Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective

[pemerton]

I don't hold it against the game, but it made me think about the necessity of having rules that make thieves be good thieves and bad sorcerers.

In MHRP, this requires achieving a Milestone (ie resolving, one way or another, a character "arc") and then using those XP to buy the appropriate new power set, distinction of whatever.

10 XP for finishing a Milestone will allow meaningful change but not a complete rewriting of the PC. We've seen this in our MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic games, but I think not to the extent of change your character was undergoing.

 

[Tonguez]

Well, I have to unpack what I said a little: its theoretically possible to represent a lot of fine distinctions in Fate, but since you don't have unlimited Aspects available, that theoretical potential isn't all that realistically practical in most versions of it. And of course it doesn't have much answer that I'm aware of to the "good at X, really good at y" problem I referenced.

Im not sure what youre referring to here. The good at X, really good at Y distinction could easily be carried via a stunt if necessary or just by the narrative and a boost (or create an advantage action). Of course the trade in fate points then comes into play, but thats where the Game element sits alongside the shared story

 

[Bedrockgames]

My biggest issues are that I'm not particularly sold that Classic/Trad are as separated as he puts on, nor Trad and NeoTrad far as that goes.

Being someone whose style I don't think fits neatly into a lot of RPG categories, I can understand that. Generally I find attempts to lump people into play styles pretty tricky. It can be handy, and I think in this case, the overview is useful, but like a lot of things of this sort, it gets carried forward by other people online and that is when it gets confusing for me

I guess my point is this is useful as a break down to discuss, and there are good insights I think in the article. It is still clearly an open discussion though (the author isn't claiming these groupings are absolute or that his take is the only viable take). But after articles like this come out, they become more set in stone and can form a kind of orthodox taxonomy (where I think it is more useful if it is just seen as one way of grouping these things, that alternative groupings have merit too----especially since this is a hobby where most of us were viewing its evolution from a our own narrow perspective in our own neck of the woods)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Uhm, no. Pemerton actually had closer to what I was thinking of with Fate. Early D&D didn't embed things in broader abilities for the most part; it just outright ignored most of them outside some limited things, and it wasn't exactly friendly to mixing and matching.

4e is closer to what I was talking about with the second, but it still really wants you to bucket things and has a very limited ability to move outside of how things work except the limited things in Feats and the like. Its better than many games in the D&D sphere, but its still not particulate enough for what I'm talking about, which are things like, well, the Hero System.

(Yes, neither of these are in the D&D sphere, but I'm not particularly sold class-based systems are at all good for this sort of thing).

Well, I'm not ENTIRELY sure why Fate is the opposite pole there. I mean, maybe kinda sorta, but it depends perhaps on what you value in 'character stuff'? Like, 4e SUBSUMES what Fate does, in a sense, AND gives you loads of detailed mechanical stuff. I think of every item on the character sheet as both a mechanical unit of stuff and as a free descriptor! I also think that Original D&D meant its ability scores in much more of a free descriptor way than is now commonly understood. Like, in the original core 3 books there's ALMOST no rules associated with ability score (there are a couple, I think CON and DEX have some actual effects, and there's the prime requisite rules). Why is it good to be a strong fighter in that system? Because you can SAY "I'm strong, therefore..." Now, its true that bonuses got added pretty quickly, but it was still the case in a lot of AD&D play (ours for instance) that you could use ability scores, or class, or race, like a free descriptor and ask for stuff. Obviously Fate codifies all that!

So, I was discussing 4e vs B/X in more "what mechanical tools are there" because from my perspective they're all equal in the descriptors space (and then in that sense Fate IS the opposite of all D&Ds since it centers the mechanics on that descriptor thing, and gets rid of a lot of the other stuff).

Anyway, at the very least there are several dimensions in this space.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think HeroQuest Revised doesn't have these issues: descriptors are rated, and their are rules for how to handle degrees of precision in description.

Then probably doesn't apply, yes. At that point it turns on other issues besides "can I realize the character in my head" per se, such as how important detail is to you and how you want it to express in play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I think @The-Magic-Sword has made a great contribution by starting this thread. Neotrad is a really widespread approach, especially I think with younger RPGers (eg I'm thinking of some kids I GMed a session of In A Wicked Age for last year), and is absolutely worthy of discussion!

Yeah, it seems to me like it became a thing in the '90s pretty much, with the various BBS/Online forums and similar spaces maybe providing an impetus. I am a bit too old, by the '90s we were the youngish professionals barely fitting in some RPGing now and then. All the V:tM drama and a lot of the LARPing and various stuff was just "roll eyes, kids these days" lol. None of my circle was interested in Vampire, or really got into MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, etc. One friend of mine ran a FIDONET BBS and we noted a lot of that stuff going on. He catered to it, but it sort didn't really strike us as that interesting at the time somehow. Generational thing I guess.

