Authenticity in RPGing

[clearstream]

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.

I know what you mean. In 1958 Roger Callois wrote in "Les jeux et les homines":

One plays only if and when one wishes to. In this sense, play is free activity. It is also uncertain activity. Doubt must remain until the end, and hinges upon the denouement. In a card game, when the outcome is no longer in doubt, play stops and the players lay down their hands. In a lottery or in roulette, money is placed on a number which may or may not win. In a sports contest, the powers of the contestants must be equated, so that each may have a chance until the end. Every game of skill, by definition, involves the risk for the player of missing his stroke, and the threat of defeat, without which the game would no longer be pleasing. In fact, the game is no longer pleasing to one who, because he is too well trained or skillful, wins effortlessly and infallibly.

An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play. Constant and unpredictable definitions of the situation are necessary, such as are produced by each attack or counterattack in fencing or football, in each return of the tennis ball, or in chess, each time one of the players moves a piece. The game consists of the need to find or continue at once a response which is free within the limits set by the rules. This latitude of the player, this margin accorded to his action is essential to the game and partly explains the pleasure which it excites. It is equally accountable for the remarkable and meaningful uses of the term “play,” such as are reflected in such expressions as the playing of a performer or the play of a gear, to designate in the one case the personal style of an interpreter, in the other the range of movement of the parts of a machine.

It's intrinsic to game qua game that we play to find out. Therefore one can ask what is meant by the phrase in the context of "story" games? I think in that context it has a special, albeit ambiguous, meaning. Something like "We want stronger rather than weaker powers to decide the narrative." Noted that those powers still make concessions to game text, setting, situation, mechanics, dice rolls.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Oh, it is awesome, for what it does. I love the mechanic in Atomic Robo. What it doesn't do is allow you to cleverly solve a puzzle, because no puzzle exists to solve. It allows you to creatively stipulate a truth - while this can still be clever, it isn't the same thing.

This is assuming that the goal of play is about solving the puzzle. Which is perfectly fine, of course... I play plenty of games that have this or something similar as a goal of some sort... but it's not the goal of all play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It didn't seem likely from past posts--but just not one of those things I let wander on by, you know?

Sure, I hear you. I've had people dismiss certain games as "not RPGs", so I get where you're coming from. I probably over-apply the term, if anything. It's the sub-categories that are tough to define, categorize, and label, I'd say.

Sure. Honestly, you can make an argument that any time any sort of metagame consideration is factored in, that it steps on authenticity. That's why its usually a good idea to construct the character in the first place so certain sorts of common and ongoing metagame considerations are already going to be how the character rolls, and just accept a few of the others. I think the pursuit of authenticity at all cost is fundamentally hostile to making games work (even old-school RGFA simulationists understood that sometimes you just have to let it go for practical reasons).

I think it depends on a lot of factors.... the preferences of the participants, the game being played, the environment of play (home game, convention, etc.)... probably many more.

But I think some games are designed with this as the intent, and some are not.

As I said, I've done it. I don't entirely agree with your conclusion here. But possibly its a case of your conclusion being correct if you append "for some people and groups" to the end of that.

Sure, that's my experience. I think many people would disagree with me, but I also think that, generally speaking, it's not as difficult as many may think.

It does, but again, at a price.

Perhaps! I expect there are many contextual elements that might matter here, and there could be a tradeoff. I don't know if it must be so, though.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sure, but not every game does that thing the same way or with the same challenges, so perhaps a more granular look makes sense.

I’m wondering if there is some truth to the following:

1. We each have our preferred play style, whether through conscious and informed choice, habit, or ignorance
2. Different games more actively support those different play styles.
3. When we find a game that somehow supports our preferred play style it feels like a bigger and more exciting innovation that it actually is.
4. When other people with other preferences play that game, they tend to play it the way they play other RPGs.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I’m wondering if there is some truth to the following:

1. We each have our preferred play style, whether through conscious and informed choice, habit, or ignorance
2. Different games more actively support those different play styles.
3. When we find a game that somehow supports our preferred play style it feels like a bigger and more exciting innovation that it actually is.
4. When other people with other preferences play that game, they tend to play it the way they play other RPGs.

In fairness, I think that it can be difficult for people who are very used to one style of play to fully understand something that is greatly different.

And this applies across a lot of different axes; the first time someone who plays D&D tries to learn a diceless game usually interesting. Or the first time a person who is used to games that are DM-driven tries to learn games with more shared control of the fiction.

But ... yeah, I think (3) is a big one. That said, I think most people would be better off experiencing a wide variety of different types of games.

 

[Umbran]

I completely agree, although in my personal experience with Brindlewood Bay it does still feel like solving a puzzle ...

