You create a character with somewhere to go, like a missing sister or a score to settle with someone by name. You voice them and drive their story forward. When the game asks, you help build the world around them. If your hero dies, you want it to be the episode everyone talks about.
Your GM match: The Arc Showrunner. Both want to develop character arcs, with defined abilities and death kept for the important points in the game.
Neo-Trad play focuses on each player character's arc. Each backstory gives rise to plot, and death comes at a time the narrative calls for. A good player brings a compelling story the GM can weave in, and pursues it.
What you bring
- You provide the GM with hooks they can use, so further plot lines grow out of your character.
- You drive your own arc, so the GM never has to drag you back to the plot.
- When the game asks you to contribute, you add a hometown or a rival to the world.
Where your style trips
Main-character syndrome. Your character's arc takes up three sessions, and every scene goes back to your backstory while the rest of the players wait.
The fix: Be the biggest fan of every other character. Once a session, give another player a scene of yours: 'you'd be better at this.'
Things to try
- Keep one wound in your character's backstory open so the campaign can heal it.
- Find one thing your character has in common with each other PC.
- Let the GM deny you something you want. Losing first makes the later victory feel better.
Player types you lean toward
You'll probably recognize yourself in Method Actor, Storyteller, from Robin D. Laws's player types. Most players fall into more than one category.
GMs who'll suit you
- Best match
- The Arc Showrunner
- Also works
- The Auteur Director
- Talk it through first
- The Diegetic Sandbox Referee. Decide whether a character can die before finishing their arc, and whether the world waits for their individual story.
Bring this to session one
Four knives for the GM, each on an index card: a Tie, a Fear, an Obligation and a Secret.
Point your table at these
- On screen
- Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Arcane
- Actual play
- Critical Role and Dimension 20: table talk in character, whole storylines built out of backstories, and big swings that land.
- Games
- D&D 5e (2014 and 2024), Daggerheart, Nimble, Tales of the Valiant, Cosmere RPG
A culture of play describes a group sitting around a table playing together, so one 5th edition group could find itself in two separate cultures on two different Tuesdays. The idea comes from John Bell's "Six Cultures of Play". FKR and world simulation are both missing from Bell's list, and sit here alongside it.