Authenticity in RPGing

[andreszarta]

Ah, friends, wait for me! This totally sounds like a kind of conversation I'd enjoy, but it's going to take me a while to catch up. Aaaaaahh.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Yeah, I don’t tend to try and exclude games from being considered RPGs. I’m a large umbrella guy when it comes to that.

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.

Right. So that’s like a little give and take, right?

Sometimes, players may not have their characters do what they may want them to do because of real life concerns… so no on splits the party so that everyone can remain involved, and so on.

Isn’t that a case of the player allowing the game structure to squelch his authenticity in that moment?

As for rotating focus, I think it’s far easier to do it than many tend to think. I mean, we always do it to some extent with rounds and turns and so on. It’s really not much more difficult to rotate scenes as needed.

So a game having the ability to do that… or the GM and players being able to do that… is something that enables authenticity.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is that there are postures from which people play that are not as constrained as a typical written character. While the latter may be developed in a somewhat freeform way that the writer takes, he's still aiming the character at at least a general sort of end (though he may not be sure exactly what that is until he gets there). People absolutely can play that way, but there are many who don't, and don't want to. A more constrained campaign setup is more likely to leave them in the metagame conflict between playing their character in a way that seems authentic to them or staying in the campaign. This is more likely to be avoided if they and the GM involved were on the same page at the point when the character was created, but it isn't a certainty, and often that "being on the same page" isn't a given.

Well, I think the more narrow the concept, the more likely a game is to be less extended in duration. If the PCs must be the beat cops, so to speak, in a bad neighborhood, well that opens up a lot of conceptual space, but at some point it is quite likely at least some of them will move on beyond the boundaries of the game concept and it will end. There's also likely to only be a certain amount of stuff you can do in a really narrow premise/milieu before people have started to run out of things to do. Its like cop shows, they start out with just 'cop stuff' but by the end of season 2 all the character's girlfriends, kids, the mafia, whatever is all wrapped up in it and it starts to break down, or at least you have to kind of reinvent the premise to keep it going.

I mean, even D&D runs into this. The PCs loot dungeons, but pretty soon they're bored of that, and they start building castles, starting wars, whatever.

I definitely suspect this BitD campaign is going to get like that, the characters will soon mine out the easy material associated with their concepts and the game premise. Its flexible enough that play can probably continue through a bunch of sessions, but the structure of the game is not going to let you do just anything with it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But that was just a random example. If they don't know a famous vampire hunter, then maybe they find a local vampire hunter. The point is they might try to shift the load to someone else with more expertise than them.

No worries, I knew it was a random example… I just ran with it to point out how a game functions will impact the options available.

To continue with your example… I’ve played plenty of games where if the presence of the famous vampire hunter had not already been established, then no way is that happening. And given that many games rely on the GM to introduce elements like that, this may not always be an option.

If the game in question functions in such a way that the player has some means to introduce this famous vampire hunter… either a skill check of some sort or maybe a class ability… then it’ll be an option for the players.

Unless the GM is thwarting everything they are attempting, at some point I presume they should be able to find some candidate like this (even if the GM puts up resistance to them contacting the top vampire hunter in the world). Maybe there are games where that could be an issue. I think in a typical RPG it isn't a problem (and three clue rule is written with stuff like Call of Cthulhu and D&D in mind). And, importantly, even if they fail at this, the point was just you can't predict how they are going to approach the situation. I am not saying every approach will automatically work out

I don’t really disagree with most of what you say here, except I think GMs can predict what players will do a reasonable amount of the time. Or at least can reasonably narrow things down to a few possibilities. I think this is how most games that typically get classified as traditional tend to work. You prep the most obvious next steps.

We’re not always right, though… and when people point this out they always say “the players threw a real curve ball at me” and the like.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Consider your more narrow premise - "you're all good cops". Who gets to - is obliged to, in and via play - to express a conception of what it is to be a good cop?

In DitV, the premise of play is that the PCs respond to sin and injustice, in their capacity as religious enforcers. They have to express a conception of what constitutes sin, and what sort of response it deserves.

