What is the point of GM's notes?

[Umbran]

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

I can only speak of what I have seen so far - I'm a player, not the GM, so I haven't read the thing.

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).

So, some of this I get - if you are stuck in basically the same physical environment, solving the same kinds of problems over and over, that's monotonous. I'm not much of a fan of mega-dungeons for that reason. But so far, we haven't had two sessions in a row that were the same place, with the same problems or activities or tactical considerations.

And it isn't so much that there's one villain that's "behind it all" (though, admittedly, its presence is pervasive in the area), so much as we have decided that we want to end the bad guy, and that most of what we do serves the end of finding out how to accomplish that.

But, even if it were one bad guy behind it all, I don't find that as a sticking point.

Like, say the party were doing some tomb raiding, and have learned that this series of tombs is going to lead to some big nasty lich that is, long term a threat to a nation of people. Okay. Taking time off from that series of tomb-raids to undertake a side mission for a local merchant... that turns out to be more tomb raid that just isn't related to the lich, is not, for me, an improvement.

 

[pemerton]

Look at the gold & silver rules there, it's about deciding on the thing your trying to accomplish & then leveraging the existing rules to fit the goal by bending them as needed. It sounds like that is extremely specific wire needed & I'm not super familiar with traveler but it might be reasonable to break down one thing (ie sensors, life support, etc) to recover the wire needed & shift the problem from a dead end ~"we can't move together" kind of thing to some other interesting problem most or all of the group can participate in handling/suffering from in their own ways

I'm not really following your posts. @John Dallman posted about a GURPS game. I have never played GURPS but I have a general sense of how it works as a system. I think it's similar enough to Classic Traveller in how it handles action resolution that I can extrapolate from my experience with Traveller to think about GURPS play. That is reinforced by John Dallman's description, upthread, of how the problem of acceleration and fuel across two spaceships was resolved. A similar sort of thing could happen in Traveller.

I don't see how Fate's Golden and Silver Rules shed any light on this, or on the role that GM prep notes play in John Dallman's game.

If that was a solution I thought of in preparations, yes. If not, not. The purpose of notes, for me, is getting things started, not controlling the content of the session.

Suppose the players come up with the copper wire solution that you haven't anticipated. And you haven't got anything in your notes about copper wire. How do you handle the ensuing action declarations?

In my Traveller game the PCs have come into possession of a second starship, which powers its jump drives by means of a large solar panel that generates energy that is stored in capacitors that then power the jump drive. The PCs wanted to jump that ship but didn't have time for the charging to take place (multiple weeks). So they refuelled their other ship with an ordinary drive (fusion, we assume, though the game rules never quite come out and say it), burned the fuel to power up its jump drive, and then transferred the power from their standard ship to the capacitors on the solar-powered ship.

This required a seriously heavy-duty cable to link the drives of the two ships. Hence the players declared, as an action, that they were acquiring such a cable. I can't remember now exactly how we resolved that, but I know that my notes established that the world in the orbit of which this was happening was tech level 8 (so mostly above current earth), non-industrial but with a population of a bit over 100,000 people and an Imperial Navy base forming part of a high quality starport with repair facilities as well as the ability to construct non-starships. And play had already established that the PCs were on good terms with the commander of the naval base. So I don't think I even called for a check to confirm the availability of the cable the PCs wanted; I just allowed the players to establish that they acquired it and used it (there was no doubting the PC group had the necessary jury-rigging skills to pull off a jump drive jump start).

That would be an example of my notes shaping, though not fully determining, the solution space to the problem that the players had posed themselves (ie how to jump their new ship without engaging in solar recharging?).

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm running a 5e AP right now, Descent into Avernus. I'm absolutely using those notes to constrain the solution space at many levels. Now, I'm not a huge fan of this (anymore), so I'm available to solutions that aren't in the notes, but scene framing is hard coded, and largely the next scene is hard coded by the notes. All of the APs, even the ones hailed as "sandboxes" like Curse of Strahd or the middle of Storm King's Thunder are really still straight up railroads -- you might be able to wander around the station a bit at stops, or take a taxi into the city for some sightseeing, but when the whistle blows, it's straight to the next stop. This appeals to the skilled play angle, I'd say, in that the challenge isn't really to engage in protagonism, but instead efficiently defeat the challenges presented in the AP. @Manbearcat did a good job with this summation above.

