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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9206039" data-attributes="member: 85870">[USER=90374]@payn[/USER] --- your comment kind of goes back to my thoughts on player expectation, and the idea that you want to be good at what you're good at, right?In my head this is kind of a &quot;neo-trad&quot; sort of headspace. In the past I've used a player who says &quot;I want to be Batman!&quot; as an analogy.&nbsp; The player who &quot;wants to be Batman&quot; really does just want to be Batman. (S)he isn't interested in playing a &quot;gimped,&quot; lesser, unrealized version of Batman---or at least, only early on in character progression until her/his vision of Batman is met. Anything that disallows the player to &quot;realize&quot; their character concept becomes a barrier to fun. Now obviously this is contextual. &quot;Wanting to be Batman&quot; doesn't mean that the GM / player dynamic should always be about the player feeling awesome. But it should some of the time. And if the GM is making rulings that lead to in-fiction situations where Batman isn't being awesome, it had better be for a darn good reason with a darn good set of stakes at hand, with a darn good payoff for the player later. Interestingly, there's an intersection between skilled play and &quot;neo-trad&quot; that I'm not sure I'd fully grasped before. The difference is really in the player motivation, and the level to which a GM allows flexibility in player action declarations. OSR skilled play doesn't care if Batman gets to be Batman, but it does care if Batman has stuff to contribute to the success of the engagement at hand. Neo-trad says Batman has to remain Batman, and the best way to be Batman is to do Batman-y things and do them well.The types of things both players will say probably sound a lot alike at the table. They'll just be coming from slightly different motivational / contextual spaces. So I think I'm stumbling into another &quot;learning&quot; from Jedi Survivor ---4 --- Character Realization. GM-ing activities and techniques should, as far as possible, allow for players to achieve character actualization. This can be achieved by providing situations, challenges, and engagements that accord with: <ul>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Character build</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tacit / unstated goals based on character build</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Explicit / stated goals identified by the player</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stakes within the setting / conflicts that speak to the above</li>
</ul></blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 9206039, member: 85870"] [USER=90374]@payn[/USER] --- your comment kind of goes back to my thoughts on [I]player expectation, [/I]and the idea that you want to be [I]good at what you're good at[/I], right? In my head this is kind of a "neo-trad" sort of headspace. In the past I've used a player who says "I want to be Batman!" as an analogy. The player who "wants to be Batman" [I]really does just want to be Batman[/I]. (S)he isn't interested in playing a "gimped," lesser, unrealized version of Batman---or at least, only early on in character progression until her/his vision of Batman is met. Anything that disallows the player to "realize" their character concept becomes a barrier to fun. Now obviously this is contextual. "Wanting to be Batman" doesn't mean that the GM / player dynamic should always be about the player feeling awesome. But it should some of the time. And if the GM is making rulings that lead to in-fiction situations where Batman isn't being awesome, it had better be for a darn good reason with a darn good set of stakes at hand, with a darn good payoff for the player later. Interestingly, there's an intersection between skilled play and "neo-trad" that I'm not sure I'd fully grasped before. The difference is really in the player motivation, and the level to which a GM allows flexibility in player action declarations. OSR skilled play doesn't care if [I]Batman gets to be Batman[/I], but it does care if [I]Batman has stuff to contribute to the success of the engagement at hand[/I]. Neo-trad says [I]Batman has to remain Batman, and the best way to be Batman is to do Batman-y things and do them well[/I]. The types of things both players will say probably sound a lot alike at the table. They'll just be coming from slightly different motivational / contextual spaces. So I think I'm stumbling into another "learning" from [I]Jedi Survivor[/I] --- 4 --- Character Realization. [I]GM-ing activities and techniques should, as far as possible, allow for players to achieve character actualization. [/I]This can be achieved by providing situations, challenges, and engagements that accord with: [LIST] [*]Character build [*]Tacit / unstated goals based on character build [*]Explicit / stated goals identified by the player [*]Stakes within the setting / conflicts that speak to the above [/LIST] [/QUOTE]

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