Authenticity in RPGing

[hawkeyefan]

So, the three-clue rule, in my experience, has diddly to do with railroading. It has to do with information flow. The three clue rule can be stated simply as, "The party will typically miss two out of every three clues as to what is going on."

I think it tends to go further, no? The implication in the way you've chosen to word it is that clues are necessary.

Again, I'm not saying that the three-clue rule is the equivalent of railroading. I'm saying that they have something in common; to keep the game moving towards a specific path or goal.

Having a thing be true in the world (like, "The Duke Killed the King,") is as much a railroad as the very much sandboxy bit - "There's a dragon living in the Dragontooth Mountains (go figure)."

I don't think either of those things are railroads. I believe that each could be used by the GM to force a certain sequence of play. But I don't think that must be the case.

So, in Ashen Stars, mysteries are handed to the PCs as jobs they can take on and get paid. They are told, in essence, "Something bad (insert some details) happened in the Foo System. Go find out who or what is responsible, and deal with it, and you'll get paid."

A major problem with many seemingly railroady mysteries - there's a chain of clues, and one clue leads to the next specific clue, and the final clue leads to the answer. And that makes it a railroad.

So when I said that investigative type of games tend to be susceptible to railroading, or to the GM forcing a certain path, you disagreed. But right here you clearly describe what I was talking about.

Ashen Stars avoids that by having a large web of information, and many routes through that web to get to the actual answer of what the devil is actually going on. So, when the characters show up, there's a whole slew of places to investigate and people to talk to to get information, not one specific path.

So when I said that it takes effort to make an investigation not feel railroady, you disagreed. But right here you clearly describe the effort taken to make this investigation not a railroad.

Then, at the end, by design there's always a big ethical conundrum of what to do with the truth. The situation always has political, moral, or ethical complications, for which there is no one right answer. So, while anyone playing the adventure goes through that one point of The Truth, how they get there is up to them, and what they do after that is also up to them. So, no railroad.

Writing one of these does take some effort, as you can't lay down a straight line of clues to the result. If you crib from some famous mystery (like, say, a Sherlock Holmes story) you'll have the issue that the story is the result of Sherlock taking his path through the web, and it will look like a linear story, and if you just replicate that, you're on a railroad. You have to fill out the rest of the web that Sherlock *didn't * go to, to create a non-railroad experience.

Sure, I can see that. Again, I don't think that investigations must be railroads. And I don't think the three-clue rule is the same as railroading.

I don't think we're disagreeing as much as you seem to think.

 

[Maxperson]

Yup! That's exactly what I did. The word authenticity is, I'll freely admit, perhaps somewhat weighted.

As is "That players and GMs make genuine choices, in play, that say something..." The implication there is that GM driven games don't involve choices in play that "say something". The OP is full of language practically designed to start an argument with the other side, rather than explore the kinds of games @pemerton enjoys.

 

[Fenris-77]

As is "That players and GMs make genuine choices, in play, that say something..." The implication there is that GM driven games don't involve choices in play that "say something". The OP is full of language practically designed to start an argument with the other side, rather than explore the kinds of games @pemerton enjoys.

You'll notice I absented myself from the discussion? There's a reason for that. The phrase 'the other side' is a part of that. Im not interested in a discussion that presupposes that framework. Whether or not I think that was the intent in the OP is quite secondary at this point to my distaste for rehashing a tired back and forth.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Again, I'm not saying that the three-clue rule is the equivalent of railroading. I'm saying that they have something in common; to keep the game moving towards a specific path or goal.

