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

[gorice]

Nah, the rules are very simple: everyone can just introduce whatever new fiction they want to, until the other person disagrees. There's no risk involved, things will always go according to the consensus of the players' vision (and the consensus is usually easily reached).

I can't really give an example of play for obvious reasons, but I guess bolter-porno would suffice too.

P1: I drive my blade through yet another dog of the False Emperor with a satisfying wet noise of torn flesh and cracking of the broken bones
P2: His guts splay your armour red, in his dying breath he utters "Emperor protects", and you can almost hear Her laugher. You can't help but join, your laugher, slowly turning into a howl is just another note in this symphony of destruction.
P1: This is my greatest masterpiece, a worthy offering to Slaanesh! Cosmic nu-jazz improvisation, beyond rhythm, beyond structure, beyond understanding of the puny mortals, true music for a true God.
P2: You toy with the last survivor, stomping your ceramite boot inches away from his skull over and over, revealing in his fear, until you drink him dry. You drop your heel onto his face, exploding his head like a ripe watermelon.
P1: I carefully remove his eyeball that landed on my face and chuckle. This is a good night! Then, I hear booming warcry, that no mortal throat could possibly produce. A space marine. "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!". Well, we can't have slaves of that unrefined idiot spoiling the symphony of Slaanesh, can we?
P2: (nah, I'm not into this whole Chaos-on-Chaos stuff, let's just stick to slaughtering imperials?)
P1: (sure) A space marine, clad in heinous, tasteless blue and gold. "We march for Macragge!", he screams and I can't help but feel pity for him. Poor sod, oblivious to the truth, who've never gazed upon the beauty of the Eye of Terror. Regarldess, his dying screams will be one more note in my masterpiece.

Basically it's a process of collaborative creation, focused on milking the situation for cool details, where two minds can produce something more thrilling than one.

Thanks. That's very simple; but also nothing like D&D.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure how 'ad hoc' ability scores are in older D&D. Think of it this way. I have an INT of 15, that's roughly a 148 IQ. You ARE A GENIUS, not just 'kinda smart', and you can definitely play with that. Granted, old school D&D is not going to give you a formal label to put on your character "Scholar of Middle Cardolan History" to leverage, but there was a VERY active school of classic D&D that was doing this sort of stuff by 1976 at the latest. My point is, it isn't exactly subverting the rules, or even adding any new ones. Its more just 'how do interpret and adjudicate'. If "less rules/FKR whatever" means anything, then that's where it lives!

It's a bit tangential, but this made me think of how we handle EDU in our Classic Traveller game. If a PC has high EDU, we look at other parts of their backstory (as revealed via the PC gen process and the elaboration around that) to work out what it means.

Eg the PCs with low INT but high EDU who served in a planetary army (in one case) and the Imperial Navy (in another case) are understood as being extremely familiar with the practice manuals, logistics manuals etc for their respective services. This has enabled the Navy PC, for instance, to make a check to recognise and even to try and break an Naval code.

On the other hand, a different PC's high EDU means that he has a PhD in Xenoarchaeology, and that affects what actions his player can meaningfully declare.

 

[Aldarc]

The only problem is that you have to be willing to for the system to only express distinctions in character in the broadest way, and that the output is going to be primarily dependent on your narration to do any heavy lifting, because the system won't do it for you.
(And in the case of Fate, will tend to let you down if you want to be Good at X but Really Good at Y. I can't help but think if you're at all fussy in this area you'd be better off with Cortex, which gives a bit more wiggle-room here than Fate).

I am having some difficulty with discerning your meaning regarding Fate as it feels like you are talking about Fate vaguely rather than concretely.

 

[Aldarc]

He was a little put out when I chose to focus spotlight on another dimension of his backstory in a way he wasn't expecting, having his fairy-tale lover figure rope him and the party into fey politics that she was trying to influence to be more tolerant of mortals (being fey herself) as her knight and champion. Somehow I'd managed to hear all of his ideas without processing that the 'brothers who show up periodically so he can beat them one by one' thing was actually the load bearing part, whoops; I honed in on the childhood friend turned warlock patron who allowed the kid with medically fragile bones to become her loyal knight true love story instead and made her a much more massive character, while in truth she was meant to be more passive.

Do you think that there are possibly player tools or even system mechanics that could have better helped the player mark or highlight the primary story beats they wanted you to pick up on?

Also, @The-Magic-Sword, since you mentioned JRPGs, I am curious whether you have checked out Fabula Ultima? On the whole from my reading of the system, it seems like it would work well towards a Neo-Trad style game.

 

[niklinna]

Thanks. That's very simple; but also nothing like D&D.

