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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9356644" data-attributes="member: 7006">If I am understanding the definitions of 'Trad' and 'Neo-Trad' correctly... then there seems to be one very easy-to-understand demarcation between the two cultures (that I am using here for my post-- fully acknowledging that perhaps I am completely misunderstanding the definitions.)It seems to me that 'Trad' games are ones whose narrative is focused from the DM's perspective-- what the DM introduces into the game and story and what the players take from and build from... whereas 'Neo-Trad' are ones with their narrative derived from the players and their characters and the DM building off of them (at least in part).To put it in another way... in a 'Trad' game, the story only begins from the first session of play.  And everything that ends up important to the PCs only occurs starting from that first session.  Nothing that might have occurred to these characters before the game started matters (or even gets created), because the DM has no hand in that.  But the DM sets the stakes starting with the first session, so that's where characters interaction and concern starts from.  The real identity of "emergent play" you could say.  The story emerges from what occurs at the table by the players playing and reacting to what the DM presents.But in 'Neo-Trad'... players design their characters from the beginning of their "lives" and things that have happened to them and which are important to them can all occur before the "starting point" of the campaign.  Relationships the character has formed, needs and wants the character has built, events that have occurred and which cause the character to act in the ways they do... all of these things can and will have been formulated by the players prior to the first session, and the DM is expected (and perhaps even desires) to incorporate those past events/relationships/needs into the story going forward.  In this case... while the DM might have had the authorial control over the world the game takes place in... the players have control of the all the events that are important to their characters.  And how they act and react once that first session begins won't be as a direct result and reaction to only what the DM presents... but also as a reflection to who they already were.  Thus the DM has to react to the players, not the other way around.Now once the game actually begins... then absolutely, neo-trad players will also react in-character to things the DM offers up as actions and events... that part wouldn't change.  But there is that expected back-and-forth between players and DM in neo-trad where those actions and events will have come from both the offers of the DM creates as part of their prep, but also the offers the players have made by all the background material they created prior to that first game.  And in best-case-scenario... both sides will take their actions and reactions from what they other side has offered (whenever those offers had occurred) and build their events and stories off of it.</blockquote>

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