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

[GobHag]

TradOC? Is that neotrad/OC? Trad is a style of natural evolution to fit the needs of ttrpgs with a gm and other players interacting in a shared world. Neotrad is pretty much the evolution of adapting that game to a forum post where extreme asynchronous interaction provides room to shoehorn in a fanfic that others can interact with or ignore while doing the same themselves.

I think that the player trying to carry the disruption of neotrad to the table is more responsible than the setting for making it work. That responsibility comes in the form of a willingness to proactively carry all of the responsibilities pulled from the GM with their own actions and story building rather than just expecting everyone else to mold themselves to their neotrad story. No setting is capable of doing that for neotrad once neotrad takes the first step of changing the gm's role.

TradOC was just something that I thought would be more appropriate as a term because after talking with the writer of the blog, the article that he linked used the term differently(Basically hybrid storygame+trad game design mostly used in swedish game circles). I had a reddit post using it and my brain slipped calling it. And no, Neotrad isn't adapting the game to PbP or freeform RP but how people from those communities bring in those assumptions into TTRPG play

Calling neotrad disruptive to a game isn't quite right, after all it's a play assumption and all assumptions can be disruptive in the wrong group/place. A setting in an RPG for Neotrad players is instead is used as an assumption or a way for different players to have their desired arc or story to work together(literally or not). Almost like a validation in how 'this character fits' into the (potential) game world.

Also what I think a game that is most assuredly neotrad/TradOC, or at least designed with similar enough assumptions for the culture, and with a definite but flexible setting is Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine which I've heard is described as 'Play To Find Out How'

 

[Bedrockgames]

TradOC? Is that neotrad/OC? Trad is a style of natural evolution to fit the needs of ttrpgs with a gm and other players interacting in a shared world. Neotrad is pretty much the evolution of adapting that game to a forum post where extreme asynchronous interaction provides room to shoehorn in a fanfic that others can interact with or ignore while doing the same themselves.

I think that the player trying to carry the disruption of neotrad to the table is more responsible than the setting for making it work. That responsibility comes in the form of a willingness to proactively carry all of the responsibilities pulled from the GM with their own actions and story building rather than just expecting everyone else to mold themselves to their neotrad story. No setting is capable of doing that for neotrad once neotrad takes the first step of changing the gm's role.

I have to say I love the Retired Adventure blog but the taxonomy of Six Cultures of play never really made much sense to me

 

[tetrasodium]

I have to say I love the Retired Adventure blog but the taxonomy of Six Cultures of play never really made much sense to me

It's definitely not as useful for discussing design as forge or something, but it has its uses. I've found it useful as a thing that a disruptive "R O L E player" can be pointed at as a starting point for discussing their misconceptions about d&d (or similar ttrpgs). It's a better starting point for discussion than talking about (hockey) checking players while playing basketball or full contact tackle soccer.

With that said ime it's usually better for everyone to just tell that player they are a bad fit early on and encourage them to find something else to do on gameday if the first couple efforts at trying to talk to them about disruption rather than continued attempts at rolling that boulder in Tartarus.

Edit: part of the trouble with using the original blog post is that it presents the various styles as if they can be fit to any game and there is little if any exploration into why they do or don't work in certain types of games(system or campaign).

 

[kenada]

I have to say I love the Retired Adventure blog but the taxonomy of Six Cultures of play never really made much sense to me

I think the six cultures are most useful when viewed as different potential audiences for a game (e.g., as I discussed in post #299). Otherwise, using them to build out a taxonomy doesn’t seem especially helpful for actually designing games.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm 55 and got my start playing AD&D in 1979...so probably pretty typical on this forum. At this point, my preferred game play has evolved pretty firmly in a Neo-trad direction, though with a healthy dollop derived from PBtA games and other more purely story-driven RPGs.

One thing that particularly interests me is the intersection of wider cultural trends and how they become incorporated into the way we play games. In particular, the cultural conversation around consent has been evolving very rapidly in recent years, and I think it has a lot of implications for how we view and play our RPGs. As a GM, my typical role, I have become far more conscious of the implicit contract (these days, often made explicit) between everyone at the table. I think this has profoundly altered the way we create stories, and the balance of power at TTRPGs.

