A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[tetrasodium]

No, I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about a GM working with each player to find out what they want the game to be about, and then working to deliver that game. The players are expected to have their own goals and the GM works them into the game.

The critical omission is that you described an expectation of having a pretty high level of authority over the sanctity of your character's story in ways that significantly impact the campaign yet did not bother to mention yourself giving the other players at the table even a speck of what you expected from the gm.

I assure you this is a real thing… I’ve done it! Very often.

Let's be honest and admit that it's unlikely you were talking about a scenario exclusive to a game with that ratio? I agree games with that ratio exist and even mentioned them in an asterisk point here wayyyy back in the early pages of the thread as an exception to players generally outnumbering the gm. That a 1:1 ratio sometimes happens was unrelated to the point of a poster describing themselves engaging in a scenario where they expect a bunch of things from the gm without including even one step where they might acknowledge or utter a single word to the other players expecting the GM to do the same for them. Having that post just a couple posts above the one where the OP stated that "they've yet observed a single instance of it" in order to avoid answering questions that were ignored.

I'd like to echo @hawkeyefan's remarks about 495. I'm not seeing the malfeasance that you see, which is making it hard for me to be responsive to your challenges. For example, it didn't strike me that the poster could be describing specifically 1:1 play until you said it. (Assuming that I read you correctly.)

I will keep reading your posts and perhaps it will dawn on me. Until then I will take a break from direct replies.

As I said above, it didn't strike me as a 1:1 ratio game either, that makes 495 treating it as one extremely problematic in ways that a new "play style" needs to be explicitly clear about. But rather than doing that for neotrad you still didn't answer either questions.

 

[clearstream]

For me, this goes back to the matter of terminology, and what it is being used to convey.

"Story now" was coined to describe a certain sort of game, where the core logic of play is for the GM to establish situations that permit the players to say something. This means the situations have to involve or present "premise" (in the literary sense) and the players' choices respond to that premise and produce "theme" (again in the literary sense). Because of the form of RPGing, in which the players' choices are manifested primarily by way of declaring actions for their PCs, it's essential for this to work that there be quite deep connections between situations and characters. Given that another typical aspect of RPGing is that players build their characters, establishing that deep connection means that the players, as part of their PC build, establish elements that the GM can draw on for situation: relationships, kickers, PC goals/aspirations/beliefs, etc.

Now maybe many RPGs produce story in the sense of not just a transcript, but a transcript with "a 'little something' . . . a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader". Personally I've got doubts - I think a lot of typical RPGing does not generate story in the sense. But even if it does, it doesn't generate it in the way described in the previous paragraph - by having the players say something in virtue of the actions they declare for their PCs, which are able to say something because of the situation the GM has framed.

A very obvious example is where the GM is running an AP, which establishes the villain as part of its contents - functionally, therefore, as part of the GM's prep - so that the players have no choice, in play, but to confront that villain via their PCs. In this case, even if the confrontation of the villain by the PCs generates a theme-laden story, it is not doing so as a result of the players' choices. The choice was made by the author of the AP.

In the play of this AP, we might say that in play we find out what happens when the PCs confront the villain (eg do they suffer defeat?). But we are not playing to find out in the sense that phrase is used in Apocalypse World - we already know that the villain is the villain, and that the PCs will oppose them.

The preceding sets out some differences between "trad" play (I still put forward DL and Dead Gods as paradigms) and "story now" play. I'm sure a similar bundle of contrasts could be drawn for "story now" and "neotrad", beginning with the timing of when the player makes the choices that will reveal the truth about their character, ie as part of prep or part of play.

These very real differences in RPG play do not go away by insisting that all game play, or all RPG play, produces narrative. As I've posted upthread, all that insistence achieves is requiring the development of new terminology to describe these differences.

A quick thought on this (I'll read it and @Manbearcat's again later) coming out of earlier conversation over DitV active disclosure. The "rule" for actively disclosing is - if it's not your focus of play, actively disclose it. Notionally we can then have

That which someone decides - influences and interfaces with play, but not settled by play (Duskvol setting fiction)

That which we actively disclose - influences play and interfaces with play, but may not be settled by play (DitV town inhabitants)​

​

That which we shroud in mystery, with some process for disclosure - influences and interfaces with play, but may not be settled by play (the BBEG's plot in an AP)​

​

That which is settled by play - neither actively disclosed, nor shrouded in mystery, nor simply decided by one person​

​

Where I'm going with this is that when your focus for play is something other than protagonists-resolve-premises, the above still applies. If it is ludically-crux (among your prelusory-goals), it ought to be settled in play. The implication drawn attention to is that it's fine if the BBEG is scripted, so long as that isn't what you're playing for. To avoid accusations of "smearing out" - no, this doesn't make RPGs undifferentiable. For one thing, they can each make different things the focus of play, and they can each decide that different things aren't the focus of play. And treat those things in different ways.

In order to play RPG as game, one ought to subject one's focus of play to play. Anything else is unideal (and arguably, not playing a game.) I've said this a few different ways up thread.

GM: BBEG is thus and so and you are their resolute enemy. Not play: not the focus of play.​

​

P1: Speech acts following gamestate, principles and rules. P2: responds in kind. GM: responds in kind. Stuff resolves. Play: which ought to address their focus of play.​

I use the word "ought" above to imply a normative principle or ideal. So I am saying, broadly, that importing mechanics that were designed to ensure that the focus of play is subject to play, ought to be imported for the sake of centering on play. And there's a few design moves that buttress that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In the last three years, I've played Blades in the Dark, Stonetop, Lazers & Feelings, Dogs in the Vineyard, Thousand Arrows, Mouse Guard, and The Between with you @hawkeyefan . The experience of each of these games (and not just the thematics and the premise) are extremely different. If you were asked to write a review that spoke to "the moment-to-moment experience of that how for each participant," the reviews of each game would diverge significantly right? You'd talk about the differences in currencies, structure/play loops, reward and advancement cycles, various forms of attrition and recovery, relationship mechanics (PC to PC and PC to NPC), player & GM handles, incentive structures, and how much Gamism is present in each game (if any). It would look very different for each game. And we're still (roughly) within archetype of game!

