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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9246663" data-attributes="member: 42582">Nor do I. But no one who loves DL or Dead Gods or a CoC module points to the combat aspects as the peak of these games. Indeed, there's a tradition ("roleplay vs rollplay") that treats wargame-style combat mechanics as a necessary evil (in that they don't know any other way, but appear to regret the way that they do know).This is not particularly easy to follow, but in response:(1) I don't think that it is particularly helpful to argue that huge swathes of RPG play are not, in fact, the play of games. I don't see that that adds much to our understanding. People who play DL, or Dead Gods, or CoC modules, think of themselves as playing games (AD&D, CoC, or whatever). The fact that it does not satisfy some threshold you have nominated of being "gameful" as opposed to merely "playful" doesn't seem to me very relevant to how we should characterise what they're doing.Children talk about playing a "game" or an "imagination game" which  doesn't appear to meet your threshold of "gameful"-ness either, but there is no error of usage on the chidren's part.In the case of the sort of game play I posted about, the game consists in this: the GM tells the players something about what they (the GM) have made up, in second person (eg "You see, in the distance and coming towards you, . . ."; then the players describe actions of characters in the fiction in first person (eg "We do <such and such> . . ."); and this prompts the GM to engage in more second person narration (eg "In response, they do <whatever>).(2) I think you are mischaracterising Ron Edwards. I don't recall him ever using the phrase "ludically crux". And nor do I recall him denying that high concept sim play, including pastiche play, is game play. (Although I think it's fair to say that it is not game play that he particularly enjoys.)(3) I don't see neo-trad as especially chimeric, if by neo-trad I understand what is mentioned in this blog: <a href="https://imbrattabit.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-neotrad-role-playing-game/" target="_blank">https://imbrattabit.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-neotrad-role-playing-game/</a>As I posted in another thread, in reply to you, about two weeks ago:This relatively non-radical understanding of neo-trad is reinforced by <a href="https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2020/05/14/observations-on-gns-simulationism/" target="_blank">a remark from Eero Tuovinen</a>: Tracy Hickman understood this in his magnum opus Dragonlance, pushing the AD&D content delivery chassis to its extreme ends and beyond in an effort to deliver a true high fantasy epic via a game structurally very poorly suited for the purpose; Hickman understood that if there was to be a measure of grace to the project, it would be in the fact that the GM would in his interminable story hour be delivering actually legit fantasy literature.Neo-trad, as I understand it from that blog, aims to reduce the gracelessness, by improving the content delivery chassis to better fit what is desired to be done with it: hence asymmetry (the GM as author and the one who reveals, the players as prompts to that revelation); hence PC agency and shared PC creation; hence getting rid of cruft and any need for rule zero.Whether neo-trad in this sense can be separated from OC play will depend a bit on more detail on PC creation, and who has control over all the Chekov guns. As I've posted upthread, GUMSHOE seems like it probably counts as neo-trad, and it may not count as OC.But anyway, and setting aside the neo-trad/OC relationship, I understand that you to have something else in mind when you talk about "neotrad", beyond what I have described above, But I haven't really worked out what that is.</blockquote>

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