Authenticity in RPGing

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, the first 2 series TOS and TNG focus almost exclusively on the bridge crew and generally portray them as very highly accomplished upholders of the values of Star Fleet (though not always beyond reproach). So I can see how someone might just fixate on nothing but reproducing that exact scenario. As you said, there was rather a mismatch in premise there. I haven't played the newest Trek RPG, but I'm guessing it is a bit more narrativist in its approach than the older ones?

I’ve heard it described as such, but I didn’t really find it to be very narrative in approach. It does have what many consider to be meta-currencies in the form of Momentum and Threat. For some people, meta-mechanics like that are what makes a game narrativist.

I thought it played pretty traditionally. But, as I said, we had a GM very devoted to the setting… so perhaps there was something we were missing.

It’s the 2d20 system from Modiphius, which they use for lots of games. I’ve heard Dune is more narrative, but the rest (Conan, John Carter, Fallout, Mutant Chronicles) seem pretty traditional. I could certainly be wrong, though.

I think its all deeper than any of this. It isn't about TECHNIQUE, its about effect, and openness to seeing what will come out in play. The failed Star Trek campaign is a perfect, though obviously extreme, example: the GM simply wasn't open, didn't open up and play the gig. Instead he had his little script and the players were there to say the lines. So, the more linear and the more one-dimensional the conception and allowed direction of the game, the more its likely to just be empty of that spark, which you cannot really easily describe but which comes when a game is truly open in some sense, open to itself.

The only REAL discussion is "what techniques really work better or worse for that?" Its pointless to try to split hairs in terminology or run around debating value judgments that aren't important. How do you get that spark? IME, and I've run and played a LOT of different games with a pretty decent variety of people, the PbtA principle 'Play to find out what happens' is the most succinct way to describe it that I know of. Everyone, doing that together, with no holdouts, can, maybe not will but can, produce that. It could happen playing B2, it is fairly likely to happen playing BitD, I think.

Yes, I agree that it’s about technique. Examples of which may or may not be a component of a given RPG, and when they’re not, then it’s the participants that matter.

 

[Lanefan]

The premise of the "three clue rule" is that the players need (in some sense of that word) to acquire the information toward which the clues point.

One wonders how else a mystery-solving scenario can be run.

The very definition of a mystery is that something unexplained either is happening or has happened; and to solve that mystery one has to acquire enough information to explain what was previously unexplained.

Which means yes, if the goal of the game is to solve a mystery the players/PCs do in fact need to acquire the information needed in order to achieve that goal. The three-clue idea is merely one suggested means of presenting that information.

If done right, the only time it can become a railroad is if the GM won't allow the PCs to fail should their information gathering prove fruitless.

 

[Lanefan]

What exactly is the alternative? Roll completely random characters with random motivations, half of which obviously should not have any interest in the given adventure?

Sounds pretty much like standard procedure around here.

I've rolled up some of my own PCs at complete random in the past - random stats, species, class, background, family, etc. - and a few of 'em worked out pretty damn well in the long run.

“My character… huh… I guess he just sits here and smokes weed”. What would be the point of this?

Well, at least you'd be putting the 'high' in High Elf.

 

[Fenris-77]

One wonders how else a mystery-solving scenario can be run.

The Brindlewood Bay mystery mechanic provides an obvious alternative, as much as it isn't for everyone. Gumshoe changes the framing of how clues are collected too.

 

[clearstream]

Writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.

Perhaps, but what I wanted to follow up was my thought that

the narrowness or otherwise of the premises has potentially no interaction with the authenticity of the player's interpretation.

Folk have been discussing choice, and I do think genuine choice is involved; but not what I will non-pejoratively call the superficial choice that is being focused on. I come to that conclusion by thinking about theatre actors. We talk about authenticity of theatrical acting in a way that seems identical to the use of the word in the OP. Through application of techniques and principles, the actor explores/expresses something that feels true.

The actor does not choose their character. Who that character is, is decided for them. They are a good-hearted wood cutter, say. They do not choose their situation, nor how it will unfold. That is decided for them, in the script. They don't even choose what words they will say.

