A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[pemerton]

My issue with “neotrad” as a design school is I view it as just design. If we look at the design taxonomies outlined by Tomas Härenstam that you translated in post #42, it can be split into two groups: those with “indie” mechanics and those without. The group of those without are all games based on past designs. That’s two flavors of D&D (modern and classic) and BRP-like sim games. Everything else is some flavor of “indie”-influenced game: neotrad, storygame, or co-narrator.

I actually think he’s looking at this the wrong way, and MDA is my tool for showing this. Take the D&D category. He includes Pathfinder in this category. As we know, Paizo redesigned Pathfinder quite significanlly for its second edition. It is mechanically incompatible. Is it still Pathfinder? Yes. I would argue that Pathfinder 2e has almost the same dynamics as Pathfiner 1e. That is how people can recognize it as still Pathfinder and how it can be used to play the same kinds of games. However, there is one exception: combat.

Paizo changed the dynamics of combat from PF1 to PF2. Unlike PF1, the combat mechanics actually do what they are intended to do. Combat is balanced, and the encounter-building works. You cannot build your way to success. You have to fight effectively as a team, leveraging your synergies and teamwork to create advantages you can exploit. This is a fundamentally different dynamic from PF1, and it is unsurprisingly a point of controversy. Those expecting PF2 combat to operate like PF1 combat are in for a rude surprise, and it eliminates (or at least greatly hampers) the ability to optimize a character to overcome challenges.

I would postulate that you can preserve a game’s dynamics while incorporating “indie” mechanics. PF2 has social conflict rules. You can use the VP subsystem to run a social conflict like you would in Blades in the Dark. D&D 4e can do this as a skill challenge. Even D&D 5e has a limited from of social conflict (the social interaction rules on pp. 244–255 of the DMG, which @Manbearcat has written here about using for that). TIBFs and Inspiration are arguably an “indie” mechanic (since it’s kind of like a poor man’s aspects and Fate currency). Don’t forget consequences resolution.

Would people put these games as indie games? No. Thomas himself includes D&D 4e in the D&D category. That’s because these games have the same dynamics (more or less) that they’ve always had. It’s just that the mechanics have changed, and some of those changes incorporate newer tech and design ideas. That is why I view “neotrad” design (as articulated here and by Thomas) as just design. It’s a just the current state of the art.

I was struck by this.

As I posted upthread, I'm groping towards an understanding of MDA. But to me, it seems that 4e skill challenges do change the dynamic of play - they change the capacity of the GM to manipulate "offscreen" fiction so as to make it the case that X happens next regardless of the outcome of the action resolution process. (This is one way of expressing the conflict/task resolution contrast.) Hence why @Manbearcat, I and some others have seen indie GM advice and GM-side techniques as helpful for 4e D&D (whereas these are largely irrelevant to AD&D and probably to 3E/PF1 as well).

I'd love to hear further thoughts from you on this.

 

[kenada]

This is the aim of sandbox play; a traditional mode. That would mean the design work is done for trad design. That's totally fine, of course, and would not need the "prescription" supplied by the manifesto.

Except that as noted in post #189, that’s the wrong answer. While I do want a number of traditional dynamics, I don’t want them all. I discuss some them in post #207. That is why I am so critical of taxonomical approaches. It leaves gaps into which possible designs can fall, leaving them with fewer or worse tools for working them out.

 

[pemerton]

For convenience, this is how I recognise a candidate game text: i) first filter for every game text I understand to fit a traditional mode of play (OSR, sandbox. sim, trad) and then ii) filter for just those that also integrated innovations from indie-games (largely storygames) with a particular concern for how they treated GM powers and centered player authorship. One will find games that ought to be neotrad. Observe them in play (find actual play of such games and observe it.) Where they do not follow the manifesto, the prediction made is that they will not in fact bridge the experiential space between trad and indie as Harenstam hoped. I've given the example of the Beneath Ash and Snow, Forbidden Lands actual play. It's good quality OSRish-sandbox play, but the imported mechanics are not - in the hands of a trad-GM - doing the jobs they were designed for.

I found this - plus your back-and-forth with @kenada about the FL actual play - helpful in terms of what you are looking for and what you regard as a disappointment in that respect.

But I'm a bit unclear on something, as I will try to explain. To frame my question:

*I think we all (that is, at least you, me and @kenada) agree that there is Hickman-ish trad. Heavily influenced by Edwards, Baker and Harper, I would describe this as being based around somewhat toothless resolution mechanics with a good dose of GM-as-glue to make sure the desired experience is nevertheless delivered. From other threads I think you might describe it slightly differently, but still I think we agree that this is a thing.

*I think we all agree that there is Baker-ish "indie"/"story now" which eschews GM-as-glue (ie it makes the GM a "player" in some sense, as this thread has canvassed in perhaps tedious and ideologically-riven detail). While still aimed at "an experience", this sort of RPGing does not characterise that experience in terms of a particular GM-curated story.

