Authenticity in RPGing

[aramis erak]

Would you say then that the personal authenticity of a player can be seen in RPG play in the case that the player is playing themself?

I think the OP means to include RPGs in which players are normally not playing as themselves, such as Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. So that is what my comments relate to, although it perhaps does shed some light to think about playing-as-self in this context.

In my experience, players don't want to play themselves as anything less than a super hero...
So authenticity is already flown out the door do to their own lack of self-honesty.

Even within the milieu of classic Star Trek there's far more that would make sense than simply playing super upstanding regulation characters! I mean, consider Captain Merrick from the Roman Empire planet episode. Granted he's portrayed as washing out of Star Fleet, but he's not exactly made of Kirk-like material. Even Spock goes off the reservation in The Managerie. The original (FGU?) Star Trek RPG had the characters being fairly 'cut and dried' out of the gate, but even there you'd always get hit by some weird scenario straight out of TOS that was going to make you have to figure out how to bend the rules into a pretzel, just like Jim Kirk!

If you're talking FGU's 1978 Starships & Spacemen, it's not got anything that describes player-intended behavior (IE, no psych nor alignment) other than class and species; it does indeed have some odd encounters, some of which are more like the original Lost In Space than Star Trek. It only prescribes behavior by reward - XP awards differ by class. What a security officer gets XP for isn't the same list as the Doctor or Engineer. It's also not labeled as Trek, even tho' it was intended as a trek RPG.

If you're talking the 1984 licensed one, Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game, that's by FASA, and again, has no player-intended behavior indications other than species. Nor does it even have XP to shape behavior. The only behavioral restrictions are by species.

The first license I'm aware of was Heritage Models' Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier... 1978, same time frame as FGU.
It lacks any significant story suggestions; it's sample mission is essentially a refluff of The Galileo Seven. It's rules are almost purely ground combat; no encounter tables, no ship rules. (yes, I'm looking at it. I have not run it.)

 

[pemerton]

And I think that this would not really tick the box of the OP in terms of being very authentic. That is, the motivation to do X or not do Y is external. It is, as I pointed out in a previous post, largely similar to the restrictions imposed by things like the walls of a dungeon. Maybe if you REALLY want you can take a pickaxe to that wall, but the GM is pretty much saying "you don't want to do that, you want to follow my hallway." Now, obviously, a lot of real life is pretty much like this too, so its not NECESSARILY inauthentic either, its just that it won't be 'deep' in any RP sense.

The OP was talking about authenticity in RPGing, rather than authenticity in life! Of course it's possible to talk about the latter too, but that's more contentious, for what I think are obvious reasons. But there are different conceptions out there of what it means to respond, authentically, to the "hallways" we find ourselves in as we live our lives (contrast eg Marcus Aurelius, Zen scripture, and Sartre).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Having a premise is one thing. Dictating behavior beyond the premise is another.

I don't see any reason the GM can't say "This campaign is going to be about playing X type characters; if you do things to move outside of what would put you in the category of X (whether that's getting you ejected from a group that X defines or simply move away from where X is going on) I'm not going to bother to keep following your character."

So in practice, having and sticking to a premise may not dictate behavior directly, but it does say that you're not going to reposition the spotlight of the campaign if you move out of it.

This doesn't necessarily mean that there's extremely sharp lines on how the characters can think about things, but there can be sharp lines on what they can do and, effectively, still stay in the campaign.

As an example, if you're got a group of characters who are a member of a particular organization and do some kind of task (enforce laws, fight enemies, investigate anomalies, whatever) the organization is going to have some rules. You may be able to get away with bucking some of those rules subtly for a while, but the chances are you won't get to indefinitely, and when you're done it doesn't matter what the character does (whether he's ejected from the organization or imprisoned), he's effectively no longer operating in the context of the campaign, even though he at least theoretically still exists in the setting.

(There's a potential case of a character who leaves the organization and still interacts with the other characters still within it, but I think that's a borderline enough case that it can mostly be ignored).

 

[Lanefan]

If you are running through A1 through A4 Against the Slavelords, there is a pretty hard-coded premise. Your characters ARE the enemies of the Slavelords, who ARE evil villainous slave takers. At no point in the entire 4 module series (what today we would call an AP) is this premise explored, and certainly its characterization of the situation is never challenged. The PCs are offered no other motives that I can recall aside from just "these are bad guys, go get 'em" (I didn't come up with a copy of A1 in my rummaging in my cabinet so I am not positive exactly what the text says). The GM could toss in the obvious "find your lost relative/love interest/ally/friend" of course, but its not like the whole thing really cares about that. As written such an NPC won't figure into the actual story in a material way.

Part of that is because modules in that era expected the DM to build the backstory around why the PCs were there rather than come with that backstory already baked in. IMO this is a great thing about the old modules - they jsut give us the adventure itself and leave the rest to us.

With the A-series, the bespoke-to-table backstory could be anything from "A PC's friend/relative was taken as a slave, we're the rescue mission" to "We work for one group of slavers and they've asked us to take out this other group" to "We blundered into the hideout in A1 and one thing led to another" to who knows what?

 

[Bill Zebub]

There being no “correct” answers probably relates to what @pemerton means by authentic. My answer is mine, your answer is yours, and each is true.

I like this, and can agree to the use of “authentic.”

But it’s also how I GM and play every RPG, so using it distinguish between RPGs, instead of just play styles, seems odd to me. But maybe the OP just meant that some games more actively support…through guidance and/or mechanics…this style?

