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<blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9317590" data-attributes="member: 7044566"><p>No. See my other responses. As much as I use Brennan as a punching bag, he’s selling himself short, he could adjudicate combat totally free-form, if he wanted to.</p><p></p><p>For ease of communication I’m going to call the general style the ‘storyteller style’ (sts for short).</p><p></p><p>So the fundamental, design, problem of sts is that it’s hijacked a design that wasn’t built for it’s purpose. I think this led to a whole ton of cognitive dissonance and post-hoc apologia. Amongst designers, because system didn’t matter, it, well, didn’t matter. You threw whatever together because that’s how it’s done.</p><p></p><p>Think for a moment about how crazy that is. I was serious above when I mentioned Vampire telling you not to use the rules. You find the same thing in 2e, 3.5 e, 5e, not to the same extent as Vampire but still, it’s absolutely crazy. It’s only defended because ‘that’s how it’s done’. Or you get smart people and smart people are amazing at post-hoc rationalising and so they’ll write pages about negative space, bricolage, Chestertons fence and so on. This obviously isn’t a phenomenon confined to rpg’s, it’s just a thing humans do.</p><p></p><p>So a rational designer, one who wants the parts of the system to be intentional, to have function, has a bit of problem.</p><p></p><p>But let’s rewind a moment. I think there have been innovations in the STS. So the first thing you’d want to do, is make them concrete in the text. A lot of the neo-trad principles are born from this. So in terms of teaching a GM, there can be better or worse texts.</p><p></p><p>For instance Brennan mentions the water slide, what we used to call Roads to Rome.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]LmZSWKPXhZ4:5338[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>Ignore what he says about being a player, he doesn’t have the first clue as to what he’s talking about, when we get to the GM advice though. It’s good advice (for the STS).</p><p></p><p>What about resolution mechanics though? When people think of system, this is often what they think of. We’ve already established they’re, at most, suggestions. Which puts us in a weird place. Why keep them at all? Or why not replace them with something that does have function?</p><p></p><p>Because neo-trad design is still basically bound by tradition. You can make the rules functional for the play style by basically reinterpreting them as improv prompts, you can even get rid of rule zero by doing that (In my home system that’s what I did).</p><p></p><p>I don’t think there’s any deeper design ethos though. It’s more like, here’s a neat widget that adds color and also isn’t a totally new way of doing things.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: I'm vastly underselling 'color adding improv prompt' and if you were seriously developing a design ethos for the sts, I think you'd start there.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="thefutilist, post: 9317590, member: 7044566"] No. See my other responses. As much as I use Brennan as a punching bag, he’s selling himself short, he could adjudicate combat totally free-form, if he wanted to. For ease of communication I’m going to call the general style the ‘storyteller style’ (sts for short). So the fundamental, design, problem of sts is that it’s hijacked a design that wasn’t built for it’s purpose. I think this led to a whole ton of cognitive dissonance and post-hoc apologia. Amongst designers, because system didn’t matter, it, well, didn’t matter. You threw whatever together because that’s how it’s done. Think for a moment about how crazy that is. I was serious above when I mentioned Vampire telling you not to use the rules. You find the same thing in 2e, 3.5 e, 5e, not to the same extent as Vampire but still, it’s absolutely crazy. It’s only defended because ‘that’s how it’s done’. Or you get smart people and smart people are amazing at post-hoc rationalising and so they’ll write pages about negative space, bricolage, Chestertons fence and so on. This obviously isn’t a phenomenon confined to rpg’s, it’s just a thing humans do. So a rational designer, one who wants the parts of the system to be intentional, to have function, has a bit of problem. But let’s rewind a moment. I think there have been innovations in the STS. So the first thing you’d want to do, is make them concrete in the text. A lot of the neo-trad principles are born from this. So in terms of teaching a GM, there can be better or worse texts. For instance Brennan mentions the water slide, what we used to call Roads to Rome. [MEDIA=youtube]LmZSWKPXhZ4:5338[/MEDIA] Ignore what he says about being a player, he doesn’t have the first clue as to what he’s talking about, when we get to the GM advice though. It’s good advice (for the STS). What about resolution mechanics though? When people think of system, this is often what they think of. We’ve already established they’re, at most, suggestions. Which puts us in a weird place. Why keep them at all? Or why not replace them with something that does have function? Because neo-trad design is still basically bound by tradition. You can make the rules functional for the play style by basically reinterpreting them as improv prompts, you can even get rid of rule zero by doing that (In my home system that’s what I did). I don’t think there’s any deeper design ethos though. It’s more like, here’s a neat widget that adds color and also isn’t a totally new way of doing things. EDIT: I'm vastly underselling 'color adding improv prompt' and if you were seriously developing a design ethos for the sts, I think you'd start there. [/QUOTE]
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