What is the point of GM's notes?

[pemerton]

To add to some of what I've posted not far upthread: is the basic dynamic of play players engage with GM's ideas or GM engages with players' ideas? As I've said, when I'm GMing Classic Traveller I'm inclining towards the second, though it is mediated through the procedures for random generation of content.

Of course there is back-and-forth. But the answer to the question why does our Traveller game involve alien civilisations, psionics and plots within the Imperial Navy and Marines is because the PCs included a xeno-archaeologist, a spy, and a former Marine who aspired to learn psionics.

 

[pemerton]

The general sense for this type of play is that the GM's NPCs can act more like PCs and have input in the play space that's orthogonal to the current play agenda. Let's say the PCs wrong a certain powerful NPC, and then the NPC takes actions "behind the scenes" to hire some bandits and ambush the PCs while they're in the middle of another quest 6 game-time months and 5 real world sessions later. That would be applauded as good "living world/sandbox" play, because the PCs actions had repercussions they couldn't anticipate and displaying those consequences helps generate verisimilitude.

Is it relevant that this can be done without the sort of off-screen management that @Maxperson describes?

The GM can narrate that bandit ambush as part of framing a new scene, or as a consequence of a failed check, without having done advance working out of how exactly the NPC pulled it off.

 

[Maxperson]

From the players' in-character-point-of-view, when they hear about the prospects of an Imperial armada arriving, I don't think it matters whether I wrote that out three months ago, or whether I made it up on the spot as part of the framing when one of the characters - an Imperial Navy Commander - returns to her base on Novus.

The difference is that I am not trying to present to the players my "mental model" of a world. Rather, I am trying to frame situations that will engage them relative to their aspirations for their PCs.

Here's the thing. A living, breathing world isn't for the benefit of the PCs. Of course from an in-character perspe.ctive it doesn't matter when you did it. It's for the players benefit that it's done in advance and it gives THEM the sense of a living world

I think it was earlier in this thread that some posters suggested that it would be important to know the details of such an armada in order to make other decisions about the gameworld (though I'm not sure which ones). My view is that the armada is no more nor less significant than any of the other things happening, such as depressions in major industrial worlds, or droughts on important agricultural worlds. In a system like Traveller, this is all bound up in the rolls made for random content generation.

What happens once you determine that there are droughts on some worlds, depressions on others and say wars in 3 systems? Where do you go with all of that information once it is randomly determined?

Other systems that I GM - eg Prince Valiant - are even less procedural than Classic Traveller. The living world in Prince Valiant consists in the PCs getting married, having families, intervening in politics, establishing their regencies, travelling to Constantinople and being praised by the Emperor, etc. We don't need to know any details of military operations beyond either (i) the maps we are using from historical atlases, and (ii) the operations the PCs themselves undertake.

That's a world, but it's not a living, breathing one as we are using the term.

 

[TwoSix]

To add to some of what I've posted not far upthread: is the basic dynamic of play players engage with GM's ideas or GM engages with players' ideas? As I've said, when I'm GMing Classic Traveller I'm inclining towards the second, though it is mediated through the procedures for random generation of content.

Of course there is back-and-forth. But the answer to the question why does our Traveller game involve alien civilisations, psionics and plots within the Imperial Navy and Marines is because the PCs included a xeno-archaeologist, a spy, and a former Marine who aspired to learn psionics.

Which would stand in stark contrast with playing a module like, say, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, where you're going to run into aquatic enemies and pirates as such regardless of whether you play a dwarven cleric of the forge, an elven psychic, or a human pirate.

 

[Manbearcat]

I’ve (and I think chao) have used the term
“Setting Solitaire” to depict this, but I assume that is pejorative rather than absolutely instructive to new players that may want to try their hand at GMing?

* The GM has all the extra-PC pieces in play and their interactions. Setting.

* They could run “the game” without player input. Solitaire.

