A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[hawkeyefan]

Thats the peculiar thing about this hamfisted otherizing; they make others out of the same.

I think it’s far more hamfisted to assume that all games are identical.

That is, you're asserting that there exists a fundamentally separate game thats only played in such and such way, when the reality is that its all just the same game.

There are in fact RPGs designed and intended to be played a specific way. Some of these RPGs work quite differently from one another.

Not every RPG is intended to be hammered and molded into whatever experience the players want. Some people may choose to do this, but that doesn’t mean that’s how the game was designed.

And more over, you didn't really answer the question, and in fact doubled down on it. Broadly gesturing towards nowhere in particular doesnt constitute proof of these GMs existing, nor does it conjure into truth that what these hypothetical GMs are doing is just a style of play and not just them being bad at running RPGs.

I don’t expect that there’s any evidence I can provide that will satisfy you, is there? I mean, if you haven’t seen examples of this kind of stuff in RPGs and here on EN World and similar places of discussion, then I don’t really know what to tell you.

I can say that I have absolutely been that GM myself. I’ve ignored player cues or outright requests in order to keep the game focused on what I wanted it to be focused on. This was mostly in my earlier days of GMing, and mostly with trad type games. I didn’t have exposure to the variety of games that I now have. It wasn’t done with malice or any kind of ill intent… it was mostly done from lack of understanding.

Honestly, that’s when my group largely shifted to a more neotrad approach, though we never would have called it that… this was years before the term was invented. But there was a significant shift that we made and it resulted in more enjoyable play.

This is why I reject your claim that there are no differences. In my experience, there clearly are.

And it should be said too that all of this also flies entirely beyond the simple fact that none of this has diddly or squat to do with design, not even on a theoretical level.

I don’t agree with that at all. Theory aside, at a practical level, design decisions of these sorts will shape the player experience.

All this fuss is spending a lot of effort and brainpower on a hyperfixation with a very small part of an overall experience that only becomes so problematic if you sit yourself on a mountain of assumptions about the people playing whatever game, whilst ignoring the game itself.

Honestly this six cultures stuff really just comes off as Hogwarts Houses; its fun to think about on a surface level but then theres people that will really overthink the differences between a Ravenclaw and a Slytherin when the source material is a half-inch deep on the subject.

I realize that you only get so verbose because your thoughts are so complex… but if you don’t consider this worthwhile, then why spill as much virtual ink as you have?

But even if we step back from hyperbole, the collaboration angle is just weak. Sure a player can pitch story directions and seeds, but that still puts the burden of creation on the GM, and its entirely uncalled for to say the GM is doing something wrong if they fail to do so, or even just decide not to.

I don’t think anyone has said that the GM is doing anything wrong. I think that largely depends on player expectations and what kind of experience the GM has pitched.

It’s really only a problem if the GM pitches a neotrad game and then delivers a trad experience. Or vice versa.

But of course, it also has to be said that the whole assumption underlying this is that the player is coming to the table with a story, and thats never been a good idea to begin with. If you've already got a story, just write a book.

This is a pretty bold claim. Again, plenty of games do this, whether it’s the players having story ideas or the GM. Or, as is incredibly often the case, the designers of a prewritten adventure.

It’s a huge swath of RPGing that you’re describing as a bad idea. While also somehow implying that all games are the same.

I’m really struggling to understand your point. It seems to amount to “I don’t like neotrad play so it should not exist”… but it can’t be that simple or you’d have managed to boil it down to one sentence.

Obviously 495 is talking about a rather unusual one GM one player ttrpg(which one?)

No, I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about a GM working with each player to find out what they want the game to be about, and then working to deliver that game. The players are expected to have their own goals and the GM works them into the game.

I assure you this is a real thing… I’ve done it! Very often.

 

[loverdrive]

The question is is how prevalent is it actually that GMs are like that?

Tetra might be floating an unreasonable assumption of neotrad people, but the thing is is that what I just quoted is also a rather uncharitable assumption thats levied at trad people.

Anecdotally, Ive never actually played with or even observed a GM that acted like this. And on the same token, I've also never seen the other side as Tetra posits with nightmare players who are every worst stereotype.

Part of why that is probably that my main group just isn't like that, and also that the people I've taught have perhaps just benefited from me being the one to get them into rpgs.

Either way, it still makes me question the overall point and whether or not this is actually a matter of producing a new kind of game, or if we're just assuming a new game will somehow prevent bad actors from ruining the experience.

If the problems being solved only exist in any meaningful way on r/rpghorrorstories I just don't see the point.

While I encountered this uhm malicious/indifferent approach exactly once and the guy was a walking red flag anyway, I've seen more than enough times GM latching on a detail player did not intend and leaving the Actual Hook in the dust, because of misinterpretation, misunderstanding or player badly communicating their concept.

