What is the point of GM's notes?

[John Dallman]

Does your game (the setting, the obstacles, the antagonists) orbit pretty much entirely around expressed PC dramatic needs (PC dramatic needs are the sun, the obstacles/antagonists are the planets)? Yes? Protagonism.

Thanks, that's clearer, and it makes clear that I'm running games in a very different way.

The dramatic needs of PCs are not something I expect GM or players to be fully aware of at the start of a campaign. They're emergent properties of the combination of the set of characters and the setting. These needs are gradually discovered in play, and change as the characters are changed by their adventures. The characters strive towards their dramatic fulfilment by means of concrete actions within the setting reality; they often have fairly complex individual agendas, and have to compromise parts of them.

Playing this way assumes that all the players are willing to stay with a setting and group of characters for long enough to let these emergent phenomena crystalize. Having that happen is a matter of devising an interesting setting, with some depth to it, and of the players being willing accommodate each other's quirks.

A GM can't have full information about everything in that kind of setting. So a large part of their preparation for a session is filling out details of the things they anticipate the characters interacting with. That detail is needed to maintain verisimilitude, to keep the feeling of setting plausibility and engagement.

Since the start of this thread, I've been starting preparation for the next session of my space navy game. The PCs are going to try to rescue a group of people who are currently stuck on a space station orbiting Io, the innermost of Jupiter's large moons. Jupiter has radiation belts (like Earth's Van Allen belts, only much more dangerous) which are at their strongest around Io's orbit. The space station is a 400 yard diameter rock, which provides fully adequate radiation shielding to the rooms carved into its core, so the people are safe there, but can't leave. The ship the PCs have improvised is a 100 yard diameter rock, fitted with engines, and again with adequately shielded rooms carved into its core. The trick will be getting the ship into position, and moving the people from one shielded area to another quickly enough.

The first piece of my prep is looking up how good the available shielded spacesuits are, and thus how much time will be available. The answer looks like "This is manageable, but it's going to have to be planned right and done smartly." That's the biggest constraint on PC actions.

The next piece will be more conventional: names and thumbnail personalities for the people to be rescued. There's no need for combat stats: nobody involved is fool enough to start a fight under these circumstances.

This is not a situation where dramatic posturing will get anybody anywhere. Radiation doesn't care about such things. The players are all serious SF fans, and running this like Star Trek would utterly shatter suspension of disbelief. Some of the PCs are uploaded, so their minds run on computers, and can be backed up. I'm fairly confident they'll be the ones who volunteer to take risks if those are necessary.

 

[Ovinomancer]

On this point I do disagree. I've GMed 1a, and have played in a lot of 1a, and I have also GMed 2a. (2a is what eg Rolemaster and to some extent Classic Traveller tends to looks like when GMed in a protagonistic-oriented fashion.)

The difference between deciding the fiction in advance of play and deciding the fiction in the moment of play, in response to player cues, and the back-and-forth at the table (which can take place even in games that do not have the formal PbtA injunction to ask questions and build on the answers) is huge. In my own view, based on my own experience, it can hardly be exaggerated. If you've tried it and disagree, I'm very interested to hear more. If you've not tried it, then I strongly suggest doing so and seeing what happens.

The daylight I see here is that the GM, in many games, is not required to honor the PC cues, but is instead allowed to do whatever they want. I'll be the first to agree that this is something I'd find deeply unrewarding, but it's also what most people unfamiliar with games that center protagonism immediately think of when considering 2a play. That view is colored by the GM's role in 1a/b play as the sole author of the fiction (outside of action declarations), that is then drug through into the idea that the GM reacts to the PC's action, but remains the sole author of the fiction. It's literally the point of view that is the source of many of the arguments against Story Now style techniques. So, when I was accounting for the play, I left that as uncertain because it's entirely up to the GM without constraint by system or mechanics (except those constraints accepted by the GM in the moment of choosing which mechanics to use), which is how the vast majority of players with primary experience in D&D or GM centered games imagine improv games must work.

