What Games do you think are Neotrad?

[GobHag]

One way to look at it MIGHT be that in Neo-Trad play the character is imposed on the premise and on the setting. In Narrativist play the premise is imposed on the setting and character, and in Trad/Classic play the setting is imposed on the premise and character.

While primacy of character is important, premise and setting do work as a way to make sure everyone on the table are in the same page. It's probably why the idea of limiting ancestry for verisimilitude reasons are disliked so much, the not-entirely-canon-compliant Forbidden Realms in most 5e player's mind should be alow for Tiefling/Orc Life Clerics no problem.

I don't think Hero is neotrad per se, but I think it absolutely has all the tools to be used that way, without much that would automatically pull away from that.

This is something I'm actually very interested too. Games not designed for Neotrad, but is still able to without much fuss or even commonly played for it even with all the obstacles the system gives them. @gorice so while I'm unlikely to play 3e, I'm still curious just for things to read and analyze(or steal for another campaign or something)

 

[pawsplay]

Part of Hero's historical culture is "bluebooking" which is mostly OC/freeform play conducted in parallel with the group sessions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is something I'm actually very interested too. Games not designed for Neotrad, but is still able to without much fuss or even commonly played for it even with all the obstacles the system gives them. @gorice so while I'm unlikely to play 3e, I'm still curious just for things to read and analyze(or steal for another campaign or something)

The reason I said that is that Hero was, of course, originally designed for superheroes. And while you can run a superhero game in a way that's not extremely character centric, or is expected to drag characters off into unexpected directions, its not actually what the genre usually expects; it mostly expects you to explore the confines of the characters as presented, in some cases unfolding them as they go (this is particularly common with the teen or new-supers subgenres, also the one area characters sometimes angle off significantly from their base state). There are some practical reasons for this relatively static development in the history of superhero comics, but its still become enough of a trope of the genre that a game to represent it has to at least lean into that.

 

[gorice]

This is something I'm actually very interested too. Games not designed for Neotrad, but is still able to without much fuss or even commonly played for it even with all the obstacles the system gives them. @gorice so while I'm unlikely to play 3e, I'm still curious just for things to read and analyze(or steal for another campaign or something)

The problem with RPGs is there are too many of them and I don't have time to play them all. Like @Thomas Shey said, supers games might interest you. I've heard Marvel Universe is good, and not as crunchy as Champions/Hero, but I haven't played it myself.

13th Age is a really good suggestion someone made earlier. Likewise, 4e D&D (probably you're familiar with it, but just in case), and maybe Blades in the Dark or similar games (Blood Red Blossoms is a free game based on the BitD chassis, made by the guy who did Fabula Ultima).

I'm never not going to recommend Apocalypse World. Extremely character-driven, but with no planned events. You'll either love it or hate it, but probably gain something from the experience.

 

[innerdude]

To further innerdude’s point. There’s a whole load of play that’s similar but for genre. As long as we stay within the genre we’re doing it right.

To a certain degree I think this true. Again, it's a difference of perspective, but that perspective makes a difference in approach to play. For vanilla SNN (Story-Now Narrative), the genre is important because it focuses the available premises. Neotrad looks at genre as an important (but not singular) boundary that limits character trait selection.

I think both types of play find their enjoyment in looking at how X, X is.

So Batman does some particularly Batman things and everyone goes ‘awesome, Batman would really be doing those type of things and you did it in a very cool way.’

I'm not so sure about this for both vanilla SNN and neotrad. Neotrad does for sure; the reward of playing Batman is to engage fully in the premise of being Batman, and the better one fulfills the role in the game, the more Batman-y themes and stories emerge.

I don't think SNN looks at genre and goes, "Hmmm, I really enjoy pontificating on just how screwed up your average screwed up post-nuclear apocalypse actually is." It's more interested in watching the characters navigate the landscape of it. If a particular element of the shared fiction stands out or has a key role, it's only in the interest of getting characters moving forward within the premise.

 

[thefutilist]

To a certain degree I think this true. Again, it's a difference of perspective, but that perspective makes a difference in approach to play. For vanilla SNN (Story-Now Narrative), the genre is important because it focuses the available premises. Neotrad looks at genre as an important (but not singular) boundary that limits character trait selection.



I'm not so sure about this for both vanilla SNN and neotrad. Neotrad does for sure; the reward of playing Batman is to engage fully in the premise of being Batman, and the better one fulfills the role in the game, the more Batman-y themes and stories emerge.

I don't think SNN looks at genre and goes, "Hmmm, I really enjoy pontificating on just how screwed up your average screwed up post-nuclear apocalypse actually is." It's more interested in watching the characters navigate the landscape of it. If a particular element of the shared fiction stands out or has a key role, it's only in the interest of getting characters moving forward within the premise.

