A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[hawkeyefan]

Also, if someone can please pass this answer along to @FrogReaver … he has me blocked, but is apparently quoting me in this thread.

It seems to me to be a violation of the blocking feature of the forum. If he does not want to engage with me, that’s fine… but I see his ability to quote me without my knowing as making it personal.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This really does just reinforce my point. Did and do we really need "new" games just because a lot of RPGs (re: virtually all of them, even the better ones, given the clear denial that half or even more of the point is improv) are terrible at actually teaching how to play and run them?

Yes. I would say that we do need games that are clearly describing how they’re meant to be played and run. You describe a shortage of such games here. So why would you not want them?

The differences you noted are independent of any particular game. You're playing differently and engaging with improv differently. It is entirely immaterial whether its 5e, Shadowrun, or Monsterhearts that you're playing.

So the difference between Monsterhearts and 5e has nothing to do with Monsterhearts or 5e?

There are no design decisions being discussed. Just nebulous player behaviors.

So the game you’re designing, it’ll work the same as all other games, eh?

Not finding the subject particularly valuable has nothing to do with the willingness to talk about it. Making that point, in fact, is a valid approach, and trying to say I shouldn't be bothering most certainly isn't a valid response.

Idk about you, but even in my own topics I'd rather have a bunch of people disagreeing with me (as has happened) than a bunch of yes men generating no interesting thought whatsoever.

Then why are you encouraging folks to stop spending so much effort on the topic?

Its heavily implied, if not outright stated, when we throw up an example of a GM not delivering a bespoke narrative for a player, for whatever reason, and call that problem.

No, you’re inferring that despite me explicitly saying otherwise. It is only a problem in the sense that two or more people have differing expectations. No one is to blame.

Case in point. Do we need a new game to just talk to each other and be clear about what we're there for?

No, not specifically for that. But I would say that if a game is clear about its intent, then there is less chance for such mismatched expectations.

And a prewritten adventure is an entirely different idea altogether. The entire point of one is so nobody has to do any writing or pitching.

Except the people who write the adventure. They have to do a good bit of writing.

Just open the module and follow along. Whether or not it ends up being a good experience is seldom on the GM or the Players, short of them screwing the pooch something fierce. I for example have never had, seen, nor run a bad experience with Curse of Strahd, but I have seen and observed TOA go sideways, to no fault of anybody at the table.

Your anecdotal evidence clashes with plenty of other anecdotal evidence… I can’t give it any weight.

The subtle snark aside, the point is that the problems that are supposed to be solved by a nebulous "new" game are all things that are, 1, highly assumptive of the persons who will be playing, and 2, problems easily solved in already existing games by just shifting how they're engaged with.

A Session Zero solves the vast bulk of these issues, as does not cheating. You can apply both of these methods to any game.

That is what I was communicating by noting that the otherizing of these ideas as "neotrad" is hamfisted, as no new game is actually being produced by it.

I don’t know who’s “otherizing” here. I personally like these categories as they help me know what I should be doing with a given game. That they’re not perfect doesn’t mean they’re not useful. They do similar work to session zero, so I don’t think you’re even against the idea.

 

[Composer99]

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 is a thread about games that aspire to be in the neotrad school of design - that is, games that aspire to deliver a gameplay experience that is recognisably neotrad.

Is it not the case that games designed with some other design aims in mind - such as fully trad games (perhaps the most archetypal being World of Darkness games) - will necessarily be worse at delivering a neotrad gameplay experience? Is it not the case that if your goal is to deliver a neotrad gameplay experience, then mechanics that increase player authority during gameplay simply are better at fulfilling that goal, compared to, say, mechanics (or the lack thereof) that fulsomely empower GMs?

The post I'm quoting seriously comes across as threadcrapping and trying to shut down discussion, whatever your intent may be.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

What? I expect the same for all players. This really isn’t that hard to understand. All you have to do is stop looking at it with such an adversarial mindset. This isn't about conflicting opposing ideas… this is about collaboration.

The players come up with ideas. The GM happily adds those to his own ideas.

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’m not talking about one on one games. I’m talking about games with a number of participants.

The first game I ran that I said could be categorized as neotrad was AD&D 2e. I had five players. Each had an idea of their character and what they wanted to see in play. We created NPCs for each of them, and NPCs that were mutual to two or more of them, and so on. All with motivations and goals that would impact play.

It wasn’t really all that much more prep than I would have typically done at the time. Probably less, honestly, given that a lot of the ideas came from the players.

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.

It’s not problematic for the people who are doing it. Your insistence that it’s problematic in theory just doesn’t match actual experience.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

People don't often like to think of these games like that, but I can't help but keep sounding that bell. All of these problems are improv problems, and just as easily solved.

The problem is you didn't play through the evolution of RPGs from the mid-70s through to the modern era. Your stance is not viable. That is, what you seem to be proposing will only work for a tiny niche of RPGs. Brilliant designers of the early period thoroughly explored those options. Some decent games resulted, and with today's state of the art better ones are possible, but they will never achieve the results of a BitD or an AW. I know this from raw experience.

 

[tetrasodium]

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

I'd be interested to hear that explained. While you are at it, perhaps go into a bit of detail about what in neotrad makes your 495 scenario skip over the player who is a playerextending to other players what they are expecting from the player who is a GM to the point where interacting with them at any point through that process is not even mentioned

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'd be interested to hear that explained. While you are at it, perhaps go into a bit of detail about what in neotrad makes your 495 scenario skip over the player who is a playerextending to other players what they are expecting from the player who is a GM to the point where interacting with them at any point through that process is not even mentioned

I don’t know what you just said or what you’re asking of me. I’ve described the game in a pretty straightforward way.

