Authenticity in RPGing

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another issue that has arisen is I think some people would also view this as something of a straw man. They would push back against the idea that these other styles of play and games are more curated. The GM is doing a lot of improv in these games, the players are reacting in the moment: they are improvising their response. It isn't like they are sitting down before hand to curate what will happen. There may be structure, but even an uncurated jazz performance has structure in the form of modes, scales, key signatures.

I fully appreciate where you are coming from, but I was listening to the play of that BitD game the other day that @Campbell and @Nik et al are players in. So the scene that @Manbearcat outlined earlier where Nik's character was in Six Towers stalking the Spirit Warden guy while there was a Circle assassin nearby and he was testing some sort of spark thingy, etc.; that scene arose ENTIRELY out of a player driven process, the GM had ZERO to do with its evolution! The player chose how to construct his character, the players collectively chose the nature of the crew, its connections, goals, capabilities, etc. Everything in that scene arose, without any particular GM prep or 'engineering'. I mean, yes, sometimes the GM said something like "Oh, OK, you know this guy, he's a Red Sash leader..." or whatever. So Manbearcat, as GM, can put in play specific 'color', but the actual need for a contact or a victim, or a vice purveyor, or whatever, comes out of a combination of the premise and the specific choices and actions of the players during play. Furthermore it bears directly on the fundamental premise of the game, that the PCs are rogues living in a dangerous milieu choosing to engage in hazardous criminal enterprises.

There's a through line there, from premise -> player choices -> GM scene framing which is fundamentally, causally at the table, different from even the most entirely pure sandbox or "curated in the moment" low prep play in a game structured like 5e. Now, maybe some of the GMs that make statements of equivalency to the above in their 5e play are really departing seriously from 5e's default structure/process/premises and doing what something like BitD 'just does' (assuming you run it roughly as intended). I certainly can't say, and am not trying to cast doubt on anything said here by anyone. It is IME, not the way the 5e designers envisaged the game being used, and you'll have to 'jigger the system' a bunch to really get it to work well, but I'm not that jerk who says "You cannot be telling the true story" simply because it is a remarkable and unusual story. I can just say that the action in that BitD game was utterly stock BitD from what I can tell (it was the first game I've sat in on, so I'm not a big expert on that system yet).

 

[Bill Zebub]

While true, my observation is that it only helps so much; people are still going to react to the connotation.

The other option is to make up a German-sounding word and claim it means exactly what you want. E.g. Selbergeist. According to Jung that means the expression of self while pretending to be Drizzt.

 

[Umbran]

You understand that taking your statement literally amounts to "we interpret any term you can use to describe X in a loaded fashion such that it is impossible for you to ever assert, in any language, your opinion about X."

No, it does not. Your point here seems hyperbolic, and is apt to not be constructive.

It means that if you are speaking to a large enough group, you are practically assured that some number of folks in the group are going to have some issue with your opinion/assertion, and that will be a barrier to discussion. Empirical evidence of this rests in 20+ years of this website, so maybe arguing otherwise is not your best bet.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Knowing that…and it should be obvious, especially when choosing a word that carries implicit value judgments…it would probably be smart to preface the whole thing with definitions/disclaimer.

Is everyone supposed to do this? Which opinions, points of view, and terms are subject to a need to disclaim? Who decides what that list is? I mean, I understand the intent, but this sort of 'policy' is entirely untenable IMHO. Better for everyone to get used to the notion that there are perfectly well-meaning and decent people with opinions and word use, etc. that is different from yours and learn not to assume the worst whenever you read a post. Obviously that's not going to ever become universal, but frankly I've seen the posters on this forum, and some others, generally evolve in that sense in a positive direction in the last 10-15 years.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From my perspective a lot of the curation comes from the gameplay conceit of the adventure to be completed or mystery we are obligated to solve. A lot of this is usually socially reinforced by the whole play group, usually more strongly by other players than the GM in my experience. Basically, it is the GM who decides what player characters goals should be. There are clues to be found, information players need, etc. We essentially move away from these characters (who have meaningful connections to the setting) in this specific situation and move towards group problem solving or moving through story beats.

I mean I get that there are levels to this stuff, but there are definitely levels to this stuff. It's also not just GMs doing the curation. Players are active hands in curating the adventure gaming experience.

Right. It was very much in my mind with those 5e campaigns I played in to be 'on the team' and respecting the prep and directions which the GM clearly telegraphed (or which we outright discussed outside of play). This was a consistent and strong organizing motivation throughout both campaigns. I'd think, "Oh, OK, now its time to go follow this GM supplied lead that is obviously intended to address something set up for the cleric." Or, "OK, we won't try to investigate this thing over here because that will plainly take us off the currently prepped path, so we'll go on down the tunnel instead of opening the door." Or sometimes it was more explicit than that, like the GM saying "Yeah, while you were away your henchmen awoke the vampire and it took over your castle!" Clearly we're supposed to try to get the castle back... None of those types of consideration would come up in, say a Dungeon World version of that campaign.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I fully appreciate where you are coming from, but I was listening to the play of that BitD game the other day that @Campbell and @Nik et al are players in. So the scene that @Manbearcat outlined earlier where Nik's character was in Six Towers stalking the Spirit Warden guy while there was a Circle assassin nearby and he was testing some sort of spark thingy, etc.; that scene arose ENTIRELY out of a player driven process, the GM had ZERO to do with its evolution! The player chose how to construct his character, the players collectively chose the nature of the crew, its connections, goals, capabilities, etc. Everything in that scene arose, without any particular GM prep or 'engineering'. I mean, yes, sometimes the GM said something like "Oh, OK, you know this guy, he's a Red Sash leader..." or whatever. So Manbearcat, as GM, can put in play specific 'color', but the actual need for a contact or a victim, or a vice purveyor, or whatever, comes out of a combination of the premise and the specific choices and actions of the players during play. Furthermore it bears directly on the fundamental premise of the game, that the PCs are rogues living in a dangerous milieu choosing to engage in hazardous criminal enterprises.