There was ONE place where I got a good taste of a form of online RP. There was this BBS Door game, I forget the name, but the guy relaunched it as a web site, really early on, in like 1995. So it was basically THE massive online game of the day, Earth 2025. Just a very simple conquest game, no graphics, nothing. Every few weeks a new game would start, and everyone would get a country with 100 acres of land, and then you could explore, fight, buy tech and military, etc. So right away we invented Guilds, basically. 10 or 20 or 100 of us would all put a tag in our country names and if anyone attacked any of us, the rest would get in an ICQ war room and crush them within a couple hours. Of course everyone else did the same thing, so it turned into this massively complex game of backstabs and political alliances, spies, double agents, etc. You didn't have a CHARACTER exactly, but we all kind of assumed a persona within the game. It was kind of interesting. I think I played for a couple years and started the 'Society of Carnage', lol.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As an example, I'm playing in Scum&Villainy campaign right now, and some organic developments made my character move towards psychic mystical stuff, in tune with the Way and there were plenty of situations where leaning into it would be very cool and would showcase the character journey!

The problem is that I didn't have enough spare points lying around and my Attune was 0. So I had to just shoot people in the face instead, without a "use the force, Luke" moment until I came around to invest XP into magic-psychic mumbo-jumbo.

That certainly can be an issue with almost any RPG where the resource available and the character conception are out of sync. It isn't even necessarily a non-issue with freeform or semi-freeform environments where there's moderation, as my experience with superhero MUSHes shows. I'd characterize it as having a character who's "too big" for the environment proposed by whoever's in charge, whether that's central authority or group consensus.

(Of course people can simply not care about relative capability levels amidst a group, but nothing tells me that's routinely the case even among people who are really interested in expressing their character properly; people certainly cared on those MUSHes in most cases).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Im not sure what youre referring to here. The good at X, really good at Y distinction could easily be carried via a stunt if necessary or just by the narrative and a boost (or create an advantage action). Of course the trade in fate points then comes into play, but thats where the Game element sits alongside the shared story

The problem is, I don't think having to do that every time it came up would be satisfactory for most people. It certainly wouldn't be to me. And to be blunt, it doesn't have to be that way, the fact its that way in Fate is a limitation of the system, not an intrinsic requirement of mechanics. Its just one most people who like Fate either don't care about or don't care about enough to counterbalance other virtues of the system to them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Being someone whose style I don't think fits neatly into a lot of RPG categories, I can understand that. Generally I find attempts to lump people into play styles pretty tricky. It can be handy, and I think in this case, the overview is useful, but like a lot of things of this sort, it gets carried forward by other people online and that is when it gets confusing for me

Honestly, my problem may be as much chronological as anything else. By the standards they seem to be using, I saw a lot of people attempting what they call Trad really early, but you can argue that in most cases they didn't have the tools for the job; the combination of uncovered ground and random character generation wasn't as kind as it could be here in the earliest games.

I guess my point is this is useful as a break down to discuss, and there are good insights I think in the article. It is still clearly an open discussion though (the author isn't claiming these groupings are absolute or that his take is the only viable take). But after articles like this come out, they become more set in stone and can form a kind of orthodox taxonomy (where I think it is more useful if it is just seen as one way of grouping these things, that alternative groupings have merit too----especially since this is a hobby where most of us were viewing its evolution from a our own narrow perspective in our own neck of the woods)

Yeah, I'd tend to agree. There's nothing wrong with using it as a framework even if I don't think I fit neatly into any of their categories.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, I'm not ENTIRELY sure why Fate is the opposite pole there. I mean, maybe kinda sorta, but it depends perhaps on what you value in 'character stuff'?

Well, do note I was contrasting Fate with older versions of D&D, not 4e. With 4e it gets, as you say, a lot more complicated in whether 4e is serving your purposes. Though I'd argue that even with it being one of the most flexible versions of D&D, it still has a lot of D&Disms pretty thoroughly embedded in it. As an example, try to build a really thorough-going jack-of-all-trades in it. You can kind of hammer a Rogue into the mold if you're willing to do enough work on it, but it'll be a constant struggle and probably won't really look like that until moderate levels at least.

Like, 4e SUBSUMES what Fate does, in a sense, AND gives you loads of detailed mechanical stuff. I think of every item on the character sheet as both a mechanical unit of stuff and as a free descriptor! I also think that Original D&D meant its ability scores in much more of a free descriptor way than is now commonly understood. Like, in the original core 3 books there's ALMOST no rules associated with ability score (there are a couple, I think CON and DEX have some actual effects, and there's the prime requisite rules). Why is it good to be a strong fighter in that system? Because you can SAY "I'm strong, therefore..." Now, its true that bonuses got added pretty quickly, but it was still the case in a lot of AD&D play (ours for instance) that you could use ability scores, or class, or race, like a free descriptor and ask for stuff. Obviously Fate codifies all that!

Well, in terms of AD&D and earlier, I'm kind of talking the game as written, not how you could sort of fake other elements the game ignored. At that point we're effectively talking about different games. And of course it really, really wanted to keep things inside its lines in terms of things that crossed over from one class to another.

So, I was discussing 4e vs B/X in more "what mechanical tools are there" because from my perspective they're all equal in the descriptors space (and then in that sense Fate IS the opposite of all D&Ds since it centers the mechanics on that descriptor thing, and gets rid of a lot of the other stuff).

That's fair to a point, but I think you're being at least pretty blase about the meaningful descriptive space in the character in B/X and earlier; in practice, if you have to add-in ad-hoc mechanics to make it work, I don't think the system has much wiggle in descriptive space; you're just bolting it on from the outside, and in some areas it will actively resist you.

Anyway, at the very least there are several dimensions in this space.

Sure.