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

[FrozenNorth]

I have to agree. I just finished the introductory adventure in the One Ring, and even by the standards of introductory adventures, it really felt like we were bystanders in someone else’s poor Tolkien fanfiction.

To elaborate a bit further …
1. The first adventure didn’t seem like it would interest the characters we were playing…despite the fact that we were all playing the adventure’s pregen characters.
2. In multiple adventures, the adventure not only told us directly where to go, but directed us to take a particular path to get there. It was painfully obvious that a particular path was necessary so we could face the pregenerated obstacles the adventure had prepared.
3. The adventure was a series of pregenerated encounters. In the series of 5 adventures, there appeared to be a single encounter where any action we had taken up to that point modified anything.
4. In two adventures, canon NPCs tagged along. We had no choice in the matter.
5. Cut scenes in combat. Literally. In every single combat when you reduced the enemy to 0 hp, a cut scene would occur to rob you of the victory. Several times the monster ran away (and you couldn’t do anything). One time, the sun came up snd turned the monster to stone. One time, the monsters just came back to life so they could be incorporated into the epilogue.
6. As mentioned, we played pregen characters. Multiple times, we encountered NPCs who should know our characters. This had no impact on how the NPCs reacted to us.
7. Building on that last point. We arrived at our f’ing home, where my character was the heir to the manor, and the first words out of the current master’s (my father) mouth “What business brings you to Buck Hall?”. Another adventure involved a pregen interacting with both her mother and her fiancé. The adventure did not seem to warn the GM that this might derail the adventure.
8. The majority of encounters had minimal ways to solve them: roll the appropriate skill. Even encounters where you could roll more than 1 skill, the consequences were the same regardless of the skill you rolled.
9. Adventure 4 started with our characters arrested for actions we did in Adventure 1. This is the case despite the fact that there were no witnesses or evidence we did anything wrong, and several months had passed between the adventures.

Yeah, this did not feel like a neo-trad experience. This felt like a trad experience done really poorly.

Not related to the trad-neo trad issue, but…
10. The pregens were created according to the One Ring rules. However, since the characters were all hobbits, under the One Ring rules they all had virtually the same skills. This was a major pain as all skills rolls were either “we are all trained in this at roughly the same rank” or “none of us are trained in this so why are we even rolling?”*

*Note: as with most things, in the hands of a capable adventure writer, you could probably take this element and make it suspenseful, or at least interesting. That didn’t happen here.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Nice! It's stuff I've heard before, but never so clearly or so...agreeably.

I like that it’s system agnostic These are principles that can be applied anywhere.

 

[Wolfpack48]

To elaborate a bit further …
1. The first adventure didn’t seem like it would interest the characters we were playing…despite the fact that we were all playing the adventure’s pregen characters.
2. In multiple adventures, the adventure not only told us directly where to go, but directed us to take a particular path to get there. It was painfully obvious that a particular path was necessary so we could face the pregenerated obstacles the adventure had prepared.
3. The adventure was a series of pregenerated encounters. In the series of 5 adventures, there appeared to be a single encounter where any action we had taken up to that point modified anything.
4. In two adventures, canon NPCs tagged along. We had no choice in the matter.
5. Cut scenes in combat. Literally. In every single combat when you reduced the enemy to 0 hp, a cut scene would occur to rob you of the victory. Several times the monster ran away (and you couldn’t do anything). One time, the sun came up snd turned the monster to stone. One time, the monsters just came back to life so they could be incorporated into the epilogue.
6. As mentioned, we played pregen characters. Multiple times, we encountered NPCs who should know our characters. This had no impact on how the NPCs reacted to us.
7. Building on that last point. We arrived at our f’ing home, where my character was the heir to the manor, and the first words out of the current master’s (my father) mouth “What business brings you to Buck Hall?”. Another adventure involved a pregen interacting with both her mother and her fiancé. The adventure did not seem to warn the GM that this might derail the adventure.
8. The majority of encounters had minimal ways to solve them: roll the appropriate skill. Even encounters where you could roll more than 1 skill, the consequences were the same regardless of the skill you rolled.
9. Adventure 4 started with our characters arrested for actions we did in Adventure 1. This is the case despite the fact that there were no witnesses or evidence we did anything wrong, and several months had passed between the adventures.

Yeah, this did not feel like a neo-trad experience. This felt like a trad experience done really poorly.

Not related to the trad-neo trad issue, but…
10. The pregens were created according to the One Ring rules. However, since the characters were all hobbits, under the One Ring rules they all had virtually the same skills. This was a major pain as all skills rolls were either “we are all trained in this at roughly the same rank” or “none of us are trained in this so why are we even rolling?”*

*Note: as with most things, in the hands of a capable adventure writer, you could probably take this element and make it suspenseful, or at least interesting. That didn’t happen here.

My biggest gripe with these sorts of adventures is feeling as if the PCs are mere witnesses to something that doesn’t really involve them. And that the encounters and indeed the entire adventure can be fully resolved without them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have to agree. I just finished the introductory adventure in the One Ring, and even by the standards of introductory adventures, it really felt like we were bystanders in someone else’s poor Tolkien fanfiction.

Not exactly sure what makes it poor to you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that GM Intrusions are much worse than Compels in Fate. If you are not big into Compels, regardless of whatever I may say otherwise about them, then a game like Cortex would probably work better, since it's similar to Fate but Character Distinctions (i.e., Aspects) are done entirely player side.

I certainly found it much less stressful than the one time I ran Fate.