Have others experienced this shift? I have noticed that, in many forum conversations, a lot of tension arises around different attitudes towards GM control over the game, and subsequently player agency...or consent.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think the six cultures are most useful when viewed as different potential audiences for a game (e.g., as I discussed in post #299). Otherwise, using them to build out a taxonomy doesn’t seem especially helpful for actually designing games.

But that is ultimately about design. If you are carving up the entire RPG audience into these camps, naturally designers will cater to the camps. I am just not sure the underlying assumptions behind the categories is accurate. I could simply be out of touch. Like I said, I like his blog and he is a really smart guy. I just don't see the RPG cultural landscape he paints here, when I game at the table or cross paths with other styles of play (I see some elements, but not this particularly arrangement of categories).

I can also see how it would be valuable from a non-design standpoint: making sure you play with people who have the same gaming 'culture' as you. But again I just never found this particular grouping and its definitions to be satisfying (and I think most people and groups, even if there is merit to these groupings) don't neatly fit into one or the other. I even think as the idea from this blog has gained traction it has almost kind of shaped gaming culture 'artificially'. I do run into a lot of younger gamers who take these categories quite seriously, and I think it is because the article itself helped define their sense of the RPG cultural landscape. But I think if you grew up playing in the 70s or 80s and saw all these different styles emerging over time, it doesn't quite land the same

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's definitely not as useful for discussing design as forge or something, but it has its uses. I've found it useful as a thing that a disruptive "R O L E player" can be pointed at as a starting point for discussing their misconceptions about d&d (or similar ttrpgs). It's a better starting point for discussion than talking about (hockey) checking players while playing basketball or full contact tackle soccer.

I am not quite sure what you mean by this. To me if someone is a 'ROLE player' and that is causing disruption in the group, that is not a matter of the ROLE player having misconceptions about D&D and other RPGs, it is just a clash of styles. But I don't need 6 cultures of play to identify that as a problem, and the six cultures model seems like a somewhat unwieldy way to approach this very simple and very known clash of expectations and play style.

Edit: part of the trouble with using the original blog post is that it presents the various styles as if they can be fit to any game and there is little if any exploration into why they do or don't work in certain types of games(system or campaign).

For me I just question the actual categories. They just don't match what I see and have seen over time.

 

[pemerton]

I think the six cultures are most useful when viewed as different potential audiences for a game (e.g., as I discussed in post #299). Otherwise, using them to build out a taxonomy doesn’t seem especially helpful for actually designing games.

But that is ultimately about design. If you are carving up the entire RPG audience into these camps, naturally designers will cater to the camps.

I took @kenada's point to be that the "six cultures" don't actually yield any design prescriptions or advice. They don't tell you what techniques, or procedures, or elements, you might include in a game to make it a good trad game, or a good neotrad game, or a good "story" game, or whatever.

 

[kenada]

But that is ultimately about design. If you are carving up the entire RPG audience into these camps, naturally designers will cater to the camps. I am just not sure the underlying assumptions behind the categories is accurate. I could simply be out of touch. Like I said, I like his blog and he is a really smart guy. I just don't see the RPG cultural landscape he paints here, when I game at the table or cross paths with other styles of play (I see some elements, but not this particularly arrangement of categories).

I think it’s more helpful to look at the cultures as describing different sets of preferences rather than as “camps”.

I am just not sure the underlying assumptions behind the categories is accurate.

This is touches on why I am critical of the taxonomical approach — the problem being that as soon as you deviate from or step outside of the taxonomy, it becomes a lot less (if at all) useful.

 

[Aldarc]

I think it’s more helpful to look at the cultures as describing different sets of preferences rather than as “camps”.

This is touches on why I am critical of the taxonomical approach — the problem being that as soon as you deviate from or step outside of the taxonomy, it becomes a lot less (if at all) useful.

Right. It's also not as if people swear themselves to these gaming cultures as if they were factions. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that some people do, just like some people declare themselves part of "Team Simulationist" before launching a crusade against G and N, whose very existence somehow threatens them. But anyway, there are plenty of people who jump between these cultures of play without thinking anything of it, perhaps picking up an OSR game or playing a Story game or two and then going back into a more Traditional game.