As I alluded to, this isn't exactly my preferred approach, but my players bought it for me because they thought it would be less work (I'm traveling quite a bit for work lately). It's not, and I find @Emerikol's statement upthread that APs are less work to only be true in contrast to his truly herculean amount of effort into a game. I spend far more time on an AP prep than I do on any of my own stuff, including when I've run Big Plot and hexcrawl sandbox games (both within the last 5-6 years).

 

[pemerton]

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?

When the pc's encounter them?

OK, so what is the process for determining when the PCs encounter them?

Suppose the GM has a note which channels some mix of the Odyssey and REH Conan and reads: The temple of Olath is of predominantly black marble with the occasional lurid green mottling. The high priest is pleasant enough company, but at his core as cruel as his divine master. He may try to trap unsuspecting travellers to sacrifice them on Olath's profane altar! And then maybe there's a map and key to the temple, and a stat block for the evil high priest.

There are very many ways that such a note could be used in play. Just as a handful of examples:

* it could be used to frame a situation (After many days lost at sea, you are able to anchor your galley in a sheltered bay. The beach slopes up quite steeply, and above the beach is a hill. At the top of the hill sits what looks like a temple that glistens black in the sunlight.);

* it could be used to establish a consequence of a failed check (eg an orienteering check, or teleportation roll, or similar sort of manoeuvre is failed, and the GM narrates Instead of arriving safely at the destination you had hoped, you find yourself lost in the swamp - but through the mists you can see a building all of black that looks like a temple . . .);

* it could be used to determine an outcome of an action declaration (one of the PCs has been captured by the high priest of Olath, and the player of another PC declares I want to sneak in and rescue my friend. I believe temples of Olath often have a concealed way in and out. Can I find one here? The GM might then consult the previously-drawn map, note the absence of any concealed way drawn on that map, and answer "No").​

There are other ways, too, and each of the above has "sub-ways" - eg a GM might use notes (like a "world map" or "region map") to decide what are the possible suite of consequences for a failed orienteering check, and this might help the GM decide whether or not the Temple of Olath is a possible narration on this particular occasion of failure.

 

[pemerton]

IPart of the tension of the episode with Orm (Ylsa's father) was that the party became aware that he was in town

Did the bolded bit happen because you (the GM) told them something that was in your notes?

 

[pming]

Hiya!

TL;DR = "Notes about things that are ongoing to the campaign as a whole, and the current PC's predicament specifically".

For me... mental "memory-prod" relating to stuff going on behind the scenes or that has happened, or will happen without intervention.

So I might have a note of "Belaraz the Cutpurse has still been successful in tailing the PC's. He's seen them talking with both the Mayor and the High Paladin of the Order of Tyr, so he knows they are probably all working together. He will report back to Guildmaster Khorbal after the PC's go to sleep for the night".

That gives me an idea of what the Thieves Guild is doing in regards to the PC's poking their noses in their business. It also lets me have 'targets' if the PC's get up to 'no good' and start to do drastic things (like arresting/killing thieves), then maybe the Mayor's family gets threatened or his house burned down. Or if they do nothing, then the Guildmaster will be informed of everything the PC's have been doing up until the end of that day.

I also make notes of important events that happened in the previous session; like poisons, diseases, curses, etc. that haven't been "realized" yet by the PC's. These I usually put in red at the top of the page. These are the things that instill a large amount of, hmmm.... campaign continuity of time. This, the time in the campaign thing, is one of the worst tragedies of 5e; 5e only seems to pay, at best, lip service to this. It's why there are very little "permanent drawbacks" in the game (re: save or die, debilitating diseases that change a PC in some permanent way, guidelines for long-term projects like building a keep, church or tower, etc). Fifth edition has "glossed over" these as being "boring and not fun"...focusing on a more action-movie style of play. This has, to me, greatly harmed the integrity of a true Campaign (which is why people think of a D&D Campaign as a set story line that takes characters from 1st level to 20th level, and ends). I'll take the never-ending-Greyhawk campaign that I started back in 1981 over a $70 hard-to-read full colour 'Adventure Path Campaign' any day of the week!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Lanefan]

I can only speak of what I have seen so far - I'm a player, not the GM, so I haven't read the thing.

