D&D 5E Help me understand & find the fun in OC/neo-trad play...

[pemerton]

This thread has not helped me understand "OC" at all, except in terms of giving a name to.what CR does -- which is just D&D except Mercer makes sure the PCs are the protagonists in a literary way (which is not really something I do as the GM; players are responsible for making their PCs feel like the protagonists IMO).

Well, there you go. It's probably a bit reductive to say that that is all of it - ie that OC/neotrad is nothing more than the GM making sure the PCs are the protagonists in a literary way - but that's a good chunk of it.

And as you say, it's not something that every GM sets out to do. Because not everyone is running a neotrad game.

There are other approaches to player/PC protagonism, though - see further below.

Re: backstories. Ugh. I’ve tried that a few times. The players either ignore the obvious backstory hook or get mad that it doesn’t play out exactly how they wanted it to. It honestly felt like I was supposed to just stay out of their way as the referee and validate the story they wrote and pretend dice rolls were involved. Any change or hint of challenge, obstacle, etc in their path was met with…less than ideal responses.

What you say - about staying out of the way and validating the players' story - is not entirely wrong. That's a key part of the difference between OC/Neotrad and (say) Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel. In those latter games, played according to the author instructions, it's legitimate for the GM to frame scenes that put pressure on the player's conception of who their character is (even to try and push the character to breaking point). Whereas in OC/neotrad, the situations and challenges the GM sets out should validate the player's character conception, and invite them to show it off.

A very simple D&D-ish example is that, in neo-trad play, if a player is playing a teleporter than the GM should frame scenes where teleporting is helpful. A more complex example (because it is about theme) is that, if a player is playing a character whose raison d'etre is saving orphans, then the GM should frame scenes which invite the saving of orphans, and that don't require the player to choose to trade off the saving of the orphans against other crucial values or relationships.

Sure. But that’s an incredibly odd stance to take in a group activity and team endeavor. “Me first” is the antithesis of group/team, right?

It's character first rather than me first. There can either be spotlight rotation ("OK, now we're doing this thing that is central to this PC") or spotlight integration (eg to rescue the orphans, which PC X is really committed to, will require PC Y the teleporter to teleport from here to over there).

 

[jmartkdr2]

Thank you to everyone making positive contributions to the thread. It really does help, even if the ride is a bit...bumpy...at times. And I appreciate the patience.

So, a follow-up question. What are the best practices for setting up and running a neo-trad game?

From the info in the thread so far, I'm assuming some variation of:

Talk to your players, make sure they're on board. Session Zero, lines and veils, stars and wishes, etc.

Get goals and plot hooks from the players, if not backgrounds that can be mined for ideas.

Work with the players to make sure things gel together at least somewhat, there's no major problems or clashes re: theme. Though some internal party conflict is great.

Incorporate all that into prep by making factions, NPCs, situations, potential quests, etc that reflect the players' & PCs' goals.

Wind 'em up, and let 'em go. Emergent play. Play to find out. Poke the PCs in their feels. "Steer" things only in the sense of injecting drama, conflict, tension, obstacles, challenges, consequences, etc.

How close is that? How far off the mark? Some pitfalls to look out for? General advice?

That's all excellent. I'll add a few tips but you got the core stuff already.

1. Don't worldbuild too much until you know who the party is. Then focus your worldbuilding on stuff they would care about (ie the cleric's church) or that you plan to use (ie the evil god whose cult they be fighting a lot)

2. Create connections before play begins - the old Fate trick of having a relationship with two other pcs via backstory. It doesn't need to be much (they met once years ago is fine) but generally speaking no one should be an island.

3. Give time for rp - after a big arc or major battle, leave room for pcs to actually talk to each other. This is similar to how you can't put too much time pressure on a sandbox campaign. If you don't let the slow parts happen, you're missing out on the best parts of neotrad. If they're in a tavern, let them chat over ale for as long as the players have stuff to say.

 

[prabe]

Thank you to everyone making positive contributions to the thread. It really does help, even if the ride is a bit...bumpy...at times. And I appreciate the patience.

So, a follow-up question. What are the best practices for setting up and running a neo-trad game?

From the info in the thread so far, I'm assuming some variation of:

Talk to your players, make sure they're on board. Session Zero, lines and veils, stars and wishes, etc.

Get goals and plot hooks from the players, if not backgrounds that can be mined for ideas.


Incorporate all that into prep by making factions, NPCs, situations, potential quests, etc that reflect the players' & PCs' goals.

