What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

Also I want to be clear here, I am not trying to convert people to sandbox play. I am not even advocating for it. I was just defending the style against some criticisms I saw and fending off a label I though wasn't particularly fitting and a bit insulting (and there I was also defending other style of play against that label).

But with sandbox I don't expect that most people would go for that style. And I wouldn't even advocate it for most games. It isn't the only style of game I run. For example I love Ravenloft and I have never run Ravenloft as a sandbox. It just wouldn't' hit the right notes for me as a sandbox (I know people who do run it that way, who are content with it and love using domains as these places for players to go into and contend with the lords). But for me, with Ravenloft I want something more atmospheric and more grounded on a structure like mystery or investigation (and other more mainstream adventure structures). That is why when I talked about living world and connected it to Feast of Goblyns I distinguished between Living Adventure (which is what I saw something like Feast of Goblyns being) and Living World (which is what I see as a sandbox).

 

[Campbell]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the theater the idea that good acting is performative rather than the result of an internal process that involves attempting to embody your character is pretty misguided. 'Hamming it up' is a pejorative to most actors.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What's being said is that your commentary is generic and does not actually describe the play process. That it is a romanticized description of how you want to feel while playing the game.

This isn't what I am saying. Living world isn't about what I want the world to feel like, it is about how I, as the GM, ought to treat the world. The whole point of the NPC as alive, isn't really about convincing the players they are real (though hopefully they are lifelike---which I think is common in any kind of campaign) it is just to emphasize that I am treating this NPC as someone who has a life, goals, is always doing something even when they are 'offscreen' (and I am thinking about what they are doing). Now obviously you can't do that for every single NPC all the time (unless you are some kind of genius who can track that many different characters in his or her head at the same moment) but you can do it for important characters (like was suggested it the Feast of Goblyns "wandering major encounter" description). And you can put other living NPCs on the backburner by placing them on tables to ensure they come up from time to time (you can also go over NPCs between sessions to figure out who is doing what). How extensive one gets with this, is personal. Some GMs might only do it for a handful of NPCs, some might regularly comb through all of them (I usually focus on a handful, use tables to bring others up periodically, and do occasional check ins with my roster of NPCs between sessions---but this is pretty casual).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the theater the idea that good acting is performative rather than the result of an internal process that involves attempting to embody your character is pretty misguided. 'Hamming it up' is a pejorative to most actors.

I know nothing about acting. It wasn't a commentary on acting and the process. My point was I don't care about the performance as a GM or player. I don't care how much of it shows. And I am not looking for everyone to always have a deep immersive experience. It is going to wax and wane. But for me the important thing is people are engaged and when important things are happening they feel like they are there. I would distinguish that between acting where the person, whatever is going on with the internal process, is conveying their characters internal emotions to the other players.

I wasn't using hamming it up as a pejorative. I was using it to describe over the top performance of the character. I don't know what it means to an actor. To me my favorite movies have performances I consider hammy and over the top. I like that kind of stuff. In terms of gaming, I just mean exaggerated performance of your character and their emotions.

To put it much more simply: I don't care if my players are playing their characters like they do on critical role. I am not looking for that kind of acting at the table

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do not like being talked to in a way that assumes because I have a different perspective that I lack relevant experience and knowledge.

I want to be clear this isn't what I am trying to do (in fact I wasn't particularly aware of most of your posts as I was making many of these responses). When I do talk about sandbox in general or sandbox GMs, I am not saying I speak for ALL sandbox GMs (this is why for example I distinguished between post 90s and pre-90s sandbox GMs). I am speaking to my experience of sandbox when generalize (this is what I think the kinds of sandbox GMs I have in mind feel about procedure and mechanics for example). I tried to use language like "I think" "IMO". I am making no assumptions about your experience with sandbox. And like I said in my other response, if you feel what I am saying isn't true of sandbox, isn't true of sandbox GMs, or isn't true about the group of sandbox GMs I have in mind, certainly tell me so. I am just reporting my sense of things

