What is the point of GM's notes?

[pemerton]

Years ago, when I mostly ran bog-standard D&D (Basic, AD&D, 3E, and early 4E), I viewed preplay notes mainly as constraints on the GM and a facilitator for keeping the PCs within the bounds of the story (be it module, AP, or home design).

So can we talk a bit about how preplay notes keep the PCs within the bounds of the story?

To elaborate the question a little bit:

* The notes are (to a significant extent, at least) private to the GM, and (I believe, given your reference to modules) contain things like descriptions of imaginary people, descriptions of imaginary places, and descriptions of posited imaginary events that have not yet "occurred" in the shared fiction;

* The PCs are imagined entities whose actions are, in some fashion, declared by game participants who don't have access to the notes;

* So what exactly does the GM do, at the table, which means that the upshot of my second dot point is informed by the material described in my first dot point?

 

[pemerton]

A more useful form of the question may be - "As a GM, how do you structure or use notes during a session of play to enhance the play experience?"

Feel free to start you own thread then!

I'm interested in answers to the question that I asked. They are useful to me.

 

[BookTenTiger]

My favorite kinds of notes to prepare are narrative truths about the world, factions, enemies, etc. I usually have a few lists of these on a google doc called "Things I Want the Characters to Know."

Whenever a character searches in an unusual place, talks with an NPC I wasn't expecting, or it's just an opportune time, I'll drop in something from these lists.

I remember one adventure the characters were in a manor owned by a vampire during a big party. They decided to do some sleuthing. One character started rifling through a bookshelf, another started talking with party-goers, and a third found a room used as a trash dump. They all rolled very well on their various skills.

I opened up my doc as was able to drop in some juicy tidbits about their vampiric host, the haunted graveyard outside the manor, and a possible side quest in an upcoming location.

Lots of fun!

 

[Lanefan]

Brevity can be (is) just fine, if it's what the table as a whole wants. Especially if you have players who particularly enjoy char-build, it gives them a chance to try out more ideas.

Of course. My point is simply that to play new characters or run out new concepts doesn't need a whole new campaign or game. All you need to do is retire or kill off the character(s) you're playing now and have at it.

I'd say the players are contributing at least something in the direction of authorship, if the DMs are being constrained to run adventures that fit the PCs' needs/stories.

Different definition, I guess. When I see "authorship" I think of the designing/writing of those actual adventures, which players in general don't do.

FWIW, the campaigns I run (which I gather are quite different than the ones your group runs) behave similarly: They start with an instigating event which I write up, then future arcs tend to be based more on the PCs' actions and goals.

In a small way, and over a longer term, mine aren't all that different...ideally. In practice, and at any point during the campaign, sometimes the players don't have any good ideas what to do next and so I'll run them into something; and-or other times one player might have a good idea what to do next but can't talk the others into it.

 

[darkbard]

So can we talk a bit about how preplay notes keep the PCs within the bounds of the story?

To elaborate the question a little bit:

* The notes are (to a significant extent, at least) private to the GM, and (I believe, given your reference to modules) contain things like descriptions of imaginary people, descriptions of imaginary places, and descriptions of posited imaginary events that have not yet "occurred" in the shared fiction;

* The PCs are imagined entities whose actions are, in some fashion, declared by game participants who don't have access to the notes;

* So what exactly does the GM do, at the table, which means that the upshot of my second dot point is informed by the material described in my first dot point?

In my opinion, approaching GM notes from this mindset (as I once did) is an invitation to the GM to guide or curate the fiction as they imagine it playing out in their head in advance. Less generously, such notes can serve as an invitation to Force and Illusionism.

They are means for the GM to stake out limits on PC action declaration via fiat or sometimes subtle manipulation to "keep the game on track."

Of course, notes need not be such. But I do think they provide pressure: if the GM wants to tell this cool story, adhere to this plan, with very little variance.

I'm not interested these days in play oriented around PCs exploring GM precrafted plot. And so I find such notes an unwelcome hindrance, by and large, to playing to find out.[/i]

 

[Lanefan]

There's also the question of what qualifies as a "story arc" to various people.

I'm in a group that's going through Rime of the Frost Maiden. In one session we are hunting down a vicious moose, and in the next, we are booting kobolds out of a mine. These look and play like a mix of or random adventures, though in each one there's a tidbit that leads to the whole.

If your AP is a single dungeon crawl, yes, it will get tiresome. If your AP is built out of several different threads that combine to bring to an overall culmination, it may feel less constrained, as the PCs activities and concerns change several times over the short term

I don't know RotFM at all so I'll have to take your word for how it's designed.

