D&D 5E (2014) Help me understand & find the fun in OC/neo-trad play...

[niklinna]

I don’t really put stock in Ron Edwards’ opinion.

That's fine then. I wasn't asking you to.

All models are wrong, some models are useful. This is as true of GNS as it is of Cultures of Play.

How very true that is.

 

[overgeeked]

This is tangential to your point, but is it so buck-wild to me that the blog you linked there lists “no rule zero/golden rule” as a hallmark of neo-trad, and then just calls that statement self-explanatory and moves on. Maybe that’s self-explanatory to an audience who’s already familiar with neo-trad, but it sounds completely outlandish to me.

Yeah. That’s wild.

 

[niklinna]

To me, it's a sign of the move to integrate/adopt "indie" methods into an overall more "trad" agenda.

I can easily see how the GM arbitrarily screwing the players over might not fit into a neotrad agenda. Then again, the GM could just as well fiat things into going their way! A die roll could very well kill a neotrad PC in a meaningless way, after all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Note this is a [+] thread. If you don't enjoy this style of play, that's great, but there's no need to drag this thread down. It's okay to let people talk about what they like.

I'm using the definition provided in the Six Cultures of Play article.

Sorry, but I don't get it. My preferences run squarely in the old-school, OSR, and NuSR veins. I like challenges and I'm fine with randomness and character death. Almost literally the opposite of everything I've seen, read, or heard about OC/neo-trad. This isn't me ragging on OC/neo-trad. This is me explaining where I am coming from in hopes of making the conversation easier.

So, for the people who enjoy OC/neo-trad style play. What's the draw? Where's the fun? What's the joy? Etc.

Honestly. Please help me understand because I don't get it.

To begin with: Chuck whatever you've gotten from the article. It's not productive.

"Neo-Trad" is, as the name implies, a new take on "trad" play. As the article notes, "trad" arose out of the desire to explain why the world was what it was--to satisfy the desire for a world that has a story of some kind to it. Note the "of some kind"; don't project excessive implications onto that word. Some stories have a neat beginning, middle, and end. Others don't. Don't presume artificiality here.

"Trad" entrusts all of this stuff--all of the "make satisfying narrative beats" action--to the DM. The DM is the "author" of the game, and the players are getting the chance to experience that. This does not imply that there is a railroad, though often that is what DMs choose to do. With sufficient skill at improv and adaptation, it is quite possible for a "trad" DM to have only a loose idea of what events might happen, and follow other cues (e.g. succeeded or failed rolls, PCs dying, etc.) This gets tougher as you near a major conclusion, of course, since the goal is for there to be reasonable closure and the like, but it is still possible for improv to occur. The key difference, however, is that it is essentially never player-driven; DM is author, curator, proposer, etc., and players are purely reactive. Their reactions may fuel future DM improvisation, but that's purely the DM's prerogative, like an author listening to fan theories and deciding she really likes a particular one.

The new take of "neo-trad" is to cease making the DM the sole and exclusive arbiter of what may happen; players cease to be purely reactive to the world, and instead get to actively shape things. Folks have noted that backstory inclusion is one common method here, but that's far from the only way to do it. Many "neo-trad" DMs request what is called a "skirt-length" backstory: just enough to keep you covered. Other techniques include DMs asking what I would call "fact-confirming" questions. A "fact-confirming" question is one that the player gets to declare an answer for, but which is not them warping the world in order to allow something to happen. Instead, the player is revealing something that the players didn't know was true before, but which (within the world) always had been true. Confirming the facts about the world. This technique is also often used in "story games."

As an example from my DW game, I might turn to the party's Shaman when they arrive in Al-Rakkah and say, "Shaman, is this your first time in the big city?" If they answer "yes," then I'll follow that with the question, "What's the thing that shocks you the most about being in such a teeming hive of civilization, so remote from the wild?" If they answer "no," I'll follow that with the question, "What brought you to the city the previous time?" These questions establish facts about the world. E.g. if we go with the "this is not my first time" path here, the Shaman might answer, "I came to visit a friend." Boom--we have just established that there is, or was, a friendly NPC in the city that the Shaman knows, or knew. That is an instant new path the story can take, exploring the Shaman's connections, without being part of a 20-page backstory.

Beyond backstory-inclusion and fact-confirming questions, you have things like personality quirks (e.g. 5e's BIFT stuff, "bond," "ideal," "flaw," and "trait"), organically-established relationships with NPCs (e.g. if a PC forms a rivalry with an NPC, or the party adopts a creature), "Session 0" requests or setting-crafting participation (e.g. the players pick Bard, Wizard, Swordmage, Warlock, and Sorcerer as their classes--so maybe almost everyone learns arcane magic and other forms are looked down upon; or the party has three dragonborn, a human, and an elf, so dragonborn feature prominently), and personal "quests" or major goals that a player has set for themself (such as our party Bard, who previously aimed to permanently end the Song of Thorns, and succeeded at doing so, and now aims to redeem the Raven-Shadow assassin-cult).

