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

[kenada]

You're definitely right there, as I think it's highly questionable whether the second and third items on his list ought to be regarded as appropriate or functional. I certainly would find anyone who used "conversation traps" to be unbearably toxic. Is there some rationale I'm not seeing why I should change my mind?

I’ve done #2 before (or something that seems to be in the spirit). In a Mage: The Awakening 2e game a couple of years ago, we were investigating abductions where people would show up … changed. We had a suspicion a cop NPC we had met was crooked and working with them, but we didn’t know. After some investigation, we found a hideout and decided to stake it out. Being a life mage, I opted to short circuit the situation instead of waiting for the action to come to us. I made myself look like the cop, went up to the hideout, and knocked on the door. The reaction when they answered gave me all the information we needed to confirm our suspicions. The reason why I’m calling this #2 is because of the way I collapsed the response space of the ST. Unless that place was a red herring, we were getting the information.

 

[kenada]

I should add this hinges on what @Manbearcat means by “conversation trap”. Is it skillfully tricking everyone into going to the wrong place and being angry at each other while you steal the captain’s ship and wife and daughter (like Cugel in Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight), or is it approaching the conversation as a gameable element to get what you want?

 

[niklinna]

I should add this hinges on what @Manbearcat means by “conversation trap”. Is it skillfully tricking everyone into going to the wrong place and being angry at each other while you steal the captain’s ship and wife and daughter (like Cugel in Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight), or is it approaching the conversation as a gameable element to get what you want?

I figured it was asking peripheral/tangential questions of the DM in order to get answers that require them to concede something they wouldn't have if you'd asked directly what you want to do. It can really drag play time out; even if only one player does it, their turns can easily take 5x as long as normal. I call it "fishing for exceptions".

 

[Aldarc]

I don't disagree; that's why I've said the problem with expecting visible difference there is probably not practical because of the intrinsic coarseness of the system. But at the end, if that distinction is important to someone, then that's a reason its not going to serve them, even though its self-defining traits are good in other results.

Basically, I'm arguing that some expectations are simply not going to be supported there; the question is if the player has those expectations. But I've seen some neotrad people who absolutely did have those expectations, so I don't think its off to note that there's a limitation here for them.

Maybe you have a better idea than I do, but I'm not sure what game system is out there would allow them to never fail all the time about the things related to their character concept.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To pile on to/with/around @Manbearcat I think there's a point where it useful to admit that every game presses the G button, and that at least a part of the difference outlined above is simply different rationale for why it gets pushed and exactly what happens when it does. I'm bending the notion of Gamist pretty far there, I know, but not to the breaking point I don't think. To steal 'maximally compelling and consequential', and I think to agree with the above, is that when you X after that phrase honestly, and in keeping with expectations and system, that it covers all the above example (with, as mentioned, some planning and thought).

Well, 'G', like the other agendas, is more than simply a degree. Some games are very gamist, but the 'game' is about on a par with Hooks & Ladders. Other games may only be secondarily focused on delivering G, but what they deliver is much more sophisticated and challenging.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

B/X was explicitly roll in order, with a limited option to drop two points from a non- dex, con, or cha stat (but not below a 9) to bump up your prime requisite by 1. Unlike AD&D it offered no RAW alternatives that can shape more to a predetermined priority of stats.

Yeah, I kind of started thinking about other flavors of Basic, which I don't really know well, and of course a lot of people imported stuff like that from AD&D, which is not official but certainly common.

For the most part though I think stats are fairly irrelevant and you can roleplay most any personality and approach with any stats or class so I big picture come out to the same point as you. You want a Sean Connery James Bond approach B/X elf? It will work fine. Whether it will get successful results will depend entirely on the player's specific approach in the situation and the DM's adjudication.

Well, I am pretty sure that you are correct there's a school of play that existed in classic D&D like that, but there was ALSO a school that said you play your ability scores to the hilt, that they ARE the definition of the character (along with class and alignment). This obvious clashed with the more challenge-centered Gygaxian folks, but even Gygax talked about playing to your character's abilities. I think he just didn't expect you to take it to the extreme of, like, losing! Or maybe he even just thought of it as a challenge, like "hey, dwarf, you got INT 5, give me the goofy story of how you figured out that Sphinx riddle!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think one very important element to understanding neo-trad and gamist priorities is that contests of skill that have multiple approaches, builds, etc can be an avenue of further expression by playstyle. When you sit down to play a fighting game or an RPG or a MOBA, each character has their own powers and the way those powers allow them to address problems and flow are a major part of the texture of playing them, a big part of their vibe.