Wind 'em up, and let 'em go. Emergent play. Play to find out. "Steer" things only in the sense of injecting drama, conflict, tension, obstacles, challenges, consequences, etc.

How close is that? How far off the mark? Some pitfalls to look out for?

I'm afraid I'm going to answer your questions, not by answering your questions, but by working my way through the last campaign I started. It's not the only way to start a neotrad campaign, but it's one I've found to work well for me. Obviously, YMMV. There'll be some links to things in my GDrive.

So, this is the third campaign I've started in this world--the first ran 1-20, the second is currently at (I think) level 17. (That is correct, I don't always know what level the PCs in a given campaign are.) I'd established the city of Dhaqi during the second campaign, and I decided I wanted to start a campaign in a big city and see if I could have it orbit that for a long time.

(There will be references to things in the setting other than Dhaqi in the files I link, but I don't think any of those will prevent understanding. I can unpack anything at request.)

Most of the time, the first time a group of PCs enter or deal with a city-type location, they get a quick-and-dirty thumbnail of the city. Dhaqi's looked like this: Dhaqi in Brief

I wanted the PCs to be, if not natives of Dhaqi, then long-time residents. They'd know the city better than that, I thought--and I knew I wanted them to fill in some details, which meant I needed to tell them more about the city so they could have a better sense of the negative space they were working in/with. I ended up with this: Dhaqi in Some Detail

(Here I should say that while I probably know more about Dhaqi than is in even the second, more detailed document, I don't have the vast majority of it written down.)

After giving the players that, I started with my wife (who I know is good at this sort of thing) and asked her for two people, a place or group, and an event in Dhaqi, and how her character was connected to them; then I rolled a relevant die to determine whom I'd ask next. After all six players had responded, I had this: Character Connections to Dhaqi

(Additionally, they had given me backstories ranging from a couple of paragraphs to over 2,000 words--no novellas this time. I do not have all of those in one place, so I cannot share them easily.)

Once I had all their connections to Dhaqi, I set up a situation that started in Ikaz's Ruins involving a group of wererats attempting to take over Dhaqi's criminal underworld (which didn't kick off with wererats, because level one characters) and put things in motion. The PCs have poked around and done some damage to the plans--they're probably just about to unravel the whole thing. I've provided them with information to at least three things from their backstories while they've been dealing with the wererats; once that's done, they'll have options for what to pursue next.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I though if an example:

What's the most important scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron? It's not a fight at all - it's the party scene, especially the late-night bit where the Avengers are all sitting around talking about the hammer. They're just talking, sharing backstory and motivation and personality, a little push-pull as Thor asserts his excellence and other respond to that, and the audience learns about the people, their relationships and motivations and the personal stakes are established.

Imagine the ttrpg version of this. What would the gm be doing here? Not much. You might, might make Steve's player roll a die when he goes to move the hammer, but that's about it until Ultron shows up. The gm there just let the scene breathe and let the players roleplay, unguided and unfettered, until everyone had their turn on camera and the conversation wore down. Then he dropped the bombshell that the BBEG was here and ready to start some trouble.

That could happen in any type of roleplaying game, but I'd only expect it in a neotrad game.

 

[pemerton]

Thank you to everyone making positive contributions to the thread. It really does help, even if the ride is a bit...bumpy...at times. And I appreciate the patience.

So, a follow-up question. What are the best practices for setting up and running a neo-trad game?

From the info in the thread so far, I'm assuming some variation of:

Talk to your players, make sure they're on board. Session Zero, lines and veils, stars and wishes, etc.

Get goals and plot hooks from the players, if not backgrounds that can be mined for ideas.

Work with the players to make sure things gel together at least somewhat, there's no major problems or clashes re: theme. Though some internal party conflict is great.

Incorporate all that into prep by making factions, NPCs, situations, potential quests, etc that reflect the players' & PCs' goals.

Wind 'em up, and let 'em go. Emergent play. Play to find out. Poke the PCs in their feels. "Steer" things only in the sense of injecting drama, conflict, tension, obstacles, challenges, consequences, etc.

How close is that? How far off the mark? Some pitfalls to look out for? General advice?

I feel that if I dial up the potential quests and dial down the play to find out then what you say heads in a neotrad direction.

If I dial down or eliminate the potential quests, and dial up both play to find out and poke them where it hurts then I'm heading away from neotrad and towards something more like Apocalypse World, or Burning Wheel - what in my mind tends to go by the label "story now".

 

[pemerton]

The fundamental question being asked here, if I understand it, is whether player preferences as expressed through PC backstories and what the engage with drives the direction of the campaign, as opposed to the GMs big plan.