The implication of all of these things is that the players get to declare what interests them, and consequently, as the DM spins tales and binds fates, they'll respond to those declarations with something associated. The players are not beholden to what the DM elects to provide them, but it's also not the case (and a pretty base canard) to say that the DM is beholden to the players. Instead, what was once a purely top-down arrangement (DM declares, players at best provide or withhold consent), has become a bilateral one, each providing material to the other. By putting players into situations that are already interesting to them, some kind of story naturally drops out, without needing to have a rigid plan or preparation. Again, this "story" does not need to have a clean beginning, middle, and end; it simply has the core driving element of any kind of story, a situation that demands a response (including the choice not to respond), where the consequences of one's response matter.

I have a term for this sort of thing, when done as an intentional game-design-purpose, is "Values & Issues." The players declare what things they care about (what their Values are), and expect to face conflict or difficulty that will put those things to the test (facing off against Issues.) There's also another side, more emphasized by things like the Session 0 stuff/setting-crafting participation, which I call "Conceit & Emulation." The players identify a theme, message, concept, tone, genre, etc. that they wish to explore or examine (the Conceit), and the DM furnishes situations and experiences which relate to that theme/message/tone/etc. (the Emulation); "supers" gaming is a very common example of this approach, since "superhero" media has a lot of very strong tonal, thematic, and conceptual characteristics.

On the mechanical side of things, mechanics are viewed as tools of self-expression, but also as tools of achievement (growing in power is, itself, a story, after all). As a result, there must be some sense of fairness or equality between different specific tools, because players dislike being punished solely due to picking some particular theme or idea. It's okay for there to be a spectrum of power/effectiveness, but that spectrum must be genuinely orthogonal to thematics; if divine magic is just better than primal magic, that's bad, but if some primal magic is poor and other primal magic is great, or some divine magic is ultra-situational and other divine magic is broadly useful, that's most likely fine. Since reaching a satisfying story is generally the goal, instant gratification is not preferable (this is a major difference from "OC" play)--instead, survival and getting the chance to try again is pretty high on the list, which is part of why I don't see 5e s a very good "neo-trad" game, at least not until you get several levels into the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is tangential to your point, but is it so buck-wild to me that the blog you linked there lists “no rule zero/golden rule” as a hallmark of neo-trad, and then just calls that statement self-explanatory and moves on. Maybe that’s self-explanatory to an audience who’s already familiar with neo-trad, but it sounds completely outlandish to me.

I mean, the idea of neo-trad is that the GM is no longer an utterly absolute, unquestionable authority. That's what "Rule Zero" cashes out as in trad play: whatever the GM says, goes. Neo-trad opens the possibility that not everything comes from unilateral GM declaration--that there may be rules that bind even the GM. Dungeon World has such rules all over the place, for example, telling me what I must do as GM (even though it's not, properly speaking, neo-trad.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I can easily see how the GM arbitrarily screwing the players over might not fit into a neotrad agenda. Then again, the GM could just as well fiat things into going their way! A die roll could very well kill a neotrad PC in a meaningless way, after all.

I would argue that effective neo-trad play expects averting such situations. Either never letting them come to pass in the first place (e.g., that's not an option the dice can randomly produce), or using various other tools to say that the consequences here are not what they seem (hence my "no random, permanent, irrevocable deaths" thing: either the death isn't random, but accepted or prepared for; or it isn't permanent, the character will get better on their own; or it's revocable, meaning it's possible for the group to restore the dead character to life.) A portion of the unfair and inaccurate "no randomness" claim regarding neo-trad arises from misunderstanding this effort; it is not that randomness doesn't happen, but rather that greater control is exercised over what randomness is allowed to do, to avoid damage to the desired play-experience.

 

[pemerton]

I can easily see how the GM arbitrarily screwing the players over might not fit into a neotrad agenda. Then again, the GM could just as well fiat things into going their way! A die roll could very well kill a neotrad PC in a meaningless way, after all.

But the neotrad solution to that is something like a "death flag" or similar, rather than rule zero.

 

[niklinna]

But the neotrad solution to that is something like a "death flag" or similar, rather than rule zero.

What's that?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What's that?

Having looked it up, it's basically a toggle. Keeping it down means you can't die randomly (you're left stable, effectively, but otherwise suffer the consequences of being dropped). Raise your Death Flag, you can die--but you may also get a precious resource you wouldn't otherwise have. The example rules included "Conviction," which you have 6 of at the start of each session or each day, depending on which variant the DM picks. Spending Conviction can give you advantage, let you reroll a die after you've seen the result, or even potentially get extra actions (better benefits having higher costs, naturally). Raising your Death Flag gives you 6 Conviction instantly, even if it would push you over the normal 6 cap. But, crucially, you can't lower your Death Flag unless you spend 6 Conviction--meaning you can't just willy-nilly pass back and forth between the two states.

It turns death into a chosen risk, rather than a constant burden. Given when the document--"Raising the Stakes: Drama Rules for Action Fantasy Campaigns"--was published, namely 2007, this was clearly written for 3e, but could work for most editions of D&D with minor tweaking (e.g. 5e doesn't have rules for "immediate actions," but this would probably work fine as a once-per-round free action or the like.)

 

[pemerton]

What's that?

See @EzekielRaiden just upthread. And more generally I was treating it as a shorthand for "no random, permanent, irrevocable deaths" (ER's phrase)- eg in Burning Wheel or Torchbearer if I spend my last Persona, that means I won't have the will to live should I die.

The 2007 document ER references <http://esix.pbworks.com/f/RaisingtheStakes.pdf> arose out of discussions here, although the poster (Ryan Stoughton) doesn't seem to be active anymore.