What is the point of GM's notes?

[Fenris-77]

Just for the record, I wouldn't describe my style as very old school. I take a lot of inspiration from old school. But I do a lot of things old school GMs would reject.

That is pretty much what I meant. I was using the phrase as shorthand to stand in for a lot of discussion we've had elsewhere. Specifically about sandboxes. Anyway, just so people understand that that style is something that most of us enjoy.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps, rather than ascribing me the worst intellectual failings you can think of, you could just respond to the actual content? Analysis isn't a bad thing, deeper understanding isn't a bad thing - and neither need to be the product of intellectual arrogance.

Like I said, I don't see anything wrong with analysis. I think it is good. but an honest analysis has to be open to the possibility that it is wrong, has a flawed assumptions somewhere, etc (no matter how convincing it is: this is why I am always pushing back against some of the sandbox dogma on my own side). But the intellectual arrogance comes in when there is absolutism and certainty around that analysis. To be honest, I have found you very non-arrogant, very flexible in terms of your thinking. But that isn't the case with everyone, and the reason I quoted your post was because I think it reflected some of the assumptions that go into some of this analysis that does lead to the arrogance I was talking about. And lets be clear, arrogance exists on my side too. I don't think it is that present in this particular thread. Out in the world though, arrogance is pretty evenly distributed. If you wander into discussions where living world sandbox GMs have the upper hand, there is a lot of exclusionary and arrogant language I disagree with (which is why I am always arguing in favor a sandbox that is expanding and broader and includes other styles of play: including ones that use things like player facing mechanics). I also don't like a lot of the hard lines people draw and I don't like a lot of the belittling language used to describe more narrative approaches and more player facing approaches.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, @Imaro has managed to deftly turn this thread from a discussion of games to a discussion of the participants. A quite nice derailing by ad hominem. Kudos, I think, given it appears the intent was to stop any possible discussion about games to begin with.

 

[Aldarc]

Like I said, I don't see anything wrong with analysis. I think it is good. but an honest analysis has to be open to the possibility that it is wrong, has a flawed assumptions somewhere, etc (no matter how convincing it is: this is why I am always pushing back against some of the sandbox dogma on my own side). But the intellectual arrogance comes in when there is absolutism and certainty around that analysis. To be honest, I have found you very non-arrogant, very flexible in terms of your thinking. But that isn't the case with everyone, and the reason I quoted your post was because I think it reflected some of the assumptions that go into some of this analysis that does lead to the arrogance I was talking about. And lets be clear, arrogance exists on my side too. I don't think it is that present in this particular thread. Out in the world though, arrogance is pretty evenly distributed. If you wander into discussions where living world sandbox GMs have the upper hand, there is a lot of exclusionary and arrogant language I disagree with (which is why I am always arguing in favor a sandbox that is expanding and broader and includes other styles of play: including ones that use things like player facing mechanics). I also don't like a lot of the hard lines people draw and I don't like a lot of the belittling language used to describe more narrative approaches and more player facing approaches.

I think that criticizing the ideas and arguments presented would be more productive for this thread and reduce a lot of the hostility rather than criticizing people for their perceived intellectual arrogance or accusing them of intellectual bullying, as the latter is most definitely ventures in the realm of ad hominem attacks.

 

[Manbearcat]

EDIT: As a secondary thought, I would ask @pemerton and @Manbearcat... what do you get from these discussions? I've never seen either of you actually declare that something about your playstyle was changed or that you've adopted a different playstyle and/or goals during these discussions, so I'm just curious what is your pay off here?

Well, a couple things I learned last night:

* Imaro and Bedrockgames think I'm a pompous ass who intellectually bullies people...which tells me they CLEARLY dislike me WAAAAAY more than I even thought. I knew there was hostility there after nearly a decade of conversation, but I didn't realize the temperature was that hot.