*And I think maybe we all agree that there are modern RPGs that borrow some indie-type mechanics (eg more player-facing rolls; clearer GM-side guidelines and techniques that facilitate cutting to the action; etc) which nevertheless aim to deliver an overall experience similar to Hickman-ish trad - to be a bit crude about it, the experience would be Hickmani-ish trad but with cruft like encumbrance completely removed, and with better systems used to reduce the ad hocery on the GM side. But the GM still remains glue(-ish) in a way that is different from Baker's games.​

Now @kenada calls the last thing "neo-trad" (I think) and sees the meaning of the "neo-" simply being that it is up-to-date in its design. (To reiterate my own crudity, it cuts away cruft from legacy RPG design, and uses better systems to reduce ad hocery.)

I am also happy to call the last thing "neo-trad", but have a question about it: namely, if it integrates the indie methods in more than a superficial way, it's goal of overall GM curation will come under pressure. (And perhaps this just means that, by my lights, the integration of indie methods is merely superficial.)

But you, @clearstream, seem to see at least some of the games falling under my third and last dot point as failures from the point of view of your manifesto - as in, they are really just "trad" with no genuine "neo". And I'm curious as to what you envisage the "neo" being, that goes beyond the games you see as failures but that doesn't just amount to a game being a Baker-ish indie game (ie an example of my second dot point).

I hope this question to you - @clearstream - makes sense!

 

[Emberashh]

MDA posits that players experience the aesthetics (the intended emotions not the visuals of the game), observe the dynamics, then operate the mechanics. Non-digital games confound this because you have to understand the mechanics before you can even start.

I would say this is where the issue lies, but not in regards to TTRPGs specifically, but in an error in the framework.

The player should be considered as positioned inbetween the Dynamics and the Aesthetics.

The player is fundamentally always interacting with the games Dynamics, regardless of whatever aesthetic experience they're having. Ergo, aesthetics should lie somewhere beyond the player in the framework. (After all, two people could have very different emotions when playing with, say, a Durability mechanic)

It doesn't strictly make a difference in anything MDA is saying, but it does make it a bit more intuitive and easy to understand, particularly as a universal game framework rather than something specific to only some game types.

And as far as needing to understand the mechanics, thats a given in all games. Dynamics, per MDA, are things that only emerge as a result of those mechanics being applied through play.

Eg, a sniper rifle and a prone position are both mechanics, but the idea of camping as a strategy is a dynamic.

Dynamics in rpgs are going to be the difference in combat systems between an indepth tactics game and a narrative distillation down to a single dice roll, and anything inbetween. Likewise for other "Pillars", if you will. In social interactions, this could be a difference between improv roleplaying or a convoluted system of rollplay.

The underlying mechanics across these could all be pretty similar (and often are given the ubiquity of dice) if not identical, but that then, per MDA, combines with the Content of the game when it comes to what dynamics are created.

Eg, there's a substantial difference in dynamic when a 1d20 roll is positioned as the quality of your Action, as we might see in the typical d20 game, and when a fixed number is positioned as the quality of the Action, while the 1d20 roll is posied as how well you responded to the difficulty, as it is in my system. (Eg, your Action would take say the +30 you have for lockpicking, but your 1d20 roll is still the difference between flubbing an especially tricky lock and expertly picking it. You only fail if the Lock truly exceeds your base capability of +30 and if your 1d20 roll doesn't make up the difference)

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is definitely underrated as a general practice in TTRPGs. Ideally, this is precisely what a resource like the DMG should put a significant amount of its text toward. Personally, I'd love to see it go even further, especially for games that intend to have a toolkit nature, and propose alternate rules with notes about their impact on play.

I agree with both you and Kenada here; one of the problems with discussing many game systems is they're, to some degree, opaque about what their design principals were in the first place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here I will just observe that a BA and software engineer are operating at a layer of design above what I'm considering. They are soliciting requirements and designing the solution.


Well, MDA formally can't describe TTRPG design, but some later frameworks in the same family possibly can.

Ask agile how it feels about dependencies extending outside the putatively multidisciplinary team? That silence is analogous to MDA-family of frameworks silence on audience as format and author.


I think you are answering engineering questions, while the ones I'm asking are ludological. You're asking "how can I make an omelette", I'm asking "how does our conception and choice of chef relate to our food choices?"


How does one ensure that the story emerges from play? What does each participant need to be doing or not doing, for that to be true?


Another analogy might be to ask - what is the impact of the chosen technology on the games that can be made. If your chosen format has consequences for the way your mechanics will translate to dynamics and thus aesthetics, you cannot design those away. Your intended aesthetic will not play as intended (or your intentions were formed within the envelope of those consequences.)