I don't doubt this was their experience. I mentioned Hillfolk as well and that is similar. It is a very good system for producing something that feels like it was pulled right out of a TV show, without having to do a lot of prep (it shifts a lot of GM burden to the players in a way that allows them to contribute to the story outside their characters). I think what I would argue is being more limited to the power your character has in the setting for example, isn't a more curated experience (at least for me). And the amount of power a player can exert on the direction of the campaign is quite powerful in a typical game of D&D if the GM is open, fair and good at making rulings. I think we are getting a little lost in the metaphor of improv versus composed, and curated versus non-curated. Ultimately the issue I had with the OPs framing was not that it presented the systems and styles he was talking about as giving an authentic experience. It was the zero sum game of "This is authentic and those systems that are really just variations on railroads squelch authenticity." Is BitD different from D&D and Call of Cthulhu? Absolutely. Is a mystery adventure using the three clue rule a variation of Railroad and is it a less authentic experience? I don't think so.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, it does not. Your point here seems hyperbolic, and is apt to not be constructive.

It means that if you are speaking to a large enough group, you are practically assured that some number of folks in the group are going to have some issue with your opinion/assertion, and that will be a barrier to discussion. Empirical evidence of this rests in 20+ years of this website, so maybe arguing otherwise is not your best bet.

Sure, but the implication that the onus must be on certain posters to take some kind of steps, vs the onus is on other readers to interpret generously, is one I know which side I am likely to fall on. Now, I'll also posit that the response to the, in a large group of readers inevitable, few negative responses might most constructively be to completely ignore them. Pointless debate isn't one-sided, but ideally it will exist at a minimal level to start with.

 

[Bedrockgames]

From my perspective a lot of the curation comes from the gameplay conceit of the adventure to be completed or mystery we are obligated to solve. A lot of this is usually socially reinforced by the whole play group, usually more strongly by other players than the GM in my experience. Basically, it is the GM who decides what player characters goals should be. There are clues to be found, information players need, etc. We essentially move away from these characters (who have meaningful connections to the setting) in this specific situation and move towards group problem solving or moving through story beats.

Where I would agree with you is that a lot of use of the three clue rule and a lot of play with mysteries is about the group solving the problem (the mystery. I would disagree that the only two alternatives here are moving through story beats or solving that problem. As I said, players can always change key by setting new goals for themselves if they truly want (and how willing they are to do that does come down to reading the room sometimes because these games are a social event: if four players clearly want to solve the mystery and one player truly just wants to Murder Watson and make it a Natural Born Killers campaign, someone reading the room would refrain from going in the more murderous direction). But that has a lot less to do with the three clue rule and mysteries and more about groups who want to stay on focus with a particular aim.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't doubt this was their experience. I mentioned Hillfolk as well and that is similar. It is a very good system for producing something that feels like it was pulled right out of a TV show, without having to do a lot of prep (it shifts a lot of GM burden to the players in a way that allows them to contribute to the story outside their characters). I think what I would argue is being more limited to the power your character has in the setting for example, isn't a more curated experience (at least for me). And the amount of power a player can exert on the direction of the campaign is quite powerful in a typical game of D&D if the GM is open, fair and good at making rulings. I think we are getting a little lost in the metaphor of improv versus composed, and curated versus non-curated. Ultimately the issue I had with the OPs framing was not that it presented the systems and styles he was talking about as giving an authentic experience. It was the zero sum game of "This is authentic and those systems that are really just variations on railroads squelch authenticity." Is BitD different from D&D and Call of Cthulhu? Absolutely. Is a mystery adventure using the three clue rule a variation of Railroad and is it a less authentic experience? I don't think so.

Yeah, and I thought you made some pretty reasonable points. There IS, at least potentially, a continuum. I can just say that I haven't in 40+ years of play, actually experienced a D&D game that got to where the BitD game was the other day. I'm OK with the assertion that maybe once you get to a certain point there's some substantive reason to not formulate your D&D game exactly like, say, Dungeon World, that maybe you like some elements of GM direction and "OK, we'll play an adventure that reflects on PC concerns, but the GM will still draw maps and keys within that context" or whatever is where you want to be. I think there is just a tendency for some people to try to assert that there's no 'air' between that and something like DW or BitD, and I don't think that's the case. I think a more principled stand to take, which seems to be yours, is "Yeah, system matters, these are likely to play differently, and we can say different things about them." The semantic arguments beyond that point are fairly uninteresting to me, or at least I don't perceive any value in wandering in that particular swamp.

 

[Maxperson]

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

"Grog understand. Handaxe is very different from tomahawk, which very different from logging axe, which veeeeery different from greataxe that Grog use to cut heads off of smart people."