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

[tetrasodium]

No? In fact, I would say the opposite. In games I run, when my players ignore the problem, that is also treated as their decision, that will have consequences.


How about you get off that high horse, reread the naughty word article and see the author flat out says THIS DOESN'T APPLY TO GAMES but to the way individual people or fandom communities view them? You can easily run any type of game in Savage Worlds and you're doing some real no true Scotsman here by deciding that if people who run character-focused games didn't run it in the right system, it doesn't count. I run Blades in the Dark, which is very character driven. Yet several examples I have used in my previous post were from my d&d games. I have played my first Fate session with a guy who would run it in a way that DELETED all my agency and, not knowing the system, I only realized this is GM issue when the same guy ran me Only War, a system I knew, exactly the same way. Six philosophies are not about a specific game, it's not a cut and dry what game is or isn't this or that category. GMs can embody a philosophy, fandoms can, maybe creators and designers. It's not about naughty word individual games.

Also, you completely mispresented, in the most insulting way, my point about how this type of game requires cooperation between GM and players to tell a story together to naughty word on this sytele ald claim it allows one bad apple to destroy it, when my point was that in properly run character-driven game this bad apple will not happen.

It doesn't matter if the article is talking about playstyles of people or playstyles that game systems support. D&D exists because some folks wanted to explore & play with a playstyle that did not fit wargaming & had to create a system that fit their desired playstyle rather than forcing it into a wargame. Not every game supports every playstyle, it's not reasonable to pretend otherwise. The two can not be totally severed. pretending otherwise does a disservice to both as well as the other people at the table.

Fate might look fairly simple given how you can pretty much fit the rules on a hand written index card, but it takes a solid understanding of the complex ways they can interact to avoid problems. To some degree that bold bit accurately describes compels. Compels can be fairly complicated with how they interact with aspects, especially if a player's efforts to exercise agency would cause them to so obviously self compel that the GM just points to it rather than death spiraling the game & your post does not provide enough detail to say who was at fault.

 

[Cadence]

RE: Fan Fiction

I hadn't realized the Sherlock Holmes stuff started so early: Sherlock Holmes fandom - Wikipedia. (1897-1902).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It doesn't matter if the article is talking about playstyles of people or playstyles that game systems support. D&D exists because some folks wanted to explore & play with a playstyle that did not fit wargaming & had to create a system that fit their desired playstyle rather than forcing it into a wargame. Not every game supports every playstyle, it's not reasonable to pretend otherwise. The two can not be totally severed. pretending otherwise does a disservice to both as well as the other people at the table.

Fate might look fairly simple given how you can pretty much fit the rules on a hand written index card, but it takes a solid understanding of the complex ways they can interact to avoid problems. To some degree that bold bit accurately describes compels, they can be fairly complicated with how they interact with aspects, especially if a player's efforts to exercise agency would cause you to so obviously self compel that the GM just points to it rather than death spiraling the game & your post does not provide enough detail to say who was at fault.

I literally told you the GM ran a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME the same way he ran fate. He didn't use compels. He just had isolated me from rest of the group and whatever I did that didn't fit his story, he would impose every penalty he could think of possible to make me fail, until every roll I made was basically impossible, then mocked me for trying to play anything but dumb big brutes. GM determines the style, not the system.

 

[zakael19]

@bloodtide wrote: "This also has the big point of most Neo T players playing characters as themselves. And most Traditional players are deep role playing a character."

Wat. What strange alternate dimension strawperson of neotrad game style have you built in your head, and why do you hate it so much?

My neotrad players (shading into full OC in some cases) are very much not playing themselves. One is playing a confident flirtatious rapscallion, one is playing a chaos gremlin, one is playing a delver into deep dark mysteries flirting with corruption, and one is playing a long-suffering little guy trying to fix the messes his companions make.

Or in my other game, where one is playing a very well conceived kleptomaniac tabaxi haunted by her birth omens and failings; one is playing a Goliath cast out of his tribe for failing to align with their strength based ways and walks the path of mercy and serenity; one is playing an Owlin from the fey wild looking at the world with wide-eyed wonder and here to chronicle adventures; and one is...ok, playing a murderhobo fighter, so that's pretty trad there.

