What Games do you think are Neotrad?

[pemerton]

I don't consider physics-style simulation and genre-style simulation to be so close as to fall into the same category.

To me, this is like saying that "I don't consider the orbits of the planets and the falling of an apple to earth to be so close as to fall in the same category."

I mean, if the category is size of things in motion than of course they're rather different; apples are a lot smaller than planets. But if the category is effects of universal gravitation between massive bodies than they are instances of the same phenomenon.

Edwards is using "simulationism" to group, and explain features of, RPGing that foregrounds engaging with the imagined content for its own sake. That content can, itself, be various sorts of stuff. And he unpacks those variations in loving detail.

 

[pemerton]

I've been thinking about this further, and how is AD&D's ridiculously exhaustive equipment lists any different than the same procedures in a "Narrativist" lane that end up specifying what streets characters live on, or how they feel about characters that never turn out to be that important?

You refer to certain procedures. Which RPGs do you have in mind?

I don't know of any RPG that specifies what street a PC lives on, so can't comment on that. But the RPGs I know best that focus on how PCs feel about other characters are Burning Wheel and Torchbearer, and the design of those games ensures that these characters are important.

 

[pemerton]

I’ve said it before but 90% of the people who claim they are sim are GNS Gamists. They’re just confusing what they like about the medium with the purpose they put the medium to.

I made my own posts just upthread before reading this. Setting aside the precise figure (90%? Most? Many?), I agree.

Particularly in the D&D and D&D-adjacent RPG space.

 

[pemerton]

I also think there are certain ways to play that do organize their play around simply existing in a fictional world, where players will spend a good deal of their time not actively seeking to overcome challenges.

So what about if you do all that but we know you’ll succeed? Then you start seeing stuff like, it wouldn’t feel earned. (hmmm).

So I think this from Edwards is relevant:

How does conflict of interest relate to Step On Up and to Challenge? The crucial answer is that it may be present twice, independently, within the two-level structure.

• Competition at the Step On Up level = conflict of interest regarding players' performance and impact on the game-world.
• Competition at the Challenge level = conflict of interest among characters' priorities (survival, resource accumulation, whatever) in the game-world.

Think of each level having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. Therefore, four extremes of dial-twisting may be compared.

1. High competition in Step On Up plus low competition in Challenge = entirely team-based play, party style against a shared Challenge, but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people, such as levelling-up faster, having the best stuff, having one's player-characters be killed less often, getting more Victory Points, or some such thing. Most Tunnels & Trolls play is like this.
2. Low competition in Step On Up plus high competition in Challenge = characters are constantly scheming on one another or perhaps openly trying to kill or outdo another but the players aren't especially competing, because consequences to the player are low per unit win/loss. Kobolds Ate My Baby and the related game, Ninja Burger, play this way.
3. High competition in both levels = moving toward the Hard Core (see below), including strong rules-manipulation, often observed in variants of Dungeons & Dragons as well in much LARP play. A risky way to play, but plenty of fun if you have a well-designed system like Rune.
4. Low competition in both levels = strong focus on Step On Up and Challenge but with little need for conflict-of-interest. Quite a bit of D&D based on story-heavy published scenarios plays this way. It shares some features with "characters face problem" Simulationist play, with the addition of a performance metric of some kind. Some T&T play Drifted this way as well, judging by many Sorcerer's Apprentice articles.

Looking at that last dot point, we can see that play in which characters face problems/challenges may be purely exploratory, and hence simulationist. It's the introduction of the performance metric that makes it "step on up"/gamist. I think @thefutilist captures the notion of a performance metric in the wording of "it wouldn't feel earned". Earning an outcome is a type of performance metric.

An RPG that might be played in way that includes characters facing problems, which are challenges for them in the fiction, but which is not gamist because it doesn't have a performance metric, could be Fate. Maybe some approaches to GUMSHOE?

