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

[overgeeked]

Note this is a [+] thread. If you don't enjoy this style of play, that's great, but there's no need to drag this thread down. It's okay to let people talk about what they like.

I'm using the definition provided in the Six Cultures of Play article.

Sorry, but I don't get it. My preferences run squarely in the old-school, OSR, and NuSR veins. I like challenges and I'm fine with randomness and character death. Almost literally the opposite of everything I've seen, read, or heard about OC/neo-trad. This isn't me ragging on OC/neo-trad. This is me explaining where I am coming from in hopes of making the conversation easier.

So, for the people who enjoy OC/neo-trad style play. What's the draw? Where's the fun? What's the joy? Etc.

Honestly. Please help me understand because I don't get it.

 

[TwoSix]

Do you play MMOs? If you do, have you ever run old content just to get transmog?

Have you ever paid money in a video game for a cosmetic upgrade?

 

[overgeeked]

Do you play MMOs? If you do, have you ever run old content just to get transmog?

Yes, I do and yes, I have.

Have you ever paid money in a video game for a cosmetic upgrade?

Nope. Not even once.

 

[TiQuinn]

Note this is a [+] thread. If you don't enjoy this style of play, that's great, but there's no need to drag this thread down. It's okay to let people talk about what they like.

I'm using the definition provided in the Six Cultures of Play article.

Sorry, but I don't get it. My preferences run squarely in the old-school, OSR, and NuSR veins. I like challenges and I'm fine with randomness and character death. Almost literally the opposite of everything I've seen, read, or heard about OC/neo-trad. This isn't me ragging on OC/neo-trad. This is me explaining where I am coming from in hopes of making the conversation easier.

So, for the people who enjoy OC/neo-trad style play. What's the draw? Where's the fun? What's the joy? Etc.

Honestly. Please help me understand because I don't get it.

I read that definition twice and still don’t quite know what they mean by neotrad.

 

[Distracted DM]

OK so pulling the definition from that linked article:

Spoiler

OC basically agrees with trad that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it deprioritises the authority of the DM as the creator of that story and elevates the players' roles as contributors and creators. The DM becomes a curator and facilitator who primarily works with material derived from other sources - publishers and players, in practice. OC culture has a different sense of what a "story" is, one that focuses on player aspirations and interests and their realisation as the best way to produce "fun" for the players.

This focus on realising player aspirations is what allows both the Wizard 20 casting Meteor Swarm to annihilate a foe and the people who are using D&D 5e to play out running their own restaurant to be part of a shared culture of play. This culture is sometimes pejoratively called the "Tyranny of Fun" (a term coined in the OSR) because of its focus on relatively rapid gratification compared to other styles.

The term "OC" means "original character" and comes from online freeform fandom roleplaying that was popular on Livejournal and similar platforms back in the early 2000s. "OC" is when you bring an original character into a roleplaying game set in the Harry Potter universe, rather than playing as Harold the Cop himself. Despite being "freeform" (meaning no die rolls and no Dungeon Master) these games often had extensive rulesets around the kinds of statements one could introduce to play, with players appealing to the ruleset itself against one another to settle disputes. For the younger generations of roleplayers, these kinds of games were often their introduction to the hobby.

Organised play ended up diminishing the power of the DM to shift authority onto rules texts, publishers, administrators, and really, to players. Since DMs may change from adventure to adventure but player characters endure, they become more important, with standard rules texts providing compatibility between game. DM discretion and invention become things that interfere with this intercompatibility, and thus depreciated. This is where the emphases on "RAW" and using only official material (but also the idea that if it's published it must be available at the table) come from - it undermines DM power and places that power in the hands of the PCs.

These norms were reinforced and spread by "character optimization" forums that relied solely on text and rhetorically deprecated "DM fiat", and by official character builders in D&D and other games. Modules, which importantly limit the DM's discretion to provide a consistent set of conditions for players, are another important textual support for this style. OC styles are also particularly popular with online streaming games like Critical Role since when done well they produce games that are fairly easy to watch as television shows. The characters in the stream become aspirational figures that a fanbase develops parasocial relationships with and cheers on as they realise their "arcs".

Based on these definitions the answer is obvious: it's all about you and your character and their interactions with other characters. I don't want to call it "selfish play" because that seems unfair and inaccurate, but that is the first thing that came to mind when reading that article.

