Thomas Shey
Legend
Of course the question is whether people really into that are interested in being genuinely challenged. I suspect for some of them, its not.
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NeoTrad/OC Play, & the treatment of friendly NPCs (++)
- Thread starter S'mon
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Of course the question is whether people really into that are interested in being genuinely challenged. I suspect for some of them, its not.
thefutilist
Adventurer
I want to walk back some of what I said earlier and talk about an imaginary example instead (well an example kind of based on some of my OC play)
We're playing a trad type game, say Savage Worlds. There's Flashback, Shadow Song and the GM.
It's a superhero game and Flashback and Shadow song decide they're estranged brothers but they've working together because The Apocalypse Conundrum has arrived. It's a big boss type bad guy thing.
The players of Flashback and Shadow Song know, without having to communicate it. How this will go. Their characters will argue and fight and take different paths and The Apocalypse Conundrum will rain down ruin. At some point, defeated, broken and exhausted. The brothers will have a tender moment. A small thing that escalates into actually healing their rift. They'll fight with the bad guys some more and defeat the Apocalypse Conundrum and be fully reunited in the course of doing so.
So that's three people fully onboard with each other, mutually creating a story by knowing how it should go. And if you ask the players, they'll swear they were just playing their characters, immersion fully intact and all of that.
That type of play is at one end of the vibes spectrum. Fully aligned.
At the other end. There's loads of hard lines that stop us treading on each others toes. Why do we need the lines? because we're not aligned. In the worse case scenario we're trying to play but it's borderline impossible because everything is walled off. Everyone is overly precious about the other person ruining their character conception. Resolution mechanics are a form of frustration and disgruntlement. Play is characterised by a lot of vying for power and authority over things.
So what's my point. A lot of OC discontentment is caused by playing with people that you don't really want to play with. They don't 'get it' and instead of finding people who do, barriers are created to stop other people messing with your stuff. But functional tabletop roleplay is all about people messing with your stuff.
thefutilist
Adventurer
I'm repeating my central thesis a lot but there's one more example I want to throw out.
www.polygon.com
About half way through this article there is an editor note and after that a paragraph beginning "a case in point comes early on".
For anyone who is interested, give the article a read from that point on and then answer the question. Is this OC play or not? If not then what type of play is it?
The cast of Worlds Beyond Number is coloring outside the lines of D&D
The first year of the actual-play podcast is a master class in narrative role-play
www.polygon.com
About half way through this article there is an editor note and after that a paragraph beginning "a case in point comes early on".
For anyone who is interested, give the article a read from that point on and then answer the question. Is this OC play or not? If not then what type of play is it?
hawkeyefan
Legend
I'm repeating my central thesis a lot but there's one more example I want to throw out.
The cast of Worlds Beyond Number is coloring outside the lines of D&D
The first year of the actual-play podcast is a master class in narrative role-play
About half way through this article there is an editor note and after that a paragraph beginning "a case in point comes early on".
For anyone who is interested, give the article a read from that point on and then answer the question. Is this OC play or not? If not then what type of play is it?
I would say it is. There is nothing at all obliging Erika to have Ame react the way she does. Her reaction is entirely up to her. The high roll simply served as a prompt for the GM to prompt her. And, the Insight check seems to have been prompted by Erika’s own reaction to something the GM said which was prompted by Erika’s declared actions.
I see it as a series of back and forths, accurately described by Mulligan as collaborative storytelling. There’s little game there.
At least, that’s how I read it.
Has there ever been any other writing on the "Six Cultures of Play" besides the original blog post? I have never been able to comprehend the author's ideas because of his terrible naming conventions and the fact most of it is dedicated to "and here's why this thing isn't Real Gaming". Has anyone at least come up with compelling different names? Like, every player-generated character is an Original Character. That's what it means. But this dude simply does not know how to explain his own thoughts in a way that makes sense.
