What is the point of GM's notes?

[pemerton]

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

But how does the players' sense of it change based on when the GM decided it? As opposed to when the GM narrates it?

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?

The process is the opposite. Random generation determines events pertaining to the PCs - the PCs meet a starship, or a NPC on world, or a particular patron who wishes them to undertake a mission; the PCs find that the demand for the goods they're trading is quite high, or conversely it is very weak; etc - and the GM then establishes fiction around this to give it meaning, if it's not already obvious what that is.

For instance, when the PCs were on Ashar one of them was banished for having committed a crime. She entered a neighbouring country. It had already been established that the two nations were hostile to one another; and that religion was important in the government of both of them. When the PC encountered fugitives, it was easy to present them as religious refugees, adding additional detail to the already-established situation.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

Sure, but in the "living world" no PC action is needed. It's assumed that the GM followed a chain of causal logic, utilizing the capabilities that would be consistent with the NPC as PC analogue (although they may have access to capabilities the PC couldn't gain, like if the antagonist is a lich), to arrive at the point where the bandits can execute their ambush.

A lot of the Paradox Entertainment games on PC (I'm thinking Crusader Kings 3 here) follow this model; you can literally just watch those games run with no input from the player. Thousands of NPCs will follow algorithms to try and conquer territory for hundreds of years.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is a huge part of Apocalypse World. It is what "fronts" are for. Yet I don't think you and @Maxperson count that as a "living, breathing" game.

In my own case, GMing Traveller, I don't need to decide what resources have been martialled in advance. If the next random starship encounter is with a warship, then I can decide that it's a vessel that is hostile to the PCs because sent by the Chamberlain. That's part of the point of a system for random content generation.

I just read the intro and skimmed the Fronts entry in Dungeon World SRD (I have a game tonight and want to exercise before I do my prep so I don't have time to read and absorb the whole thing). It is very possible I am getting something wrong, missing something vital but I think I at least have a general sense of what a front is now. Let me preface this by saying I tend to take an expansive view to sandbox and living world (heck living world to me is a concept I dragged out of a non-sandbox adventure). I think there are many sandboxes and many living worlds. I also think there are orthodox ways of thinking around these concepts in communities where they are common, and it helps everyone if we at least make distinctions between types, so people don't feel like a particular playstyle (whether that is mine or yours) is being stealth'd into a campaign.

What I read about Fronts doesn't run counter to living world for me. If I understand it, it takes something that a GM would commonly do in a living world and gives it more parameters, more definition, more formality. In some ways it seems like it places more limits, but in other ways it looks like it also expands. What I was describing above is what I call playing a living character (this is fundamentally what I mean when I say living adventure or living world: are the NPCs active and engaged in the same way as the PCs are, but also limited in ways like the PCs are). I think this covers very similar ground to Fronts, but the front is maybe more interested in things like when those NPCs plot against the party, and when other dangers present themselves. I think for me that is maybe just one part of the living world concept, and you may be placing boundaries on it that I wouldn't place in my campaign (for example the fronts appear to be something that have a regular rhythm to them around sessions----which is fine, I do that with something I call grudge encounters). Really the only difference I see is I tend to be more intuitive and open with applying this stuff (more sensing it when it naturally arises and then initiating things----and I always tend to do them through the eyes of the NPC in question or the group). Another thing that struck me about fronts is they get into some territory some sandbox GMs might quibble over, but I would file under the role of fate in my worlds. For example it seems like you can have these impending dangers that loom over the campaign in some way, and are drivers of certain kinds of conflict. I freely draw on fate for such things (I even have tables for it). I also don't mind introducing dramatic stuff. This is very long winded and meandering but on the face of it, I don't see Fronts as antithetical to living world or to sandbox. I think some GMs might quibble, and it would be a good idea to clearly explain what a font is and how it might go against any expectations a typical sandbox GM would have if you were selling the concept to them (and the areas I would focus on would be do fonts in any way place limits on GM power, or do they in any way enhance player power over the world: those are essentially the two lines you will butt up against). Incidentally this is why when I formalized fate in my own book, I did so in a way that intentionally walks that line, allowing for the dramatic stuff I liked from Chinese Wuxia television series where characters have fated calamities and there are these coincidental meetings of characters that become significant, while also abiding by the expectation that these things have an in setting explanation). But that was just my approach

 

[TwoSix]

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.

