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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective
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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 8996189" data-attributes="member: 6690965"><p>Oh, definitely this is a risk. A skilled player will just tell you; I think a lot of how session zeros get used in modern D&D played in this style is about doing this, parsing out the bits of a character that matter and identifying the beats everyone wants to hit. I can imagine a system that would do this better or more specifically for sure though. It might not even be a resolution system, so much as a campaign structure one. You can imagine questionnaires with stuff like "things my character wants to learn, something good I want to have happen, something bad I want to deal with" and so on, and then some advice/guidelines on how to structure those things into a workable narrative.</p><p></p><p>I think this is where the Trad component of neo-trad comes in, to a degree. You don't generally get to to say anything about another character's mental world or have any direct influence on their actions/decisions in such a system, which works really well for this kind of play by leaving blank space for the characters to exist/grow in. It's why either long-term threats or episodic (or discrete quest/adventure) structures can work so well for this form. There is an outside plot the characters are engaging with day to day, and they get to interject character moments as they see fit and/or get excited when the character beats they prompted start to appear.</p><p></p><p>I think you do need a safety mechanism, a strong social contract or some out of character forum to cover gaps though, when you run across situations that a player isn't feeling able to express their character, or is feeling like something important about the character it being taken away. Again, there's probably more room for formality in a system here.</p><p></p><p>I suspect this is very much a style that would happily embrace death flags or similar mechanisms.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 8996189, member: 6690965"] Oh, definitely this is a risk. A skilled player will just tell you; I think a lot of how session zeros get used in modern D&D played in this style is about doing this, parsing out the bits of a character that matter and identifying the beats everyone wants to hit. I can imagine a system that would do this better or more specifically for sure though. It might not even be a resolution system, so much as a campaign structure one. You can imagine questionnaires with stuff like "things my character wants to learn, something good I want to have happen, something bad I want to deal with" and so on, and then some advice/guidelines on how to structure those things into a workable narrative. I think this is where the Trad component of neo-trad comes in, to a degree. You don't generally get to to say anything about another character's mental world or have any direct influence on their actions/decisions in such a system, which works really well for this kind of play by leaving blank space for the characters to exist/grow in. It's why either long-term threats or episodic (or discrete quest/adventure) structures can work so well for this form. There is an outside plot the characters are engaging with day to day, and they get to interject character moments as they see fit and/or get excited when the character beats they prompted start to appear. I think you do need a safety mechanism, a strong social contract or some out of character forum to cover gaps though, when you run across situations that a player isn't feeling able to express their character, or is feeling like something important about the character it being taken away. Again, there's probably more room for formality in a system here. I suspect this is very much a style that would happily embrace death flags or similar mechanisms. [/QUOTE]
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