Yeah, I think OC is primarily what you said: neotrad with an extra emphasis on giving the players space to act in character and experience the world/each other through that sort of immersed lens. Neotrad in that backstories are woven into the game, trad in that there's almost certainly a GM authored plot / set of story beats the players created their characters to experience. When I've run 5e for players like this, I've found you need to be in the mindset of spending a lot of time listening to people do back and forth chatting that doesn't materially move gameplay forward - and ideally have multiple players who enjoy that and can run scenes together. Otherwise it winds up being a lot of "look to GM to chat with" which I found exhausting (some GMs really like that though!).
I'm running into this as an issue in a TOV game I started off to see if I could get a somewhat vanilla narrativist experience going in a 5e derivative. Players have their backstories, but keep looking to me to define stuff about what they said was important to them. THey also keep saying at end of session that they want more space to roleplay - because to them that's not "having our instinct/character challenged" but instead "talking about things." One really revealing moment to me was when the paladin was like "Ok, welp, the bandits are evil time to chop of their heads" and the monk argued a bit (shouldn't we deliver them to a lawful authority? isnt it against being a paladin to kill defenseless prisoners?), but then just kinda shrugged and gave up when I was like "well do you want to do soemthing mechanical to convince her?"
Just saying what they felt was appropriate for their character, but with no expectation of materially affecting things.
In like the 1st scene of a new game of Dungeon World (hacked via Homebrew World), one PC immediately Interfered with another PC's actions because it was important and the roll fundementally changed the entire way the scene went and adjusted conditions forward.
Thomas Shey
Legend
That makes a lot of sense, actually.
On the MUX I referred to, since you're potentially playing with a large number of different people (sometimes more in theory than in practice, but a lot of us at least tried to since otherwise you could have players who were effectively isolated for no reason other than other people not knowing them) you learned there were people who would understand how to do give and take (and how not to exceed the proper lines on that) and people who--didn't. And you tended to be a lot more rigid with the latter if you didn't avoid them completely. And not all of them were bad people (though there were people who just altogether did not care about anyone's roleplay than their own which was really a problem in that environment), but they just weren't going to engage with you well, either exceeding your lines in places you didn't want, or not giving you anything to work with.
Pedantic
Legend
For sure it is. I think the big thing that makes it look any different there is just the caliber of performers. I think they're absolutely playing in the space you call out in your earlier example with our two estranged brothers, it's just that the boundaries of that space are much bigger, due to their extensive storytelling/improv experience, and established performance chemistry, plus a lot of OOC work/review they talk about pretty openly in their associated media. The all know the themes/arc that Suvi is trying to hit, they know the kinds of themes that Ame is playing with, and they have a lot of practice onboarding even quite subtle suggestions from their fellow performers and rolling with them.I'm repeating my central thesis a lot but there's one more example I want to throw out.
The cast of Worlds Beyond Number is coloring outside the lines of D&D
The first year of the actual-play podcast is a master class in narrative role-play
About half way through this article there is an editor note and after that a paragraph beginning "a case in point comes early on".
For anyone who is interested, give the article a read from that point on and then answer the question. Is this OC play or not? If not then what type of play is it?
I would say they're definitely doing OC play, they're just doing it very performatively and very well. One thing I think you can take from WBN (and really Brennan's style in general) as a technique to support that kind of play is how all the players relate to the rules. They only go and look at them when they want input, or they want flavor. The mechanics are one of several paintbrushes, and they only pick them up and bind themselves to them when they feel that color will help the story they're trying to tell.
Edit: I just thought of a really clear example of that from later in the podcast. Lou is pointedly putting off selecting a subclass for Eursulon, until he feels a sufficiently appropriate moment for swearing an oath and/or invoking new mechanics occurs.
GobHag
Explorer
Yep, some directly about it and some are taling about similar points:
A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
(And a Plug for my Superhero Simulation Ascendant)
arbiterofworlds.substack.com
Old RPG Gamers and The Streaming Youth - From a Dark Forest
Another question from the dark forest, which is essentially creaky old people muttering about how much better it was back in the day. I tri...
jdcspot.blogspot.com
On the Shape and Origins of New School Play
A discussion of the differences in how New-School & Old-School gamers conceive of their PCs and how it informs the way they play & experience TTRPGs.
deathtrap-games.blogspot.com
It is in essence about a new TTRPG culture--and OC is named such because of roleplay servers/forums that are explicitly looking for that--if you look at Disboard and look for roleplay you'd see server that are 'OC welcome' there. If the grognard came from wargame, then this new demographic came from freeform roleplay.
