What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

But ultimately I couldn't refute a simple syllogism:

All fiction is constructed by one or more authors. All RPG play operates within a fiction. Ergo, the fictional space of RPG play is constructed.

You could easily replace fiction with 'game worlds', and reach the conclusions that the game world is constructed. The game world being constructed doesn't preclude it from existing outside the players. In fact if the game world is the domain of the GM to control, it naturally would exist outside the players. No one is saying a literal world exists but there is a model of a world the GM has created, and it is one that the GM can adapt to what the players do. Now if if this doesn't work for you, fair enough. I am not interested in wining converts here. I don't know a whole lot about game theory. I know enough about philosophy to sense this isn't really proving anything about the claims people here have made about how they run living worlds or sandboxes that are world in motion.

Also that syllogism does not prove point 2 (all RPGs operate within a fiction). I would suggest, especially since the term 'the fiction' has meaning beyond 'fiction' as it is used when say describing a novel, that the point is contestable.

Ultimately though, I don't think syllogisms really matter here. What matters is are you playing and enjoying the game and style you are talking about. If you are, go to it. However your experience of the game, doesn't detract from mine. That you fell out of love with the idea of a living world, is your business, not mine. I have been running and playing games like this for ages, with zero angst over whether the world is real enough.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The game world doesn't exist independently as an externality, it's constructed. Even if the construct is generated for particular purposes, needs, and agendas (usually good ones), it doesn't change its nature as a construct. Pulling a piece of that construct out, setting it aside and declaring, "This thing here, this piece of the fiction, it exists independently and externally to the rest of the fiction," doesn't turn it from fiction into not-fiction. Applying the "externally existent" descriptor to the game world is a category error.

No on is asserting it this. No one is saying it is a thing in the real world. What people are saying is you can map out a world, run a world, so it exists outside the players as an idea that is explorable. It is not unlike the notion of exploring a setting made for a video game, with the additional element that the human GM is there to add an additional layer of flexibility (i.e. the game might not be programed to allow for it, but a GM can help facilitate what happens when you try to pick up the rock by the bridge or kill the shop keeper).

If this is insufficient for what you were seeking, fair enough. I am a little perplexed though that an argument or a syllogism would entirely change how you experience the game. That just isn't how I think at all. Do I like this game? Yes or no. Do I feel like I am exploring a world external to myself? Yes or no. That is all I really care about. The GM's job here is to create the sense of a real world, not to create an actual world. But it is an approximation that can really feel real, and the GM can cultivate it as an external in his or her imagination (which is external to the players). I think when you keep describing it as 'the fiction' you miss on this aspect of exploring what is in the GM's head and what they understand about the world, as well as the interplay between that and the PCs: and the energy that flows from that. Now if that is too wishy washy, too mystically phrased for you. By all means, go play another game. Some of us take a somewhat mystic view to conceptualizing how gaming works and it totally works for us. To me it isn't particularly important if you accept these worlds as real or not

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have no issue with your game style, or that it's enjoyable to you. At some point, I'm going to play in that style again myself!

But setting apart the "game world" from the rest of the shared fiction doesn't make it less fictional, it just means that I-as-GM have privileged that part of the fiction more than other parts.

But I completely understand the justification for privileging the fiction pertaining to the game world. It's a very useful conceit if the agenda is to limit "experiencing the game world only through the view of the character." And I get why that agenda exists. It's driven by the desire to provide pleasurable gaming experiences---the unfolding of mysteries, the experience of exploring the unknown, of exploring an alternative ego / mind to better understand the self. It's driven by a desire to provide some of the really deep, valuable, and pleasurable outcomes that only RPG play can produce.

I have zero problem with you wanting to privilege the game world fiction for your own play. Just don't turn it into a category error.

I think if you put player facing mechanics under scrutiny you would find all kinds of similar problems you are identifying with the living world concept. But based on what you are saying here, I really think out minds just work differently and we are looking for very different things from an RPG. At the end of the day, player facing mechanics seem like a great option for some people. But I have to say: a lot of the people preaching about this style in this thread are only pushing away people like myself with the way they dismiss our style and play up their own. It is a preference. There is nothing particularly better or worse about your preference

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have zero problem with you wanting to privilege the game world fiction for your own play. Just don't turn it into a category error.

it isn’t a category error and calling it fiction missed the point of play in this style. Look, I can imagine a small town in my head with residents, a layout and geography. This place exists in my mind external to the players. And the players can explore it in the game. The point of contact is what I and others are calling the energy, the synergy. You seem to be using a term to invoke that and the town in question (ie you are folding the world into the fiction). But these can be two distinct things: one the shared experience the group has as they play in the town together, the other the mental model of the town in the GM’s mind.

 

[pemerton]

Obviously if the GM makes up everything then the player would not be authoring anything. And I was only tangentially interacting with the example which did not seem player authorish. I do though believe many have said that there is some player authorship in the game and that when they establish something, within genre limits I accept, that something comes into existence. So when that happens, the character viewpoint cannot be maintained almost by definition (Actor vs Author role).

Do you not agree though that in the real world I do not see people and make up a story about them and it become true? Can we agree on that?

In the real world I don't learn about things by making up stories about them. Nor do I learn about things by having someone lese tell me a story that they made up about those things.

In a GM notes based world, the notes are reality. So if a character just up and says he knows someone out of the blue when in fact at that moment the character does not know anything about that person, that is not something anyone in our world would ever do.

