A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[niklinna]

I'm not sure who you're replying to - there are a few posters in this thread whose posts I can't see - but what is the ostensible basis for claiming that it subverts "story now" play for a character to go from priest to heretic, or from bodyguard to assassin? I mean as you say it all depends on context, but on the face of it either of those sounds like it could be quite awesome!

I think @Manbearcat was showing those, within the parenthetical, as examples of things you must understand as Story Now play, to even talk about what subverting Story Now play might look like. (But then I often have trouble parsing his text so maybe I am wrong! )

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Saying all RPGs are ludonarratives is basic in the same way as saying all RPGs integrate imagination into their mechanics and gamestate. Further, we can say that the ludonarratives developed in RPGs are fictional: they involve pretence. That can't be taken to imply that a Western dramatic tradition of protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence applies to all RPGs.

It might be that the crucial commitment is that play that isn't protagonists grasping problematic features of human existence, can still be ludonarrativist play. Those resisting such a commitment would conflate (to my mind) one kind of story with all other kinds of narrative.

Right, RPGs are 'ludo-narrative' games, ludo = game, narrative = a story of some kind. So, nothing much is being said here, its just being said in $10 words. This is all stated thoroughly by RE around 2 decades ago, every RPG has a transcript, and some of those transcripts have 'something special', some element of addressing a premise and constructing a theme. PERSONALLY I would limit the term ludonarrative to that sort of game, as other RPGs focus on other elements, such as skilled solving of tactical situations, puzzles, etc. Some DO have more elaborate narratives, built by 'running through' a pre-scripted environment/set of events, usually with either the GM deploying some techniques to 'keep it on track' and/or the players consciously sticking within certain scripted boundaries. It would obviously be wrong to say THOSE are 'not narratives' as they certainly CAN be. Scripting, even partial scripting, certainly cannot be held to prevent either 'game' nor 'narrative', but they definitely produce a different sort of, and generally more limited, type of transcript. But anyway, we have trod all this road already. I propose that we limit the term 'ludo-narrative game' to those which center on this, commonly referred to as 'narrativist' or 'Story Now' games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Very important to note in the above passages that no distinctions are made between video games, board games, visual novels, and others. Game design is game design.

Yes, and this is where @Manbearcat is coming from, CRITICALLY these video games you cite lack the fundamental feature of Narrativist RPGs, which is that there is no pre-set story or locked in characterization. You CANNOT ACHIEVE what Narrativist RPGs achieve using a pre-programmed medium! Now, I won't say you can't achieve it in the form of a computer-hosted activity, even one with a single human player, but as of now even the most sophisticated of video games are not infinitely adaptable. Something like an MMORPG is a bit different story, as @niklinna pointed out up thread, but Civ IV? It cannot do what Apocalypse World easily achieves.

So there is a CATEGORICAL difference here between these things. ANYTHING could happen in a BitD game, and it could really go in any direction, and you could bring ANY sort of character concept to the table bounded only by the milieu. This is entirely not true of video games or board games. There will be a fixed number of elements and a very bounded 'story space'.

 

[tetrasodium]

Sorry, your posts aren’t clear to me.

Your post should not be misattributed to me because you are the one who wrote it. I asked you to explain your own post and even quoted the post in question complete with what it was quoting.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And you seem hesitant to provide an answer, in plain unambiguous language, to the question of what the aims are.



And? This doesn't address anything in the quote its attached to.



Thats a clear contradiction, to be frank. A concept is still a narrative, unless we're working off the definition of a character concept as just being a broad trope or two like "Elf Wizard" or "Halfling Barbarian".

So, my BitD character Okazaki Takeo is a narrative? He starts play as a Cutter in a crew of Assassins. He claims to be from an island called 'Shimayama' (not a place described in any of the setting material) which has been destroyed AFA he knows. He comes with a pair of fine weapons (Cutter benefit) and a vice of serving an 'Oni' which inhabits his sword. He's got an enemy which is a sawbones who's daughter he got a bit too close with (they were war buddies before that, as he's a veteran of a War, part of the game's backstory).

That's it, aside from assignment of points to attributes and such. Sorry, you may call that a 'narrative', but I don't! He's got POTENTIAL, and a lot of that was actualized in play. He goes from being a walking cliche, basically, to whatever he comes out as during our almost year of play. Those background elements certainly figure in the stuff that @Manbearcat throws at him, and I, at the player authorial level, make decisions in accordance with it as well. But the raw character? I am entirely sure you cannot even start to guess even the outlines of the narrative that arises.