By definition, every player made character is an OC but OC's implication is that the character is a special thing that is the main focus of the player themselves--they write about them, draw about them, imagine things about them off the table, the OC is the player's 'baby' so to speak. Aesthetically, they usually come from anime, animation or video games that have a focus on large cast of characters(Fate/Stay Night, Overwatch, MHA, Hazbin Hotel, Harry Potter, every single Gacha game ever). In regards to practices, table tools like X cards or lines/veils are shared with storygaming, but also things like 'player side railroading' by saying "Hey DM wouldn't it be cool if X/Y/Z happens?" or using backstories (implicitly/explicitly) as what to focus on about that player
The player already has a character in mind even before they start session 0(or even have a game!), they might change a few things here and there but they already have a solid image of their character already in place. They might even re-use that character from table to table or campaign to campaign.
Yep, some directly about it and some are taling about similar points:
A Manifesto: In Defense of Simulationism
(And a Plug for my Superhero Simulation Ascendant)Old RPG Gamers and The Streaming Youth - From a Dark Forest
Another question from the dark forest, which is essentially creaky old people muttering about how much better it was back in the day. I tri...On the Shape and Origins of New School Play
A discussion of the differences in how New-School & Old-School gamers conceive of their PCs and how it informs the way they play & experience TTRPGs.
It is in essence about a new TTRPG culture--and OC is named such because of roleplay servers/forums that are explicitly looking for that--if you look at Disboard and look for roleplay you'd see server that are 'OC welcome' there. If the grognard came from wargame, then this new demographic came from freeform roleplay.
By definition, every player made character is an OC but OC's implication is that the character is a special thing that is the main focus of the player themselves--they write about them, draw about them, imagine things about them off the table, the OC is the player's 'baby' so to speak. Aesthetically, they usually come from anime, animation or video games that have a focus on large cast of characters(Fate/Stay Night, Overwatch, MHA, Hazbin Hotel, Harry Potter, every single Gacha game ever). In regards to practices, table tools like X cards or lines/veils are shared with storygaming, but also things like 'player side railroading' by saying "Hey DM wouldn't it be cool if X/Y/Z happens?" or using backstories (implicitly/explicitly) as what to focus on about that player
The player already has a character in mind even before they start session 0(or even have a game!), they might change a few things here and there but they already have a solid image of their character already in place. They might even re-use that character from table to table or campaign to campaign.
Yeah 100%, and to the OP topic: I've definitely seen an expectation that the DM take on and heavily role-play out long scenes with NPCs that players engage with or define from backstory etc with some of that "player-side railroading/writers room" stuff of "hey wouldn't it be cool if they got kidnapped/hated me/etc."
It was kinda interesting to me coming from significant neotrad 5e play with some players who were super into OC stuff (getting art, thinking up side-stories, using them in other campaigns as you noted) and discovering narrativist play. Talk about two fundamentally different ways of being "character-centric." I'd always wanted to play TTRPGs where the scenes felt like reading one of the great fantasy novels, but neotrad play never delivered that (in part because as the GM you can't be truly surprised by what comes next when you've authored plot beats!). OC play, or large amounts of D20 mediated freeform role-play, doesnt resemble a novel at all because there's a lot of narratively purposeless scenes that a good editor would strike out.
My experience with narrativist games is that they, well, deliver scenes that either push a narrative forward or are interested in getting inside characters heads and exploring shifting motivations / conflict / reflection. There's always a game purpose or provocative question at the heart of a role-play scene, not "can I flirt with the pretty werewolf until she wants to take me upstairs" or "lets have a shopping scene around funny little clothes" or what have you.