 

[Lanefan]

You are NOT THE LEAD STORYTELLER

You do NOT GET TO BREAK/CHANGE RULES

You do NOT USE YOUR PIECES TO CONVEY A THEMATICALLY NEUTRAL, PC-DISINTERESTED WORLD

You do NOT USE SECRET BACKSTORY (it doesn't exist) OR NATURALISTIC EXTRAPOLATION TO OPPOSE PC

Then why in hell would anyone ever GM such a game? Seriously.

By reading this you can't do anything such as change or kitbash rules or define setting so as to make the game your own (yet the players, it seems, can to some extent do the latter), you can't present any sort of mystery for solving or later reveal, you can't present the players a living setting that has things happen - both now and in the past - independent of the PCs and-or their actions meaning said PCs and their players are largely operating in a vacuum beyond the here-and-now, and if by "naturalistic extrapolation" you mean "if the PCs do x, then y happens; if they do not, z happens" then their actions (or lack of) have no future consequences. What's the point?

Also, from the player side, no secrets = no mystery = no reason to pay attention.

People complain that some DMs would be better off as novel writers and in fairness, all too often those people have a point. However, I think it might be time to turn that same statement around and point it at the cadre of players whose primary interest is delving into the angst and emotions and troubles of their own PC: those players would be better off just writing a novel.

 

[tetrasodium]

Then why in hell would anyone ever GM such a game? Seriously.

By reading this you can't do anything such as change or kitbash rules or define setting so as to make the game your own (yet the players, it seems, can to some extent do the latter), you can't present any sort of mystery for solving or later reveal, you can't present the players a living setting that has things happen - both now and in the past - independent of the PCs and-or their actions meaning said PCs and their players are largely operating in a vacuum beyond the here-and-now, and if by "naturalistic extrapolation" you mean "if the PCs do x, then y happens; if they do not, z happens" then their actions (or lack of) have no future consequences. What's the point?

Also, from the player side, no secrets = no mystery = no reason to pay attention.

People complain that some DMs would be better off as novel writers and in fairness, all too often those people have a point. However, I think it might be time to turn that same statement around and point it at the cadre of players whose primary interest is delving into the angst and emotions and troubles of their own PC: those players would be better off just writing a novel.

Those systems usually allow the GM to be final arbiter of what the players can introduce & massage the thing into something that fits things the players aren't aware of. The GM can still define whatever is behind that door or around that corner(to varying degrees) when players/npcs do something to make it relevant. The GM also usually has the same (incredibly powerful)tools available to the players & typically those tools extend to all of the NPCs giving them even more power in a way. You can see a great example of that kind of play with Whil Wheaton Felecia Day Jon Rogers & Ryan Macklin playing fate in this video

 

[Ovinomancer]

Then why in hell would anyone ever GM such a game? Seriously.

By reading this you can't do anything such as change or kitbash rules or define setting so as to make the game your own (yet the players, it seems, can to some extent do the latter), you can't present any sort of mystery for solving or later reveal, you can't present the players a living setting that has things happen - both now and in the past - independent of the PCs and-or their actions meaning said PCs and their players are largely operating in a vacuum beyond the here-and-now, and if by "naturalistic extrapolation" you mean "if the PCs do x, then y happens; if they do not, z happens" then their actions (or lack of) have no future consequences. What's the point?

Also, from the player side, no secrets = no mystery = no reason to pay attention.

People complain that some DMs would be better off as novel writers and in fairness, all too often those people have a point. However, I think it might be time to turn that same statement around and point it at the cadre of players whose primary interest is delving into the angst and emotions and troubles of their own PC: those players would be better off just writing a novel.

You play the game to find out what happens. Not "how do the players navigate my setting/notes/adventure/sandbox/plans," but really to find out what happens.

And, there are plenty of places for the GM to add things, they're just not only only ones and are constrained in ways a D&D GM aren't. In return, they're also not under the mental overhead of having to come up with everything all the time -- play is pretty clearly focused and the players have the work of driving it.

There's plenty of opportunity for secrets and mysteries, they're just not ones written by the GM for the express purpose of the players figuring it out, but instead are actual secrets and mysteries to everyone at the table, and everyone discovers their answers/secrets at the same time.

This play looks nothing at all like novel writing, and while it can be focuses on angst and emotions, it's as required to be so as a D&D game is -- which is to say not. It is required to be about the PCs, though, which isn't a terribly odd statement once you've dispensed with the GM being expected to provide a fiction for the players to explore.

