A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[kenada]

I believe referee is merely a holdover from a time when people did not yet have a proper name for gamemasters and helped themselves with the next best thing that was somewhat familiar.

RPGs grew out of mini-games within wargames. And in wargames, you often do have an actual referee. Two players, or two teams of players are playing against each other, controlling all the units that are in the game. And the game can have an actual referee who is not participating in the play at all and not controlling any of the units, but simply making neutral, disinterested judgement calls on whether the moves that the players want to make are within the rules of the game.
Once the Special Agent Doing Spying And Sabotage minigame appeared, it was logical to have the decisions what these special agent units would learn or could accomplish made by the same person who was also refereeing the battles. At that point, the role was no longer "just the referee", but still primarily the referee. And once people were doing special mission play without the battles, the role no longer included any refereeing. But as these games where played by people who mostly had been playing wargames, and been calling the people who set up the battlefield and make judgement calls referees for decades, many still continued calling them referees. Out of habit.

But a gamemaster running an RPG is not doing any refereeing. A GM is an active participant in the play. Continuing the use of the term referee in discussions about RPGs is misleading, and I would even go as far as to say factually wrong.

I like linking this post by Jon Peterson because the article it discusses is actually about a group that did play the war-gaming way (with referee separate from the opposition). I actually tried something like it as a conceit in my homebrew system, but it confused my players. They thought they’d be taking on the monsters (rather than its being used as a framing device for when the referee is toggling between “neutral referee” and “playing opposition”). I’ve since reverted back to the conflict resolution process I’d been using for a while.

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playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[Thomas Shey]

Has the definition of neotrad changed again? Superhero games don't need to change the role of the GM and start giving gm level control to players. IME from my experience with games like the old 2d10 marvel thing and more recent stuff like icons standard trad style works reasonably well

"Need" is doing some heavy lifting here.

 

[dragoner]

I wouldn’t expect such players to be all that interested in play that’s meant to focus on their ideas, then. Neotrad and other types of play require players to come with ideas and excitement for play.

Some games accommodate both, "get in where you fit it" as they used to say in west oakland. I know a couple of my players simply aren't into leading, they play and have fun, they just are going to follow along though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There seems to be a lot of assumption along those lines in many conversations. That the GM is a font of imagination and creativity, and players lack that.

Bluntly, I think it often goes beyond that; that the GM can be counted on to manage setting coherence and how well it supports the story but individual players or even players as a group will wreck things trying to support their own personal interest if given a chance (Lanefan has outright said this on occasion, but others seem to believe it but are less willing to be quite that blunt).

The same people who will be utterly appalled at someone saying they don't extend a GM unlimited trust seem very unwilling to do even halfway that for players. The double-standard can be kind of striking.

The old Marvel game from TSR? I wouldn’t define that as trad, really, though it predates these categorizations. But the use of Karma allows players to determine a lot without approval from the GM. If they spend the Karma, the thing they’re trying happens… whether that’s a Power Stunt or turning a Miss into a Hit or a Hit into a Bullseye.

Very much not a trad element.

Superhero games, barring some of the really earliest ones, have tended to have metacurrency and rules for using it even outside of the direct character action for a very long time because of their stylization. As I noted, adding fairly large elements to the setting as a set-up for character definition isn't exactly rare there. Admittedly, this can be argued to be in part that superhero settings are so kitchen-sink in most cases that they can absorb a lot of such things without even a ripple, but that's more an issue of scale than difference in kind in most cases; most fantasy campaigns can absorb a secret organization or a faraway country without much impact, too.

I wouldn’t expect such players to be all that interested in play that’s meant to focus on their ideas, then. Neotrad and other types of play require players to come with ideas and excitement for play.

Or at least it heavily rewards them doing so. Its not impossible for people to play neotrad games in a fashion that makes their characters more like supporting characters if they don't feel like putting in a lot of effort.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is a catch for the GM there though. If one or more players at the table want author level control over their character's story the inevitable result is that the GM must say hellno or start doing heavy bookkeeping and curation of those elements far beyond what would normally be needed for a more traditional campaign and because the player(s) retain that level of control it becomes an immediate and obvious excessive constraint on the gm's ability to add anything as scandalous as adventure hooks not first subjected to an N-way pitch meeting to hash out any possible details needed to build next session's adventure. Once the gm has gone through that meeting they can take the resulting bargaining notes to rework the adventure as needed. Even if a gm goes through all of those hoops the players are under no obligation to accept the resulting story elements & the GM is then left tracking even more stuff on top of tracking what is and is not accepted.

