I had started to suggest OSR minus all the other bits, but that didn’t feel right. Pathfinder isn’t old-school D&D, a retroclone, or particularly adjacent to those games. Pathfinder 2e does have an exploration mode, but it still lacks most of the techniques one would use to create OSR-style play. Also, based on our prior conversations, your approach to balance is quite different from OSR play (which is itself [OSR play] non-normative for PF2).
I’m responding for my own edification since it seems like what’s being described fits with what Edwards describes as “setting-centric Story Now play”. Is the issue that if you aren’t taking a principled approach (e.g., something like what Edwards describes for doing it with a confused game text), that the game risks becoming incoherent?
For example, let’s assume we’re going to play a campaign using Pathfinder 2e. We decide on a village on the border between Andoran and Cheliax. Andoran is sort of like a fantasy frontier America while Cheliax is an empire of diabloists. Play starts with various situations like the Church of Asmodeus has come to town, rebels against the rule of House Thrune are causing trouble in the area, and so on. So far, it sounds like we have all the pieces in place to begin our setting-centric Story Now play.
Of course, play doesn’t just start at the status quo and then nothing happens. The PCs are going to go out and do things. They’re going to impose themselves on the setting all over the place (break the rebels’ stuff, etc). We’re playing for the emergent story, so that’s the point. However, because there are no principles to keep the GM honest, will a plot emerge eventually (inevitably?)? And if one does emerge, we’ve ended up playing something different from what we think we’re playing (Story Now vs. Story Before).
Yeah, from what I can tell it might technically be something new where 3e+ player empowerment, game balance, and combat as sport are mingled with many of the techniques of the OSR-- namely things like Dungeon Crawling Procedures, Lite Combat as War Elements, Jacquayed Dungeons, Hexcrawling Procedures, emphasis on treasure finding as advancement, and so forth. Notably the common thread is that it utilizes the game systems of a player empowered neotrad/trad style system on the character side, but uses the OSR elements to innovate on adventure and story structure (in the context of those game.) The wrinkle is probably just that each of these movements in gaming has elements that aren't mutually inclusive to one another, you can separate them out, which changes the experience, but not always in a bad way so something new can come from it.
Well, lets be honest, plot emerges either way, at least viewed in retrospect (which is the only plot can be viewed in an RPG, IMO). The question is does it emerge driven by PC actions and consequences, or does it emerge from where it was hiding in the GMs head/notes? Or possibly some combination of those two? I'd guess that running D&D type games with an emphasis on Story Now actually lands in that third column.
IMNSHO, I think it might be overly reductionist to say that plot emerges either way or that it can only be viewed in retrospect, because we experience it "As It Happens" in the game, not as a concrete thing after the fact. I feel that different kinds of techniques for producing plot probably produce plots that have different textures and such in the same way that TV Serials, Films, and Video Games in the same genre (Horror, Comedy, Drama) do, as a result of the constraints of whichever medium we're talking about, but Medium here isn't 'tabletop gaming' as a whole, its the set of techniques used to produce it.
Like, I think that goes back to Emerikol's hangup with how Blades in the Dark handles the idea of preparation, when Blades in the Dark says:
Your crew spends time planning each score. They huddle around a flickering lantern in their lair, looking at scrawled maps, whispering plots and schemes, bickering about the best approach, lamenting the dangers ahead, and lusting after stacks of coin. But you, the players, don’t have to do the nitty-gritty planning. The characters take care of that, off-screen. All you have to do is choose what type of plan the characters have already made. There’s no need to sweat all the little details and try to cover every eventuality ahead of time, because the engagement roll (detailed below) ultimately determines how much trouble you’re in when the plan is put in motion. No plan is ever perfect. You can’t account for everything. This system assumes that there’s always some unknown factors and trouble—major or minor—in every operation; you just have to make the best of it.
Emerikol responds "But the players doing the nitty gritty planning, and sweating all the little details, and trying to cover every little eventuality ahead of time (or adapting to it with the defined set of tools they have at hand during the mission) is the fun part!" (Not to put words in
@Emerikol 's mouth, though, I could be wrong.) It could be, and that's sort of what I mean by techniques too, the Blades in the Dark mechanic creates one kind of game feel, while how Emerikol would handle it would create another, because even though in "retrospect" they're the same story, they were told very differently, which naturally changes our experience of it, and therefore, our impressions and perspective on it.