In such a case, we're not actually talking about a narrative at all period, so it becomes questionable what the throughline is from that on to paying off some sort of expected narrative during gameplay. You could say that its an issue of some sort of fantasy regarding being a Halfling and/or Barbarian isn't being met, but that comes down to LDN, and really just to DND specifically being chockfull of bad game design, and nothing thats been offered up about whatever "neotrad" is seeks to address that specific issue.

Well, sure! I put that on D&D not being a suitable game for Narrativist play! In an ACTUALLY Narrativist game, lets call it 'Dungeon World' I can make a halfling thief, and an interesting story can arise as the character is tested in various ways in terms of his character traits, not just in terms of the player's ability to say when to look for traps, etc. I mean, DW is MEANT to evoke a narrative of heroic adventure and derring do of a sort that is familiar to trad RPG players, so the leap here is not HUGE, but it is very definitely a leap.

Now, take THE SAME RULES, you have Stonetop, with nothing but different playbooks and a bunch of specialized custom environmental rules (which are literally drawn from the last chapter or two of DW). This game sports a MUCH deeper and more thorough narrative trajectory as a rule due to a more interesting theme which directly engages with core elements of a character's nature, not just "how do I get some gold."

And meanwhile, character concept as its conventionally used comes with the expectations of story seeding as well as story writing. If your character is coming to the table with a backstory, you're pushing a narrative that the game and/or Game Master or may not be able to accomodate, and if not, will then arise in LDN.

No, you are suggesting possibilities, and more importantly giving the GM things to latch onto in order to put pressure on your character so that actual story can emerge. Stories require conflict, remember? I mean, we learned this in, like, 8th Grade English, Man vs Man, Man vs Himself, Man vs Nature, etc.

If you spent 20 years trying and couldn't figure out sandboxes then that is genuinely, well, sad. Ive literally never played an RPG that wasn't nor couldn't be run as a sandbox.

Well, first of all, we DID figure it out, or you'd still be playing in c 1985 era RPGs! Maybe it all seems trivial to you and you can ignore all the points we had to hash out over years of play, but none of this was at all obvious at the start.

Considering you decided to be vague I can only assume you're saying all those games I listed, which, mind you, are all the most popular RPGs on the market, are not compelling.

And thats not an argument I can take seriously.

I have never said one game or type of game is 'compelling' and another isn't. I think what is compelling to one person is different from what is compelling to another. All I ever claimed is that different games are fundamentally different in certain ways. I am certainly NOT going to give up that claim, and I am happy to state that I find some more compelling, yes.

You haven't explained what you want.

I don't think you have either, certainly not in this thread. I've stated what sorts of play I am after, plenty of times. I bet you there are 50 posters here, easily that could give at least some sort of account of it. As I've said to @clearstream I think it is super beneficial to discuss actual play and dissect it and look at the systems and techniques which produce it. AFAIK almost all advances in the state of RPG art happened that way.

 

[niklinna]

Something like an MMORPG is a bit different story, as @niklinna pointed out up thread

I did?

Well, since I used to play some MMOs, I'll say know about things like people making up their own quests, or getting married in-game, or doing everything in-character, including talking to other players (RP-only servers). My World of Warcraft guild would do fun activities like naked level 1 gnome races from Coldridge Valley to Blackrock Spire.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As stated, theres more than one kind of problem we can tie to these issues, and whether or not we're using one or the other is entirely besides the point.

After all, I'm positive beyond all reasonable doubt you and everyone else in this topic has made the criticism of 5e that it doesn't actually support what its pitched as. Exploration being the prime example.

Whether you want to say the anemic to non-existent exploration game within 5e is a consistency violation or LDN just doesn't really matter when the point was that game design is game design; tabletop rpgs are not exceptional.

And Im sure there will still be arguments to contrary, but fact of the matter is that differences in game medium, tabletop rulebooks versus a digital video game vs whatever, are highly specific and we can objectively identify them; to paint in absurdly broad strokes and say nothing from video game design spaces applies is just prejudicial and predicated on a clear elitist belief that video games are icky, unlike our pure wholesome TTRPGs.

The contradiction between mechanics, theme, and even playstyle isn't something thats limited to just video games. Thats patently ridiculous and just denying it isn't an argument.

