A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, it's a fairly significant difference and where so many of these neotrad/OC debates expose imply or provide cover for an unhealthy play expectation.

The gm carries a lot of additional duties and responsibilities that players do not. If you talk about reducing the gm's power/authority/etc to make them more like a player while talking up player authority all of those duties and responsibilities remain exclusively with the gm. If you talk about involving players in a collaborative shared narrative storygame where players have the ability to do things like make declarations and compels* or similar shares some of those duties and responsibilities with players who are expected to do nontrivial amounts of lifting with their own character, other player's characters, the world, and places they might intersect

But that's talking about a game that actually kind of embodies what may as well be an extreme example of the values Neotrad/OC tries to spotlight and neotrad/OC discussions tend to be about gameplay as if it were a thing that could simply be slotted into almost any system. That's where the focus on changing the gm's role carries a second punch by pinning blame to the gm for the inevitable breakdown and failure of trying to slot the square peg into a round hole. If the talk is instead focused on making players more like the GM the square peg is immediately called out over the various ways it will clash when a particular player's effort to import it into a poorly fitting system needs to be explained to the rest of the table.

* Both fate terms. I used it because they are simple and work the same both ways. Declarations spend a resource to declare a relevant detail into existence and compels force someone else to take some action unless they can explain why not and buy their way out of the compel.

I feel like a lot of what you are saying is still coming from a very classic/trad kind of place where there is a specific milieu that has fixed characteristics and the players navigate characters through it in a rather 'flashlight' fashion with overcoming challenges being a central aspect. In that sort of play then undermining the GM becomes a problematic issue because it leaves the central goals of play without support. If, however you entirely embrace a narrativist sort of view of the goals of play, then there is no issue here. The GM then is mostly concerned with Czege-type issues (IE being the owner of obstacles to PC goals).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If they also insist on the game being a do anything sandbox, something has to give.

But, thats also why the other option is pursuing a true emergent narrative system, rather than the kinda-sorta thing that results from slapping a conventional literary or film plot into whats otherwise a sandbox.

This is a solution I've been looking into in my game.



The issue is that traditional stories don't work in interactive environments; games are about doing, not being a passive audience.

Thats the reason most video games that try to force a story through the game could just as easily done their story as a movie with nothing lost. The "story" is just movie scenes inbetween disconnected bouts of unrelated gameplay.

Meanwhile, games like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, the Sims, and others are ones that go the other way, allowing story's to truly emerge from gameplay, and many others unlike those are heavily conducive to the same on a smaller scale, like DayZ or Bannerlord. They aren't stories that are even remotely similar to conventional narratives we see in movies or books, but thats okay, because games are a different medium.

The latter is more of what RPGs should be playing like, if we want to hold up the idea that they're games where you can do "anything".

As said, there's two choices. Either we go for an actual sandbox, which means players need to adjust their expectations, or we accept the idea that RPGs aren't games where anything can be done, and so the design and the players need to follow that assumption.

We can't have it both ways.

I think there's a nexus of agreement, that is that Narrativist play was intended to address this sort of thing. I mean, that's my experience is that classic/trad play can spit out narratives, but those will be some sort of 'baking' of ingredients supplied by the GM, largely, and then maybe confounded and extrapolated a bit by players with GM approval (or not).

We all kind of desired something MORE, and that eventually lead, via many experiments, to the notions of players providing cues to conflict and GMs providing the fictional position to allow it to be realized, with the 'snowball' sort of mechanisms there to provide some velocity to the whole thing so it doesn't bog down into 'cupcake play'.

 

[tetrasodium]

I feel like a lot of what you are saying is still coming from a very classic/trad kind of place where there is a specific milieu that has fixed characteristics and the players navigate characters through it in a rather 'flashlight' fashion with overcoming challenges being a central aspect. In that sort of play then undermining the GM becomes a problematic issue because it leaves the central goals of play without support. If, however you entirely embrace a narrativist sort of view of the goals of play, then there is no issue here. The GM then is mostly concerned with Czege-type issues (IE being the owner of obstacles to PC goals).