The three clue rule is simply about addressing the problem of the players not being able to go in any direction because they don't have information about the mystery in question. I don't think it is about keeping it moving towards a specific goal or path. It is just about it not grinding to a halt. A railroad on the other hand is "I have a destination in mind and you will reach that destination". There being truth at the heart of a mystery and the players having fair access to clues about that truth, that doesn't lead to a particular path, scene, etc. It just leads to a conclusion (the killer is Roy Sanderson, a 500 year old vampire who likes baseball and murdered his victims at Fenway Park, he is particularly vulnerable to holy water). The 'specific path or goal' in a railroad is going to be a particular confrontation with that vampire or a series of encounters leading up to that confrontation. But in this scenario, they can do whatever they want with that info once they've assembled it and assessed it. There is almost no way for the GM to even predict what path they are going to take here. They could do something odd like bring a priest to bless his tap water, or they might phone a notable vampire hunter tell him all the details, then take off; they might confront him at a baseball game, phone the police or victims family and tell them they know who the killer is then call it a day, say 'screw it, we didn't know vampires were involved' and get out of dodge, formulate an elaborate plan to where the mayor asks Sanderson to throw first pitch and have sprinklers filled with holy water ready to go once he steps on the grass, try to redeem the vampire, etc. Sure, the solution has a good chance of involving holy water and a good chance of involving the murderer (unless they've uncovered other weaknesses, or they don't want to destroy him for some reason). But that is still quite far afield from how a railroad ought to go.

 

[Maxperson]

You'll notice I absented myself from the discussion? There's a reason for that. The phrase 'the other side' is a part of that. Im not interested in a discussion that presupposes that framework. Whether or not I think that was the intent in the OP is quite secondary at this point to my distaste for rehashing a tired back and forth.

Sure, and I'm not trying to get into that back and forth, either. That's why I worded it like I did, rather than start arguing with the OP. I was just pointing out that the OP isn't really designed to get a discussion of his preferred playstyle going, but rather it was inflammatory to the point of practically being designed that way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's no reason a GM can't say that. It's perfectly fine to do so. It just means that whatever potential there may have been for the players to bring Y to the table is now gone, and whatever they bring must be about X. Which may or may not be a problem for any given group, or any given case of X and Y.

Oh, it absolutely does exclude things. I'm just prone to stepping into this one because I've seen people literally say that except for open-ended sandboxes where any character or group of characters can do anything and, barring in-setting responses making it impossible, the campaign should go on, and if it can't/doesn't, its not really an RPG (and some of them seem to feel if the setting is such that in-setting responses can make this impossible, its not appropriate for an RPG). That seems to reserve the term for pretty small corner of campaign types.

Sure! I think it all depends. If the premise of play is to be cops or whatever, then there is the potential that if a character stops being a cop, then they may no longer be in play. Or at least, not in the same capacity or to the same extent. I think there are a number of factors that matter here, with the primary being if this applies to one character or all, how the game plays and if it supports rotating focus and/or player characters who are not strictly working together as a team. There are other factors for sure, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.

Sure. I ignored some of those (rotating focus because, frankly, unless you've set up the game to do that from the get-go--and I don't see a reason to do so strongly on a regular basis, though I've done so with some games where it was a necessity in the past--I don't see some reason to suddenly start just because someone has taken actions that will move his character out of the avowed focus of the campaign) because when operate they make my point moot.

 

[clearstream]

If I say "the premise is that you're all good cops", then I've limited what they have to say. Does that mean they can't have something authentic to say? No. But it's more narrow. Now, instead of being about law enforcement in general, it's more likely to be something like "what's it like to be the one good cop amongst a corrupt department" or similar.

I feel like narrowness isn't an issue in works of fiction, because the space is limitless at every point. Folk seem capable of taking the most narrow premise, and expanding it to fill a complex and fascinating work. And the most open premise can result in something vacuous. It's hard to explain, but I actually feel the narrowness or otherwise of the premises has potentially no interaction with the authenticity of the player's interpretation.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I feel like narrowness isn't an issue in works of fiction, because the space is limitless at every point. Folk seem capable of taking the most narrow premise, and expanding it to fill a complex and fascinating work. And the most open premise can result in something vacuous. It's hard to explain, but I actually feel the narrowness or otherwise of the premises has potentially no interaction with the authenticity of the player's interpretation.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I recently finished up a campaign where my players were constables and I gave them full freedom to set their own moral course. They started out pretty righteous but by the end they had effectively become drug kingpins. In this campaign had they fully abandoned their posts, we would have just shifted the focus of the campaign to their new direction.