Played in this way, within Edwards' framework these would be High Concept Sim, but perhaps with a different sort of player/GM authority structure from the one that was most prevalent when he was writing 20 years ago.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’m not passing judgement so much as stating that within a specific model (way of looking at the world), there is no such thing as sim. In another model, you can have sim for days, all the sim you’d ever want and then some more.

My creative agenda would be Narrativism (or story now, to use the newer term)

To be honest, I very much expected that to be the case. I never clash with anyone so much as I do with fans of narrativism (even when the subject isn't narrativism, oddly).

 

[Micah Sweet]

The question about simulation being an agenda or not is not about whether or not how closely a game simulates X or Y is an important element of a game's design. It obviously is to some people. It's about if it's the objective or simply a set of aesthetic tolerances will pursuing some other objective. Like at the end of the day if what we are actually doing at the table is overcoming challenges then that's still Step On Up even if our tolerance or aesthetic desires require the game's system to model medieval combat more accurately or if metagame resources are a no go for us.

Our creative agenda is overall a matter of what play is organized around. What are we trying to do when we sit down at the game table?

My agenda is about Players exploring a persistent, largely pre-generated imaginary world, where the parts of that world align with reality as much as fantasy and practicality allow, through the actions of their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

My agenda is about Players exploring a persistent, largely pre-generated imaginary world, where the parts of that world align with reality as much as fantasy and practicality allow, through the actions of their PCs.

I think we can push this is a bit harder, can't we? I mean, your profile says "OSR Enthusiast". I assume that the players who explore your persistent world are not just chilling, or going shopping. I assume that they have to struggle across the land (perhaps adjudicated via hex crawl play) and, when they get where they're going, are expected to confront challenges that the players are doing their best to defeat.

 

[Aldarc]

I can't see everything in this conversation; however, I feel like this thread that is supposed to be about Neo-Trad Games! has been hijacked by a habitual thread-crapper with a victim complex (potentially yet again) to argue, wrongly, that simulationism was a game agenda persecuted or maligned by Ron Edwards and the Forge. Seeing this interesting thread turn into yet another round of re-hashing battles about GNS is pretty disheartening.

Could we please get back to talking about Neo-Trad Games and Culture, please?

 

[GobHag]

As this has strayed away a bit from discussing Neotrad specifically, let me say this; I consider Simulationism to be something I'm vehemently against in my games(systems and tables). Systems that want that as the goal are an automatic 'no' to me and tables that are looking for realism are an automatic worthles, generally I think the more a rules model reality the worse it is in a very rapid pace. Hell, I'm even against rules-light simulationism that some in the OSR space espouse.

They're both something I only want a sprinkle of at best. Want to play a simulation? Play a survival game.

Going back a bit @clearstream I disagree that Neotrad and OC should be differentiated. The Trad gamestyle and the Trad design ethos are both called Trad; Different but they hew very close to each other.

 

[clearstream]

As this has strayed away a bit from discussing Neotrad specifically, let me say this; I consider Simulationism to be something I'm vehemently against in my games(systems and tables). Systems that want that as the goal are an automatic 'no' to me and tables that are looking for realism are an automatic worthles, generally I think the more a rules model reality the worse it is in a very rapid pace. Hell, I'm even against rules-light simulationism that some in the OSR space espouse.

Another cure would be to avoid conflating playing for elevated appreciation with playing for realism. Fidelity to reference may be analogic and symbolic; the reference itself needn't be real.

Going back a bit @clearstream I disagree that Neotrad and OC should be differentiated. The Trad gamestyle and the Trad design ethos are both called Trad; Different but they hew very close to each other.

I considered that. The problem I hit is the degree to which the YZE plays more like OSR than OC, and yet surely has a right to the label seeing as "neotrad" was literally coined to label it. Try tinkering with the indie mechanics that focus is put upon: you quickly learn that you can apply neotrad design without getting all the way to OC. You can go in many directions.

I've never heard of a trad design ethos. Can you say more about that?