 

[bloodtide]

I have seen all of these things happen many times in neo-trad games, with the exception of mind control lasting "an entire game session" (mind control yes, but that duration is excessive). The difference would be that all of these events would occur as part of a tractable challenge with an interesting storyline that the characters had to overcome to escape / get items back / remove the curse / etc, which may not be the case in traditional games (but still probably is?)

If you have seen them many times, I wonder if your game is Neo T?

And you say the occur, but you don't mention the severity. So if you count that one time a character got turned into a turtle for a couple minutes and then it was dispeled. I'm talking about when the character becomes a duck for several game sessions, maybe weeks or months in real life time.

And you don't mention if the players agree or not. Because that makes a big difference.

And . the "tractable challenge with an interesting storyline" is likely a split between the two games. And again, it depends on if the players agree or not. As you say, both games have the characters getting cursed and having to adventure to find the cure. But I would think only traditional has the events like the characters falling off a bridge into a raging river and loosing many of their items.

You seem to think that neo-trad means there is zero challenge in the game, the players dictate all events that happens, and the DM sits there without any control over the game. It's just not true.

Don't think I ever typed that? I thought I typed above that in a Neo T game all the power and control is shared between all the players(with the DM as a player). But a challenge is more vague...and depends on the players.

My neotrad players (shading into full OC in some cases) are very much not playing themselves.

Again, I said 'many'....not "all must do it". Every game type has players that play themselves....it is very common. It does stand out the most in Neo T games and the Story games.

 

[zakael19]

I would love for you to define “deep role playing.”

Edit: also for this being a + thread you sure are crapping all over the play style and people who enjoy it by projecting all sorts of stuff.

 

[prabe]

When I have more players, scenes tend to be more setting specific and general interest; if I have less players, I can make scenes that really target specific players more often.

I've found that I can set up arcs/directions centered around single characters with five or six players, and inside those arcs individual things that need dealt with can attract interest from the other characters. (Also, the players have decided to follow that arc, so they're all interested in that, anyway.) YMMV, of course--this does seem distinctly dependent on the players playing that way.

 

[CreamCloud0]

But wish-fulfillment fantasy is not an unusual genre; the entire "isekai" genre of anime, for example, is pretty much pure wish-fulfillment, where someone gets neatly and conveniently removed from our world (often by being run over by a truck, hence the memes about that) and then deposited into a much more interesting fantasy world with special powers.

methinks your perception of the isekai genre might be slightly skewed if you think the point of the entire genre is being powerfantasy wish fufilment, i don't deny there's a disproportionate amount of powerfantasy isekai but it's not the point of it.

 

[CandyLaser]

If you have seen them many times, I wonder if your game is Neo T?

And you say the occur, but you don't mention the severity. So if you count that one time a character got turned into a turtle for a couple minutes and then it was dispeled. I'm talking about when the character becomes a duck for several game sessions, maybe weeks or months in real life time.

Rendering a player unable to play for real-time months is ludicrous behavior, assuming you're playing a game where each player has a single character.

And . the "tractable challenge with an interesting storyline" is likely a split between the two games. And again, it depends on if the players agree or not. As you say, both games have the characters getting cursed and having to adventure to find the cure. But I would think only traditional has the events like the characters falling off a bridge into a raging river and loosing many of their items.

You are simply wrong about this. This has been pointed out many times, in this thread and others, with people giving examples from their own games. I'll add to the count, as in the next-to-last session of the game I'm currently running, one of my characters lost literally all of their gear, including their body. They're a sort of magical plasma that inhabits different constructed shells, so this wasn't fatal, but they haven't gotten their gear back yet, and at the current rate I'd estimate that it'll be at least another couple of real-life weeks before they do. At no point did I confer with the player before doing this, and my game is much, much closer to a neo-traditional game than a traditional one.

I thought I typed above that in a Neo T game all the power and control is shared between all the players(with the DM as a player). But a challenge is more vague...and depends on the players.

Power and control being shared does not mean that everyone has a veto on anything that happens at the table. Most PBtA games, for instance, restrict what the GM is able to do—but only the GM has the ability to make Moves/Cuts/etc.

 

[prabe]

Power and control being shared does not mean that everyone has a veto on anything that happens at the table. Most PBtA games, for instance, restrict what the GM is able to do—but only the GM has the ability to make Moves/Cuts/etc.

It doesn't even mean that anyone has a veto on a given thing. (An expansion of your point, not a real disagreement.)