The post you quoted was mostly talking about fate, I ran it at a flgs for most of 4e's run. Compels and declarations are just as core to fate gameplay as aspects, the only difference is that aspects are a thing with an impact on play that is harder to explain and not super relevant crunch.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The post you quoted was mostly talking about fate, I ran it at a flgs for most of 4e's run. Compels and declarations are just as core to fate gameplay as aspects, the only difference is that aspects are a thing with an impact on play that is harder to explain and not super relevant crunch.

I'm not sure where compels fit into this landscape. I mean, they are certainly a mechanical pathway to altering the fiction. What FATE missed was the central concept of defining agenda and building from that. You CAN play a pretty Narrativist FATE game, but it hasn't been classically considered a true Narrativist system. I have no idea how it would fit within Clearstream's taxonomy.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure where compels fit into this landscape. I mean, they are certainly a mechanical pathway to altering the fiction. What FATE missed was the central concept of defining agenda and building from that. You CAN play a pretty Narrativist FATE game, but it hasn't been classically considered a true Narrativist system. I have no idea how it would fit within Clearstream's taxonomy.

Compels fit in because they are part of the responsibility that players share with the GM in fate. I started typing out a response talking about how the city sheets in dfrpg (pre-fate core fate) shape things actively going on in the world beyond the pcs themselves with the intention of talking about how fate core grew out of dfrpg & still maintains those elements on some level... and then I stopped because it hit me that you were claiming that fate is not a "narrativist" system.... We might not be talking about the same game, I'd ask if you were confusing it with monster of the week or something but admittedly have not played that. Fate core came out in 2013 & has existed in some form since 2003, I'm not sure if any game that recent is "classically" considered anything. Collaborative shared narrative is practically fate's whole thing.

As for clearstream's taxonomy, it seems to be an effort to to work backwards from a desired style of play at a table & work backwards to a system agnostic thing the GM needs to get onboard with. I'm not sure if any system meets the taxonomy, but there are lots that can be stacked alongside it with a huge chunk of overlap in the venn diagram, fate is very much one such system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, Adventure Paths - which pre-package the story - seem to be pretty popular. CoC is an enduring RPG, and a typical CoC module is a pre-packaged story. Back in the day there were the DL modules, and Dead Gods, and the like.

I think saying that all these things miss the entire point is a bit strong. I mean, they're not to my taste (and apparently not to yours either), but for a lot of people this sort of play - the players "being there" in the story via their PCs - is the point of RPGing.

EDIT: mostly ninja'd by @hawkeyefan in post 77 upthread.

I'm in the process of finishing up playing in a Pathfinder 2e adventure path, and while its been a bit rigid for my tastes, its still been worth playing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yes, it's possible that GM needs to be seen in an entirely new light.

I'm morally certain that it's right to see GM in at least some mainstream modes of play as part of "lusory-means", i.e. part of the mechanisms of play. But what does this mean in terms of rule-following? If one's view is that "rule zero/golden rule" power is essential to make TTRPGs work, then they're not only part but also fabricator of lusory-means.

GM is often characterised as "referee" - interpreter and upholder of rules. But referees ordinarily do not follow the rules or enact them, they only see that they are followed/enacted. They may validate the goals of play, but do not set or pursue them.

GM is often characterised as a "player". One view is that this is a plain mistake. Best read as a synonym of "participant." If taken in earnest, as I suggest, it gives GM skin in the game. They are rule-followers and game goal pursuers. Although not necessarily the same rules or goals as other players. Once asymmetry us embraced, I see no reason at all why GM cannot satisfy every function required of them, as a player.

On surface, GM as player is rather efficient: no constitution is needed to say how GM should wield power... the background norms that enable game play at all, with the game text, covers it. What counts as GMing can be engineered into the design of each game, to suit the design intent. Hence it's placement in a manifesto for TTRPG design.

Where GM is not player, I'd argue one ought to have a coherent idea of what they are. One coherent idea is that they are referee and lusory-means, at most signatories to a constitution. So it's a choice, that depends on purposes and preferences.