Setting Solitaire

When the players do play, it becomes an input into the game’s model run.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The general sense for this type of play is that the GM's NPCs can act more like PCs and have input in the play space that's orthogonal to the current play agenda. Let's say the PCs wrong a certain powerful NPC, and then the NPC takes actions "behind the scenes" to hire some bandits and ambush the PCs while they're in the middle of another quest 6 game-time months and 5 real world sessions later. That would be applauded as good "living world/sandbox" play, because the PCs actions had repercussions they couldn't anticipate and displaying those consequences helps generate verisimilitude.

I think the expectation too is that the NPCs have will like PCs do, but also have limitations like they do. You wouldn't just make the ambush happen. You would try to play the NPC fairly, like a PC, working against the party (including doing things like possibly tracking the NPCs movement and their method of communication and tracking the party----as well as doing things like if the NPC sends spies after the party, giving the players a chance to spot them)

 

[TwoSix]

Is it relevant that this can be done without the sort of off-screen management that @Maxperson describes?

The GM can narrate that bandit ambush as part of framing a new scene, or as a consequence of a failed check, without having done advance working out of how exactly the NPC pulled it off.

Personally, I don't feel the procedure that generates the fiction necessarily precludes any particular kind of fictional element. I think the most important element is imposing another play agenda that's in contrast to the current agenda.

It's the GM taking control, driving the agenda, and forcing the players to react that drives "living world" play. It's framing the PCs into a scene of the NPC's dramatic goals (I'll get revenge on that adventuring group for crossing me!") and letting the NPC's needs drive play for a time.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In Stars Without Number, Crawford attempts to explain roleplaying games to new players by equating the PCs to avatars in a computer game and the GM as the computer. This has me thinking whether we should reframe "playing to discover what's in the GM's notes" as "using the GM interface to play/discover the game." The GM exists as the players' interface into the game and its curated world: they are the computer that runs the game world program as well as the input/output of player commands for their PC's actions. This may be better than "GM's notes," though it may not provide a better sense of the underlying play procedures in more mainstream sandbox games.

This is at least a metaphor many sandbox GMs use. Where the Gm is like the program, but has greater adaptability because the GM is human. For most of us, at least for the time being, that is the thing that really separates the two mediums (a video game RPG is more locked in, has more preset material with interactions defined before hand----I am sure there are things like algorithms as well, but at the moment it still seems to lack the human GMs adaptability (though it certainly might beat the human GM in terms of being able to map out and track a world and its physics. A lot of the sandbox GMs I talk to, believe eventually programs will reach a point where they can function the same or better than a human GM. But I do think this is a lot closer to describing what is going on than discovering the GMs notes (still though, I think the obvious aim of an RPG sandbox is to create a believable world for the players to explore-----if you remove that from the equation with sandbox I think you are missing something key

 

[pemerton]

Personally, I don't feel the procedure that generates the fiction necessarily precludes any particular kind of fictional element. I think the most important element is imposing another play agenda that's in contrast to the current agenda.

It's the GM taking control, driving the agenda, and forcing the players to react that drives "living world" play. It's framing the PCs into a scene of the NPC's dramatic goals (I'll get revenge on that adventuring group for crossing me!") and letting the NPC's needs drive play for a time.

In Burning Wheel, one option for a failed Circles check is that a nemesis NPC turns up (instead of the helpful NPC the player was hoping his/her PC would meet).

Generally, the nemesis would still be related to the PC (and hence the player agenda) in some fashion, but his/her arrival here-and-now is certainly adverse to what the player was hoping the PC would achieve.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve (and I think chao) have used the term
“Setting Solitaire” to depict this, but I assume that is pejorative rather than absolutely instructive to new players that may want to try their hand at GMing?

* The GM has all the extra-PC pieces in play and their interactions. Setting.

* They could run “the game” without player input. Solitaire.

Setting Solitaire

When the players do play, it becomes an input into the game’s model run.

This makes it sound like the players are secondary to the "model run." when it's the complete opposite. The players and their goals are primary.