We might say that actors can't act authentically - it's simply wrong to apply that word to them even if a quick google turns up titles like "Act Authentically, An Actor's Workout". Or we might say that actors can act authentically, and roleplayers can act authentically, but the two are different... in which case one looks forward to an explanation of the difference. Or I suppose we might say that neither are authentic, perhaps taking the "simulation" line of argument I assayed earlier.

Or if we accept actors can act authentically, and this is using the word in the same sense as in this thread, then it seems to me that a lot of the foregoing discussion has focused on the wrong kind of choice. Superficial choice, not genuine choice.

 

[chaochou]

Narrativist games are those which allow the players to address their chosen premise. In this description, premise is not a synonym for genre. It does not mean 'Star Trek' or 'Cops on the Beat' or 'Fantasy freebooters looking for fortune'.

In this description it means addressing specific statements or questions - created by the players through the development of initial situation and then extended into play - such as 'Cops faced with temptation always end up corrupt' or 'Given our space station is irrevocably doomed, will I reconcile with my estranged father or are the wounds too deep?'

In this type of play, authenticity comes from the players' choices of the specific premise which interests them, and the actions they take to resolve the conflicts which drive at the premise they are exploring. So, for example, if I'm playing with the idea of finding out if 'Cops faced with temptation always end up corrupt?' the focus isn't on whether I succeed at arresting some criminal or gang, it's about whether I become compromised or corrupted doing it.

Authenticity, in the sense I had from the OP, is about giving the players the freedom and responsibility to develop and push at the premise(s) they've developed, and then saying something individual and truthful through their words and actions as the beliefs they want to express get tested by the conflicts which arise through the game.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, the first 2 series TOS and TNG focus almost exclusively on the bridge crew and generally portray them as very highly accomplished upholders of the values of Star Fleet (though not always beyond reproach). So I can see how someone might just fixate on nothing but reproducing that exact scenario. As you said, there was rather a mismatch in premise there. I haven't played the newest Trek RPG, but I'm guessing it is a bit more narrativist in its approach than the older ones?

Yes, a bit.
It also uses 2 metacurrencies under 3 names, and metacurrency spends to add NPCs mid scene...

But it also has specified by the player Beliefs and rewards for adhering to them, and different rewards for challenging them. The GM can likewise impose "directives"... which work like beliefs, but shared across the party, and carrying additional mechanical penalties for challenging them.

Many choices get made due to mechanical concerns.

 

[Umbran]

The Brindlewood Bay mystery mechanic provides an obvious alternative, as much as it isn't for everyone. Gumshoe changes the framing of how clues are collected too.

Gumshoe uses a different mechanic than other games, but it doesn't "reframe" in the sense that, as Lanefan says - you are trying to solve a mystery, and need information to do that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Even with the broader campaign structures, you can have campaigns that are mostly (at least in part) about solving mysteries. A lot of modern day monster-hunter campaigns lean into that pretty heavily, for example.

I was wandering off-topic a bit, but just suggesting that solving the mysteries doesn’t have to be the goal of having mysteries.

 

[Umbran]

Right, and that is likely to involve play proceeding in a somewhat fixed direction, instead of playing to find out where it goes.

The very first line of Blades in the Dark is, "Blades in the Dark is a game about a group of daring scoundrels building a criminal enterprise on the haunted streets of a fantasy-industrial city."

The first two sentences of Ashen Stars are, "Ashen Stars is a game of mystery and adventure set in a gritty space opera universe. You play freelance law enforcers solving problems for pay in the Bleed, a war-ravaged frontier of colonized space."

It seems to me that both of these give "direction" - in BitD, the PCs are going to do crime. In Ashen Stars, they are going to be solving problems and mysteries for pay. As pemerton noted above, in Dogs in the Vinyard, the PCs are religious enforcers. You expect them to be out there enforcing rules against sin.

In none of these games are you "playing to find out" doing whatever strikes the player's fancy - there is an general direction. Blades in the Dark characters are not going to form a country-western band and take off across country with a talking jackrabbit in a camper-equipped pickup truck they call the "Smystery Smachine"...

So please put a leash on that "play to find out" thing - because the games do so on their first pages.