I didn't know that was a requirement!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Do you think that there are possibly player tools or even system mechanics that could have better helped the player mark or highlight the primary story beats they wanted you to pick up on?

Also, @The-Magic-Sword, since you mentioned JRPGs, I am curious whether you have checked out Fabula Ultima? On the whole from my reading of the system, it seems like it would work well towards a Neo-Trad style game.

Maybe, I've thought about the possibility before, I do know (from experience) that Masks style playbooks did not work for them because they did not process the basic idea of conflict with the other members of their 'legacy' as core to the experience-- which is kind of concerning because all the playbooks are primarily about the conflict your character faces, so it would have to be more open-ended than that, perhaps literally a survey asking "What do you want your character's story to consist of?"

I haven't, I'll look into it, though.

 

[Pedantic]

Thanks. That's very simple; but also nothing like D&D.

To be fair, I don't know that I actually agree that the kind of freeform roleplay @loverdrive is talking about is a good generalization of the form overall. That's more of an instant messenger/chatroom tradition that tends to be very focused on two (or a very small number) of participants without an overarching narrative, and tends towards one-shot or short play. I think it probably does belong in the tradition, because it has a really solid conception of inviolate characters that experience stuff coming away unchanged (except in ways they want to be changed), but it's a niche.

I think Dimension 20's short anthology D&D games are probably a better example of how this might exist inside a D&D system. There's a lot that's going unspoken and relying on the impressive improv/storytelling skills of talented performers instead of explicit discussions before/after play (though they make it clear that a lot of stuff is discussed out of character), but as an example of setting up character arcs/planned points of change within character concepts, it's a solid demonstration.

 

[gorice]

I didn't know that was a requirement!

It's not! But it is a very particular way of doing things.

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe, I've thought about the possibility before, I do know (from experience) that Masks style playbooks did not work for them because they did not process the basic idea of conflict with the other members of their 'legacy' as core to the experience-- which is kind of concerning because all the playbooks are primarily about the conflict your character faces,...

That is a fair point and consideration. Sometimes PbtA/FitD playbooks lean (sometimes heavily) into themes that aren't necessarily what players want their characters to experience, which I know from my own experience can be off-putting.

That said, while it may seem outside of neo-trad philosophy, it seems like one should make a character for the game played. It's like how we often here about players who create characters that aren't really suited for party play in D&D. The common go-to advice is that players should create characters who are party play-compatible. Likewise, it seems like if I was playing Masks that I should create a character that is conducive for playing at the table, whether that pertains to the other players or the system. That may mean creating a character that does have a conflict with their legacy even if that's not necessarily the primary conflict that I originally had in mind for my PC. I suspect that even the groups that inspire a lot of contemporaneous Neotrad (e.g., Critical Role, Dimension 20, etc.) take such considerations in mind.

...so it would have to be more open-ended than that, perhaps literally a survey asking "What do you want your character's story to consist of?"

Fate has Troubles that are meant to serve as the chief lightning rods that attract conflict for the PC. You can use Troubles for internalized conflicts of personality (e.g., Manners of a Goat); however, they can also be used for personalized story arcs: e.g., "Unsolved Murder of My Brother" and then finding out that it was the Red Foot Clan may lead to the new Trouble, "I'll Have my Vengeance against the Red Foot Clan!" But these may not be limited to Troubles either. A number of Fate games used Guided Aspects that are more thematic. Cortex Prime often employs similar guided prompts for its Distinctions.

 

[chaochou]

What were some of your (general audience of this post) favorite characters ever?

Do you mean neotrad characters?

I had a Malkavian in a Vampire game who was pretty much useless at everything. He was a sort of 70s hippie who'd made it quite big in the music industry and as a clubland DJ. Because the game was new, we didn't have access to the build rules (we just built characters in a one-to-one with the GM) so I ended up being of a generation which cost lots of build points without conferring any real benefits. My skills were a hotchpotch, and my powers were pretty poor - Obfuscate was decent - so mechanically the whole thing was a mess.

But the character had Mark of Cain, which turned plants to ash, and a heroin addiction. And was Malkavian. So I hammed up my junkie lifestyle, my mystic pronoucements, being wracked with visions while high, and my (non-existent) powers of prophecy. At one point - when we were supposedly doing some errand for the Prince of Chicago or something - I spent the time hallucinating about a carnival and used my Mark of Cain to sign my autograph in huge letters in ash in the grass in the park.

In other words, it was performative. I'd created a reasonably entertaining and plausible fictional person turned vampire and depicted them authentically, and the group appreciated that (from me) as I did from them. Nothing about the character(s) was challenged, and that was okay. It got a bit stale after a while, like you run out of road creatively when a character is fairly static. But it was still a memorable character.