 

[clearstream]

This is a thread about games that aspire to be in the neotrad school of design - that is, games that aspire to deliver a gameplay experience that is recognisably neotrad.

Is it not the case that games designed with some other design aims in mind - such as fully trad games (perhaps the most archetypal being World of Darkness games) - will necessarily be worse at delivering a neotrad gameplay experience? Is it not the case that if your goal is to deliver a neotrad gameplay experience, then mechanics that increase player authority during gameplay simply are better at fulfilling that goal, compared to, say, mechanics (or the lack thereof) that fulsomely empower GMs?

My take is that it's more about the how, what, and when of authorship, rather than the who per se. The motive to compel/constrain GM's voice is to guarantee space for other voices, not specifically to transfer authorship... although that would be both a foreseeable consequence and potential to leverage (and it is, in fact, leveraged). Players will say more, with greater effect, GM will say less, with less omnipotence.

But this is for the sake of settling in play the focus of play. Which requires that players can effectively address it. Just to give the obvious negative case, the goal isn't just so that players can smother the focus of play in stuff they've prepped or decided, instead of GM. It's so no one can. You can, I hope, see how player-authorship could just as easily go off the rails as GM's.

 

[FrogReaver]

Also, if someone can please pass this answer along to @FrogReaver … he has me blocked, but is apparently quoting me in this thread.

It seems to me to be a violation of the blocking feature of the forum. If he does not want to engage with me, that’s fine… but I see his ability to quote me without my knowing as making it personal.

I recently as in the last month or so checked the box above. However, I started seeing the ignored quotes just like if 2 way block is off so I assumed it was off.

Had no idea it was possible to still see your comments and quote them while having 2 way block enabled.

Apologies for that. My intent is to now avoid this particular settings configuration due this issue. I’m going back to the ignore setting so you should see my posts going forward. If I change it to entirely block again I’ll click the remove ignored content option which will prevent this from occuring.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And what are those aims? Having a specially curated plot thats simultaneously as compelling as any tv show but also doesn't feel like you're being railroaded?

Shouldn't have to be pointed out that that is patently ridiculous, and no amount of "collaborative storytelling" shtick says otherwise; its a lot like saying a customer is collaborating with a Chef on a meal by ordering a bunch of crap that isn't on the menu whilst expecting to still use the 50% off coupon.

You sound bitter.

But even if we step back from hyperbole, the collaboration angle is just weak. Sure a player can pitch story directions and seeds, but that still puts the burden of creation on the GM, and its entirely uncalled for to say the GM is doing something wrong if they fail to do so, or even just decide not to. A player whose actually collaborating in a fair way is going to be creating, and driving, most of the experience themselves.

Let's examine Dungeon World for a minute. Is the allocation of work, not authority, all that unusual? No! The GM frames every scene, they can also generate material in advance, and have a central role in rules application. The only real difference is that the game clearly spells out how the process of play works and the sort of experience which is being aimed at. Yes, this certainly puts more of the narrative direction in the hands of players. Experience shows this works quite well!

And that makes sense. Its not a secret that being a good player means being proactive, curious, and flexible; not so coincidentally the same fundamental qualities asked of improv players.

But of course, it also has to be said that the whole assumption underlying this is that the player is coming to the table with a story, and thats never been a good idea to begin with. If you've already got a story, just write a book.

No, you misunderstand these games, at least their intent. Played as designed and intended players come with the raw uncooked character concept but no idea what narrative will arise. Now neo-trad play is possibly a bit different, and here the players will need to work out how their concepts get operationalized in play. I think what @clearstream aims at is a sort of blueprint for that in a general sense.

It has to be said too that while your PBTAs and FATEs and what not are held up to combat this, you can also just do sandboxes in more typical games and start the game as nobodies, like basically every cRPG that doesn't force a specific character on you figured out decades ago.

That simple fact is what highlights how deep in the weeds this culture stuff gets. You don't need a brand new game to stop these problems, just stop trying to force a story to happen.

Again your lack of deep experience is showing. We tried this for at least twenty years and it failed miserably.

If the game isn't compelling enough on its own to just play for its own sake, find a better game to play. And if you still want to see a story happen, learn improv and start actually collaborating, don't just throw in 2 cents and demand the GM to deliver the other 98. And don't you dare start complaining about how the sausage is made. If you want to actually collaborate, you don't have the luxury of being merely an audience member.

Rules systems, meanwhile, can be designed to help this along. A suitably compelling game system will do so with ease, and as much as people like to complain about it, 5e is such a game. So is DCC, LFRPG, PF2E, GURPS, COC, BRP/Runequest, and scores of others. You might not get TV show plotlines, but these are games; we don't need to copy other narrative mediums.

No they're not and your insistance on this point simply once again shows you are apparently missing critical elements of understanding the issue.

And so are your PBTAs and BITD and all that, for the record. The key difference is mostly that where other games drive interesting stories by being compelling interactive experiences, these narrative games do it by just directly injecting microstories into your improv. Both are fine, and ultimately neither is nearly as fun trying to force a story than they are just playing them and enjoying them for what they are.

Hey, you're welcome to your experience but you clearly don't get what I am after, so it's not doing me much good. Honestly I am happy you're exploring different ideas, keep it up!