As an aside - I first heard of Brindlewood Bay last night. Due to player illness, my Witchlight campaign failed to run, and so we sat around just talking for a while, and it came up. Really weird coincidence.

That aside - there's some fundamental differences between acts of creation and acts of analysis. Creation can be framed with things the creation must be consistent with (like, say, in writing a sonnet one must be consistent with the rhyme and meter scheme), but the mental processes underway are not the same as analysis. Folks for whom the difference matters will bounce off a creation process masquerading as an analysis process.

But anyway, how about we go into that more granular look at Gumshoe, and how it handles mystery?

Old school games typically place the major burden of a mystery on the discovery of clues. This is typified in Gygaxian searches, in which the player is supposed to specify that they are searching, exactly what they are searching, and how, often in excruciating detail. If you don't pick the right thing to search, or if you don't get a good roll, you don't find the clue.

In 3e, they lightened this up a bit. The search action declaration is more broad - "I search the room, square by square." No need to specifically note that you are searching the leg of the bed, that's assumed when you get to that square. But still, if you fail the roll, you don't find the clue.

This necessitates things like the "Three Clue Rule" - the GM has to assume that the players will get some bad rolls, and will miss clues. So, if discovering the clues is to be a real option, you need more clues. This is less about railroading than about plain statistics, but I digress...

Given that this can be a little tedious, and given that most GMs are not, in fact, seasoned mystery writers, there's a tendency for the clues to be pretty blatant - the clue is a scroll tube of letters between the Duke and some unknown correspondent, detailing when they are planning to kill the king, or the like. When you go to the appointed place at the appointed time, you encounter and fight the unknown correspondent, defeat them, and unmask the... Duke's wife! Or whoever. Mystery solved!

And, yeah, the results are kind of linear, and are contingent on a specific resolution, so they can feel railroady. Granted.

Gumshoe looks at satisfying mystery fiction, and notes - rare indeed do the investigators fail to find the clue. Spock doesn't scan for life forms, fail, and go, "Gee, Captian, I'm sorry, but for some random reason I can't scan my butt with both hands today." If there are life forms, Spock finds the darned life forms! What the scan doesn't tell Spock is why the life forms are relevant. Gumshoe proceeds based on the idea that searching for clues is actually kind of tedious, but thinking through their context and meaning can be very interesting.

So, in Gumshoe games, finding clues is easy. If the character has the right skill, in the right place, and asks, basic relevant information is given, no roll required, no chance of failure. If there's more information, they can spend a skill point to buy it - again, no chance of failure, only a question of how much they want to invest on getting one set of information.

Without having any concern about what information the players will be able to find, the GM is free to distribute it more widely, in smaller bits that provoke more thought.

With the focus now on thought, rather than search, we are more solidly in the space of exploring how the characters relate to the issues - playing to find out what this means for them, and how they want to proceed with what they discover.

 

[Umbran]

I’m wondering if there is some truth to the following:

1. We each have our preferred play style, whether through conscious and informed choice, habit, or ignorance
2. Different games more actively support those different play styles.
3. When we find a game that somehow supports our preferred play style it feels like a bigger and more exciting innovation that it actually is.
4. When other people with other preferences play that game, they tend to play it the way they play other RPGs.

To a degree, yes. But, I think it is a broad generalization, with all the issues of applying generalizations to individuals.

 

[Malmuria]

I completely agree, although in my personal experience with Brindlewood Bay it does still feel like solving a puzzle (and BB is specifically a mystery solving game). In Brindlewood that's framed by specific (open ended) questions that help focus the group's broad discussion about how the clues fit together. That said, I know that some people bounce off it hard, so there's that too.

I love the vibe of Brindlewood Bay, as did my players, though I found after a few sessions the coziness tends to be cloying, even with the Cthulhu mystery cult lurking in the background. I don't know what it's like as a player, but as a GM it's clear that much of the point of what you are doing is giving out clues so that the players have enough to work with when they go to the theorize move. In some ways it didn't really matter what the PCs did--they were going to get clues, I was going to make hard moves they they would resist, and the fun would be in playing up the murder she wrote vibe. It's a fun game for sure! And an interesting take on the mystery scenario structure. fwiw brindlewood bay did not feel more authentic than a session of, say, call of cthulhu.

 

[Fenris-77]

I love the vibe of Brindlewood Bay, as did my players, though I found after a few sessions the coziness tends to be cloying, even with the Cthulhu mystery cult lurking in the background.

If the coziness wasn't to your taste try The Between. Same mystery mechanic but its essentially Penny Dreadful the RPG (so not cozy at all). Great game.

 

[Bill Zebub]

...with all the issues of applying generalizations to individuals.

But, but...that's how I navigate a complex world.