I’ll try and explain myself better (although the following is a bit reductive)

When I was doing genre play, I’d kind of play into the genre. So the choices for my character tended to be what was genre appropriate. If I was playing batman (or most super heroes), I wouldn’t kill because that breaks the genre and I’d be judged for breaking the genre.

The way I play now, there is no genre standard in the appraisal. If you’re a superhero and you kill, then you’re judged as a human being based on whatever standard of ethics the players have. You won’t be judged for breaking the genre.

In terms of neo-trad play, I think it’s more like the first than the second. You’re trying to affirm the players vision of their character, not judge them as a human being. You’re also being less responsive to the situation, you’re always folding it back towards your vision. It’s the player version of the many roads to Rome GM style. Only if the group’s on the same page, then you’re all heading to Rome. The GM is creating opposition that isn’t going to screw with your conception of your character.

Or put a very different way. The way I play now, Batman could never kill and that might actually make him the villain. We'd have to see how the story goes, I don't think you'd want that kind of uncertainty in either genre trad or neo-trad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think Hero is neotrad per se, but I think it absolutely has all the tools to be used that way, without much that would automatically pull away from that.

Generally I think that neo-trad styles of play are not all that far from trad in terms of their mechanical design and a lot of their basic process. There are specific things that are HELPFUL, added ways to flag character concept elements, ways to trigger and manage plot arcs under greater player control, etc. However many trad games are played with some of that mindset anyway. A game like 4e can spin in that direction for sure, with the players selecting all the elements of character build, including all their items. There's a very rich milieu that ties into the character stuff, so it is VERY easy for the GM to understand "oh, I'm supposed to run something with Demons" or whatever. Mainly the difference between that and Narrativist play is whether character concept prevails over premise. In Narrativist play the premise imposes on and shapes the characters, forges them into something new. Character is more of a static concept, or develops along a preplanned arc in neo-trad play.

 

[pemerton]

Do people really think that someone who posts a thread asking how to develop play in the style of Fabula Ultima should be directed to go play, I dunno, 3e D&D or GURPS? Dogma is getting in the way of good and actionable advice.

No, of course not. I mean, GURPS is classic purist-for-system, and can be drifted neo-trad only in the way that RM might also be - namely, by leaning heavily into the scope for character definition via the intricate PC build rules, and largely ignoring or overriding the resolution rules as presented.

3E is not a game that I feel close to, or would play in any serious fashion. To me it seems to combine gamist PC building with largely high concept simulationist or exploration-heavy gamist play, but without any of the technical innovations that characterise games oriented towards neo-trad play. In Forgist term, this is not a matter of agenda but of what the Forge would call "ephemera", search-and-handling, etc.

I reject the premise that particular mechanics, taken in isolation, must suggest a certain purpose of play.

As do I. Hence why I think (say) DW can be played both "story now" and "neotrad".

Likewise, Burning Wheel - probably my favourite FRPG - has PC build mechanics that are redolent of classic purist-for-system design. In that respect it resembles The Riddle of Steel. As Ron Edwards said,

Realism, so-called, was supposed to be the foundation for heroic, mythic tale-creation. However, without metagame mechanics or any other mechanisms regarding protagonism, the realism-Sim took over, and RuneQuest became, essentially, a wargame at the individual level. . . . One functional solution to the problem, as illustrated for just about every Narrativist game out there, is to move combat mechanics very far into the metagame realm: Sorcerer, Castle Falkenstein, The Dying Earth, Zero, Orkworld, Hero Wars, and The Pool take that road to various distances, and it works. Until recently, I would have said these and similar designs presented the only functional solution from a Narrativism-first perspective.

However, The Riddle of Steel is like a guy waving his hand in the back of the room -"Scuse me, scuse me, what about that first road? I'm not ready to jettison that idea yet." It's as if someone stepped into The Chaosium in 1977, and said, "Hey, you know, if you don't put some kind of player-modulated personality mechanic in there, this game is going to be all about killing monsters and collecting Clacks." This didn't happen in 1977, and that's why RuneQuest play was often indeed all about those things. But it's happened now . . .​

It's no coincidence, in my view, that Jake Norwood has written the foreword to BW Gold; nor that a RPG.net reviewer summarised BW as "If you’ve ever wanted to combine the powerful emotions and epic grandeur of Lord of the Rings with the brutally detailed combat of RuneQuest, then boy, do I have the game for you".

Truly excessive detail is simply bad design, in my opinion.

Yet purist-for-system engines are built around it!

 

[Manbearcat]

Isn't this just play as such? If there's no system, even an informal one, just force, I don't think we're even talking about RPGs anymore. Certainly not in a sense in which it matters much which system we are nominally playing.

This is what I wrote for reference (your "this" in the first sentence):

* Its very important to me that system have a robust and immutable "say" that cannot (and will not) be subverted by either player-side or GM-side railroading or Force.

