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My experience is that since we're still playing a roleplaying game, the neo-trad desire for character definition is always in conversation with other gameplay elements, whatever the mechanics happen to be-- absolute control is more or less disqualified by the multiplayer nature of the activity...

You are correct, it can be both too though, the same player I've been talking about actually has in the past, basically designed for me a setup where their character's bullying brothers appeared as minor antagonists through the campaign (e.g. showing up as hired muscle by other bad guys) so he...

Sorry that was me attempting to imply that play had already been taking place or the players had come to an arrangement about shared backstory elements, I have seen that happen organically as you assumed it had here but if so it would have been accompanied by a quick (ooc: [question planning...

Yup! This description I think captures a lot of the essence of the mindset, and I think the earlier reference of problem statements rather than complete arcs intersects well with this-- the baggage that the character carries around with them defines their story as much or more than the external...

This really is something that shows up with literary movements too, you have authors who in retrospect were doing things that would become the norm even centuries before the movement actually seems to take place, when that happens we just talk about them in those terms, alluding to them as...

Avoiding getting too caught up in the semantics and categorization, but I wanted to touch on this, the thing about degenerate forms of play is that they sort of suggest an intrinsic value judgement that comes from somewhere (it's actually a really unfortunate term, given the concept of...

Universal systems would indeed have the benefit of latching directly onto the roleplaying without much fuss, but I also agree that crunchy systems that include lots of character options give a toolbox for self-expression that can get the player excited by letting them sort through it looking for...

There's an expression that Collville turned me onto "The Map is Not the Territory" where it emphasizes that while a map is useful for navigation it doesn't necessarily describe the perfect reality of what it is attempting to depict. Collville was discussing how rulebooks and forum discussions...

This is an interesting idea and I think you're absolutely correct about childhood make-believe being a kind of patient zero for the behavior, but my impression of Nordic is that it's more focused on achieving the psychological bleed and then breaking it down afterward-- e.g. it's kind of high...

I do recognize that session was saying that, but the things I bolded taken together heavily suggest that the intent is that you can also use the free feats for other archetypes after, since the clause that gives you the feats is distinct, and it still promotes taking other archetypes, and even...

I think you're right in that I should have made the fact that those two concepts were different clearer, to me, they came together under what you outline as their commonality of premeditation. I've also noticed that you can get tension if they get it too fast and then the player has to figure...

What were some of your (general audience of this post) favorite characters ever?

Yup, or an example on this forum, you might find that even if you want a heist game BITD doesn't fit your needs because your conception of a heist game includes way more strategic planning and execution-- like playing Payday 2 or something but in tabletop RPG form.

This seems a bit too hostile to actually respond to, but giving it the benefit of the doubt-- six cultures of play isn't gibberish and the overlap isn't particularly damning as the same person can be influenced by more than one game over the course of their life, or community-- e.g. I started...

So, one of the things I base my choice of system off of, is actually the way the texture of the mechanics and player options align with the theming and fantasy of what they express. Your system, in theory, should be able to perform any of these narratives, but it's texture will remain static as...

Yeah, my own group does make them somewhat compatible but there is some friction (mainly between the desire for instrumental play and the desire for purely expressive play) the main thing about compatibility is the degree to which the activities interfere with each other. My players still...

Yup, in fact, some examples of these kinds of RPs include things like Wolf Pack RPs where things (in my experience) were mainly happening to let the PC wolves interact, dicker, and so forth, or indeed yeah you could have your RP be a bar setup of people who regularly show up and banter with each...

Is that the acronym for Free Kriegspiel? Not exactly, that still has a referee who has the power to adjudicate, on the messageboards that power was typically more decentralized. The emphasis is also different since that game is still a wargame. Notably though, you could think of its...

Personally, I really like TTRPGs that are more like like engines or systems, because you can play mroe games with each one. If every game of X were the same to the extent that I would either like all of them, or none of them (which I'm not sure is true of the systems its being discussed about)...

The Term Neo-Trad is being used as described in the Six Cultures of Play article. So, to launch this discussion I want to talk a little bit about how I started Roleplaying, and that'll ground my perspective and why it might differ from those of other people. The year was ~2004 and I was ~10...