing - whatever form it takes in the particular game: Faith Points, Alignment Bonuses, whatever - based on the characters’ actions. Not in Dogs.

In Dogs, the GM has no opportunity to pass effective judgment on a PC’s actions. Talk about ’em, sure, but never come down on them as righteous or sinful in a way that’s binding in the game world. The GM can’t give or withhold dice for the state of a PC’s soul, and thus never needs to judge it.

Which is good! Which is, in fact, essential. If you, the GM, can judge my character’s actions, then I won’t tell you what I think. I’ll play to whatever morality you impose on me via your rulings. Instead of posing your players an interesting ethical question and then hearing their answers, you’d be posing the question and then answering it yourself.​

I don't know if Baker is the first RPG author to make this point. I'd more-or-less reached the same conclusion in the late 1980s: for authentic play, I want the players to express their conception of what morality demands, not try and work out what someone else's (ie the GM's) conception of that is. (As I posted upthread, my type-(2) situations are a version of this, where players play authentically while scorning conventional/cosmological judgement in a little replication of Nietzsche.)

 

[pemerton]

By encounter I just mean any interaction the GM decides to give you with an owl bear. The GM would have decided by salient (which I think is implied by fiat). Again in this example I wasn't worried about what conditions needed to be met, my point was even in a case where the GM has total power to decide that you face an owl bear, that doesn't seem affect the authenticity of my character (certainly you could say its unfair, its not the best procedure, it is heavy handed, it imposes on agency if the GM isn't considering conditions). It was more a point about how I am not seeing where authenticity is the issue. I am not saying the GM declaring an Owl bear encounter "because" is a good practice. I just don't see how a GM even doing that is particularly relevant to the authenticity of play and of your characterization of your character.

As per my reply upthread to @kenada, the OP is referring to authenticity on the part of the participants, not the authenticity of the characters they depict.

I don't think it is possible to talk about the authenticity of play, in the context of the GM having declared (say) "You see an owlbear rushing towards you!", if we don't know anything about why the GM said that, where it comes from in the game play, what is significance is for the player(s) to whom it's said, etc.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But, is that meaningful? Isn't it true that anything could easily be done as a railroad? Try to name a genre that couldn't be easily done as a railroad, and tell us why you think the genre is somehow railroad-resistant.

No, I don’tthink that any game can easily be run as a railroad. I think some games… or rather some methods… are more susceptible than others.

Again, if everything is susceptible, this is not special.

I ran Ashen Stars for my regular group for several years - I used many of the published adventures for it, and not a single one of them was a railroad in design. It took no effort on my part to make the scenarios non-linear in construction.

Now, Ashen Stars has an ethos from its inspirational material - every mystery has, at its end, an ethical conundrum or choice the PCs will have to make. While eventually you expect every group to solve the mystery, how they get there, and what they do when they get there, are not on rails.

Sure. As I said, I’m not saying that it must be so. And I don’t think of the three-clue rule as being as severe as railroading. I do think that it’s there to help guide the game, though, and I can see how that may contradict with authenticity.

I’ve never played Ashen Stars, though, so I have no experience with it. How do the published adventures function? How do they work without forcing things a certain way?