Once your crew have finished it, it'd be interesting to know whether the DM is running it stock or has mixed things up a little for variety.

So, some of this I get - if you are stuck in basically the same physical environment, solving the same kinds of problems over and over, that's monotonous. I'm not much of a fan of mega-dungeons for that reason. But so far, we haven't had two sessions in a row that were the same place, with the same problems or activities or tactical considerations.

And it isn't so much that there's one villain that's "behind it all" (though, admittedly, its presence is pervasive in the area), so much as we have decided that we want to end the bad guy, and that most of what we do serves the end of finding out how to accomplish that.

But, even if it were one bad guy behind it all, I don't find that as a sticking point.

I've been in games where it's been a sticking point for me - "It points back to this guy again? Can we just go nuke him already?".

Like, say the party were doing some tomb raiding, and have learned that this series of tombs is going to lead to some big nasty lich that is, long term a threat to a nation of people. Okay. Taking time off from that series of tomb-raids to undertake a side mission for a local merchant... that turns out to be more tomb raid that just isn't related to the lich, is not, for me, an improvement.

Oh, I agree. I'm thinking more where the merchant mission is an actual change of pace - instead of tombs it's a forest adventure, say, where the opponents are living breathing creatures that Clerics can't turn but Fighters can make bleed.

And that another reason to change things up: some characters or classes are simply stronger or weaker in some adventure types than others. Changing up the adventure types gives everyone a chance to shine and-or be less effective for a while, and ideally it all more or less evens out in the end.

 

[Manbearcat]

I spend far more time on an AP prep than I do on any of my own stuff, including when I've run Big Plot and hexcrawl sandbox games (both within the last 5-6 years).

As it intersects with my #4 above (and my elaboration), this is a key point.

An AP run like this requires tremendous prep (certainly compared to my typical prep) in the same way that exhaustively constructing a multi-tiered megadungeon would involve.

For this sort of Skilled Play to be the apex priority of play, you have to nail down everything from the foundations to the finishings. Players are working through an objectively framed, fully-fleshed obstacle course of danger/hazards/plights et al. To play Skillfully here means to solve that obstacle course efficiently and robustly. GM's need to have the material pre-constructed (just like a dungeon) and fully assimilated for the players to both edify and exemplify their skill. This is why GM notes need to have uses of Force available to constrain the players to the obstacle course and the continuity of the obstacle course (because, unlike in a dungeon, they may not know when they're straying).

Its a huge undertaking cognitively.

 

[AnotherGuy]

As I alluded to, this isn't exactly my preferred approach, but my players bought it for me because they thought it would be less work (I'm traveling quite a bit for work lately). It's not, and I find @Emerikol's statement upthread that APs are less work to only be true in contrast to his truly herculean amount of effort into a game. I spend far more time on an AP prep than I do on any of my own stuff, including when I've run Big Plot and hexcrawl sandbox games (both within the last 5-6 years).

Speaking for myself, I very much concur with this statement given my experience.
AP's are without doubt more work for me than when I do my own stuff, this could be due to my failing of wanting to include the myriad of ideas on the net about the specific AP.

Unlike Ovinomancer though I am a fan of AP's - although Descent into Avernus did not appeal to me.

 

[John Dallman]

Suppose the players come up with the copper wire solution that you haven't anticipated. And you haven't got anything in your notes about copper wire. How do you handle the ensuing action declarations?

At that point, the other major source for the campaign, the GURPS Transhuman Space series of sourcebooks, comes into play. That provides me with quite detailed background for the game, most of it not specific to scenarios.

Copper wire is a commonplace industrial material, and when they were faced with the problem of ships with different performance, the characters were at a naval base in Earth orbit. So if they needed ordinary cabling, for a purpose in accordance with the mission the Navy had given them, the base would be willing and able to supply it. If it was very unusual cable, getting it would take longer, because the Navy would have to get it manufactured, but provided the PCs had a sensible reason for needing it, they'd get it. Their successes over the course of the campaign have made the Navy look good, so it is quite helpful to them.