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

[Wolfpack48]

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".

Yep, the context here matters. If the duck in question is key to the adventure and needs to be active (or the entire party are ducks), then it’s one thing, but using it as a “time out” on one player is Tyrant GMing. We’d need to know the situation here

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?

Working together Is of course the desired “Neo Trad” play. Man, I really dislike this jargon.

 

[overgeeked]

Yep, and I agree with the sentiment to a point. I still believe the GM should be able to generate adverse events that may affect characters and that characters will need to react to those events. And I don’t believe the GM has to ask for the players permission to do so. That said, the characters need to matter.

Where the scene breaks down, for me, is the overlap with OC play. You can play OSR games where the characters matter. It's no more difficult than finding out the PCs' goals and dropping those into the game. But, once the characters go from being important, from simply mattering, and become the central focus, things break down. For me.

In a weird twist, Professor DM of Dungeon Craft also dropped a video today. His is about the recent Vecna module. I think part of the video is relevant.



Around 10:00 is the relevant bit. He brings up two points. First, character stats do not dictate how epic the stories in your game can be. You can have epic stories with low-level characters. Second, things that happen in play, during the actual game, are wildly more relevant, memorable, epic, etc than any bit of lore or backstory will ever be.

I agree completely with both of those points. And I think the second one, despite being about villains, also applies to PCs. No villain you tell your players to hate is ever going to be hated as much as the villain your players learned to hate during play. No PC backstory is ever going to be as awesome as playing through those moments at the table.

This is one of the reasons despite understanding more about the neo-trad style now (honestly thanks everyone), I don't think it will ever be my style. I don't want a character with a detailed backstory telling me how cool they were before the game even starts. I want to see them be cool during play in a shared moment at the table. This is also why I prefer starting characters weaker than heroes or superheroes. I want to play through the character's backstory, I don't want to read about it. I want to experience it first hand. I want that zero to hero arc to happen in play at the table.

 

[TwoSix]

I think this is exactly the draw of neo-trad style. Wanting the character to actually matter to the unfolding story. To be more than a replaceable cog in a machine that will grind on regardless.

For my own definitions, that's the core difference between trad and neo-trad. In trad, the characters are there to play the adventure. In neo-trad, the adventure is there to give the characters a backdrop.

 

[zakael19]

Where the scene breaks down, for me, is the overlap with OC play. You can play OSR games where the characters matter. It's no more difficult than finding out the PCs' goals and dropping those into the game. But, once the characters go from being important, from simply mattering, and become the central focus, things break down. For me.

In a weird twist, Professor DM of Dungeon Craft also dropped a video today. His is about the recent Vecna module. I think part of the video is relevant.



Around 10:00 is the relevant bit. He brings up two points. First, character stats do not dictate how epic the stories in your game can be. You can have epic stories with low-level characters. Second, things that happen in play, during the actual game, are wildly more relevant, memorable, epic, etc than any bit of lore or backstory will ever be.

I agree completely with both of those points. And I think the second one, despite being about villains also applies to PCs. No villain you tell your players to hate is ever going to be hated as much as the villain your players learned to hate during play. No PC backstory is ever going to be as awesome as playing through those moments at the table.

This is one of the reasons despite understanding more about the neo-trad style now (honestly thanks everyone), I don't think it will ever be my style. I don't want a character with a detailed backstory telling me how cool they were before the game even starts. I want to see them be cool during play in a shared moment at the table. This is also why I prefer starting characters weaker than heroes or superheroes. I want to play through the character's backstory, I don't want to read about it. I want to experience it first hand. I want that zero to hero arc to happen in play at the table.

Idk if this really is in response to your post, but just kinda sharing why what I think the play and GM style that aligns with whatever the heck neotrad is just works for me:

So I have nowhere the gaming history most posters here do. Played a tiny bit of 3.5 as a teen ages ago, and then nothing until playing in a home-brew adventure in 2018. After that wrapped, I volunteered to try GMing and ran CoS; picking up a second game as the pandemic happened for friends stuck at home who wanted to try D&D. In that one, I threw together various short modules I found into an overarching plot. Wound up adding a couple OC players (didn't quite recognize that concept at the time), and we had fun! But it was pulling teeth sometimes to get people to get on board with the next plot point, people would always forget what was going on, and all the usual DM gripes.

We end that campaign (and COS), and I start up a new one. Fall into COS again with my friend/acquaintance group and I find myself kinda mentally exhausted. One player really wants to do lots of spotlight hogging OC roleplay, and I want action declarations. Maintaining attention is hard, people check out - are distracted (especially when the OC player kicks off another self-spotlighted RP bit). I notice a poster here often reference different games on another forum (thanks @kenada) and start checking certain posts here out.

Start up another online game at the start of this year for a lovely group from Reddit who were looking for a DM for their first game after coalescing out of a one shot. They're all CR fans who played BG3 and wanted to actually do The Thing. Because they like CR, they pick Call of the Netherdeep - and I'm still stuck in "running a premade is easier then doing it myself." But this time I do a session 0, and we knit some backstories in, and create connections between some of the players following all the "GM best practices" I've been reading/watching over the second half of last year. Things start connecting in my head when I realize that there's a huge difference in both effort and response when I try and nudge them towards the Plot vs when we're just doing something I fabricate and direct to a player's backstory/espoused goals as they arrive.