And this is really what I meant, and I think ultimately in a macro sense, what PbtA's 'play to find out' means. If the GM is the one who defines what 'good cop' IS and anyone who doesn't conform to that conception is expelled from the force, then we have a pretty shallow and inauthentic kind of play. At best the players either muddle along, or are uninterested in exploring the concept in the first place. At worst it goes like that Star Trek blowup, the players throw up their hands as the GM keeps insisting they have to enact his conception of the premise or else.

I'm not terribly familiar with DitV, though it gets used as an example pretty often, but it certainly is both narrow in premise and milieu, and yet entirely open in terms of how that plays out. I'm guessing its not a game one plays long campaigns of however.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was going to post the same things as what @hawkeyefan has posted here.

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.

Right, and that is likely to involve play proceeding in a somewhat fixed direction, instead of playing to find out where it goes. There could be other dimensions to things, so its not an absolute, but we're generally in the territory of "GM maps out the general course of play."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

Basic premises are not “pressures that push against authenticity”. They are minimal conventions necessary for an adventure to be meaningful.

Yes. Which is always the case if

1. the adventure has a goal and
2. some information is necessary to achieve it.

Lack of (2) leaves us with a “dumb arcade” style game (beat up 1000 goblins in small groups, then beat up Goblin Boss). Which isn’t big on meaningful choices.
Lack of (1) leaves us with a full sandbox game. Which is full of meaningful choices, but it’s the opposite of a discrete adventure.
Also, with this process of elimination you are playing “guess my invisible hoops to jump through”… while decrying anything that involves a GM offering the players any hoops to jump through.

I would suggest giving a PbtA/FitD type of narrativist game a play and then see if you update this view.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That’s interesting.

If GMs didn’t expect or worry about players “solving” a mystery, and instead just set up mysteries that exist in the world, then the pressure is off to ensure the players are successful.

Then if along the way some mysteries happen to get solved it’s genuinely rewarding.

Right, and I don't think @Bedrockgames is at all wrong either. I just think that its pretty interesting when the real underlying object of the game isn't necessarily the going around and gathering the clues and solving the mysteries, but what that means for and does to the PCs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Consider your more narrow premise - "you're all good cops". Who gets to - is obliged to, in and via play - to express a conception of what it is to be a good cop?

Right! I’d expect everyone involved to have ideas on that… and I’d expect there to be significant overlap, but then also some conflicts.

In DitV, the premise of play is that the PCs respond to sin and injustice, in their capacity as religious enforcers. They have to express a conception of what constitutes sin, and what sort of response it deserves.

Dogs is a great example since the characters are the ones who are determining those things… they decide what’s a sin and how it should be punished. So in that sense, everything they do in service of their mission is righteous.

But can’t the characters disagree? Don’t the beliefs of the players act as a kind of sounding board that gives the game some additional context?

It seems like there are more layers to it.

RPGing can generate pressures that push against authenticity.

By chance recently I've been in a thread or two that describe 4e D&D skill challenges as "players looking for excuses to roll their best stat/skill". The picture of play that this description creates, for me at least, is that the players are sacrificing an authentic conception of the fiction, and what their PC might do in it given their fictional positioning, for the expedience of mathematical success.
I would expect tables at which that sort of expedience predominates to have trouble with the rule in Agon that gives the player final say over whether or not their description of what their PC is doing makes their PCs' epithet (a type of free descriptor that every PC has) applicable, such that a bonus die is added to the player's dice pool. (The same rule applies to other descriptors that can grow the dice pool, but in those other cases - adding a Divine Favour die and a second Domain die - there is a resource cost, of spending a point of Divine Favour or a point of Pathos respectively, and so expedience does not push all one way.)

I find that it’s a kind of reverse psychology thing… give the players the freedom to make these choices, and they’ll be stricter to themselves than I’d probably be. A lot of people can’t imagine this because many games have conditioned participants to seek any and all advantages. But my experience has taught me otherwise… I simply don’t need to police players in that way.

Designing, and adjudicating, a RPG so that the imperatives of play favour authenticity over expedience is not trivial. It's not magical or mystical either! But I think it does require a certain sort of approach and perhaps a certain sort of "ethos" from everyone at the table.

Absolutely. I think it’s a combination of the game and the participants.