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

[EzekielRaiden]

That's a rather wild conclusion to draw from what seems to be a pretty questionable reading of my post about drawing conclusions from questionable descriptions. I think the lack of more than forum posts describing "neotrad" is noteworthy because other terns like story games shared narrative games & similar tend to be used in those longer form writeups. Where are they for this thing called "neotrad/oc" that so many in the thread claim to be?

There's been a flurry of people discussing it.

The vast majority of the people who do so:

• Don't like it
• Aren't involved with it, and/or
• Only know of it second hand

Is it any wonder, then, that these descriptions inflicted from the outside end up being scattershot, incoherent, and generally sounding like rather an un-fun thing to do?

I gave my explanation of what I think it is above. Others have agreed that they think it is a fair and appropriate description. If that is not enough to satisfy you, if you somehow need there to be a blogpost to take what I said seriously, that's not my problem.

 

[pemerton]

So if something isn't already documented, it doesn't exist?

To add a thought to this:

It seems to me that these classifications serve a few purposes. One is for those who have particular preferences or interests in their RPGing to describe and communicate them among themselves, and to others.

It seems to me that, just from this thread, it's pretty clear that neo-trad is doing that job. Whether the relationship to "trad" is places on a spectrum, or a contrast of general tendencies, doesn't really matter to that point. I mean, there's an actual thing that's going on among quite a few RPGers.

 

[pemerton]

Regardless, this doesn't seem to be the thread for discussing that. There are several other threads you can find that discuss Neotrad as a label.

Right. It's not a mysterious thing that's sprung into existence only so @overgeeked can ask for more information about it!

 

[pemerton]

There's been a flurry of people discussing it.

The vast majority of the people who do so:

• Don't like it
• Aren't involved with it, and/or
• Only know of it second hand

Is it any wonder, then, that these descriptions inflicted from the outside end up being scattershot, incoherent, and generally sounding like rather an un-fun thing to do?

I gave my explanation of what I think it is above. Others have agreed that they think it is a fair and appropriate description. If that is not enough to satisfy you, if you somehow need there to be a blogpost to take what I said seriously, that's not my problem.

Slightly tangentially, but I'm reminded of when another forum personality was insisting that various posters subordinate their accounts of RPGing to an academic text that (i) in my professional view was not all that good, and (ii) relied heavily upon citations of essays and blogs that those various posters had read more closely than the academic authors.

The mediums of publication are not self-certifying!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Can’t people be both? I was a maths kid, am far from being a yoof (very dated term), but I still played D&D so I could be a cool fictional character.

Of course. But groups tend to skew in different directions

But a cool fictional character who spent their time on exciting adventures, not agonising over personal relationships.

And why not both? An adventure is cooler when you have a personal stake in events.

 

[tetrasodium]

Going to break this up a bit because there are some initial checkboxes that settle things a bit before moving on to the rest.

There's been a flurry of people discussing it.

Yes, I agree. The venn diagram of that discussion is rather fuzzy. That was the reason I asked for something longer form, it was not a potshot.

The vast majority of the people who do so:

• Don't like it
• Aren't involved with it, and/or
• Only know of it second hand

Thank you. That admission says a lot, especially the last two points.

Is it any wonder, then, that these descriptions inflicted from the outside end up being scattershot, incoherent, and generally sounding like rather an un-fun thing to do?

This is a rather unfair bristling over a genuine question. The existence of this thread itself demonstrates that "neotrad" is not some downtrodden thing that needs to hide in shadows fretfully hoping to avoid the notice of some of the farcical descriptions of DMs take action.

I gave my explanation of what I think it is above. Others have agreed that they think it is a fair and appropriate description. If that is not enough to satisfy you, if you somehow need there to be a blogpost to take what I said seriously, that's not my problem.

I don't feel it is your problem, but the existence of such a thing would provide a (hopefully) clear touchstone that could be held up as an example. As noted abovem the rest of your post was useful wrt inching towards understanding.

---

The thing is that, at least in my anecdotal experience, OC/neo-trad players usually do not come from a TTRPG background. Instead, they come from text roleplay on places like deviantART originally, and nowadays on Discord. I participated in one of these recently and it's fascinating how they approach RP from a purely interpretative/experiential perspective. Many of these, the veterans told me, used to be diceless. Nowadays most of them use some dice mechanics, but the systems are so simple that they'd be at most rules-light under our usual definition.

I was under the impression that neotrad was not some playstyle that needs to be analyzed through the lens of indirect historical observation. While my experience with players declaring themselves to be neotrad aligns with your observations in those first three sentences I'm not sure how that helps with clearing up how/if the story/shared narrative type gameplay elements you described as neotrad-like in post63 when applied through neotrad play are distinct from story/shared narrative. However ↓ this ↓ does

What I am trying to say here is that style of play can be something different from RPG rulebooks/systems/etc. So while OC/neo-trad may be close to story games in design, I'd say that they come from different origins and, as such, it's interesting to recognize them as different variants of a common approach to roleplaying.

What I'm absorbing from your post as a whole when colored by that last bit is that some key element of "neotrad" involves the player deciding for themselves to eschew the rules of the game being played & this isn't the only post that carried those vibes. If true that seems like it should be right up there spotlighted front & center for neotrad just as character longevity is highlighted in dcc funnel type play or be made clear as not the case.

 

[Ringtail]

So if I'm understanding all these terms correctly (which I'm not sure I am, but here goes...)

I like Neo-Trad because its an intersection of two things I enjoy greatly about about RPGs. I really like role-playing. Creating a character, really embodying them, how they think, how its different from me and developing their relationship with the party. But I'm more drawn towards trad and even OSR game design. I like explicit mechanics, tactical combat and playing within the confines of the rules, which shapes my role-play. Narrative/story-games, while good at the character stuff, I find very ephemeral and unsatisfying as a "game" (more like a framework for narrative.)

 

[Umbran]

If you feel you need everything spelled out for you

Ah. And now you make it personal.

Insulting me doesn't make you more correct, you know. It just makes you look like you're more willing to insult people than accept a difference of opinion.

Have a nice weekend.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This is the bit that really stops me cold. I pull back hard from the notion of there being any kind of planned story in RPGs. Whatever story an RPG can have should be purely emergent from play. A combination of the referee's prep, the players' choices, and the dice.

To you is the referee pre-planning a story a definitional part of OC/neo-trad? Other posters seem to disagree with that.

Even the most trad- of trad- games tends to have adventure hooks. The difference between trad and neo-trad is that trad DMs tend to take as a point of pride that their adventure hooks are independent of the characters and don’t rely on their backstories because it’s more « realistic », while neo-trad DMs tend to rely heavily on adventure hooks that draw on the players’ backstories or have thematic resonance with the characters.

In reality, independent adventure hooks aren’t more realistic, they just outsource to the player the work of finding a reason why their character should care about the adventure hooks the DM has created.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They aren't. Sorry, hate to break it to you. Labels are ok actually, so long as you don't take them as gospel to reality.

Even when that label is very intentionally designed to insult and defame?

Because the reason it's called 'OC' derived from the term 'OC: do not steal', which is a phrase meant to invoke derisions of fan fiction.