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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9241416" data-attributes="member: 71699">This reads to me as if my position is taken to be one hostile to traditional modes of play, including in that GM positioning such as that characterised as "DM curation". That ignores my enduring engagement with those modes and arguments concerning the healthy, functional play found in them.My arguments for neotrad amount to this: the label should have a distinctive meaning. For example, trad and neotrad should not mean the same thing! Given the label ought to have a distinctive meaning - otherwise, why use it at all - what is that distinctive meaning based on what I am seeing in the domain?I observed a set of game designs sharing features with indie-games and in some cases expressly characterised by their designers as neotrad. Others before me identified some of the traits and goals of those designs, and looking at them, I agreed. Further observing putatively neotrad games being played, I noticed that the traits and goals often amounted to nothing: the group was playing the game as trad. My observations-based intuition was that the facet of play that most shifted a game from -trad to neotrad, was being quashed by defaulting into traditional GMing. That doesn't mean I dislike traditional GMing, it means that I do not see it as consistent with the supposed goals of neotrad.I then noticed that many of the same games I was looking at either outright denoted GM "player", or included other language to mediate their powers. All in the end I did was advocate that this indeed was right minded (for neotrad) and that those hoping to have success (to those ends, the ends of neotrad) ought to prioritise it.Your take is off the mark. It is entirely possible to argue that A is good in contexts A', and B is good in contexts B', and in advocating A in A' one is not denigrating B in B'. I am not for example arguing that denoting GM as "player" is always good, always the right choice (and in particular the right choice for traditional modes of play - it's not). Nor am I saying that neotrad is better than -trad, or even that I prefer one over the other. It seems to baffle folk, but I enjoy all modes of RPG. I do not have a favourite. These days, the main question I ask is "Is this going to be a new experience?" when signing up for games. The games I have coming up are Starhold (one-shot) and Dolmenwood (campaign). The last four games I purchased were - RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, Legend of the Five Rings (FF edition), Blades in the Dark, and Worlds Without Number reprint (I only have the digital version, currently.)Something I just realised folk might fail to assume, is that by my lights -trad game designs that include features learned from indie-games, but remain -trad in play, are not neotrad. The inclusion of such features is necessary, but not sufficient. If one likes, this gives us weak and strong definitions of "neotrad". The weak version is any traditional mode game design that includes innovations first seen in indie-games. The strong version fits my manifesto.I hope this dissolves the concerns you harbour.</blockquote>

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