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Aldarc Here is the notes I with the boxes I mentioned from last nights session. This would be the element of the game that would tie, in my mind, to referring to the GM's notes. The way I did it though was put this page together in front of the players at the start of the session to help explain to them the situation (I didn't show them the sheet prior to play beginning, but asked for their input as I made it: for instance I showed them an image of the coffins they were in and asked is this "Thin wood" "Thick Wood" or "Reinforced Wood" in your opinion for the purposes of establishing TNs on breaking and Integrity. A lot of times during play if something arises I wasn't expecting (like the player asks to find the toughest martial hero in town or the head of a local group of gamblers, and I haven't made any of that, I sketch out all the info on that character really fast in my notes, including motivations, goals, etc, so I have something tangible to work with in play, that doesn't feel like it is taking shape as the characters interact with it). I don't want to make the mistake of defining what I do in opposition to Pemerton's point about notes. It isn't that notes don't matter, or aren't important (or that setting materials in general aren't important). It is simply the 'playing to discover the GM's notes' label that I find doesn't capture my experience at the table (especially since I am actively working to make sure it isn't simply playing to discover my notes, as that is what prompted me to move towards sandbox in the first place)

This is my (very artistically rendered sketch of the chasm from the side, just so I could have distances set:

This is my notepad map of the homestead (which I made prior to the campaign starting as I was fleshing out the area). This was an elaboration on existing setting material (I had Li Homestead on the map and a description of it and feast beetle li, but it wasn't until the campaign started and that I mapped out the homestead itself). This wasn't technically a full sandbox because the players came in as a team of constables (so there is a mission based element here). However within that framework, they can do what they want, and if they don't want to be constables (like decide to become bandits or something that is fair by me). Still I would call this more of a sandbox with a concept. In this case they were sent to find a woman who went missing, and eventually they learned that she was abducted by Feast Beetle Li (who was going to kill her in her usual method in s short span of days)

The boxes in this image are just me tracking survival roll results. But the next page had a similar set of boxes to the first in order to track how many days before the victim ended up in the coffin and killed by Feast Beetle Li (they arrived on the final day because they spent three days going after a potential witness and then got lost for a day when they made their way back---so tracking the number of days as a ticking clock was important here)

This is the image I showed them of the coffins:

and just to bring the living NPC thing to focus, even though I mapped out the homestead and the cavern complex, I didn't really see it as a "dungeon" or "location" in need of a exploring. I saw it as a residence. Feast Beetle Li was moving around as she needed (something I might simulate when the players arrive by just randomly rolling to see if she is there or out, which room she is in, what she is doing---i may also simply decide this). As the players interacted with her, it became easier to simply decide what she did and where she went. So as the players tried to get out of the coffins she started adjusting her strategy and taunting them. I decided once they stared using the chains to climb up she simply flipped the switch and had them drop one by one into the chasm. Then she retreated into a position where she could ambush them with a dart trap if they survived and came after her----but she is living so she is only staying there so long before adjusting her strategy. Since the players ending up going down into the cavern and talking with the lady who lives in the cave (Ms. Lan), I decided she is starting to get nervous and concerned and as the session ended, I have this whole week to think about what she might do in the hours the players spent talking with Ms. Lan

 

[Emerikol]

Gah. No, this just displays your unfamiliarity with the genre conventions. To someone that's familiar with Arthurian Romance tropes, @pemerton's scene is a classic example and plays straight down the verisimilitude lane for that genre. That you're unfamiliar with this, but familiar with the spoof of that genre (Holy Grail), just shows your level of awareness, not an underlying difference in approach to verisimilitude. There's probably tons of things in your game that read the same way to someone that's seen The Gamers but doesn't know much otherwise. You've pointed out something that absolutely goes directly to verisimilitude of the intended genre and called it a fault -- which really doesn't say anything about the techniques but instead just about what you prefer/are aware of in terms of game genres.

That may all be true. I was imagining a standard D&D campaign whereas no doubt he was playing something with different assumptions. A lot of these player authoring style games seems more focused and thus you have a lot of games that really are just variations on the same common core. Kind of like Fate is a system or cortex plus is a system but many different games with different genre assumptions use that core.

My reaction was no doubt driven by the fact I was thinking about typical D&D campaigns and not the specific game being played.