I have bolded the bit I don't agree with. It's not true that the character does not know anything about that person. To elaborate via an example: if the person is the resident of my PC's home town, then almost certainly my PC knows a great deal about that person. Unless my PC has amnesia, that will include recalling whether we were on good or bad terms last time we met.

It's true that, at that point, the player may not know anything about that NPC. But now the question is: who gets to decide what it is that the character knows? You seem to think it's more immersive if the GM tells you. To me, that is radically non-immersive because it makes me feel like my PC is an amnesiac space alien.

It's also true that when I author fiction about what/who my PC is seeing, my character is not him-/herself engaged in any act of authorship. My authorship as a player correlates to my character's recollection of his/her memories. When in your game you listen to the GM tell you something that s/he authored about the NPC or other thing your PC is seeing, your character is not him-/herself engaged in a process of listening and learning. Your listening and learning as a player correlates to your character's recollection of his/her memories.

Authoring is obviously only a rough correlate to remembering. Likewise listening and learning is only a rough correlate to remembering. You prefer the second. I prefer the first. I don't accept that yours is "in character" in a way that mine is not. Just like remembering, authoring is something that happens inside me. It is immersive in that fashion. Whereas listening and learning is a process of having knowledge come into me from outside, which is not what remembering is like at all. That is why I find it dissociating rather than immersive. What it has in common with remembering is that it is not an "active" creative process. I imagine it is that commonality that makes you prefer it.

in one instance, information is put into a characters head by that characters player. In the other the GM is describing what the character sees and is passing information to the player from the characters mind. I see a difference here. Call it what you will.

I have tried to describe the difference in some detail above.

if I had a cleric player who said "Hey, I want to flesh out my religion and come up with the marriage rites, or develop the hierarchy further, or whatever." That would be fine but it would be done and checked by the GM to be sure it didn't go against already established things.

This is a completely different thing for me from the above, because now we're talking not just about PC memories but about social practices, theological beliefs, etc. The established things you're referring to are, I assume, the GM's notes. For my part I don't see any reason to favour the GM's invention over that of the player, unless there is some direct intersection with the current situation in play (eg if the PCs are about to sneak into the evil high priest's manse, having the player at that point just invent the evil high priest's religious practices might be out of bounds - they'd at least have to succeed on a Religion check).

 

[Emerikol]

But setting apart the "game world" from the rest of the shared fiction doesn't make it less fictional, it just means that I-as-GM have privileged that part of the fiction more than other parts.

Categories are sometimes arbitrary delineations. For me, I feel there is a high value on a world designed in advance and carefully crafted. So I put that in a different category from what might be generated ad hoc at a gaming table. There is always some improvisation in minor areas but it’s heavily informed by what was created earlier.

 

[Lanefan]

Who's talking about force? This is the sort of thing you agree to in in the pitch and session zero (or not).

That's just it: I wouldn't agree.

 

[Lanefan]

I have bolded the bit I don't agree with. It's not true that the character does not know anything about that person. To elaborate via an example: if the person is the resident of my PC's home town, then almost certainly my PC knows a great deal about that person.

Did you mean to type "president" here?

If not, just because someone's from the same town as you doesn't necessarily mean you know anything about them.

Hell, I've lived in the same town my whole life and there's boatloads of people here I don't know from rocks.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But setting apart the "game world" from the rest of the shared fiction doesn't make it less fictional, it just means that I-as-GM have privileged that part of the fiction more than other parts.

But they are different things. Two fictional things can be different. The shared fiction, by which I assume to mean that which is occurring at the table in the setting and more broadly the setting itself, is far up wide a category because you make it impossible to distinguish between the shared reality being established at the table and the world created by the GM that is informing that reality. Further fiction and the fiction (or shared fiction) are not identical concepts. This argument is predicated on an equivocation around the word fiction. This is why I called it word games in an earlier post. You aren’t proving anything. What you are doing is taking away our vocabulary to talk about living worlds, through techniques like equivocation, and by using loaded language like the fiction. Essentially language is being controlled to force us to agree with a playstyle preference (or at least to acknowledge sone deep artificiality about ours that yours doesn’t possess).

 

[pemerton]

When we say narrative power, it is just a convenient term for describing games where the players can narrate things into existence like the GM, or possibly games where they have limited abilities to establish setting content as players, not as characters.

I don't understand this, at two levels.

First, why do you get to have "convenient terms" whereas my language is outrageous and forbidden?

Second, if a player says, as his/her PC, I put on a cloak she has now narrated something into existence - her PC is wearing a cloak. But I assume you don't count that as narrative power. If a player says to the GM can my guy pay for a new lantern and the GM says sure, just knock off the gps, does that count as narrative power?

if you say "What do I see", the GM isn't responding based on their prior conception of the fiction. That isn't how we conceive of play at all. It is not this unfolding fiction that is happening that gets built up in binary exchanges of players say X, GM decides. There is that component of the GM making his decision. But you are ignoring things like players can make a case outside character for things, and the GM will often be considering their words.

I don't get the impression that @Emerikol is a big fan of what I have bolded. He has repeatedly stated that he favours strictly in-character play.

But in any event, are you able to explain how the bolded bit is different, in its fundamentals, from a PbtA GM asking questions and building on the answers?

To take another example, if the players go to the head of phoenix moon gang and ask for her help finding the disappeared daughter of a local magistrate, the GM is going to respond, not decide, but respond, based on what the players say, what the leader's motivations are, weighing any rolls they might make, who the player characters are, etc. What the players say here could be very important.

I don't understand how the GM's response is not a decision. I mean, it's not a reflex or automatic response is it?