What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

It's not a dismissal. No setting is real. Calling a fictional setting a "world" is a metaphor.

You can't "explore the world" in a RPG anymore than you can "conquer the world" in Risk; it's merely a fictional conceit that overlays what the players are actually doing at the table, which is declaring actions and rolling dice to see how they turn out. The GM merely acts as an arbiter to allow for a wider declaration of possible actions. A module or a pre-defined setting is a tool that many DMs use to help them make arbitrate these choices.

It is dismissive because it is pejorative (it arose as “just discovering the GM’s notes” in a debate between these two styles of play). What you are exploring is the world the GM is imagining. Notes are simply a tool for tracking the world. And you are also exploring a world that is shaped by player actions in the game as well and the synergy between this and living NPCs and groups the GM is running

 

[TwoSix]

It is dismissive because it is pejorative (it arose as “just discovering the GM’s notes” in a debate between these two styles of play). What you are exploring is the world the GM is imagining. Notes are simply a tool for tracking the world. And you are also exploring a world that is shaped by player actions in the game as well and the synergy between this and living NPCs and groups the GM is running

It's tough for me to view describing my own play as pejorative, as I'm not that much of a masochist. I certainly allow for a bunch of player input, but I pre-author a bunch of stuff as well, generally.

And yes, the players in my own game are discovering my notes, and we're generating a fiction around that activity. I don't think that makes me a bad DM.

 

[Maxperson]

These two things are pretty different:

* the GM extrapolating from notes that s/he wrote in advance and that only s/he knows;​

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* the player(s) extrapolating from shared fiction which (ipso facto, given it's shared) has been established at the table in the course of play.​

I've GMed using both sorts of approaches. I've played using both sorts of approaches. It's not the same.

Different avenues to the same notes.

 

[pemerton]

But it is the same thing, just distributed among players now. If I am adding to the story as a player, well then I am just doing what the GM does, and I am working off my 'notes' being the only one who knows in that moment what the note is.

No. There is no RPG I'm aware of where a player can constrain the outcomes of action resolution by reference to, or extrapolation from, material that s/he pre-authored.

Also, you say "just distributed among players" as if that's a small thing. Whereas what we're talking about is a social activity, of playing a game, in which an important part of that activity is producing a shared fiction. So the distribution of power and responsibility in relation to generating that fiction goes to the very heart of the activity.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Also, you say "just distributed among players" as if that's a small thing. Whereas what we're talking about is a social activity, of playing a game, in which an important part of that activity is producing a shared fiction. So the distribution of power and responsibility in relation to generating that fiction goes to the very heart of the activity.

I am not saying it is a small thing. I am pointing out it is in essence the same thing as the GM is doing, just distributed among the players. But that makes a big difference in how the game plays and feels. I just think it undermines the whole notion that the GM is simply running a game where the players are discovering what's in his or her notes.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. There is no RPG I'm aware of where a player can constrain the outcomes of action resolution by reference to, or extrapolation from, material that s/he pre-authored.

You pointed to games where players can contribute to the setting/fiction out of character as an alternative to 'discovering the GM's notes". I am not particularly invested in the parameters of those kinds of games, I am just going by what you and others are asserting. Though I will say, pre-authored material does factor into a game like Hillfolk based on my experience playing it, and that can be a reason to invoke rules that constrain players framing scenes certain ways. No expert in that game, but I've played it a bit.

Either way, I pointed out the GM isn't always working from notes, the GM is often extrapolating, inventing whole cloth, even ignoring or rejecting note content, because the aim is what is imagined in the GM's mind as the world, not what is one the page in the notes. You maintained this is still just the notes. I am saying why is all this magically discovering the GM's notes, yet when players engage in these things, it is creating fiction? By the way I am not saying players aren't creating fiction when they do that. But I think it would be highly reductive to say players are discovering one another's notes, just as it is highly reductive to say players are discovering the GMs notes in the case of the sort of sandbox people are describing.

 

[Lanefan]

It's baffles me then how a player can create fiction and also be acting in character. The two things seem mutually exclusive to me.

They're kind of not, really, or not as much as you think.

The difference is mostly that in those types of games what you see as your character can become the fiction if you put it there, because before you do so there might be nothing there at all.

For example, for whatever reason you or another player has pulled the party into a scene at an outdoor market. You, in-character, decide that while you're here you're going to check out the lute-maker's stall to see if she's got anything particularly fine today. Congratulations - you just added a lute-maker's stall to this fictional marketplace by simply assuming its presence (you can do this as there's no obvious reason why such a stall would not exist in that place and thus no reason for any sort of roll) and declaring your action. Oh, and by the way you also just added the lute-maker herself and made her female. Carry on.

In the sort of game you or I might play, the GM would either know up-front whether or not there's such a stall in this particular market or would roll to determine on the fly if one exists.

 

[Lanefan]

Well when developing a character prior to campaign start, I work with players to come up with a backstory. A backstory that fits the world. The conflict would be if there were no gladiatorial schools. Maybe it's a frontier campaign without even cities. So developing a backstory is collaborative. Typically on names and such it's from the GM but on other details the GM will work those in if at all possible.

Now if this happens in game and comes completely out of nowhere, I don't believe your player is acting in character at that moment unless what he is telling the group is some delusion the character has developed that is not true. The DM may allow it of course but such a declaration is leaving character mode and entering authorial mode. So it's not in-character. A character cannot invent a real backstory for himself.

I disagree a little here. A character can't invent a backstory out of nothing, I'll give you that, but once there's a framework of a backstory I have no problem with the player fleshing it out.

An example: a PC I play has, as part of her DM-plus-random-determined background, done some time in the (Roman-equivalent) legions. That's all I got to work with; but I-as-player then expanded on that to say which legions she was in, who the commanders were, what rank I achieved (and how I then lost it!) and what my role was, and the vague timing around all this. All subject to DM veto, of course, but as yet he hasn't vetoed any of it and it sometimes gives me a nice foundation to roleplay from.

 

[Imaro]

Did these things happen in the game or not? I'm not understanding what you're trying to get at.

I'm not trying to get at anything, I am genuinely surprised this is considered authoring fiction since players in D&D make action declarations all the time and I was under the impression it was not viewed as a game where players had authorial control...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not trying to get at anything, I am genuinely surprised this is considered authoring fiction since players in D&D make action declarations all the time and I was under the impression it was not viewed as a game where players had authorial control...

Over anything except action declarations, yes. This has been a point so often that it's often elided -- the only authority a typical D&D player has is over their character build and their action declarations, but even this is subject to GM veto or override. Build choices are constrained by what the GM will allow, and action declarations often are policed for "metagaming" in many typical D&D games, so even this is no where near absolute.

But, yes, the players are putting things into the fiction with PC action declarations. Of course they are.