I'm not 100 % certain what your implication here is, but if you're saying that games that feature Force to move the gamestate/fiction forward aren't RPGing...well, then the majority of play out there in the wild since the late 80s wouldn't constitute RPGing.

I may personally not run games that entail GM's subverting one part of system or another (often various action resolution manipulation, but sometimes just strategic exposition dumps, deus ex machina, or various forms of funneling/breadcrumbing), but it's so ubiquitous that setting No Force Allowed as a purity test for playing an RPG at all is not likely to get much traction in the community-at-large! I do think there is a very interesting conversation to have around what % or magnitude of Force deployment sends an RPG into Calvinball-land, though. I've discussed that in the past, but that isn't for this thread.

For this thread, the novel feature of Neotrad play as it pertains to Force is that the authority over ensuring outcomes emerge onscreen (possibly in the defiance of system) is shared by players in the form of either Systemization (which comes in various forms from PC Build dynamics allowing the system to be overwhelmed or "outcome swaps via breaking the currency dynamics" or so much player fiat loaded into the system that an intended or unintended dynamic of unfettered authorship emerges) or Social Contract (quid pro quo of "you do my metaplot/setting tourism and I'll do your character arc" or "hey let's just ignore that outcome because it's bad for what you/I want" or elaborate Session 0 mapping onto play that falls outside of System).

I think some 'indie' or 'story' games actually do just this. Is Blades in the Dark really an OC game?

Agreed. Some games do this. Blades in the Dark is definitely not one of them (a quick look at Player's Best Practices reveals a player orientation that is diametrically opposed to Neotrad; Build Your Character Through Play among plenty of others). I'm not clear on what you have in mind here. I mean, Tier 0 to Tier 2, orthodox Blades in the Dark play (where the GM is using system to put pressure on the Crew as they are supposed to) is about as anathema to OC as it gets. Stuff going morbidly wrong for Character/Crew during that time is everywhere. The trick is for them to skillfully manage the game of "spinning plates", endure/"right the ship"/"get back off the canvas"...if they can. Tier 3 its still there in that same sweet spot of play, but towards the end it gets wobbly.

Now Tier 4 and 5? At that point, we get a sort of play like I mention above; the system's loop which is intended to put relentless pressure on players and impose continuous suites of hard choices gets overwhelmed by the PC/Crew build dynamics (especially in concert with Gang Scale and Cohorts). So I would say, Tier 4 and Tier 5 Blades in the Dark definitely tilts toward a Neotrad dynamic (which is why I've said before that I feel like Blades needs a My Life With Master endgame before Tier 4/5).

I think the problems we're having are that (a) neotrad isn't a discrete thing, certainly not an 'agenda' in the old Forge sense; and (b) no system is bound to an agenda anyway.

That's why I've been trying to identify the OP's particular priorities and suggest games that might support them.

As @pemerton mentions in response to you, in Forge terms, Neotrad is definitely High Concept Simulationism (HCS). However, the novel feature of Neotrad (as it pertains to HCS) is that ubiquitous Player Fiat or even Player-side Railroading or Quid Pro Quo between players and GM.

Last thought on the matter, the interesting thing about D&D 4e and one of the primary reasons it got so much hate (and love from me!) is because it elegantly toggles between Neotrad and (along with Blades in the Dark, Torchbearer, and certain PBtA games where the GM is aggressive and knows where/how to apply pressure; like DW) a Story Now + Gamism hybrid (that delivers on both). The dial is trivially:

* If you want Story Now + Gamism, then up the Encounter Budgets and difficulty in battlefield arrays/rosters and hard choices in terms of nested Skill Challenges for combats. If you want Neotrad, do the inverse.

* If you want Story Now + Gamism, while still following Fail Forward's constraints, when players suffer Skill Challenge micro-failures or macro-failures, "make as hard a move as you like (to borrow Vincent's AW language)" should tilt toward punishing/hard choices. If you want Neotrad, do the inverse.

The first approach generates dynamic evolution of character, story, setting, follow-on conflicts. The latter approach ensures that player preconception of character and attendant arc "stays online."

 

[pemerton]

Which is exactly what I was talking about.



So presuming the mechanics for silver weapons aren't simply superfluous, they signal that in play, one thing you might use is a silver dagger to fight certain foes.

I'm not sure where silver weapons come into it.

I'm talking about a system like AD&D, that has - for instance - a price list for animals that will almost never come into play. Or Rolemaster, that has - as part of PC gen - rules for generating hand, foot and head size. These systems have rules that do not satisfy the "Chekhov's gun for mechanics" principle - it is not implicit in the system that these rules will be used, and it is certainly not implicit that they will be used regularly.

They are there to serve other purposes - roughly, a sense of "completeness" that is part of a certain simulationist ethos in RPG design.