But the model of the living world has been explicitly called out as running without the intervention of the PCs, that was the point of the "asleep for 10 years" example called out several pages ago. The PCs can't be both "primary" and "nonessential" by my understanding of what those words mean.

I think where the PCs are primary are in determining the resolution of the world (using resolution here as picture or video resolution, not fictional resolution). The areas around the PCs and the NPCs that are meaningful to the play goals will be more fleshed out and detailed, by necessity. Other than acknowledging that there are kingdoms and lands across the ocean, for example, you don't waste "processing" time fleshing out their daily activities.

 

[Cadence]

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.

This is making me think about my actual play experience. I think my best experiences playing D&D and the like (as a player or DM) is when there is a nice hand-off between the players and DM in this regard:

• the DM and player are fine with the player authoring chunks of background or things they would know
• the DM uses the players ideas and conceptions where they don't derail too much of what they have in their heads and thinks is vital
• where the DM accounts for the players big picture without making it too gamey (useful-ish magic items and background relevant encounters turn up, they don't turn up perfectly tailored like clock work in matched sets)
• where the DM isn't too wedded to their pre-existing ideas
• where the players have the characters motivations be fungible enough that the characters don't constantly leave the party for a new job or change of scenery like happens in real life
• the players aren't too munchkin/min-max in their contributions

The odd thing is, it feels like in all of those we would have knee-jerk described it as the DM running things and making up the world -- I guess, unless pressed to think about what was actually happening.

 

[Maxperson]

But how does the players' sense of it change based on when the GM decided it? As opposed to when the GM narrates it?

Mind you, this is not about all players. Only about how it feels to a lot of us. Coming up with everything on the fly makes the world feel like a facade. It's all on the surface. There's no true depth to it. The advance prep makes it FEEL like there's depth there. Like the the rest of the world is going about its daily business even when the PCs aren't around. Living, breathing.

The process is the opposite. Random generation determines events pertaining to the PCs - the PCs meet a starship, or a NPC on world, or a particular patron who wishes them to undertake a mission; the PCs find that the demand for the goods they're trading is quite high, or conversely it is very weak; etc - and the GM then establishes fiction around this to give it meaning, if it's not already obvious what that is.

For instance, when the PCs were on Ashar one of them was banished for having committed a crime. She entered a neighbouring country. It had already been established that the two nations were hostile to one another; and that religion was important in the government of both of them. When the PC encountered fugitives, it was easy to present them as religious refugees, adding additional detail to the already-established situation.

Okay. From the last post, it sounded like there was some sort of random event table. So the players might hear of a rebellion on Rigel CXII, a famine on Xerxes II and a war on Bizarro World.

 

[Cadence]

* In our Prince Valiant game, the PCs had ridden north of the town of Castle Hill to confront a knight - "the best in all Britain", Sir Lionheart - who was blocking the road north, not letting anyone pass who was unable to beat him in battle. The two PC knights were defeated. The third PC asked for a joust, but the proud Sir Lionheart declined to joust with a mere squire. To which the PC responded, "Fine, I'll just continue on my way then!" and tried to pass Sir Lionheart and continue along the road. This called for a Presence vs Presence check, which the PC won - and so Sir Lionheart knighted him so that he could joust and perhaps succeed where the others had failed. The new knight then defeated Sir Lionheart (mechanically, by spending a certificate to Kill a Foe in Combat - the player chose killing and not merely knocking senseless because he intuited, from Sir Lionheart's personality as portrayed by me, that Sir Lionheart would which to continue the fight on foot if unhorsed, and the player knew that his PC had no chance of winning that fight).​