Agreed! As Nintendo observes, game experience quality is closely connected with amount of playtesting. One class of problematic designs are those that need a lot to be put in place before you can start iterating.


Thank you for your patience! It feels like we're asking dissimilar questions.

EDIT I would assert again that it's imagination as mechanics that separates them! Look at Baker's diagrams. What happens in the clouds?

Of course some mechanics are cubes, but as a player I can control my fictional positioning with at times no reversion to cubes. I can act, in fiction... in imagination. Everyone else making updates to their draft, to match.

That aside, to see how the questions raised could matter to you as a designer, think how your design would be played under varying GMing assumptions. What changes? What design moves might some assumptions open up that other assumptions would shut down. How will aesthetics change as a result?

In Baker's design anything which doesn't invoke mechanics is not a move and can provoke at most a soft move from the GM, which is itself pure fiction, though it can certainly be consequential, as can the character's non-move triggering it. This is all still deeply game layer stuff by his reconning.

 

[Pedantic]

Eg, there's a substantial difference in dynamic when a 1d20 roll is positioned as the quality of your Action, as we might see in the typical d20 game, and when a fixed number is positioned as the quality of the Action, while the 1d20 roll is posied as how well you responded to the difficulty, as it is in my system. (Eg, your Action would take say the +30 you have for lockpicking, but your 1d20 roll is still the difference between flubbing an especially tricky lock and expertly picking it. You only fail if the Lock truly exceeds your base capability of +30 and if your 1d20 roll doesn't make up the difference)

There's a bit of a telling vs. showing problem in TTRPGs here though, especially given the additional filter of play at a table vs. a game text. We already struggle to constrain action declarations to specifically fortune in the middle or fortune at the beginning, even when a game has a strong stance on the subject.

Communicating anything more nuanced about what a resolution mechanic is supposed to represent to not only GMs but also players without mechanical reinforcement is quite hard, and I think it's still an open design question about what precisely that reinforcement should be.

 

[kenada]

In TTRPG, the mechanics dive in and out of the imagination. Imagination is part of them. One can say that what one means by "mechanics" is that they are external real world things and not imagination, and if so one ought to accept that MDA lacks a complete account of the way in which TTRPGs operate.

MDA specifies what it means by mechanics. Insisting on a different definition doesn’t allow us to say anything useful about or using MDA anymore. If we want to use MDA as a framework, we have to use the structures it provides. We can call them other things (as DDE does), but the meanings are the same. If DDE can account for tabletop RPGs, then it follows that MDA can as well. All that means is MDA has poor terminology, which (as you quoted Lantz in post #225) is a known problem.

This is a good response as I alluded to in a response to Snarf above. It's certainly worth asking, is "neotrad" simply spatchcocking a few mechanics from indie games into an otherwise traditional TTRPG design? The resultant play will be traditional (as folk who can afford the time to observe actual play will see). Making "neotrad" a synonym of "trad". I'm not aiming to offer a toothless definition!

I put weight in Harenstam's explanation of his OP

What “neotrad” means seems to be part of the issue. I took Härenstam’s definition at face value, “A hybrid between simulation games and Story games. Often looks like traditional simulation games (expensive books), but contains a lot of inspiration from the indie games mainly in terms of mechanics.”

Baker invests ample, strongly worded text into enforcing that the rules are observed. Relying I suppose on the principles of respect for and a playfully curious tolerance of a designer's work

Fortunately, I don't mean that. I mean both asymmetrical roles and equal committment to grasping and upholding the rules.

Baker assumes a good faith attempt to play the game, which is what I also assume. I think the issue of how to get people to follow the rules is intractable, so I don’t worry about it. It’s like trying to make your game resilient in case the sun explodes while people are playing. There’s not much you can do about that.

I have in mind that it should be provocative. It should point out the impossibility of the toothless definition of neotrad, and prescribe a solution. It's not a toolkit of design patterns, it's background philosophy for design with purpose.

When would a designer choose to engage this philosophy?

 

[kenada]

This is definitely underrated as a general practice in TTRPGs. Ideally, this is precisely what a resource like the DMG should put a significant amount of its text toward. Personally, I'd love to see it go even further, especially for games that intend to have a toolkit nature, and propose alternate rules with notes about their impact on play.

I don’t know how appropriate it would be for the DMG since it’s more of a designer’s tool or one for advanced tinkerers, but that would be better than it is now. Even just doing post mortems and retrospectives like you see done with other types of games would be an improvement.

 

[tetrasodium]

.

I don’t know how appropriate it would be for the DMG since it’s more of a designer’s tool or one for advanced tinkerers, but that would be better than it is now. Even just doing post mortems and retrospectives like you see done with other types of games would be an improvement.

I think the old "behind the curtain" sidebars in the 3.5 dmg & MM do a great job of showing both RAI & the why's in a way that's useful even to GM'ing