Yeah, they’ve all been very different experiences in play. Even if you narrow that list down to just the three PbtA games… Stonetop, A Thousand Arrows, and The Between… they all produce different play. There are differences in their design that bring these different play experiences about.

Denying that just seems odd. I don’t think that there’s anything to be gained by ignoring the differences in game design and how that shapes play.

 

[Emberashh]

forget that the concept is imported from video game critique

Game Design is Game Design, and ludonarrative dissonance/harmony isn't specific to any particular game medium.

The blow-by-blow, moment-to-moment experience (cognitively, emotionally, logistically/procedurally/table-time-allocation) of playing and running a game like Dogs in the Vineyard is profoundly different than playing and running a game like Apocalypse World. That is despite the reality that (a) its the same designer for both and (b) these games are supposed to be DNA-deep kindred. When you move from one of those two to something like Torchbearer, the differences explode

Yes, different games with fundamentally different Content are different, and between those three, many of (though not all) the mechanics are also different

That is the level of zoom we should be looking at when examining games, when examining how best to facilitate design that does the necessary work for "Neotraditional moment-stacking" (which yields Neotraditional play in the aggregate).

This is why its important to not just scoff at video game sources.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, they’ve all been very different experiences in play. Even if you narrow that list down to just the three PbtA games… Stonetop, A Thousand Arrows, and The Between… they all produce different play. There are differences in their design that bring these different play experiences about.

Denying that just seems odd. I don’t think that there’s anything to be gained by ignoring the differences in game design and how that shapes play.

Can you quote one person asserting these games don’t have differences? I can quote a bunch where I and others explicitly say that’s not our claim.

Might I suggest the reason the idea that all games are exactly the same is so easy to knock down is because we all see it as absurd.

Now if the concern is that we say there are similarities between games… of course there are! Pointing out those similarities is not claiming the games are the same!

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, they’ve all been very different experiences in play. Even if you narrow that list down to just the three PbtA games… Stonetop, A Thousand Arrows, and The Between… they all produce different play. There are differences in their design that bring these different play experiences about.

Denying that just seems odd. I don’t think that there’s anything to be gained by ignoring the differences in game design and how that shapes play.

Who denies it?

 

[Manbearcat]

Game Design is Game Design, and ludonarrative dissonance/harmony isn't specific to any particular game medium.

When it comes to very specific concepts like ludonarrative/dissonance, game design is not game design is not game design. That concept is important to video games in the same way its important to TTRPGs in the Trad space (with the features I mentioned in that post you quoted). Its utterly irrelevant to Pawn Stance Dungeon/Hex Crawling or to Story Now design or any challenge-based play that isn't sensitive to metaplot, or secret backstory/prompted/unprompted reveals centered around social intrigues and mysteries. Its not relevant to the overwhelming amount of boardgames or ball sports or BJJ or climbing or any other number of games.

Broadly, game design has architecture that translates and connects the various, disparate mediums of play (like those mentioned above), but some specific concerns and related concepts around specific rules instantiations/violations in physical sports have no bearing on TTRPG design or boardgame design or CRPG design. Same goes omnidirectionally between all of those.

This is why its important to not just scoff at video game sources.

Contesting the level of broad applicability of specific design concepts/terminology is not scornful derision. No one is scoffing.

 

[FrogReaver]

I also will add.

It’s not just what fiction a game can produce but also how it produces it. That is, all the mechanics and omitted mechanics matter. One of my much earlier mistakes in such discussions was believing that narrative/story now games were being praised for being able to generate certain fictions that a game like d&d could not, but the actual claim was a bit more subtle, it wasn’t that the games generated different fiction, it’s that the mechanics behind the generation of the fiction made for greatly dissimilar gameplay regardless of whether the resulting fiction ended up the same. (This difference also affects the distribution of resulting fiction, such that usually the fiction generated by 2 different games is going to be different, it just need not be.)

I’ve said that to lead into this - the game is the mechanical bits. Changing any of the mechanical bits changes the game (the play experience). Obviously some changes are bigger impact than others.

So as Manbearcat said above, the moment to moment experience is different between different games! I fully agree. Yet there still are similarities and design patterns even with all those differences.

One of the most important takeaways here is that if we all agree that games with different mechanics provide different experiences, then saying something like mechanics that provide greater player authority are better is wholly out of bounds because changing the mechanic changes the play experience.

This leaves us in a bit of a rut, how do we determine what kinds of mechanics a game should have, when is more player authority good and when isn’t it - well that depends on the rest of the game mechanics and on the experiences you want your game to provide.

So now that all this is agreed upon, can we stop claiming some games provide universally better experiences than others. This goes both ways!

 

[clearstream]

When it comes to very specific concepts like ludonarrative/dissonance

This is a very small point, but I am using "ludonarrative" only to mean the form narrative adopts via games-as-medium. (Where the signifiers are ludic and the narration fully incorporates the lusory-duality.) You're right that I liberated it from the Alexandrian.

This assumption seems mild but changes pretty radically how you think about "ludonarrative dissonance"! It becomes something like ludonarrative-narrative dissonance, and takes a few different forms (I can describe them if it becomes relevant.) One form is where it constitutes plain breaches of PtFO.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Who denies it?

Both @Emberashh and @tetrasodium would appear to be doing so. From what I can tell.