That's fine if its what you want to do, but I'm usually putting a campaign together to run a specific kind of game (which can have broad or narrow scope) and often if the campaign is going to veer off too far from that, I can't be arsed (and sometimes even if I'd be willing in principal, if I'm using a game system that is pretty unsuited for whatever direction they're trying to take it in I'm not going to bother hammering nails with a wrench--this happened with a Morrow Project game I ran some years ago where the players were starting to lean into what I refer to as "property management" elements; I don't have an intrinsic objection to those, but if I'm going to do that I want a system where either it already has some subsystems to assist with it, or I've had time to put them together before the campaign started).

 

[hawkeyefan]

The three clue rule is simply about addressing the problem of the players not being able to go in any direction because they don't have information about the mystery in question. I don't think it is about keeping it moving towards a specific goal or path. It is just about it not grinding to a halt.

If something is not moving toward a specific goal, then I don't know why we'd worry about things grinding to a halt. All of this is assuming that the players want to solve the mystery, or that the characters need to, for some reason in the fiction. That solving the mystery is the goal of play (however temporary a goal it may be).

But let's just imagine that they may not solve the mystery, or may decide not to for some reason. If that's the case, what purpose would the three-clue rule provide?

There being truth at the heart of a mystery and the players having fair access to clues about that truth, that doesn't lead to a particular path, scene, etc. It just leads to a conclusion (the killer is Roy Sanderson, a 500 year old vampire who likes baseball and murdered his victims at Fenway Park, he is particularly vulnerable to holy water).

Sure, I don't think that having specific facts be set before hand means you're railroading players or anything like that. I think setting up a web of information as @Umbran described, or an information rich environment as (I think) @Campbell mentioned, is a step toward avoiding this. I think the three-clue rule is a very basic way to set up this kind of environment, but I don't think it does enough on its own. I think the GM being open to multiple paths... even ones not set ahead of time... is a big step as well.

I think where it may get into the kind of troublesome territory here (assuming that this matters to people, there would be plenty of GMs and players who wouldn't look at any of this as troublesome or problematic) is when there are a finite number of clues that are strung together in such a way as to promote a pretty linear path... the web being incredibly simple, with minimal options. So if we miss clues 1 and 2, we find 3, which brings us to scene B, and so on. Again, not all investigations are like this, but it's like the template.

The 'specific path or goal' in a railroad is going to be a particular confrontation with that vampire or a series of encounters leading up to that confrontation. But in this scenario, they can do whatever they want with that info once they've assembled it and assessed it. There is almost no way for the GM to even predict what path they are going to take here. They could do something odd like bring a priest to bless his tap water, or they might phone a notable vampire hunter tell him all the details, then take off; they might confront him at a baseball game, phone the police or victims family and tell them they know who the killer is then call it a day, say 'screw it, we didn't know vampires were involved' and get out of dodge, formulate an elaborate plan to where the mayor asks Sanderson to throw first pitch and have sprinklers filled with holy water ready to go once he steps on the grass, try to redeem the vampire, etc. Sure, the solution has a good chance of involving holy water and a good chance of involving the murderer (unless they've uncovered other weaknesses, or they don't want to destroy him for some reason). But that is still quite far afield from how a railroad ought to go.

I don't know if I agree with that. Certainly he may predict a possible confrontation at Fenway or some other element of baseball coming up, or the use of holy water against the vampire. Many of the options that you suggest maybe possible, but many depend on either what has previously been established in play (the famous vampire hunter) or the ability of a player to introduce elements to play ("can I use my Connections ability to establish that I know a famous vampire hunter?")

The context of the game in question and how it functions will always be a huge influence here.