 

[Bill Zebub]

You’ve never read a post on ENWorld where someone said something like “no evil PCs allowed; my games are about the PCs being heroes and so that’s what I expect from the players”?

There are many variations on the above, some less severe some more so, but I think the gist is common enough I’m surprised to hear anyone doubt it.

I get that argument, and yet it’s one thing to be specific/insistent about how a specific race would react to a specific situation, and another to have general guidelines of behavior (regardless of lineage/background).

Is it inauthentic to ask that players don’t engage in torture and human trafficking? I mean, maybe by some definition it is. But I don’t think wanting to run a campaign where players are expected to play (potentially flawed) heroes is categorically different.

I’m coming at this topic as somebody who has always been very uncomfortable with evil players/campaigns. I can’t even choose the evil path when playing solo RPG video games.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I get that argument, and yet it’s one thing to be specific/insistent about how a specific race would react to a specific situation, and another to have general guidelines of behavior (regardless of lineage/background).

Is it inauthentic to ask that players don’t engage in torture and human trafficking? I mean, maybe by some definition it is. But I don’t think wanting to run a campaign where players are expected to play (potentially flawed) heroes is categorically different.

I’m coming at this topic as somebody who has always been very uncomfortable with evil players/campaigns. I can’t even choose the evil path when playing solo RPG video games.

Not to mention there's the whole problem of what it means to "authentically role play."

There are many people who believe (rightly or wrongly) that in order to play a character as they want to, they have to have full control of the character's actions. In fact, there are those who demand to play such games (for example, people who have had bad histories involving consent issues).

To label only games where players are required to act out in roleplay according to the rules (and or "social mechanics") as opposed to the players' conception of the character as "authentic" seems like it is either asking for trouble, or ensuring that it will exclude any actual conversation with the vast majority of people that play TTRPGs.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not to mention there's the whole problem of what it means to "authentically role play."

There are many people who believe (rightly or wrongly) that in order to play a character as they want to, they have to have full control of the character's actions. In fact, there are those who demand to play such games (for example, people who have had bad histories involving consent issues).

To label only games where players are required to act out in roleplay according to the rules (and or "social mechanics") as opposed to the players' conception of the character as "authentic" seems like it is either asking for trouble, or ensuring that it will exclude any actual conversation with the vast majority of people that play TTRPGs.

Agreed.

As I mentioned up-thread, I think the questions being explored here are interesting, I just would like to see a less judgmental terminology.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Agreed.

As I mentioned up-thread, I think the questions being explored here are interesting, I just would like to see a less judgmental terminology.

The other, related, issue is that there is already a rich vocabulary exploring these issues (roleplaying and choice). If nothing else, the Nordic larp tradition has reflected on these concepts a great deal, and there is a substantial amount of scholarly work on these ideas (not all of it in English, unfortunately).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don’t know if it’s more so, so much as it’s a matter of how so.

Saying “we’re going to be adventurers” is incredibly broad, and is open to all manner of interpretation. Saying “we’re going to be heroic adventurers” is more narrow. You’re not just saying what I am, but how I must be that thing.

So if we take a premise that starts more narrow than “adventurers”… perhaps outlaws or spies or constables… it certainly sets certain constraints on play. But it doesn’t dictate morality in any way. It doesn’t eliminate any avenue for the players to take within the premise. I can be a noble outlaw or a cold-blooded bastard. I can be a devoted, loyal spy or I could be compromised, playing all sides against one another. I could be a decent cop or bad lieutenant.

Having a premise is one thing. Dictating behavior beyond the premise is another.

But certainly some premises imply some sort of morals? Why is this any more of a problem than implying character occupation or a setting tech level?

I think some may. Super heroes would immediately come to mind. Or similar concepts that typically have simplistic portrayals of morality, like Star Wars and the like. Not that there can’t be exceptions; there are plenty of examples of each that don’t have the simple good vs. evil.

Most, I think, don’t require that as much. But yes, there are some that do.

I don't think it is necessarily needs to be simplistic, though I agree that the usual D&D "no evil alignment" is simplistic, due the alignment in itself being simplistic.

That’s a good example, actually, for a couple of reasons. First, I think what you’re talking about is more about setting authenticity, which is a different thing. But I think it can result in the same kinds of restrictions.

I played in a short lived Star Trek Adventures game. It was short lived because the GM has much more reverence for the setting than any of the players did. For example, when one player expressed interest in playing an android, the GM denied the request because he had chosen the setting to be around the time of The Next Generation (he knew the exact year) and there was only one android at that time, Data.

So I think that got us off on the wrong foot, and we all kind of bucked at some of the constraints. My character was a kind of minor officer who’d had disciplinary issues (this was determined through a lifepath generator on Modiphius’s website). The other characters wound up as similar outcast types.

To me, the premise was clear. If this was going to be a Star Trek show it would be “Star Trek: Renegades” or “Star Trek: Outcasts”, something like that. The GM didn’t see it and instead kept trying to force us into the “proper” Federation conduct and procedures. Needless to say, the game fell apart.

There was conflict between the GM and the players about how the characters must behave. Instead of finding a way to resolve that conflict, the GM simply kept trying to enforce his ideas. And the game ended.

What happened was a miscommunication about the premise. You note that I especially said "TNG inspired Star Trek" i.e. about elite Starfleet personnel on a ship during the height of "evolved future humans" thing. That is different than more deconstructionist approach like for example DS9. Now it is perfectly possible that not everyone cares for such nuances, and thus it is unwise to set the premise so tightly. But premise is more than the setting; it can say something about what sort of people the characters are, and to explore certain premises authentically it must.