​

<snip>

* But I wouldn't say that exploration (or learning, discovering, etc) the gameworld are very big parts of it. But there is definitely discovery of the fates of the protagonists!​

Did you put the knight there out of your conceptions, or did they suggest there was a knight there to meet? Was the best in all Britain yours or there idea? Was Lionheart's portrayal as continuing on the ground your conception or theirs? If any were yours, was that something they were discovering about the world you were presenting? If some were not, how did they insert it into the game?

 

[Aldarc]

I'm perfectly willing to accept @Bedrockgames's use of a "living world" campaign as the aspirational aim of traditional sandbox play, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful about the processes by which this aim is realized. So I think that understanding the play process requires understanding how we and others, including Brendan,* frequently attempt to achieve this in typical/mainstream sandbox gameplay or how/why certain game systems help to achieve those aims.

* Maybe it's worth exploring/reading how Bedrock Games' own publications describe play, since presumably they are meant to be conducive to typical sandbox play, though I am not sure where to begin searching for the most lucid explanation.

Sure, but in the "living world" no PC action is needed. It's assumed that the GM followed a chain of causal logic, utilizing the capabilities that would be consistent with the NPC as PC analogue (although they may have access to capabilities the PC couldn't gain, like if the antagonist is a lich), to arrive at the point where the bandits can execute their ambush.

A lot of the Paradox Entertainment games on PC (I'm thinking Crusader Kings 3 here) follow this model; you can literally just watch those games run with no input from the player. Thousands of NPCs will follow algorithms to try and conquer territory for hundreds of years.

I suspect that this is key. In typical sandbox play, the GM is not only responsible for running the immediate foreground of player-centric action/agency, but also running the background as a sort of concurrently orthogonal game that may or may not intersect again with the PCs. But at the same time, the GM only needs to "procedurally generate" what the players choose to engage/interface with, which is why these games often rely on flexible, generalized systems that gives the GM a lot of leeway to make ad hoc adjudications as needed based on a wide variety of player inputs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

When I run a sandbox I usually feel like I am engaging the players ideas. I don't like running a game where I am the one bringing the adventures to the party. I want them helping to shape the overall campaign concept with the choices their characters make. The players don't have mechanisms that are formal for shaping the campaign, but I am very open to what the players are trying to do within the setting and enabling the campaign to go there. If they suddenly want to be bootleggers, I am happy to roll with that. If by this though, you mean the players are the ones introducing

But the model of the living world has been explicitly called out as running without the intervention of the PCs, that was the point of the "asleep for 10 years" example called out several pages ago. The PCs can't be both "primary" and "nonessential" by my understanding of what those words mean.

I think where the PCs are primary are in determining the resolution of the world (using resolution here as picture or video resolution, not fictional resolution). The areas around the PCs and the NPCs that are meaningful to the play goals will be more fleshed out and detailed, by necessity. Other than acknowledging that there are kingdoms and lands across the ocean, for example, you don't waste "processing" time fleshing out their daily activities.

that isn’t the point. Living worlds are there for players to explore but the world should move around them do it has a life if it’s own that they sense as they explore. It is something that makes choices so important in play (the players need to know that Aqel-Gabod would be invaded whether they went there or not: but their still participants in the living world like the NPCs and still the campaigns focus

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm perfectly willing to accept @Bedrockgames's use of a "living world" campaign as the aspirational aim of traditional sandbox play, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful about the processes by which this aim is realized. So I think that understanding the play process requires understanding how we and others, including Brendan,* frequently attempt to achieve this in typical/mainstream sandbox gameplay or how/why certain game systems help to achieve those aims.

It is in the tools we often discuss in the advice. I am not the best mouthpiece but have tried to post links here to my write ups and blog posts in the past. I don’t have time at the moment to reiterate the main points though