What is the point of GM's notes?

[pemerton]

Weirdly, @Bedrockgames has posted two replies to my posts but then put me on ignore so I can't read them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@pemerton I put you on ignore because I found your post that quoted me multiple times with its lawyerly tone very infuriating. The point of ignore for me is temporary, I use it as a cooling down mechanism so I don't say anything angry (as I suspected your follow-ups to my responses might provoke my anger). I don't come here to get angry. The moment a poster starts making me angry, I put them on ignore. Then after a few minutes or hours, I take them off (I noticed your reposes above and took you off ignore temporarily because I accidentally went into eWorld in another window where I wasn't logged in and saw your post). I have people who ignore me too. I assume their reasons for ignoring me are valid (I don't take umbrage at them doing so). And I certainly don't announce to the forum who has me on ignore in order to paint their behavior as weird.

EDIT: Also it didn't occur to me that you wouldn't be able to read my responses. I forgot about that aspect of ignore when I selected it

 

[Lanefan]

Have you ever lived in a village of 100-odd people? I have. It doesn't take long to know everyone.

I haven't, and as you initially used the word "town" I was assuming something bigger.

 

[Lanefan]

Do you extend this objection to players trying to declare other action that will get them out of sticky situation, such as (say) attacking the trolls that are trying to kill and eat them? That will also change the setting - if the players succeed it now contains dead trolls and live PCs instead of live trolls chowing down on roasted PCs.

Once any surprise situations are resolved, or if the PCs saw them ahead of time, the trolls are a known part of the scene and the setting and it's on the players/PCs to find a way to somehow deal with them. Combat is one option, and most games have reasonably robust mechanics for this. Escape is another, and some games' mechanics handle this better than others. Etc.

A better comparison, and one I would object to due to the same conflict of interest, would be if the players had a means of, in effect, on the fly authoring a bypass into the setting that meant they wouldn't have to deal with the trolls at all.

And of course this all assumes the presence of the trolls is somehow mandated by the situation and-or adventure being run and that the DM didn't plop them there on a whim "just because"; as that's just as bad going the other way.

 

[Lanefan]

I am not going to be lawyered into adopting your language.

I really must applaud your astute trapfinding skills.

What level Rogue are you, anyway?

 

[Maxperson]

I haven't, and as you initially used the word "town" I was assuming something bigger.

I grew up in a town of approximately 400. Even there everyone knew everyone else. THE cop once pulled my father over when my dad got a new car. The cop was like, "Oops, Marc. I didn't know it was you." and let him go. When I had a library book that was due, I just walked to the librarian's house which was closer than the library and left it with her.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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.

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. In fact if the game world is the domain of the GM to control, it naturally would exist outside the players.

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.

The GM's job here is to create the sense of a real world

<snip>

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

You say in these passages that the world created by the GM - that s/he imagines in his/her head - is informing the shared fiction (= the "reality" established at the table which no one is saying is a thing in the real world).

Would you agree that sometimes that "informing" takes place in virtue of the GM making decisions about action resolution by reference to what s/he is imagining in his/her head? Also, would you agree that what you are describing here is an asymmetric relationship between what the GM imagines and controls and what the players imagine. And that that is what makes it possible for the players to "explore" the GM's imagination?

Finally, I think we all agree that the players' "exploration" of the GM's world isn't happening via telepathic processes, and that the GM is not creating the sense of a real world via any means other than speaking and perhaps making the occasional sketch? So would you agree that the actual social process whereby these things - the players' exploration and the GM's creation of a sense of a real world - occur is that the GM tells things to the players, either in the process of framing or in the process of action resolution?

 

[pemerton]

This isn't a fair characterization of what I am trying to say

I found your post that quoted me multiple times with its lawyerly tone very infuriating.

What level Rogue are you, anyway?

It's not "trapping" or "lawyerly" to take someone at their word.

@Bedrockgames has asserted - repeatedly - that the GM, in his approach to RPGing that he calls sandboxing/"living world", imagines a world and then somehow conveys a sense of that to the players. But he denies that, when this happens, what is taking place is that the players are learning what the GM is imagining. It's human, not lawyerly, to be confused by that juxtaposition.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's not "trapping" or "lawyerly" to take someone at their word.

@Bedrockgames has asserted - repeatedly - that the GM, in his approach to RPGing that he calls sandboxing/"living world", imagines a world and then somehow conveys a sense of that to the players. But he denies that, when this happens, what is taking place is that the players are learning what the GM is imagining. It's human, not lawyerly, to be confused by that juxtaposition.

I found it obnoxious and lawyerly the way you presented my posts and made a case as if I was a defendant on trial.

Not at all. I am rejecting the description that the players are discovering what is in the GMs notes. I said a while back you could say they are exploring the GM's imagined world. Now I do think that is a simplistic description that brushes over a lot of the nuances I talked about, but it is more accurate and less insulting than 'playing to discover the GM's notes' and it is at least reasonable short hand

 

[Emerikol]

I agree fully with what @Ovinomancer says about this.

If the GM is just writing stories for him-/herself, that may be fun for him/her, but doesn't make any difference to the fiction that is established and developed at the table.

And conversely, as a GM I can introduce rumours or gossip or whatever else I want to without establishing any further backstory.

This is where we part on our opinions. Some well known authors have said stories are not written they are rewritten. As analogy in this case it makes sense. My point is that crafted fiction done ahead of time and thought through carefully will be better than off the cuff fiction on average. Now you can find a really bad crafter and a great improver and that might be an exception. I'm saying on average.

If you want to add "for the kind of immersion and verisimilitude I am seeking" then by all means add that caveat.

Here are two fairly recent example from my Classic Traveller game:

* The players met Milo, an entrepreneur and explorer from the the world of Taxiwan. I told them that he had made his fortune through a computer skills training business. But what are the details of this? How is to be reconciled with the fact that Taxiwan has only a rudimentary starport and so isn't going to support the migration of very many computer technicians? Etc? Dunno. This can be worked out in the future if needed.

* The players heard rumours that an Imperial armada is in pursuit of them and will soon arrive where they are, across the galactic rift. Is the rumour true? Has it been deliberately spread? Etc? Not sure. There are various obvious and not-so-obvious possibilities that probably will be worked out in coming sessions.

I understand how you do it. Each player, including the GM, at various times asserts some truth about the fiction and it is built up from that. I am not in the dark about your style.