What is the point of GM's notes?

[Lanefan]

Barrier, eh?

Yes, barrier.

Well, I think you're going to have to explain two things:

1) How is it that the entire world of sport and martial arts and artisans/tradesfolk (from dance to boxing to smithing to football (both) to hockey to basketball to knitting to climbing to cobbling to skateboarding to golfing to woodworking to archery to running to weightlifting to baseball to wrestling to pommel horse to cheesemaking to pole vault etc etc etc etc) have created functional athletes/artisans in the billions (at least 1/4 of the world population is capable in some kind of martial affair or physical trade) range...that don't quit? Its because humankind has developed a tried and true methodology (as I depicted above) that has been passed down through the ages...that spans all cultures (the overwhelming number of which were indendent from one another).

And your tried and true methodology for any given one of those produces a small percentage that are quite good at it, a slightly larger percentage who aren't very good but keep banging away anyway, another small-ish percentage who are hopeless at it and give up, and a vast-majority percentage who are not interested in bothering to try in the first place.

2) Why is it that TTRPGs (D&D in particular) has failed miserably over its 40 year arc at pulling anything even close to a 10 % rate of functional GMs out of its population?

Why is it that humanity over its many-thousand-year arc has equally failed at pulling anything close to a 10% rate of functional musicians out of its population? Or functional archers? Or functional pole-vaulters?

I don't know what you guys see, but in my life (physically...I'm not talking about on here or the folks I'm playing games with virtually), I've encountered about 400 TTRPG participants. Of those participants, only about 25 or so have appreciably tried their hands at GMing for anything approaching a duration sufficient to say "I'm a GM." Of those 25, not even half are functional to good (and several of those are oblivious to that fact and completely unwilling or incapable of acknowledging their weaknesses and working on them). So my guess is 10/400ish. That is a dreadful ratio by comparison to (1) above.

Let's see - by comparison (and ignoring things like convention games) I've probably played with about 75 and encountered maybe 50 (?) more that I know of. I can't speak for the 50 as I don't know what/how much/how long they played; but of the 75 I can think of at least 20 who have tried GMing at least once; of which maybe half kept at it for long enough to matter.

Thing is, not all players - in fact, I'd say rather few - are even interested in GMing; for a host of reasons many of which revolve around not wanting to make anything more of the hobby than sitting around a table rolling dice every week or two.

For some - I dare say quite a few - it's they don't want to have to learn the rules in any depth. (yes, there's many players out there who interact with the rules as little as they can get away with and even that is too much) I don't think it's controversial to say a GM probably needs to have or gain at least a vague familiarity with the rules of whatever system she wants to run.

For some, it's that they don't want to commit to having to show up every week (even if they already do as a player) because while the game can sail when down a player it can't sail when down a GM.

For some - and this hits your point upthread about practice - it's that they feel they need to put in considerable work and-or practice before running a game, and aren't willing (or able due to time constraints) to do so. This one's removable, in that the "considerable work" can be reduced in various ways and practice doesn't need to be anything separate, it can be undertaken while running a game.

It seems like where "the barriers" need to be sussed out is in (2) above (and, again, I'd say that the daylight between the two is likely to be found in what I wrote above on it). Humankind has done a comparatively excellent job at solving the athlete/artisan/martial artist problem.

Nah, it just seems that way due to the bigger pool. 1 million* post-high-school pole vaulters is a big number...until you realize that's drawn from a pool of billions and that the per-capita rate of pole-vaulters among the population is in fact really small.

* a number pulled out of thin air; I've no idea how many actual pole-vaulters there are in the world and google doesn't seem to want to tell me quickly, but there's probably not all that many in the grand scheme of things. I personally have never met one to the best of my knowledge.

 

[Aldarc]

Why is it that humanity over its many-thousand-year arc has equally failed at pulling anything close to a 10% rate of functional musicians out of its population? Or functional archers? Or functional pole-vaulters?

I'll be perfectly frank, but this is a silly line of questioning, especially since I don't think that the answer is the one you are fishing for.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't disagree with the whole of this. Just a couple thoughts though:

1) I want to make it clear (and to @Lanefan ) that what I have in mind isn't some kind of Rocky montage of a 12 week fight camp with absolutely no actual "at-the-table" GMing. I don't mean that at all.

Glad you clarified this, as I took that to be pretty much exactly what you meant: non-table technique practice before ever starting to GM.

What I'm talking about is (a) having a structured plan to both understand what you're doing and hone your craft, (b) work at those fundamentals a bit before you GM (even if its just a session of picking discrete scenes/conflicts, practicing framing, practicing handling action resolution, practicing figuring out complications/fallouts at both the action resolution and scene level, and integrating the whole process), (c) running a game with actual confidence (because of (a) and (b) ), (d) then understanding how to reflect and humbly perform a post-mortem of your GMing, (e) then continuing to practice honing your craft.