We finally get to the first kinda "open sandboxy" area right about the same time as I've gotten super excited about narrativist games and done my first run of Stonetop (full narrativist/Story Now) - along with playing in an awesome Story Now 4e game run by @Manbearcat . My 5e players highlight that their favorite sessions are the ones where I'm (unknown to them) totally disregarding the adventure beyond dropping a starting premise/goal for the session on them and letting them go wild. I stop prep beyond ensuring I have a roster of interesting opponents to deploy. We start up an entire side-adventure in the city because they all say they want to take some time to explore and make some $. I straight up read to them from the gazette, and one thing sounds interesting to everybody (something the module says "is beyond the scope of this adventure but would make a great story for you to tell in a different game!").

We're now ... 4 sessions into interleaved drabs of the adventure quest with this secondary plot line the players picked entirely on their own. I asked each of them to build a different part of the premise for it, and we've just been following the twists and turns. Nothing is predetermined or prepped. I'm grabbing stuff from their backstories and hurling it at them and they're biting so hard we're all on the edge of our seats with tension all the way through - apart from occasional bits of OOC and memes and jokes. Not a single distracted moment, no "oh sorry I wasn't paying attention." They picked the villain (oh, the leader of this criminal group must be a doppleganger and that’s why the guards can’t find him!), the stuff they're dabbling in (assassinations, markets for illegal magic?), the areas of the city...etc. Each scene I'm asking their character why they recognize a thing, can tell something is off, how somebody from their backstory is involved, how their background lets them know..blah blah.

All this because I stopped caring about an adventure and just asked the players and their characters what they cared about and the arcs they wanted to fulfill.

 

[pemerton]

You used "story now", distinction without difference

I used "story now" because it's a term of art going back 20 years, and is explicitly used by Vincent Baker to characterise Apocalypse World - in the acknowledgements, Baker says that the whole of the game design follows from Edwards's "Story Now" essay.

you're literally trying to catch me on words because you lack a point to make.

I have a point to make. It is that the sort of character-arc, character-exploration play that is (as I understand it) core to neotrad play is not what is core to Apocalypse World or Burning Wheel as those RPGs present themselves.

And I gave a concrete example of my experiences playing In A Wicked Age with players coming from different ethoses.

What's your example of neotrad play using Apocalypse World?

 

[pemerton]

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).

Is Under Hollow Hills better for neotrad than AW?

 

[zakael19]

Is Under Hollow Hills better for neotrad than AW?

It has a very different model of conflict and motivations that may be better suited for what i think characterizes this style of play then core AW. DW/Fellowship or other PBTA drifts may be better suited still.

 

[pemerton]

No PC backstory is ever going to be as awesome as playing through those moments at the table.

This is one of the reasons despite understanding more about the neo-trad style now (honestly thanks everyone), I don't think it will ever be my style. I don't want a character with a detailed backstory telling me how cool they were before the game even starts. I want to see them be cool during play in a shared moment at the table.

I don't think there has to be a stark contrast here. The backstory can provide the context and underlying rationale for the events that happen in play.

 

[overgeeked]

Things start connecting in my head when I realize that there's a huge difference in both effort and response when I try and nudge them towards the Plot vs when we're just doing something I fabricate and direct to a player's backstory/espoused goals as they arrive.

Yeah, absolutely. I mostly run sandboxes. Let the players decide where they want to go. Whether they're basing those choices off pure self-interest or unspoken goals or the backstory they have in their heads is up to them. I don't tend to have any issues with interest as it's all player driven. I can definitely see the benefits of being more upfront and concrete about starting with defined goals. In old-school and OSR games, PCs tend to develop those naturally over time through play. Starting with just enough of a backstory to have goals sounds fine.

Starting with the epic novels I've had players hand me does not. I think the line is personal. On the extreme end I think the refrain about railroading DMs being frustrated novelists also applies to some of the people writing epic backstories grander than Lord of the Rings for their 1st-level zero XP characters.

That OC player sounds like a nightmare straight out of my own personal hell.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, absolutely. I mostly run sandboxes. Let the players decide where they want to go. Whether they're basing those choices off pure self-interest or unspoken goals or the backstory they have in their heads is up to them. I don't tend to have any issues with interest as it's all player driven. I can definitely see the benefits of being more upfront and concrete about starting with defined goals. In old-school and OSR games, PCs tend to develop those naturally over time through play. Starting with just enough of a backstory to have goals sounds fine.

Starting with the epic novels I've had players hand me does not. I think the line is personal. On the extreme end I think the refrain about railroading DMs being frustrated novelists also applies to some of the people writing epic backstories grander than Lord of the Rings for their 1st-level zero XP characters.

That OC player sounds like a nightmare straight out of my own personal hell.

I think there’s something to be said for having characters have a reason to a) bite the premise together and b) knit into a party to the get the ball rolling. FU does this explicitly during party creation - you establish bonds and reasons to be an adventuring party as part of premise (and bonds don’t all have to be positive!).

On that pages of pre written story bit, the BG3 party members are to me the final exemplars of the pure OC style in a CRPG form. Each is so freaking extra, and then you have players that show up with that sort of thing on their minds.

None of mine thankfully.