A more formalized system will certainly help with that.

 

[clearstream]

You did not attempt to answer the questions in the post you quoted and another poster has already pointed that out.

Wrt that critical bolded bit central to supporting so much else in your 499 post... Maybe you got ninja'd while typing and posted without seeing it, maybe you scrolled past it, maybe you think it's an example of gold standard neotrad play, we have no idea... I point you to 495 as a literal example of that behavior while it was responding and quoting the same post as a your 499 post I'm quoting here.

In that post there is a player creating a PC that carries a story which would create entities in the world, possibly ones that require some degree of setting support even. It calls for "opportunities" that would shape adventures and /or the campaign on some level. It does that last one by calling for the gm to work with the player on creating NPCs who were involved in the PC's backstory with elements "leading" to the declared game shaping goals. Obviously 495 is talking about a rather unusual one GM one player ttrpg(which one?) and you can tell that with 100% certainty because at no point does it mention the gm needing to work with other players or the player who created the campaign shaping PC even speaking to a second player about any of that.

I'd like to echo @hawkeyefan's remarks about 495. I'm not seeing the malfeasance that you see, which is making it hard for me to be responsive to your challenges. For example, it didn't strike me that the poster could be describing specifically 1:1 play until you said it. (Assuming that I read you correctly.)

I will keep reading your posts and perhaps it will dawn on me. Until then I will take a break from direct replies.

 

[clearstream]

By 'narrative overlap' are you referring to your two sources of narrative (pre-determined and played I think is a succinct description of them, right?) I find it very hard to come to grips with any of this when it is all this very fuzzy set of concepts that are not accompanied by actual practice. This is what made The Forge so brilliant a place, they would just kick you right the heck out if you came in with nothing but WORDS, it had to be backed by actual play. I want to SEE in practice what this 'post-classical narratology' is saying about an actual transcript of play under a specific designated set of rules and procedures, and then iterations on play that test different possibilities. This is EXACTLY what you see in those old forums! The explosion of technique and advances in understanding of RPGs was not based in theorizing, the theorizing was used to explain what was actually observed in real play.

So far each time I've pointed to a case of actual play to observe, folk have explained that they lack the time to do so.

But rest assured, I am grounding my thinking in experience and observations of actual play.

 

[pemerton]

I realize that you only get so verbose because your thoughts are so complex… but if you don’t consider this worthwhile, then why spill as much virtual ink as you have?

<snip>

I’m really struggling to understand your point. It seems to amount to “I don’t like neotrad play so it should not exist”… but it can’t be that simple or you’d have managed to boil it down to one sentence.

I quote the above to explain my reaction to your post, in case you found it conufsing.

 

[Manbearcat]

This whole "all of this stuff is doing basically the same thing" needs to stop because its not even in the vicinity of true. Its not true across game archetypes and its not even true intra-archetype!

And this whole "all games generate story" is missing the point. Its not about "if," its about (a) "how," and, more importantly, (b) "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant."

In the last three years, I've played Blades in the Dark, Stonetop, Lazers & Feelings, Dogs in the Vineyard, Thousand Arrows, Mouse Guard, and The Between with you @hawkeyefan . The experience of each of these games (and not just the thematics and the premise) are extremely different. If you were asked to write a review that spoke to "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant," the reviews of each game would diverge significantly right? You'd talk about the differences in currencies, structure/play loops, reward and advancement cycles, various forms of attrition and recovery, relationship mechanics (PC to PC and PC to NPC), player & GM handles, incentive structures, and how much Gamism is present in each game (if any). It would look very different for each game. And we're still (roughly) within archetype of game!

@AbdulAlhazred , if I asked you to do the same thing to evaluate our games of Torchbearer, Blades in the Dark, Agon, and Stonetop, you would, again, have a deeply different assessment of each of those (intra-archetype) games!

I mean Stonetop is derivative of Dungeon World and those two games are deeply different in experience on both player and GM-side because of something as simple as how each of them handle Inventory/Gear/Loadout! Its a significantly divergent experience both GM and player side simply because of Inventory!

Why does this keep happening on ENWorld over the years and across the threads? What is the impetus for this "story generation is story generation is story generation" and "all this stuff is basically the same so stop talking about it" initiative?

 

[clearstream]

This whole "all of this stuff is doing basically the same thing" needs to stop because its not even in the vicinity of true. Its not true across game archetypes and its not even true intra-archetype!

And this whole "all games generate story" is missing the point. Its not about "if," its about (a) "how," and, more importantly, (b) "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant."