(Ironically, I'm not necessarily averse to things like Disadvantage systems, which sometimes require nudges from the GM, but they aren't usually quite as all-encompassing as Fate Aspects tend to be).

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the whole point of play from a player perspective is to explore your OC's "story", it would be quite easy to prioritize what you want for your PC over the desires of the other players, or the GM. I suspect this is why the pitfalls of Neo-Trad are being emphasized. Sometimes, it's hard not to see them.

I suspect from my experience most people aren't going to prioritize their needs over the other players (which doesn't mean it can't happen, but its a known misbehavior among people aiming for that sort of thing, since it ends up breaking the structure of the game if not reined in). The GM might be a different story, since the GM's desires here aren't considered a high priority, and sometimes you don't even have much of a fixed GM position.

 

[bloodtide]

And I'm not showing up to a game to roleplay an useless duck and be butt of other players' jokes, it sounds like for ours of being bored, feeling useless, all for one jerk's sick power trip.

This is the difference between a Traditional player and a Neo T player.

Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark are literally the first types of games people point out as examples of "Neotrad" and agressively contrast them with OSR.

I'm no expert here, but these people might be wrong.

But these games are exactly what we've been discussing here - they put emphasis on player agency, they help tailoring the plot to the character, they allow players to change the setting through their actions. The only thing not fitting is they don't treat the character as a precious thing nothing bad can happen to and, to be frank, I think this point is just a strawman potrayal of the "neotrad" style, something assigned to mispresent and mock the people who prefer it. I think most players in this style can take something bad happenning to their character, as long as it narratively makes sense, comes from character actions and we feel DM didn't pull some shenanigans to make it happen.

I would note your conditions. Bad things can happen to a character only if: 1. It narratively makes sense to the player 2. It only comes from the characters actions and 3. If the player does not "feel" the DM did some shenanigans. And I would sure say it sounds to me like the player must approve of any bad thing that happens.

You'd need to know the motive of the GM -- you're assuming 100% he's on a "sick power trip."

This is the typical reaction of the Neo T player though : If any event happens in the game, especially anything bad or negative directly to a PC, it must only be "a DM on a sick power trip".

And, ok, yes....Every type of play style has Bad DMs. Even Neo T.

But just as something does not make sense to the player, comes only from the characters actions and if the player "feels" right...does not automatically make a DM a Bad DM.

First of all - is being turned into a duck something that happens to the entire party? Or is this one PC singled out?

So, if you have a Bad DM, sure you can feel "singled out". But for any other DM, you should never feel targeted or "singled out". Though this really is a player problem: you you feel singled out whenever anything bad happens to your character, how do you expect to play the game?

Is the entire party having to deal with challenges presented by their new situation, or is this one PC forced to sit and DO NOTHING while the players actually spend time playing their characters?

I would note the part that "Neo T players only want to play there character free from any negative effects" is an important part. But I would wonder why you just skip over the idea of playing as a duck character? It does depend on the game system, edition and house rules....but polymorph does not always equal useless. And some players do have tons of fun being a 'super spy' or such.

And again with the false dichotomy - either the GM is a tyrant who has absolute power or players get to control everything. You guys ever heard of GM and player working together?

DM has all the power or the power is shared between many...what else?

My biggest gripe with these sorts of adventures is feeling as if the PCs are mere witnesses to something that doesn’t really involve them. And that the encounters and indeed the entire adventure can be fully resolved without them.

Well, you will almost always get this with a published adventure. It has to be generic.

And not every writer has the skill...or sadly the page numbers...to write a good book.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I would note your conditions. Bad things can happen to a character only if: 1. It narratively makes sense to the player 2. It only comes from the characters actions and 3. If the player does not "feel" the DM did some shenanigans. And I would sure say it sounds to me like the player must approve of any bad thing that happens.

This is the typical reaction of the Neo T player though : If any event happens in the game, especially anything bad or negative directly to a PC, it must only be "a DM on a sick power trip".

And, ok, yes....Every type of play style has Bad DMs. Even Neo T.

But just as something does not make sense to the player, comes only from the characters actions and if the player "feels" right...does not automatically make a DM a Bad DM.

So, if you have a Bad DM, sure you can feel "singled out". But for any other DM, you should never feel targeted or "singled out". Though this really is a player problem: you you feel singled out whenever anything bad happens to your character, how do you expect to play the game?

I would note the part that "Neo T players only want to play there character free from any negative effects" is an important part. But I would wonder why you just skip over the idea of playing as a duck character? It does depend on the game system, edition and house rules....but polymorph does not always equal useless. And some players do have tons of fun being a 'super spy' or such.

DM has all the power or the power is shared between many...what else?

You literally pull parts of my posts not just out of the context of a whole post but aout of context of a single paragraph in order to build a strawman to knock over. Thank you proving to me discussing with you is utterly pointless, as you have no respect for people of differing opinion.

 

[overgeeked]

My biggest gripe with these sorts of adventures is feeling as if the PCs are mere witnesses to something that doesn’t really involve them. And that the encounters and indeed the entire adventure can be fully resolved without them.

I think this is exactly the draw of neo-trad style. Wanting the character to actually matter to the unfolding story. To be more than a replaceable cog in a machine that will grind on regardless.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I think this is exactly the draw of neo-trad style. Wanting the character to actually matter to the unfolding story. To be more than a replaceable cog in a machine that will grind on regardless.

Yep, and I agree with the sentiment to a point. I still believe the GM should be able to generate adverse events that may affect characters and that characters will need to react to those events. And I don’t believe the GM has to ask for the players permission to do so. That said, the characters need to matter.