One consideration is that largely, what we consider the GM, and the power afforded to the GM, has the most to do with the responsibility placed on the GM's shoulders. If players accept that a GM is responsible for following the rules, then a set of powers enabling them to bend, break, and redesign the rules for the purposes of some other goal becomes needless. The more broadly defined their goals are (say, to avert bad feeling), the more necessarily wide their powers become-- this can be restricted in such a theoretical constitution, but the possible discrepancy between responsibility and powers, is likely a source of pushback.

Your point regarding the specific engineering of each game as a tuning of the GM role is a good one, although there is a part of me unhappy with it, because the setting of expectations as happening only in the game feels like a perfectly spherical cow in some ways-- there's a lot of tension when a rulebook stakes a strong position because players often don't see their expectations as being on the table for the book to alter, so it's a non-starter. So you see this natural inclination to reload the GM with authority, and the driving responsibility is "present the experience we wanted it to be, not the experience the book is evangelizing." This can even be true for the book itself, which will essentially infuse the GM with the responsibility of carrying forward its evangelism "this game doesn't suck, your game sucks."

So to get rid of that authority, you have to get rid of the responsibility, and it kinda seems like things have been going in the opposite direction-- the emphasis of the OC thing that's been treated as co-mobid with 'Neotrad' design is about exerting that kind of control on the game in the first place, for a player-desire centric experience.

 

[the Jester]

Is there a functional difference between "making the GM more like the players" and "making the players more like the GM?"

I think there is.

Making the GM more like the players reads to me like imposing restrictions on the GM via the ruleset while not shifting the unique burdens of the GM to the (other) players. For example, the GM must follow a certain set of procedural rules when creating a town or may not vary from the written text of an adventure when running it. It's about stopping the GM from exceeding his agreed-upon powers.

Making the players more like the GM reads to me like shifting some of the GM's duties to the players; for example, giving them the ability to declare that there is a chandelier to swing from in a given room, whether the GM put one there or not, is giving the players a certain amount of authorship over the setting. Or letting the (other) players make decisions about the culture they are from whether the GM likes those decisions or not.

 

[pemerton]

I would argue that GUMSHOE is largely a Narrativist system! I mean, it is intended for a very specific sort of play, and is not a 'low myth' (at least in terms of what the story is) game, but it still largely follows a kind of 'play to find out what happens' kind of schema, doesn't it? I can see how that would vary depending on the attitude of the participants though, as if the GM assumes a very specific outcome to the mystery at hand, then they can probably 'make it so'. Or am I misrepresenting it?

Well, I've only read Trail of Cthulhu, not played it.

But to me it seems like the experience it offers is classic CoC railroading, except that the mechanics ensure that the GM doesn't need to fudge rolls to make sure the players find the clues to keep things on track.

But the player-side seems to me basically working through the GM's clues to solve the GM's mystery.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If they also insist on the game being a do anything sandbox, something has to give.

But, thats also why the other option is pursuing a true emergent narrative system, rather than the kinda-sorta thing that results from slapping a conventional literary or film plot into whats otherwise a sandbox.

This is a solution I've been looking into in my game.



The issue is that traditional stories don't work in interactive environments; games are about doing, not being a passive audience.

Thats the reason most video games that try to force a story through the game could just as easily done their story as a movie with nothing lost. The "story" is just movie scenes inbetween disconnected bouts of unrelated gameplay.

Meanwhile, games like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, the Sims, and others are ones that go the other way, allowing story's to truly emerge from gameplay, and many others unlike those are heavily conducive to the same on a smaller scale, like DayZ or Bannerlord. They aren't stories that are even remotely similar to conventional narratives we see in movies or books, but thats okay, because games are a different medium.

The latter is more of what RPGs should be playing like, if we want to hold up the idea that they're games where you can do "anything".

As said, there's two choices. Either we go for an actual sandbox, which means players need to adjust their expectations, or we accept the idea that RPGs aren't games where anything can be done, and so the design and the players need to follow that assumption.

We can't have it both ways.

Of course we can. I don’t see how you can talk about games doing “anything” and then say there’s only one way. It doesn’t make any sense.