* If you're having an interesting conversation about "online/offline" content in Sandbox gaming and the impetus to evolve "offline content suddenly turned online"....DO NOT ASK PEOPLE (a) what their impulse and hopeful payoff is when challenging conversation with "this analysis is deeply niche and the overwhelmingly majority of the hobby doesn't care about it" and (b) when you have a thought like "self, I wonder if some of the frustration around looking at TTRPGs through an engineering lens is similar to the pushback on baseball/football analytics and the Evolutionary Biology/Psychology and Neuroendocrinology in research on love...again, DO NOT ASK IT.

The results will crush the interesting conversation you were having.

Across the span of engaging at ENWorld, two particular things stand out among many (and ironically, you were at the heart of the first one):

1) You remember our infamous "Gorge Conflict" conversation which spun out from a post-mortem of one of my play excerpts? Communicating with you and Nagol was actually extremely helpful to me in (a) preemptively trouble-shooting how complication generation can be a problem broadly and (b) how a particular type of Fail Forward complication generation can be a problem specifically for a certain segment of people and (c) helped me better understand the cognitive framework of one of my dearest friends.

The downstream effect of that is (i) I worked at better articulating myself in these conversations (with respect to discussing complications) but, more importantly, (ii) I worked at my play such that I've become better at identifying potential cognitive framework disparity at my tables when it comes to complications as an outgrowth of action resolution and (iii) I've become better at ensuring all parties are on the same page when it comes to decision-points > action resolution > foreseeable consequences (whether its in a system that features Fail Forward or not).

2) Unlike the above positive, the next one is a profound negative. A HUGE preponderance of data that culture war inertia and attendant coalitional thinking (as I already knew...but more data helps) turns otherwise earnest, sincere, autonomous, likely kind and fair in the rest of their life, people into something (an inversion of all of those descriptors) that they would surely regret if they could find their way out of the orbit of what they've been caught in.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Well, @Imaro has managed to deftly turn this thread from a discussion of games to a discussion of the participants. A quite nice derailing by ad hominem. Kudos, I think, given it appears the intent was to stop any possible discussion about games to begin with.

I wasn't going to reply, but your post re @Imaro touches on this point.
The issue I had was "playing to discover the GM's notes" - doesn't at the outset paint a particular roleplaying style in good stead, and no I'm not equipped to give a decent enough definition of the style, but I do not need to in order to recognise a negatively slanted one. And yes, facts do not care about your feelings, but if one wishes to have a productive thread where one can encourage others to peer outside and over their sandboxes then what you should aim for is you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

So I also mentioned upthread that some were replying in earnest and receiving unnecessarily sharp replies and that is because the waters were tainted from the beginning.

This is not an attack but an observation. I hope you take it in that spirit.

 

[Maxperson]

"Most gamers" are irrelevant to me. I just care about the individual conversations we get to have here. That's why I'm not a fan of this debate club nonsense. No one speaks for me except me.

The first rule of debate club, is nobody speaks at debate club.

 

[Imaro]

Well, a couple things I learned last night:

* Imaro and Bedrockgames think I'm a pompous ass who intellectually bullies people...which tells me they CLEARLY dislike me WAAAAAY more than I even thought. I knew there was hostility there after nearly a decade of conversation, but I didn't realize the temperature was that hot.

This just isn't true. You're making it personal and it's not. I don't think anything about you and I stated as much earlier. I can dislike how you deliver something without being hostile to you as a person.

 

[Manbearcat]

Well, @Imaro has managed to deftly turn this thread from a discussion of games to a discussion of the participants. A quite nice derailing by ad hominem. Kudos, I think, given it appears the intent was to stop any possible discussion about games to begin with.

I'll take whatever responsibility here that I can muster.

I totally thought it was going to be an innocuous, nothingburger aside. I was sincerely interested in the two questions I asked that fueled this whole thing. I shouldn't have asked them.

 

[Maxperson]

When it comes to how I ride my bike on the road, what everyone else is doing and expecting matters. If I try and cut against the grain, I might get hit by a car!

Or a tender bite of steak. Cutting against the grain isn't always bad.