Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective

[Thomas Shey]

OK, so one extreme would be B/X D&D

Uhm, no. Pemerton actually had closer to what I was thinking of with Fate. Early D&D didn't embed things in broader abilities for the most part; it just outright ignored most of them outside some limited things, and it wasn't exactly friendly to mixing and matching.

4e is closer to what I was talking about with the second, but it still really wants you to bucket things and has a very limited ability to move outside of how things work except the limited things in Feats and the like. Its better than many games in the D&D sphere, but its still not particulate enough for what I'm talking about, which are things like, well, the Hero System.

(Yes, neither of these are in the D&D sphere, but I'm not particularly sold class-based systems are at all good for this sort of thing).

 

[Thomas Shey]

He is a pretty smart guy from what I know (not sure if he is an academic but definitely an intelligent and well read person). I don't know most conversations on blogs in the RPG world (especially the world the retired adventurer belongs to) assume a certain level of understanding. But this one isn't especially difficult to crack I think. He goes over things like the history and explain what each on is. What I always found confusing about the article wasn't anything the author did but the use of Trad (which he employs because according to him that is the term people who play the style use). That always throws my brain for a loop.

My biggest issues are that I'm not particularly sold that Classic/Trad are as separated as he puts on, nor Trad and NeoTrad far as that goes.

 

[pemerton]

Well, I have to unpack what I said a little: its theoretically possible to represent a lot of fine distinctions in Fate, but since you don't have unlimited Aspects available, that theoretical potential isn't all that realistically practical in most versions of it. And of course it doesn't have much answer that I'm aware of to the "good at X, really good at y" problem I referenced.

I think HeroQuest Revised doesn't have these issues: descriptors are rated, and their are rules for how to handle degrees of precision in description.

 

[loverdrive]

Why isn't it easier to RP a thief when the game provides rules regarding what thieves DO? How do rules designed to inform a player of their character's abilities 'get in the way' of RP?

As an example, I'm playing in Scum&Villainy campaign right now, and some organic developments made my character move towards psychic mystical stuff, in tune with the Way and there were plenty of situations where leaning into it would be very cool and would showcase the character journey!

The problem is that I didn't have enough spare points lying around and my Attune was 0. So I had to just shoot people in the face instead, without a "use the force, Luke" moment until I came around to invest XP into magic-psychic mumbo-jumbo.

 

[loverdrive]

OK, so, I was sadly dragged into some stuff in another subforum and completely missed this cool thread!

I'm, like, absolutely not neo-trad. But I do agree! I recently came to a realization that I actually want the rules and fiction to be separated, with either one-way flow (as in rules constrain the fiction by prescribing a vague outcome and there's no way to manipulate fiction in a way to influence it) or just regulate narrative authority -- who gets to decide what happens next.

I, as a human being with a soul, am perfectly capable of just... deciding what happens next, so "I'm going to flap my hands in the air and fly!" and "I'm going to use a rope to climb!" having the exact same probability of success wouldn't make me choose the former instead of the latter.

 

[pemerton]

OK, so, I was sadly dragged into some stuff in another subforum and completely missed this cool thread!

Yeah, I think @The-Magic-Sword has made a great contribution by starting this thread. Neotrad is a really widespread approach, especially I think with younger RPGers (eg I'm thinking of some kids I GMed a session of In A Wicked Age for last year), and is absolutely worthy of discussion!

 

[Fenris-77]

As an example, I'm playing in Scum&Villainy campaign right now, and some organic developments made my character move towards psychic mystical stuff, in tune with the Way and there were plenty of situations where leaning into it would be very cool and would showcase the character journey!

The problem is that I didn't have enough spare points lying around and my Attune was 0. So I had to just shoot people in the face instead, without a "use the force, Luke" moment until I came around to invest XP into magic-psychic mumbo-jumbo.

Honest question, did you have fun RPing this until you had the XP to make it actually work? I can see that going either way.

 

[loverdrive]

Honest question, did you have fun RPing this until you had the XP to make it actually work? I can see that going either way.

Yeah, I had fun overall, otherwise I wouldn't catch a bus ride to the other side of the city to show up on sessions.

It's just... Idk, this specific thing with Attune felt more like filing out forms to get a permission to roleplay rather than a driving supporting force.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I had fun overall, otherwise I wouldn't catch a bus ride to the other side of the city to show up on sessions.

It's just... Idk, this specific thing with Attune felt more like filing out forms to get a permission to roleplay rather than a driving supporting force.

That makes sense. TBH that's a strange thing to have come up in a SaV game, but at least it wasn't a complete loss.

 

[loverdrive]

That makes sense. TBH that's a strange thing to have come up in a SaV game, but at least it wasn't a complete loss.

Well, I've met another PC's enemy, who was his previous teacher, and the whole situation was like "Finally! A worthy disciple!", and I really liked the idea of my character being a hidden gem of raw psychic power who was wasting his life on petty crime. SaV surely allows to utilize actions you don't have many dots in, but I didn't want to just do psychic stuff. I wanted the debut to be an explosive grand success, a reality storm.

I don't hold it against the game, but it made me think about the necessity of having rules that make thieves be good thieves and bad sorcerers.