Saying all RPGs are ludonarratives is basic in the same way as saying all RPGs integrate imagination into their mechanics and gamestate. Further, we can say that the ludonarratives developed in RPGs are fictional: they involve pretence. That can't be taken to imply that a Western dramatic tradition of protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence applies to all RPGs.

It might be that the crucial commitment is that play that isn't protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence, can still be ludonarrativist play. Those resisting such a commitment would conflate (to my mind) one kind of story with all other kinds of narrative.

 

[Emberashh]

it was mostly done from lack of understanding.

being bad at running RPGs.

This really does just reinforce my point. Did and do we really need "new" games just because a lot of RPGs (re: virtually all of them, even the better ones, given the clear denial that half or even more of the point is improv) are terrible at actually teaching how to play and run them?

This is why I reject your claim that there are no differences. In my experience, there clearly are.

The differences you noted are independent of any particular game. You're playing differently and engaging with improv differently. It is entirely immaterial whether its 5e, Shadowrun, or Monsterhearts that you're playing.

at a practical level, design decisions of these sorts will shape the player experience.

There are no design decisions being discussed. Just nebulous player behaviors.

but if you don’t consider this worthwhile, then why spill as much virtual ink as you have?

Not finding the subject particularly valuable has nothing to do with the willingness to talk about it. Making that point, in fact, is a valid approach, and trying to say I shouldn't be bothering most certainly isn't a valid response.

Idk about you, but even in my own topics I'd rather have a bunch of people disagreeing with me (as has happened) than a bunch of yes men generating no interesting thought whatsoever.

I don’t think anyone has said that the GM is doing anything wrong

Its heavily implied, if not outright stated, when we throw up an example of a GM not delivering a bespoke narrative for a player, for whatever reason, and call that problem.

It’s really only a problem if the GM pitches a neotrad game and then delivers a trad experience. Or vice versa.

Case in point. Do we need a new game to just talk to each other and be clear about what we're there for?

Again, plenty of games do this, whether it’s the players having story ideas or the GM. Or, as is incredibly often the case, the designers of a prewritten adventure.

Plenty of games are obscure and played by practically no one. You'll have to be more specific if you're wanting to offer counter examples.

And a prewritten adventure is an entirely different idea altogether. The entire point of one is so nobody has to do any writing or pitching. Just open the module and follow along. Whether or not it ends up being a good experience is seldom on the GM or the Players, short of them screwing the pooch something fierce. I for example have never had, seen, nor run a bad experience with Curse of Strahd, but I have seen and observed TOA go sideways, to no fault of anybody at the table.

I’m really struggling to understand your point. It seems to amount to “I don’t like neotrad play so it should not exist”… but it can’t be that simple or you’d have managed to boil it down to one sentence.

The subtle snark aside, the point is that the problems that are supposed to be solved by a nebulous "new" game are all things that are, 1, highly assumptive of the persons who will be playing, and 2, problems easily solved in already existing games by just shifting how they're engaged with.

A Session Zero solves the vast bulk of these issues, as does not cheating. You can apply both of these methods to any game.

That is what I was communicating by noting that the otherizing of these ideas as "neotrad" is hamfisted, as no new game is actually being produced by it.

And this whole "all games generate story" is missing the point. Its not about "if," its about (a) "how," and, more importantly, (b) "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant."

The point of noting that is to make the case that we don't really need to try so hard to make stories happen.

There is a god awful lot of stress and effort being had in the hobby over that, and its really self defeating, which is what I was relating about how I can burn myself out on video games doing the same thing.

 

[Manbearcat]

Saying all RPGs are ludonarratives is basic in the same way as saying all RPGs integrate imagination into their mechanics and gamestate. Further, we can say that the ludonarratives developed in RPGs are fictional: they involve pretence. That can't be taken to imply that a Western dramatic tradition of protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence applies to all RPGs.

It might be that the crucial commitment is that play that isn't protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence, can still be ludonarrativist play. Those resisting such a commitment would conflate (to my mind) one kind of story with all other kinds of narrative.

Although, we've had this conversation around this subject in the past (because I definitely have a large amount of misgivings and empirical disagreements about what I see as your tendency to smear the boundaries of extremely important distinctions while performing a very zoomed-out analysis), I should note that my post above wasn't to you. On the whole, while I still have disagreements around the edges, my opinion is that your efforts in this thread have been good...and I think its really, really, really garbage that some people have crapped on you in this thread. So consider this me standing up for you against the crap you were taking early in the thread and some that you've taken recently. /Leo Toast GIF.

That said...