It makes sense to me that neo-trad as a collective is ambivalent about gamism for this reason, while it can function as a block to freeform expression, "how my character fights" is also a major avenue for expressing them-- take Lancer and Gubat Banwa for instance, there's so much room to fight in radically different ways, and they all intersect with the game's lore such that it becomes another language you can use to describe that character. Some players are more willing than others to accept that dynamic, and I think we see both because they're two ways of serving the same core idea.

So I can see how granularity would let a player speak with more specificity about their character's skill as well.

Thinking about it in terms of 4e. You can see both positives and negatives of its approach. The very level playing field, and design techniques like focusing most of the effects of powers onto damage, and the very existence of A/E/D/U and codification of powers COULD work against some character concepts. OTOH it does offer a lot of 'cool move space' and a pretty decent stage on which to use it, along with hooks into the other sorts of character elements those might relate to. So probably a more effective design in that space would be less concerned with balance, or using a single character architecture, and maybe open things up more towards different types of design, like characters that do combos, cooldowns, etc. That's obviously only in one dimension of character, but a game really designed for that might do things like tie some mental state (that is basically RPed by the player, maybe with some loose rules) to their mechanics, like "I have to get really angry before I actually let loose!" Things like that, which I expect are more likely to appear maybe in Japanese RPGs? I'm not sure, I haven't really ever played any of them, just heard things.

 

[The Shadow]

I should add this hinges on what @Manbearcat means by “conversation trap”. Is it skillfully tricking everyone into going to the wrong place and being angry at each other while you steal the captain’s ship and wife and daughter (like Cugel in Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight), or is it approaching the conversation as a gameable element to get what you want?

Given that it's explicitly called "playing the GM", it pretty clearly means manipulating the GM with conversational tricks into revealing more than he intended. I don't think in-game conversations were meant

 

[pemerton]

There is a whole host of parameters of challenge-based play in TTRPGs. Some of them play nice with one another. Some do not. An incomplete list:

<snip>

* Play the GM by “setting conversation traps” to constrain or alter their obstacle framing via introducing causality/realism scaffolding for your position.

* Pixel-bitching and/or “turtling” to maximally decrease your risk profile and grind play to a sufficiently slow pace to ensure your mental processing has “the space to work” while increasing the GM’s prospects of “revealing their hand.”

Just about my least favourite sorts of RPGing!

EDIT: OK, if this is a "conversation trap" then I'm not against it:

I’ve done #2 before (or something that seems to be in the spirit). In a Mage: The Awakening 2e game a couple of years ago, we were investigating abductions where people would show up … changed. We had a suspicion a cop NPC we had met was crooked and working with them, but we didn’t know. After some investigation, we found a hideout and decided to stake it out. Being a life mage, I opted to short circuit the situation instead of waiting for the action to come to us. I made myself look like the cop, went up to the hideout, and knocked on the door. The reaction when they answered gave me all the information we needed to confirm our suspicions. The reason why I’m calling this #2 is because of the way I collapsed the response space of the ST. Unless that place was a red herring, we were getting the information.

In saying it's not my favourite, I was thinking more of a certain sort of pedantic or deliberately incomplete way of framing an action declaration, so as to then haggle over the obstacle by pointing to "realistic"/in-fiction-causal implications of that pedantic or incomplete framing.

Whereas @kenada's example seems to me just clever play of the fiction via deployment of abilities, but it's not based on withholding parts of the action declaration so as to then blindside the GM with them afterwards.

 

[kenada]

Given that it's explicitly called "playing the GM", it pretty clearly means manipulating the GM with conversational tricks into revealing more than he intended. I don't think in-game conversations were meant

Then that seems fine. It seems like a skillful play to frame your actions in such a way that it reveals information the GM should otherwise want to keep hidden. That’s only a problem if one assumes players must only react to what they are given instead of proactively seeking out what they want.

Personally, I would rather play with less or no hidden information. There is still a space (if not a need) for creative framing by the players, but it avoids any tendencies to want to protect and preserve the hidden board state.

Obviously, neither of those approaches are appropriate in all styles of play, but that’s true of most approaches. There’s a tendency in RPG discussions to claim certain types of play as innately dysfunctional because it conflicts with trad play, but I don’t think that’s fair or right.