Well, I'm not sure what you are envisaging here, so maybe this is the case if you do it in whatever way you are imagining. However, I've run VERY low to zero-prep games for a long time now, and these have been pretty much entirely Story Now in style for, say, the last 15 years. I've found my GMing burden much lighter! I simply spin scenes that follow from an extrapolation of the existing fiction and that address the concerns that are in play (often PC-based stuff, but that's not mandated). Frankly, the more the GM is bent on imposing their own structure on things, the more work for them! It can be a somewhat challenging way to GM at times, perhaps, in other ways. You certainly need to be able to summon up something interesting to say fairly often. But usually if I'm lacking in that dept I can count on asking the players questions, usually that will get me what I need. And I do basically NO book keeping. When I was running 4e campaigns for instance I just leveled up the PCs whenever it seemed appropriate and didn't really bother to track XP as such.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A lot of players are passive, and don't care about the whole story, they are along for the ride.

Never encountered a player, out of MANY, who was like this when they actually had meaningful input that drove things in the direction they were interested in engaging. Even the most passive player in any of my 4e campaigns was QUITE interested in furthering the story of his character. In combat he generally had a very simple shtick, and didn't assert himself a lot, but I actually remember more details of his PC's personality and story than any of the more showy ones, and it was pretty significant in at least one really memorable story arc in that campaign.

Obviously, there could be someone so disinterested that nothing will engage them, but is that person really coming around to play? I mean, sure, maybe it's the tag-along SO type of player, but IME disinterest transcends playing style. They won't magically have a much better time simply because they're spoon fed.

 

[tetrasodium]

Well, I'm not sure what you are envisaging here, so maybe this is the case if you do it in whatever way you are imagining. However, I've run VERY low to zero-prep games for a long time now, and these have been pretty much entirely Story Now in style for, say, the last 15 years. I've found my GMing burden much lighter! I simply spin scenes that follow from an extrapolation of the existing fiction and that address the concerns that are in play (often PC-based stuff, but that's not mandated). Frankly, the more the GM is bent on imposing their own structure on things, the more work for them! It can be a somewhat challenging way to GM at times, perhaps, in other ways. You certainly need to be able to summon up something interesting to say fairly often. But usually if I'm lacking in that dept I can count on asking the players questions, usually that will get me what I need. And I do basically NO book keeping. When I was running 4e campaigns for instance I just leveled up the PCs whenever it seemed appropriate and didn't really bother to track XP as such.

Ummm? Did you quote the wrong post? We are talking about a very different thing

 

[dragoner]

Never encountered a player, out of MANY, who was like this when they actually had meaningful input that drove things in the direction they were interested in engaging. Even the most passive player in any of my 4e campaigns was QUITE interested in furthering the story of his character. In combat he generally had a very simple shtick, and didn't assert himself a lot, but I actually remember more details of his PC's personality and story than any of the more showy ones, and it was pretty significant in at least one really memorable story arc in that campaign.

Obviously, there could be someone so disinterested that nothing will engage them, but is that person really coming around to play? I mean, sure, maybe it's the tag-along SO type of player, but IME disinterest transcends playing style. They won't magically have a much better time simply because they're spoon fed.

Its a regular trope of the character that only wakes up for combat, or other happenings. I chalk it up to some people just are not as out going as others. We were talking about language in world building, and they mention some people simply lack the inner dialog most of us have. You never can tell though, something might wake them up. Also it is more of the group story too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Its a regular trope of the character that only wakes up for combat, or other happenings. I chalk it up to some people just are not as out going as others. We were talking about language in world building, and they mention some people simply lack the inner dialog most of us have. You never can tell though, something might wake them up. Also it is more of the group story too.

I agree that there are players who are more and less proactive about developing plot and such associated with their characters, but all of them WILL do it, and seem to have fun doing so when it is present as an option. As I say, aside from WAY back when in the '80s when I remember a very few "this is my GF, she's playing an elf" type players that really just had no interest at all.

 

[dragoner]

I agree that there are players who are more and less proactive about developing plot and such associated with their characters, but all of them WILL do it, and seem to have fun doing so when it is present as an option. As I say, aside from WAY back when in the '80s when I remember a very few "this is my GF, she's playing an elf" type players that really just had no interest at all.

I don't disagree that all will do it to some degree or another, some just enjoy basking in the spot light, others are more comfortable being in the background. I don't want to force them out of their comfort zone.