I do think that the article left out another source of this "NeoTrad/OC" style of play, which was ever-expanding character options. It's all about "builds." From 3e onward, the system almost encouraged you to have your character planned out from level 1 to level 20/30 etc. Prestige Classes, for example, had prerequisites that you'd have to have chosen in order to qualify for them. You needed this feat, and this many points in a class/skill etc. to unlock this cool flavorful class.

MOST styles of play are going to involve some degree of "selfishness." You have your wizard, you want to become mighty! But I think there's a degree of how tightly you hold onto the character, how much of their future you have planned out vs. letting what happens to them during play guide their evolution.

 

[prabe]

First of all, that article is kinda a mess--especially the OC/Neo-Trad part. Among other things, OC and Neo-Trad aren't quite the same thing. OC is more about what your character brings mechanically, tending (in at least one extreme) toward what someone with your stated preferences might describe as "winning the game at chargen." This is very much the typical approach by the end of D&D 3.x/PF1e. Neo-Trad is very much more aligned with the way 5e is built, where the character focus is, ideally, more narrative than mechanical. It's where the GM pulls material from the characters' backstories and builds adventures relevant to those backstories and other interests; the idea the players might have ideas about the setting (while still giving the GM primary authority over it) is very Neo-Trad, I think. There doesn't have to be a pre-constructed story--I'm probably the most Neo-Trad GM I know (at least the most out one) and I don't pre-write stories, everything that happens is a response to what the players do--but the focus of the story is very probably going to be on the characters, as opposed to Trad, where the story is the story no matter what characters the players bring.

 

[overgeeked]

I read that definition twice and still don’t quite know what they mean by neotrad.

If you’ve seen or know much about Critical Role that would help. As far as I understand it, that’s what they do.

 

[overgeeked]

Based on these definitions the answer is obvious: it's all about you and your character and their interactions with other characters. I don't want to call it "selfish play" because that seems unfair and inaccurate, but that is the first thing that came to mind when reading that article.

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?

I do think that the article left out another source of this "NeoTrad/OC" style of play, which was ever-expanding character options. It's all about "builds." From 3e onward, the system almost encouraged you to have your character planned out from level 1 to level 20/30 etc. Prestige Classes, for example, had prerequisites that you'd have to have chosen in order to qualify for them. You needed this feat, and this many points in a class/skill etc. to unlock this cool flavorful class.

Yeah. I can see that. But I find that incredibly dull. Like reading the end of the mystery novel first. For me, play to find out goes beyond just the moment-to-moment play. I want to discover during play rather than plan it all out. Having played about 40 years now, it’s way more engaging to be surprised.

MOST styles of play are going to involve some degree of "selfishness." You have your wizard, you want to become mighty! But I think there's a degree of how tightly you hold onto the character, how much of their future you have planned out vs. letting what happens to them during play guide their evolution.

Yeah. And again, that’s the opposite of what I play these games for. Knowing the end before you begin is not interesting, to me.

 

[TiQuinn]

If you’ve seen or know much about Critical Role that would help. As far as I understand it, that’s what they do.

Okay I’ve watched a lot of CR, and while it’s more dramatized, it’s still recognizable to me as normal D&D.

Just with theater kids!

 

[Shardstone]

This article is complete garbage when it comes to Neotrad play.

In Neotrad play, the players are taking on the roles of characters in the story, and the GM takes on the role of something in relation to those characters, such as villains (in the case of 5E), an arbiter of fate, a dangerous and dark world of corruptiong magic, etc.

Sound like trad play? That's because it is, just with a little more emphasis on the narrative and thematic elements. You have more character building options so you can build a more authentic character for the world in question. Likewise, the GM often has rules and procedures for generating certain kinds of experiences at the table.

Sound like story games? That's because it is! Yes, Neotrad is simply having more crunch then a typical story game, but focusing more on the narrative then you would a contemporary OSR game. It is my preferred style of play because I get to enjoy the parts of stories I love most (the narrative and thematic ideas) and the aspects of RPGs I love most (the game rules that lead to fun experiences). I also like how the GM is always positioned with a slightly unique purpose for most Neotrad games. GMing Symbaroum is a lot different then GMing Mutant Year Zero, not just because of the rules, but because I am representing a different world and thus a different set of aesthetics and tropes and ideas.

But at the end of the day, Neotrad and blah blah blah are all nuanced takes on the same core concept of Roleplaying.