Even (a) and (b) already make GMing sound far more onerous than it has to be; more like a workplace than a hobby. If that's the sort of thing you're telling prospective GMs they need to do, no wonder they're running for the hills!

Skip (a) and (b) and instead just get behind the screen and effing do it! (c) and (e) will come naturally over time if you're cut out for GMing; not all people are. (d) is up to the individual.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll be perfectly frank, but this is a silly line of questioning, especially since I don't think that the answer is the one you are fishing for.

How so?

MBC is positing we have what seems an absurdly low rate of GMs among the player pool and compares it to the number of [various types of athlete/artisan] among the humanity pool.

I'm just trying to point out that the ratio in either case probably isn't all that different.

 

[pemerton]

On GMing: I mostly GM when I RPG, and am "the GM" for my group. One of the players first played with our group, starting in the late 90s with Rolemaster. A few years ago he did his first GMing, of Burning Wheel. He was a lot better than some other GMs I've played with!

In "no myth"-ish GMing, the hardest thing I think is coming up with consequence (you can prep some of your framings in advance). He's sometimes good at that, and sometimes only OK. Which overall is not too bad!

 

[Aldarc]

How so?

MBC is positing we have what seems an absurdly low rate of GMs among the player pool and compares it to the number of [various types of athlete/artisan] among the humanity pool.

I'm just trying to point out that the ratio in either case probably isn't all that different.

How many roles are there typically in a RPG? Now how many "roles," "specializations," or "jobs" are there in human civilization? How has the population boom of humanity affected that across time? I don't think that this is an appropriate comparison of like to like.

 

[Lanefan]

On GMing: I mostly GM when I RPG, and am "the GM" for my group. One of the players first played with our group, starting in the late 90s with Rolemaster. A few years ago he did his first GMing, of Burning Wheel. He was a lot better than some other GMs I've played with!

One of our long-time players has relatively recently taken up GMing (though the whole covid thing was awful timing as she'd just started her fisrt campaign when it hit) and though I've yet to play in any of her serious games the early reports are pretty good, and her gonzo one-offs are usually hilarious.

 

[Lanefan]

How many roles are there typically in a RPG? Now how many "roles," "specializations," or "jobs" are there in human civilization? How has the population boom of humanity affected that across time? I don't think that this is an appropriate comparison of like to like.

Huh?

The number of roles in humanity doesn't matter, only that you pick one to compare to the GM/player ratio. Some will compare higher, some lower, but I think the GM/player ratio will fit right in there nicely.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It is enough. And its enough for everyone.

But if that is the case, then I have no idea what is being argued here about the "realness" of the imagined space. I don't think everyone is working from the same framing. When I initially involved myself (with persistence and volition being a requirement of a "real" imagined space and that without those two things you couldn't falsify Ouija Board play as not being "real"), I thought it was clear where people were...but now its not clear at all.

An imagined space sufficient to resolve play is wholly different from any claim to it being "real" or subsistent (its neither...just like the imagined space of Ouija Board play).

Jesus, this is as "shark-jumpey" a conversation as I've seen on here in awhile.

These conversations always jump the shark because a point about something is made, away from the initial claim or in defense of it, and we start talking about that. This simply started with a rejection of the label "discovering what is in the GM's notes" and then became a kind of playstyle debate.

I think that is because things keep getting shifted to one of two extremes (real world physics or completely hand wavy, game physics). I think we've had this part of this conversation many times, where my side usually takes the position that the aim is to create a believable world, your side asserts that's impossible because of real world physics, we say the bar isn't that high, and then there is confusion (because it seems to be assumed we are no longer really striving for realness). I've used the term believability many times here to express what I am talking about. No one is arguing that the GM ought be a physics engine. That would basically be impossible. But the GM can be logical, emulate the kinds of things that we see in the real world, and make sure there is a kind of cause and effect with minimal loss of continuity. If you need think of it as multiple tiers or as a spectrum: totally unrealistic cartoony worlds--pure genre emulating worlds--grounded believable worlds--worlds heavily grounded in science*--unattainable physics engine worlds. Another way to think of it is "what franchise are we in?".

*Where the GM takes great pains to reflect as much real world stuff in his or her tables, in the mechanics etc (one version of this would be RPGs that are very heavy on simulating real life, and/or GMs who include things like plate tectonics, wind currents, climate maps, etc in their world building, and use as much real world data in getting the probability of their tables right.

 

[Emerikol]

My understanding of sandbox play in the classic sense, as being articulated in this thread, is that the GM is entitled and even expected to extrapolate from the notes about Sir Lionheart, the broader understanding of the setting (in this case, faux-historical mediaeval) and a feeling about "what makes sense". A reaction roll or CHA check or similar mechanic might be called for if the GM is not sure, but if the GM can make a decision without calling for a check that is permitted and even desirable.

Yes your outcome could have happened in sandbox play just as you say. I forgot or didn't notice that the context was a Prince Valiant game. I was still in D&D mode. I don't think in very many of my D&D games that tend a bit grittier would this happen but that is just genre expectations.