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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8993447" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Absolutely excellent post.Just capturing this part as it speaks to issues I’ve long known with a few friends who I’m abroad with right now (so I won’t have the time to elaborate too much).The specific friction between “Play to Find Out” (or Story Now) and “OC/Neotrad” is absolutely about the dynamics of individual & collective novelty seeking through structured discovery vs the integrity and promotion of individual character conception and thematic arc.You can’t have both of these agendas persisting simultaneously in the same play space.  The type/location of structured elements + “the meta” of “holding on lightly” (in order to achieve that sought novelty and particular brand of discovery) of the prior is anathema to the latter.I’ve run into this recently with a long friend’s nephew (about your age) who is also a friend. It’s interesting as the two pf them share your priorities and its given a lot of expression to certain struggles we’ve had in games I’ve run for them. Something that is interesting (at least I’ve found) is where Sim and challenge-based priorities come into this (and the difference between these two OC/Neotrad players) as a necessary vessel for play. You speak on this a bit above, but its interesting to me as it pertains to any given Neotrad player’s mental modeling both of (a) the integrity of their exclusive imaginings of their character’s conception in the play space and (b) their ability to conceive of and skillfully act upon their character’s prospective “lines of play.” It seems to me that the relative importance of (b) as a foundational aspect of play is a significant rider for Neotrad players that creates a divergence between one player vs another.I would suspect there is one OC/Neotrad camp that would put forward a thesis “if (b) is given too much expression (in combat) in the play, then it might render my ability to have my character conception promoted and realized through the course of play” whereas another might put forward the thesis of “if (b) isn’t given sufficient expression (in combat), then my (this particular player’s) sense that we’re actually playing a game becomes unpalatably diffuse.”Two things on that:1) I’ve witnessed this in real time (though not using the words above) between the two aforementioned Neotrad players.2) My use of (in combat) as the exclusive site of challenge-based priorities was intentional. There certainly seems to be a play agenda-spanning, uniform priority to freeform outside of combat and eschew noncombat conflict resolution. This seems to me that because, at some point, if allowed to resolve without some form of intervention (GM Force or player protest), there is a clear and imminent danger to the integrity and promotion of a given player’s character conception (circle back to the novelty seeking via structured discovery of “Play to Find Out”).</blockquote>

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