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

[Not a Decepticon]

I didn't say anything about "story first". Nor did I quote the six categories. I did talk about my own play experience with In A Wicked Age; and I did reference the play advice for BitD.

If you think that Fate, played more-or-less canonically, and Apocalypse World, played more-or-less canonically, are much the same sort of play experience, well that's what you think. I can't gainsay that. I can say that I don't think the same way.

You used "story now", distinction without difference, you're literally trying to catch me on words because you lack a point to make. And after getting offended by supposed msiattribution of your words, you immediatelly pivot to build strawman of my arguments you can knowck over. I won't be defending made up argument you made in your head and acussed me of having because dealing with my actual arguments was too hard.

You'd need to know the motive of the GM -- you're assuming 100% he's on a "sick power trip." Typically, a GM is providing a scenario to be run through with various challenges, and this could be one, and perhaps roleplaying it is another. Don't ascribe every event that's not under the player's complete control being motivated by taking away player agency. We all have events that happen that are not under our control, and it can be interesting to deal with them. For example, a scenario that starts with the players on a lifeboat rowing away from a sinking ship wasn't controlled by the players. I suppose you could walk out of the scenario opening because players didn't control it, but then you've made a decision to limit the types of games you play in.

First of all - is being turned into a duck something that happens to the entire party? Or is this one PC singled out? Is the entire party having to deal with challenges presented by their new situation, or is this one PC forced to sit and DO NOTHING while the players actually spend time playing their characters? I could buy the first as a challenge sprung on the PCs. The latter feels like singling out the player and making them waste their goddamn time. It's like forcing player to wait an entire session, or multiple ones, to introduce their new character, because it wouldn't be realistic or owuldn't fit the story for them to show up earlier - we are increasingly having less and less seisure time, forcing someone to do nothing for hours of what was supposed to be their time to have fun is increasingly more inexcusable and no "GM vision" is worth it. If that makes me neotrad, I will gladly prefer it over being forced not to play for some jerk's "story".

And again with the false dichotomy - either the GM is a tyrant who has absolute power or players get to control everything. You guys ever heard of GM and player working together?

Why the hostility? Good god.

Because the thread was based on an article that did bad job explaining itself, mischaracterized modern games to complain about "kids these days" and became a place for people who just find excuse to complain things aren't like they used to play and people now wat different things and less toleration for naughty word. It craps on whole wide variety of games solely to bash few games the author disliked and whenever someone notices it craps on a game they like, instead of questioning whenever the crap-pipe is a good thing, they just try to move that game to a different category.

Yeah, I think i'm done, this thread ran its course and convinced me the 6 philosophies is a bad text with little use for real rpg play. Which, tbh, is how I increasingly feel about lot of "theorycrafting" done on internet by terminally online, who play much less than they spend time talking about games online.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark are literally the first types of games people point out as examples of "Neotrad" and agressively contrast them with OSR.

I'd argue that PbtA was an outright storygame; Monsterhearts explicitly is. Blades is probably closer to NeoTrad.

But these games are exactly what we've been discussing here - they put emphasis on player agency, they help tailoring the plot to the character, they allow players to change the setting through their actions. The only thing not fitting is they don't treat the character as a precious thing nothing bad can happen to and, to be frank, I think this point is just a strawman potrayal of the "neotrad" style, something assigned to mispresent and mock the people who prefer it. I think most players in this style can take something bad happenning to their character, as long as it narratively makes sense, comes from character actions and we feel DM didn't pull some shenanigans to make it happen.

Agreed.

 

[Aldarc]

You used "story now", distinction without difference, you're literally trying to catch me on words because you lack a point to make. And after getting offended by supposed msiattribution of your words, you immediatelly pivot to build strawman of my arguments you can knowck over. I won't be defending made up argument you made in your head and acussed me of having because dealing with my actual arguments was too hard.


First of all - is being turned into a duck something that happens to the entire party? Or is this one PC singled out? Is the entire party having to deal with challenges presented by their new situation, or is this one PC forced to sit and DO NOTHING while the players actually spend time playing their characters? I could buy the first as a challenge sprung on the PCs. The latter feels like singling out the player and making them waste their goddamn time. It's like forcing player to wait an entire session, or multiple ones, to introduce their new character, because it wouldn't be realistic or owuldn't fit the story for them to show up earlier - we are increasingly having less and less seisure time, forcing someone to do nothing for hours of what was supposed to be their time to have fun is increasingly more inexcusable and no "GM vision" is worth it. If that makes me neotrad, I will gladly prefer it over being forced not to play for some jerk's "story".

