So Acting?

[Kelly Pedersen]

I'm not Kromm or anyone official, of course, so this is just speculation on my part. But here's how I'd break this down.

It seems to me that most skills in GURPS (4e, at least), are distinguished by means, rather than ends. You don't ask "what do you want to do" to decide on the skill used, you ask "how are you doing it". We can see this in the influence skills for sure - Sex Appeal is not merely the skill of seducing people, for example, it's the skill of using your sexiness to get people to do what you want, which can range from seducing someone, to distracting them, to making them so befuddled that they just agree to your request.

So, in the case of Acting and Performance, I'd say that Acting is the skill of maintaining a consistent persona, while Performance is the skill of conveying an emotion to an audience convincingly. I think what this means for the various examples that have been brought up, is that most stage and screen actors will be using Performance, even the method actors, because ultimately, audiences are going to see plays or movies or whatever to experience those emotions. Method actors and others who "get into the character's mind" in order to better portray them are probably using Acting as a complementary roll to their Performance rolls. Conversely, in a lot of adventuring situations, Acting is probably the primary roll, because when you're trying to deceive someone, consistency in portrayal is the main thing. But Performance will definitely be a frequent complementary roll, and I can definitely picture times when it's the primary roll. For example, if the players were creating a recorded broadcast, ostensibly from the superior officer of a group they were trying to fool, conveying a message to listen to the PCs, I would probably call for a Performance roll to do that, because it's the emotional content that's really important. Or, at least, it would be both Acting and Performance.

sir_pudding, for your examples about improv comedy, I'd actually argue that those would be a third skill, probably Public Speaking, since that sort of thing isn't (usually) about either maintaining a consistent persona or conveying a specific emotion - the comedian isn't trying to show the audience how happy she is, she's trying to get them to laugh.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

sir_pudding, for your examples about improv comedy, I'd actually argue that those would be a third skill, probably Public Speaking, since that sort of thing isn't (usually) about either maintaining a consistent persona or conveying a specific emotion - the comedian isn't trying to show the audience how happy she is, she's trying to get them to laugh.

I'm not talking about stand-up. I am talking about long-form improvisational theater. Which is often comedic, but doesn't have to be and relevantly involves developing consistent characterization.

When I play Jonathan Darke, I don't generally attempt comedy. I try to portray a man who is involving you in a criminal or espionage conspiracy, and I try to keep it authentic to the rogue literature and espionage tradecraft of Elizabethan England while still being accessible. Darke isn't a clown, he is cynical, dangerous, and paranoid. He leads a criminal organization, cheats people out of their money for a living, murders people in the streets, and reports to John Dee as a watcher, which was a kind of irregular secret policeman (and England was a kind of irregular police state). He is a Catholic in a country that no longer trusts Papists, and a patriot with a religion whose leaders conspire against the country he has killed for and would die to defend. He is man who knows he was born to hang, and intends to take their money and run for as long as he can. He is a disgraced Oxford scholar, rough around the edges, but still intellectual and deeply bitter about his expulsion. He is a man of parts and I endeavor to communicate this to the audience in hundreds of personal interactions throughout the course of the day. They say I am pretty damn good at it, too.

I certainly am both trying to maintain a consistent character and convey specific emotions. What I am not trying to do is convince anyone that my consistent character is who I really am when the costume comes off.

Notably I use a lot of core competencies that I have learned from acting workshops and classes, and a lot of things I have learned from playing RPGs too. I use these same things when I am playing RPGs.

Now Darke would definitely be using Acting if he was a GURPS character, because he is both a spy and a coney-catcher, and Acting seems to still be the correct skill for those professionals, but I don't think that I could be said to except at a remove. Nobody actually believes I am a 16th century English Upright Man nor are they intended to.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I'm not talking about stand-up. I am talking about long-form improvisational theater. Which is often comedic, but doesn't have to be and relevantly involves developing consistent characterization.

Fair enough. In the circumstances you describe, I'd still say that Performance was the primary skill, but Acting would definitely be complementary. It seems to me that with most stage performance, the goal is convey to the audience that sense of emotional "realism", so Performance is the core skill.

Now, there can be entertainment situations where Acting is the primary instead, I'd say. The Renaissance Faire performers you've mentioned are probably a good case, where the audience's enjoyment is more focused on (at least typically) being immersed in the experience rather than whichever emotions the performer happens to be trying to convey. Theme park performers might be the same.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I certainly am both trying to maintain a consistent character and convey specific emotions. What I am not trying to do is convince anyone that my consistent character is who I really am when the costume comes off.

Well, as I said before, I don't think that what you're trying to do matters so much as the means you're using to do it. I think the skills involved in Acting, of assuming a consistent persona, can be used to entertain or deceive, depending on the situation. If you don't think your experience with creating that consistent persona and performing it could be used to deceive people with equal ability as you entertain, I suspect you might have what GURPS calls an optional speciality.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Fair enough. In the circumstances you describe, I'd still say that Performance was the primary skill, but Acting would definitely be complementary. It seems to me that with most stage performance, the goal is convey to the audience that sense of emotional "realism", so Performance is the core skill.

One of the things you learn though is the emotional "realism" of Performance isn't the same as actual realism of Acting. We have come to accept a number of Performance strategies of what seems "realistic"--realistic violence, realistic crying, realistic looking teenagers...but they aren't realistic...they are only realistic in a Performance context. In real life they would seem odd...because they aren't actually realistic.

Actual reality is usually less pretty or less interesting that the version of reality on the stage or screen. So being able to do real reality...that is not something performers usually practice...because it doesn't tend to work as a performance. And if you use your great performance skills in a situation where you need to act...well...it reads...off.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't see how this makes sense in context. Nobody believes you are a 12th level Dwarven Wizard named Glorthar The Perceptive and I doubt most people want to make people believe that either.

Yeah given Roleplaying is a shared activity there is no deception, even if there may be an attempt to portray emotional states that the roleplayer doesn't actual feel. However I do think the acting skill in GURPS is more specialised thing than what might be called "Acting" in general, and seems to have been written more with adventuring applications in mind than acting / dramatic arts theory

Ultimately I'd probably call Roleplaying a speciality of Gaming, but certainly allow both acting and performance to compliment depending on the style of roleplaying!

[JoelSammallahti]

This has never come up in any game I've run, and in practice I tend to make rulings based on the player's intent when creating their character, as long as it's not too unbalancing. So if they took Acting as the professional skill of an actor, they can use that, but if they took Performance, that's fine too.

However, here's the distinction I would run: Performance is for acting that won't fool anybody in actual interpersonal communication. Acting is deception, but also performing in a realistic way.

Most theatrical traditions, for both aesthetic and practical reasons, include really exaggerated, formulaic ways of speaking and nonverbal expression. (The practical reason is that you have to be able to get your point across to the cheap seats over noise and distraction, so you go loud and ham it up.) In modern screen acting, and possibly stage acting in a sufficiently quiet and intimate venue, though, you can act in a way that looks and sounds real. That's when you use Acting. From the 1930s to the 1970s, American cinema gradually transitioned from being heavy on Performance to favoring mostly Acting. And in almost every case, you can use one skill as complementary to the other.

Again, that's just how I'd do it, not canon... But there doesn't seem to be a very clear canon. (Also, in many cases some completely different skill might be primary: Public Speaking for a stand-up comic doing a bit incorporated into a sitcom, Stage Combat or Acrobatics for an action scene, Singing or Dancing for musical plays and movies, etc., but that's obvious enough.)