Nor is any of this saying this is the best/only/most awesome way to play. It's A way to play. Clearly, while I enjoy it very much, it's not everything because I'm still running 5e.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I'm only sort-of following this, but I'm getting the impression pure protagonistic play (literally everything comes form the player's stated goals) is something I've only rarely experienced and did not enjoy. If everything in the setting exists only to serve a particular plotline, the world will feel flat and empty. A setting that's only answers to direct, plot-related questions isn't an engaging setting.

Of course, the other extreme, where the setting exists without player input even after the game happens (ie what the pc's do has no influence) is a game with no stakes, because you can't lose if you can't win.

So the goal, obviously, is to find a balance between the pc's being the focus of the narrative and the world feeling real. It's really that simple.

 

[Lanefan]

There's plenty of opportunity for secrets and mysteries, they're just not ones written by the GM for the express purpose of the players figuring it out, but instead are actual secrets and mysteries to everyone at the table, and everyone discovers their answers/secrets at the same time.

Someone has to put the mystery or secret in place, be it the GM or a player, for there to be a mystery to solve; and whoever that person is must by default know the solution or what the secret is. Ditto puzzles, riddles, or anything else where there's a clear but not-immediately-obvious answer: someone's got to put it there, and that someone already knows the answer.

 

[tetrasodium]

You play the game to find out what happens. Not "how do the players navigate my setting/notes/adventure/sandbox/plans," but really to find out what happens.

And, there are plenty of places for the GM to add things, they're just not only only ones and are constrained in ways a D&D GM aren't. In return, they're also not under the mental overhead of having to come up with everything all the time -- play is pretty clearly focused and the players have the work of driving it.

There's plenty of opportunity for secrets and mysteries, they're just not ones written by the GM for the express purpose of the players figuring it out, but instead are actual secrets and mysteries to everyone at the table, and everyone discovers their answers/secrets at the same time.

This play looks nothing at all like novel writing, and while it can be focuses on angst and emotions, it's as required to be so as a D&D game is -- which is to say not. It is required to be about the PCs, though, which isn't a terribly odd statement once you've dispensed with the GM being expected to provide a fiction for the players to explore.

Nor is any of this saying this is the best/only/most awesome way to play. It's A way to play. Clearly, while I enjoy it very much, it's not everything because I'm still running 5e.

Fate core actually has a section about that in the book

Spoiler

Taken a step further, if Bob wants to play some mopey edgelord with a bad case of main character syndrome in fate I as the gm can just agree with him and declare that his character wanders off to go wander around black out drunk in the red light disrict while the rest of the party does cool stuff together as the main characters. If bob wants to do otherwise he needs to buy off the compel and come up with a reason why his character wants to stay. If Alice wants to call in bob later I can even offer her a fate point and say something like "wait a minute, do you really want to get stuck playing therapist about bob's life choices until he finishes the bottle and sobers up enough to stand like ast time?" & alice might say "yea I don't wanna repeat of last time..." If I as the gm an feeling particularly annoyed with bob's negative antics I can even end that statement to alice with words like "what about that guy Rob who works with Bob , he seemed like someone who might be able to help in this situation going by that one time you met" or whatever.

 

[el-remmen]

Then why in hell would anyone ever GM such a game? Seriously.

It is just a different kind of game that is not very D&Dish, but can nevertheless be a lot of fun (though in my own experience, I prefer such games to be one-offs or very limited run games and prefer traditional D&D style games of a long-running campaign). But I see the experiences of them as scratching different itches for me.

 

[Maxperson]

Going back to the OP. There is no "the point" of DM notes. The point varies depending on the kind of game you run.

If you run a detailed sandbox, the point is to set down all the details of the world to be discovered. The DM cannot remember them all, so it's all written down.

If you run a loose sandbox, the notes are a framework to build upon, noting important sites, cities and a few NPCs, but leaving the rest open to either be detailed when the party gets closer, improv'd, or both.

If you run an improv style game, the point is to put down what has been established through play.

And so on. There are lots of ways to play and lots of "the point" of notes.