I don't think 'nothing applies' at all. I just think what applies heavily depends on certain assumptions and goals. You seem to be very keen to consider many things to be basically all fundamentally the same at some level. I say no that in fact you can certainly group things by traits which indicate where they have similarities, but there are also fundamental differences. So, sure, its perfectly fine to draw some experience from video games and see what applies to TTRPGs! But it won't all apply all the time, and some of the time the differences may be pretty large.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I did?

Well, since I used to play some MMOs, I'll say know about things like people making up their own quests, or getting married in-game, or doing everything in-character, including talking to other players (RP-only servers). My World of Warcraft guild would do fun activities like naked level 1 gnome races from Coldridge Valley to Blackrock Spire.

I was thinking of the FFXIV club scene, but your examples are good too. I played UO back in the EARLY days of MMOs too. We did all sorts of crazy stuff that was completely just made up.

 

[Composer99]

Then you are not understanding me. If there’s a particular experience we want to achieve then there are better mechanics for that and worse mechanics for that. Pointing out that the experience we are choosing to design for is no better or worse than another isn’t threadcrapping - it’s an essential truth - and judging by the pushback here I’d say it bears repeating.

At this point I have to say you're also coming across as a tad self-contradictory. The following:

If there’s a particular experience we want to achieve then there are better mechanics for that and worse mechanics for that.

seems to contradict:

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.

[Emphasis mine.]

If "there are better mechanics ... or worse mechanics" for achieving a particular gameplay experience, how then is it "wholly out of bounds" to suggest that "mechanics that provide greater player authority" in the context of neotrad gameplay just are better than mechanics that don't?

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If anything, your remark, "Pointing out that the experience we are choosing to design for is no better or worse than another isn’t threadcrapping" comes across as doubling down on trying to make the thread about validating trad play instead of being a manifesto for neotrad design, or at least stopping up any discussion on how to further neotrad design until trad play has been suitably validated. Which, again, still comes across as threadcrapping.

To that, I would say:

1. Trad play doesn't need validation on this thread - I am sure there are many robust defences for trad play, and it remains the most popular style of play by far, suggesting it remains well beloved!
2. It's hardly possible to draw contrasts between neotrad play and trad play without running the risk of coming across as dunking on one or the other types of play. Since this thread is "A Neotrad TTRPG Design Manifesto", it should hardly seem surprising or alarming that trad play comes out the worse for wear. One would expect that, in a thread titled "A Trad TTRPG Design Manifesto", neotrad or storygame play would be on the short end of the stick (as it were). For instance, were someone to ask me to explain at length why I don't care for country music (Johnny Cash excepted, of course), I rather expect that my explanation would - despite my best efforts - come across as slighting the genre to someone who especially loves it.

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Are you, perhaps, perceiving other remarks on this thread as constituting some kind of attack on trad gameplay over and above drawing contrasts with a view to promoting neotrad designs, and reacting accordingly? That's what I'm getting from:

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

I guess what I'm not sure about is, if you believe someone else is treating this thread as a chance to re-litigate arguments belittling trad gameplay, why are you taking the bait? Is it really worth the trouble?

(Edit to reword: Having made that last statement, I therefore feel I should probably not pursue this line of discussion any further, because I would be... maybe not threadcrapping, but surely bringing the thread even further off topic, which would be on me. I reworded this final parenthetical remark because on reflection I think the original version was coming across as passive-aggressive, which I should like to avoid. Hopefully this reworded version is better!)

 

[Campbell]

I think it's best to start with the underlying assumption that both GMs and players are running/playing games because they want to run/play the game in question. As a GM I enjoy games like Chronicles of Darkness (especially Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition), Exalted Third Edition, Dune 2d20, Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition and Classic Deadlands because the process of making a character requires players to create characters who are real people with real ties to the setting and the systems in play reward players for playing to their established concepts.

I like this for a couple or reasons. I don't enjoy world building or plot creation on their own. I need creative stimuli to build around. My investment into the game as a GM starts with the players' characters. I also want to avoid the natural inclination and social pressures towards expediency. Having the game reinforce concepts and encourage players to drive towards character specific goals and playing their flaws makes the game more entertaining and engaging for me.

I do think one area a lot of these designs could use some help with is building more bridges between characters. My home group has gotten a lot better at this over the years, but most games do a crap job of building in mutual interests between the characters and leave mostly up to the play group to figure out.