And again with the false dichotomy - either the GM is a tyrant who has absolute power or players get to control everything. You guys ever heard of GM and player working together?


Because the thread was based on an article that did bad job explaining itself, mischaracterized modern games to complain about "kids these days" and became a place for people who just find excuse to complain things aren't like they used to play and people now wat different things and less toleration for naughty word. It craps on whole wide variety of games solely to bash few games the author disliked and whenever someone notices it craps on a game they like, instead of questioning whenever the crap-pipe is a good thing, they just try to move that game to a different category.

Yeah, I think i'm done, this thread ran its course and convinced me the 6 philosophies is a bad text with little use for real rpg play. Which, tbh, is how I increasingly feel about lot of "theorycrafting" done on internet by terminally online, who play much less than they spend time talking about games online.

Are you sure you're not a Decepticon?

 

[Umbran]

...as you are clearly not engaging in good faith.

Mod note:

Mere use of a logically fallacious argument is not proof of bad faith.

Accusation of bad faith is itself a rhetorically questionable argument - ad hominem - attacking the author instead of addressing their logical points

So, are you writing in bad faith for using it?

How about we stop accusing folks, and stick to the topic, please?

 

[niklinna]

But these games are exactly what we've been discussing here - they put emphasis on player agency, they help tailoring the plot to the character, they allow players to change the setting through their actions. The only thing not fitting is they don't treat the character as a precious thing nothing bad can happen to and, to be frank, I think this point is just a strawman potrayal of the "neotrad" style, something assigned to mispresent and mock the people who prefer it. I think most players in this style can take something bad happenning to their character, as long as it narratively makes sense, comes from character actions and we feel DM didn't pull some shenanigans to make it happen.

I would like to make very clear that when I say I think some PbtA and FitD games support neotrad play well, I specifically do not mean Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark themselves. Those games have a level of built-in-pressure I do not personally associate with neotrad play, being heavily oriented around desperation & conflict. But the general frameworks are excellent for what I understand neotrad play to involve, in particular real dialogue betwen GM and players. Apocalypse World is perhaps the most constrained, with its fixed pick lists on many move outcomes, but even then it's clear who has how much say and when, and the players have a lot of say within the constraints. Under Hollow Hills is a great game to contrast. Vincent Baker has something to say about it (although it's part 6 of a series, so you might want to start with #1).

 

[niklinna]

FWIW, I checked on Fabula Ultima's Discord whether creator Emmanuel Galletto said anything about "Neo-Trad." In sum, they said that if people thought that FU was "Neo-Trad," that they would feel insulted by that. I guess that they do not consider Fabula Ultima to be "Neo-Trad." Maybe they believe that the game is more Narrativist/Story than Neo-Trad. To be fair, the Free League sense of the term also assumed things like published adventures. These are things we can find with Free League or Monte Cook Games' Cypher System but are totally absent with Fabula Ultima.

Every Free League adventure I've read makes me wonder how the game could possibly be considered neotrad . But hey, they coined the term, or so I hear!

 

[FrozenNorth]

Every Free League adventure I've read makes me wonder how the game could possibly be considered neotrad . But hey, they coined the term, or so I hear!

I have to agree. I just finished the introductory adventure in the One Ring, and even by the standards of introductory adventures, it really felt like we were bystanders in someone else’s poor Tolkien fanfiction.

 

[overgeeked]

For those that like this style of play, Ginny Di just dropped a review of a book that might be helpful.

 

[niklinna]

For those that like this style of play, Ginny Di just dropped a review of a book that might be helpful.

Nice! It's stuff I've heard before, but never so clearly or so...agreeably.

 

[Pedantic]

Nice! It's stuff I've heard before, but never so clearly or so...agreeably.

I quite liked the book, and need to spend a little more time digging at it. The only issue I really had was was the suggestion that faction progression can be handled on arbitrary timelines, which veers too far into illusionism for me.

In general, I find this kind of systemic advice very useful for setting up a campaign (or arc, or new city or whatever the base unit of scenario is) but I find it the opposite of empowering to keep the situation entirely reactive beyond that point; the world needs to do things without the player's input for their contributions to seem significant.

I find consequences are much more credible when it's not something bespoke to a player choice, but simply the status quo that will prevail without player intervention.