This isn't new and it doesn't need new terminology. It's just play. So play.

So, you identify two possibilities:

*Player preferences as expressed through PC backstories drives the direction of the campaign;

*The GM's big plan drives the direction of the campaign.​

Now if only we had some words that would help us talk about these different possibilities, their implications, what sorts of rules and techniques might facilitate them, etc . . .

 

[pemerton]

From my perspective, OC/neo-trad follows on an ancient tradition of storytelling: that of plot coming from the protagonists' own internal struggles, and not (only) as some external plot in need of solving. When one adapts that style of storytelling to TTRPGs, the result is gaming systems like Fate or gaming philosophies like PbtA or FitD. Fate is trying to be OC/neo-trad (especially Fate Core), but I'd say the best modern example, in my opinion, is PbtA games. The way I run (and whenever I get the chance to play) them, a PbtA offers you a character archetype, with a character arc already included in there. That's why we say that PbtA playbooks aren't classes/professions/etc.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that the best OC/neo-trad players I've played with have no desire to "win all the time" as someone said. On the contrary: they're often the ones proposing dramatically devastating conundrums for their characters. They don't mind losing—and losing big, in a manner that changes their characters forever. What they care about is getting to experience a dramatic story that's centered on them, where their characters are the protagonists, and that their actions, for good or ill, will have great repercussions in the world around them.

Something else I wanted to say but forgot in my first post (and I don't where to add it, so that's why I'm writing it here) is that PCs in OC/neo-trad, the way I see it, have to be, most of all, vehicles for drama. It's not about PCs getting more powerful; instead, it's about creating characters that will always be at the center of a dramatic storm, either because of their own internal struggles, their relationships, or their emotion-based behavior.

To me, it seems that you are describing both neo-trad type RPGs (eg Fate) and what I would think of as "indie" or "story now"-type RPGs (eg Apocalypse World).

Both are character-centred, but I see Fate as leaning more into curation (by both players and GM) and thus supporting the expression of a pre-given vision of the character; whereas AW eschews curation, and leans much more into the characters-might-be-changed sort of thing that you mention in your post.

The reason I think it can be helpful to distinguish these two sorts of character-centred RPGing is because they invite different sorts of relationships between the participants in how the shared fiction is created, and the use of different sorts of techniques to create that fiction.

 

[pemerton]

I do think the article indulges in hair-splitting by trying to define the OSR movement as a distinct culture of play, rather than an exploration of untapped design space within the type of play the article labels “Classic”. Likewise, I think that what the article calls “neo-trad/OC” is really just “trad” with a heavier focus on character than plot.

I think there is a defensible reason for drawing the distinction, namely, because of the way that mainstream RPGing (and for clarity, a game like Apocalypse World or In A Wicked Age is well within this mainstream) allocates particular bits of the fiction to particular participants: one group of participants primarily "own" and control the doings of particular characters; while another single participant (the GM) "owns" and controls all the other stuff; and the "plot" is the result of some interaction between and adding to these various bits that the various participants "own".

If you emphasise "plot", you will tend to be emphasising stuff that the GM "owns": NPCs, events involving the environment or large social groups, etc.

If you emphasise "character", you will tend to be emphasising stuff that the non-GM participants "own": PCs, and some of the stuff that orbits around them and the PCs' emotional/thematic/moral/etc orientations towards that orbiting "stuff".

These two different sorts of emphasis, because of the difference places where they put control or ownership under pressure or require it to be exercised in certain ways, tend to invite different techniques (and not just mechanics like - say - rolls to hit and damage; but techniques around, say, how situations and stakes are established, how consequences are established, etc).

Hence why I think it is defensible to differentiate the, both when looking at "cultures of play" and when analysing the various possible technical components of RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

Thus, Neotrad is a valid term.

I initially read "valid" as "vital", and would have strongly agreed with that proposition also!

 

[pemerton]

Neo Triad is Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, or Neo from the Matrix.
Triad is Captain America(MCU), Jhon Mclaine(Die Hard), or the typical Clint Eastwood character from the 70/80, with Dirty Harry and Philo Betto standing out.

The focus is simple enough. The default neo triad DM wants the focus to be on the players goals. They want the game to be what the players want, and as much as the players want.

The default triad game adventure is the focus.

There can be a neo-trad game concerned with the player's goals for their street cop PC, as much as one concerned with the player's goals for their world-saving chosen one. Your focus on "scale" is blurring your identification of the real issue, which is player goals for and conception of PCs vs GM-determined character-indifferent adventure.