That said, it can feel constraining if every adventure, no matter how diverse, still somehow ends up pointing at good ol' Bobby McNasty as being behind it all. There, I'd just want to get Bobby out of the way as fast as possible so as to get on to something that really is different, even just stand-alone adventures (which IMO are often the best anyway).

Princes of the Apocalypse, which I'm more familiar with, can suffer from this if not approached well: one adventure just leads (quite literally - they're joined together by passages!) to the next. In the long run, this would get really dull. Far better IMO to break PotA out into however many (15?) little adventures and place those independently around your setting, i.e. remove all the connecting passages; and then throw in some unrelated adventures or even have a second side-along story arc going to keep things fresh as you jumped back and forth.

The campaign might end up going something like, with each line being an adventure:

PotA 1
PotA 2
Other Arc 1
Stand-alone (with a minor tie-in to Other Arc)
PotA 3
Other Arc 2 but ties in with and leads directly to PotA 4
Other Arc 3
Stand-alone
PotA 5/Other Arc 4 - for one adventure the two arcs merge before again separating
Other Arc 5
etc.

And so you end up with at least a 25-35 adventure campaign* rather than just 15; and yes this would probably mean you'd have to slow down the character advancement rate, but IMO that's always a good thing to do anyway.

* - plus whatever in-game events etc. the players and-or characters want to follow up on later.

 

[pemerton]

My one group has been together for 12 years, we're on our 7th campaign together. No one has DMed for more than 2 years straight. We've only hit max level once, the other games ended just because the DM felt like their story was over, and it was time to move on. No one has much interest in playing in the same world for a decade-plus.

Brevity is totally fine. I know that some people like consistency, but I favor novelty. I'm ready for something new after a few dozen sessions.

Right. This thread doesn't have a normative focus - what ought to be the point of a GM's notes? It's about eliciting descriptions of varied practices.

 

[pemerton]

My GM notes usually focus on details of the setting that will enrich my ability to present various scenes.

Thank you for talking about what you do with your notes as a GM, and explaining how you link your pre-play writing to the stuff you do during play.

Sometimes this includes reminders about game-mechanics that are likely to come into play. Here's an example of notes from a game this winter taking place during a festival. The community was into gambling, so I pulled together some ideas for games and looked up how the gambling skill is handled mechanically.

Suppose that a player suggests a different gambling game. Suppose s/he even knows (or claims to know) more about the cultures you're drawing on then you do! Would your notes set a limit on the players implicit action declaration (No, you can't find a game of X. The only game they're playing here is Y.)? Or would you adapt or even depart from your notes?

Other things include lots of potential names of NPCs, sometimes with quick notes about personality or relevant abilities.

Do you use these NPCs simply to frame scenes? Or can they also be used to provide the content of action declarations? Do players get to know about them in advance and make them the objects of action declarations or other contributions to the fiction (eg I want to meet up with so-and-so? or Given that we've just come back from the Hills of the Moon, wouldn't so-and-so be wanting to looks us up to see what we learned?)?

 

[pemerton]

I pre-plan a number of things that way I can pull up a card rather than make it up on the spot. This is why I prep npc's by knowing motivations, personalities, etc.

<snip>

I also like to over-prep a few drop-in options: I'll prep a few wandering monster encounters just in case I need a quick battle, even if I only know the general area that battle will take place i

If you have preplanned a NPC, or a place, or an event, what is the process, or the trigger for describing that NPC or place or event to the players?

Writing notes ahead of time cements the ideas in my head.

The purpose of a GM's note is to facilitate play.

<snip>

They help the GM remember both lore and immediate needs, NPCs and plots.

Similar to my questions above in this post, are you able to say a bit more about what the relationship is between these things that the GM imagines prior to play and what actually takes place among the participants during the course of play?

the notes I write as prep. Names of NPCs, places, and such. Situations as they exist at the start of session (or when encountered). If I'm anticipating combat, lists of the opposition. Treasure, if I'm placing it.

And similar again: are you able to explain how these notes actually get used during play?

 

[pemerton]

The setting is not a sandbox: the PCs get given missions, although they have a lot of freedom in how they carry them out. It is not a truly hard SF setting, but it's a lot closer to that than Star Trek or Star Wars (which I'd be utterly unwilling to run, or play in). This means that figuring out how to accomplish things is definitely required.

One of the simpler points was that the ship they were escorting to Vesta is much larger than their own ship, and has lower acceleration, but much more delta-V (semi-hard SF). The obvious solution, given the numbers, was for the small warship to be refuelled by the large passenger ship, and I suggested this to the players. They took up the idea (they've done this before), but if they'd come up with a different plan, I'd have been happy with that.

Are you able to say how the players figuring out how to accomplish things relates to your notes?

Your example makes it seem like your notes establish the possible solution-space for figuring these things out. Is that right?