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

[prabe]

This isn't something new, but I think the desire to make it a distinct sub-set of traditional adventure play was to draw attention to the increasing popularity of this sort of character-story centric play.

No, it's not something new. It's pretty much the way the groups I was in played 1e back in mid-late 1980s.

 

[Umbran]

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

I wouldn't say that, because neo-trad deprioritizes the input of the referee. The referee planning a story is trad play. The players deciding where the story will go is neo-trad.

However, I'm going to now go back to what you said just before asking that:

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.

Here is a place where people often refuse to accept that when you are trying to figure out what other folks like, you need to come to grips with what they mean when they say a thing, not what you hear when it is said.

In this case, the issue is "plan a story."

I suspect, when you hear that, you expect that the results are pre-determined. The story is fully authored before play begins, on a railroad, and there's no real way for the PCs to avoid the specific chosen end the GM filled in. That is a bogus expectation, raised by claiming a failed example of a style is, in fact, the intention of the style.

When my players haven't asked for something specific, my natural GMing proclivities are trad-leaning. My goals are that, at the end of each session of play, each adventure, and each campaign overall, will have the feelings of a cool story, and there are things I do as part of prep to help ensure those results.

But pre-determining outcomes is not one of those things.

The bulk of what I do to ensure those results sits in the space you called "the referee's prep". You say that story should be fully emergent from play. And the player's choices and the dice are part of play. But the referee's prep ISN'T part of play. It is the portion of this that is directly authored by the GM. The story cannot be entirely emergent so long as the GM is prepping things along the way. The GM chooses the who, what, and why of the things in that prep - and who, what, and why are the basic elements of story.

If set up a campaign, and I put into place an NPC with schemes and machinations (actually, likely several NPCs, but we focus on one for now) that are apt to be in conflict with the goals and values the players have set out for their PCs. I prep a session that includes antagonists that are working on one of those schemes. The PCs defeat them, or not. I project out the consequences of that, and prep another session, and intersection with another scheme. Lather, rinse, repeat, with a rise and fall in tension that feels good to the players, victories and defeats accumulate, until finally their either stop the NPC, or the NPC succeeds.

If I make my prep choices wisely, whatever the results are, they'll be dramatically interesting - and I am thus planning a story.

 

[Reynard]

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.

 

[prabe]

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.

That's most of why I think the article is a mess, but there are legit questions, I think, about how you deal with the various ways backstories can fail to fit the GM's needs (among other things). "It's just play, so play" will mean different things to me than to the OP, pretty clearly.

 

[Charlaquin]

Honestly, just based on the responses in this thread, I don't buy it. It doesn't have an agreed upon definition, so it isn't actually a thing. Some person wrote up a list and some other people propagated that list, but it doesn't actually represent anything actual or real.

God I hate jargon for jargon's sake.

Well, the six cultures of play article is definitely identifying something real. It’s far from the first time someone has made the observation that there is a distinct division between the player skill tested against GM ingenuity style of play from which D&D originated, and the group storytelling style characterized by the 2e era. As well, I think it’s pretty clear that the folks on the Forge were very deliberately trying to build something distinct from both of the aforementioned styles. But, 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. But, the author reveals a strong bias against that style of play, particularly when it is heavily character-focused.

 

[MoonSong]

@tetrasodium Well, I kind of self ascribe to neotrad, though that is mostly because I found it descriptive of how I play rather than something I found cool on the internet and that I adapted to. So, the following is more my own experience and might be inaccurate to it.

To me Neo-trad is emergent story telling with a focus on reacting to the world. Character building is important, but not exactly as power, rather as a way to clearly mark what your character can and can't do. And as a way to stake fictional space. Not picking noble because I want +2 to diplomacy, but because I want my character to have that fiction as part of it.

At the same time it is the opposite of traditional storytelling in that there is no pre-plotted story. There are no rails for going off-the-rails from, because there is no grand-scheme. Players aren't in this game to be told the story, but to engage in the role chosen and have story be derived from that. This means that while there is a lot of focus on your own character, the game is more democratic and party driven than old-school narrative games which are instead top-down and hierarchical in comparison.

And well, as a player, you kind of expect backstory to become relevant in play, but I've never demanded for it to appear. Instead is a time to cooperate with the table and the DM. To bounce back and fort ideas and see what sounds fun for the table, and we go with that.

Though granted, I am a bit intense at times. My tagline isn't there for nothing. n_n

 

[Reynard]

@tetrasodium Well, I kind of self ascribe to neotrad, though that is mostly because I found it descriptive of how I play rather than something I found cool on the internet and that I adapted to. So, the following is more my own experience and might be inaccurate to it.

To me Neo-trad is emergent story telling with a focus on reacting to the world. Character building is important, but not exactly as power, rather as a way to clearly mark what your character can and can't do. And as a way to stake fictional space. Not picking noble because I want +2 to diplomacy, but because I want my character to have that fiction as part of it.

To me, this is just another example of someone deciding to apply a personal definition to a term, thus rendering it meaningless. We can't just define things from our own perspective and then expect that term to carry any weight. Just drop the jargon, say what you mean, and enjoy a fruitful discussion about THAT.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Honestly, just based on the responses in this thread, I don't buy it. It doesn't have an agreed upon definition, so it isn't actually a thing. Some person wrote up a list and some other people propagated that list, but it doesn't actually represent anything actual or real.

God I hate jargon for jargon's sake.

You're mostly correct here, but there is an actual difference in how game styles have evolved over the years. Just because no one agrees on the definition doesn't mean there isn't actually something here worth discussing. Makes it super difficult to get any productive discussion going though...

 

[Charlaquin]

To me, this is just another example of someone deciding to apply a personal definition to a term, thus rendering it meaningless. We can't just define things from our own perspective and then expect that term to carry any weight. Just drop the jargon, say what you mean, and enjoy a fruitful discussion about THAT.

I don’t disagree, but also there is something to be said for the value of having a name to put to something. Jargon can obfuscate meaning, often unintentionally, but it also has great utility when used appropriately.

 

[Campbell]

So, the other GMs in my home group mostly plays games I would consider neotrad while I tend to run more indie faire. As a player in those games, I view my responsibility as a player as three-fold.

1. Create and play a character the GM and other players find compelling in the same way the GM in a more traditional game should create a setting and adventures the players find compelling. This only works when we are invested in each other's contributions. When the GM in a neotrad game builds adventures/scenarios around the player characters it should not feel like service because they should want to engage with the ephemera around the player characters.
2. Provide in roads and support what other players are trying to do with their characters.
3. Enthusiastically engage with scenarios created by the GM with faith that they will build on my character's personal narrative and concept.

Central to any style of play is the conceit that we're all into it. Like I can only really run character centered play as a GM because for me more traditional world building and adventure design that does not involve characters' ephemera feels like a service because I'm just not into that. I need those seeds from other players to get things germinating as a GM.