 

[Emerikol]

One of my dearest friends is a very long time gamer. Your post here reminds me of him. He is extremely critical of genre films because all he sees is trope and contrivance, whereas my position is the opposite; “Well, that is the point of these films...I don’t want to read 200 alleged genre stories with no trope through-line present so I can hopefully one day hit the lottery and find a genre story about these types of characters in this type of provocative situation that results in a collision of these particular ideals/aspirations.”

I'm not sure where I would fall on the movie scale as I do like westerns and they seem very trope-like in many cases. I know John Wayne is going to win in most cases.

I think I am a combination of preferences and not a single preference. So in addition to sandbox play, I am also very much a skilled play person. You must prepare and buy the right resources and plan your journey and plot how to kill an especially tough monster. To me that is the bread and butter of gaming.

The story that emerges is not the prime driver of play. So let's suppose I could make the story more interesting by changing something as DM. I probably don't do it. Now as a young man I might not have been as strict so I'm the amalgam of my experiences.

Put another way, for some reason, he takes each individual film as if they were part of a larger milieu (rather than self contained with their own inevitable literary device as propellant), and then, due to this (in my opinion extremely odd) cognitive framing of clustering these films into a population and expecting a distribution of events that leans heavily toward thematically-neutral or willfully inattendant to dramatic need or genre device, he finds himself constantly saying “well OF COURSE this thing happened (cue his eyeroll).” He sees contrivance everywhere in genre films because of this clustering and mental modeling that he does.

I will admit that when not really well done and done in a heavy handed way I probably don't like those movies as much. I do though think there are times I like some of them.

I can run Dungeon Delves and thematically-neutral Hexcrawls all day long for him, but that is where it ends. He stays away from the rest of my games.

It really is like every other preference. Some people like a very broad variety of things and others like fewer varieties. I won't say I hate anything but with limited time I play what I like best. That is a better way to put it. I am sure with a really good GM of a particular style I could play a single Saturday and have fun. I just won't love it enough to devote two or three years to it.

I suspect you have a similar neurological disposition that you cluster things like this, impose a mental model on the population, expect a particular type of distribution, and see contrivance when that distribution is skewed. There are more than a few people like this.

As you read my Dungeon World and Blades excerpts from this thread, I imagibe you wincing at the contrivance. As you feel about @pemerton ’s Prince Valiant game, you would similarly hate the experience of my Dogs, DW, AW, Blades, 4e, and Mouse Guard games (irrespective of your issues with mechanical architecture and GMing techniques).

Well one example, might be self sacrifice. I would not say by any means that a PC in my campaign would not sacrifice himself for the group. I would say that that would never be his objective on day one. The players objectives always coincide with the characters objectives. It's part of being your character. So no one in my group would say "Hey it would be cool if I went down fighting to help the party escape". That might be viewed as necessary but never a good thing. My players view character death the same way you or I might view it in the real world. They are less risk averse surely but I mean they avoid it always.

I think in the narrative sense of player authoring the character is a piece that can be sacrificed if it makes for a great story. That doesn't mean you do it all the time. I'm just saying the coolness of the story overrides what the character would really want in the game. Character wants and player wants are identical in my games.

 

[Emerikol]

I think also that Bedrock and I are similar but not identical in our preferences. That may confuse if anyone starts thinking we are a united front. I speak for myself only. Creating a secret door on the fly makes me wince just for the record. Fidelity to the reality of the world is paramount to me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think also that Bedrock and I are similar but not identical in our preferences. That may confuse if anyone starts thinking we are a united front. I speak for myself only. Creating a secret door on the fly makes me wince just for the record. Fidelity to the reality of the world is paramount to me.

It's pretty darned important to me, as well. The difference is that you're saying that the "reality of the world" is based on things you've already thought of, whereas I'm basing it on "is it possible a secret door could be here?" That's pretty much true -- a secret door could be there, and that would retain fidelity to the reality of the world because it doesn't violate any physical laws or established truths about the world.

Now, when I run 5e, secret doors are where I put them and nowhere else, but that's not because I'm maintaining fidelity to the reality of the world (I imagined these secret doors for my make-believe game after all), but because that approach facilitates specific play goals -- namely, for us, skilled play and exploring the world the GM has created.