Forget ludonarrative, forget ludonarrative dissonance, forget that the concept is imported from video game critique and, if it has any application for TTRPGs, it may only pertain to techniques and play dynamics inherent to Trad RPGing (where there necessarily features an outsized component of exposition, plot dump, bread-crumbing, plot-point-noding which are mechanically non-interactive).

The blow-by-blow, moment-to-moment experience (cognitively, emotionally, logistically/procedurally/table-time-allocation) of playing and running a game like Dogs in the Vineyard is profoundly different than playing and running a game like Apocalypse World. That is despite the reality that (a) its the same designer for both and (b) these games are supposed to be DNA-deep kindred. When you move from one of those two to something like Torchbearer, the differences explode (despite sharing that (b) just mentioned).

The above is "where the play happens." That is the level of zoom we should be looking at when examining games, when examining how best to facilitate design that does the necessary work for "Neotraditional moment-stacking" (which yields Neotraditional play in the aggregate). If I want players to (a) bring a firm preconception of character into play, (b) have non-vetoable say over what character arc materializes through play (and that veto-nixing goes for the system same as GM), and (c) integrate that with Traditional systemization + Traditional GMing techniques and storytelling imperatives/responsibilities...then "those moments where the play happens" are paramount. You have to get those right.

More conversation about and more zoomed-in focus on those moments would be welcome.

Same goes for Trad play. Same goes for Story Now play. Same goes for Pawn Stance and every other form of Gamism. But this is a thread on Noetrad play, so one only brings in those alternative play (and system) paradigms in order to generate the bright lines of distinguishing characteristics.

 

[pemerton]

This whole "all of this stuff is doing basically the same thing" needs to stop because its not even in the vicinity of true. Its not true across game archetypes and its not even true intra-archetype!

And this whole "all games generate story" is missing the point. Its not about "if," its about (a) "how," and, more importantly, (b) "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant."

Forget ludonarrative, forget ludonarrative dissonance, forget that the concept is imported from video game critique and, if it has any application for TTRPGs, it may only pertain to techniques and play dynamics inherent to Trad RPGing (where there necessarily features an outsized component of exposition, plot dump, bread-crumbing, plot-point-noding which are mechanically non-interactive).

The blow-by-blow, moment-to-moment experience (cognitively, emotionally, logistically/procedurally/table-time-allocation) of playing and running a game like Dogs in the Vineyard is profoundly different than playing and running a game like Apocalypse World. That is despite the reality that (a) its the same designer for both and (b) these games are supposed to be DNA-deep kindred. When you move from one of those two to something like Torchbearer, the differences explode (despite sharing that (b) just mentioned).

The above is "where the play happens." That is the level of zoom we should be looking at when examining games, when examining how best to facilitate design

For me, this goes back to the matter of terminology, and what it is being used to convey.

"Story now" was coined to describe a certain sort of game, where the core logic of play is for the GM to establish situations that permit the players to say something. This means the situations have to involve or present "premise" (in the literary sense) and the players' choices respond to that premise and produce "theme" (again in the literary sense). Because of the form of RPGing, in which the players' choices are manifested primarily by way of declaring actions for their PCs, it's essential for this to work that there be quite deep connections between situations and characters. Given that another typical aspect of RPGing is that players build their characters, establishing that deep connection means that the players, as part of their PC build, establish elements that the GM can draw on for situation: relationships, kickers, PC goals/aspirations/beliefs, etc.

Now maybe many RPGs produce story in the sense of not just a transcript, but a transcript with "a 'little something' . . . a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader". Personally I've got doubts - I think a lot of typical RPGing does not generate story in the sense. But even if it does, it doesn't generate it in the way described in the previous paragraph - by having the players say something in virtue of the actions they declare for their PCs, which are able to say something because of the situation the GM has framed.

A very obvious example is where the GM is running an AP, which establishes the villain as part of its contents - functionally, therefore, as part of the GM's prep - so that the players have no choice, in play, but to confront that villain via their PCs. In this case, even if the confrontation of the villain by the PCs generates a theme-laden story, it is not doing so as a result of the players' choices. The choice was made by the author of the AP.

In the play of this AP, we might say that in play we find out what happens when the PCs confront the villain (eg do they suffer defeat?). But we are not playing to find out in the sense that phrase is used in Apocalypse World - we already know that the villain is the villain, and that the PCs will oppose them.

The preceding sets out some differences between "trad" play (I still put forward DL and Dead Gods as paradigms) and "story now" play. I'm sure a similar bundle of contrasts could be drawn for "story now" and "neotrad", beginning with the timing of when the player makes the choices that will reveal the truth about their character, ie as part of prep or part of play.

These very real differences in RPG play do not go away by insisting that all game play, or all RPG play, produces narrative. As I've posted upthread, all that insistence achieves is requiring the development of new terminology to describe these differences.