What is the point of GM's notes?

[Maxperson]

So make a counter point beyond “That term is pejorative”. Do you have any actual play example you can share which displays how a GM’s notes or a GM’s prepped material somehow enhances play? Or where it supports protagonism?

"enhances play" is purely subjective. I have no objective example to share. And as for supporting protagonism, one style of play has stolen the term and used to describe only their style play, excluding the playstyles of others, so no, I have no example of their definition of protagonism, because I don't play their style.

I think it would really help if we moved beyond the dislike of the term and just started talking about how GM notes/prep/world can facilitate play and how it can restrict play.

And a good start to that would be using different terms. It's not productive to use a term that you know people don't like and are resisting, and then tell them to suck it up(with nicer language) and just discuss things.

 

[Maxperson]

So am I being pejorative of my own game when I describe episodes of it that have this character?

You can talk about yourself however you like.

 

[Maxperson]

All the mathematicians in the world agree that 2+2 = 4. That's part of what reveals mathematics to be a scientific discipline.

All the philologists in the world could ponder the possibility of a mythology for England, but only one would come up with LotR: JRRT.

When we read LotR and its appendices, we are learning what JRRT invented. When we read critical treatments of it (I am familiar with Christopher Tolkien's commentaries in Unfinished Tales, plus Thomas Shippey's book; some posters here might be familiar also with The History of Middle Earth series) we see how JRRT made decisions, and changed his mind.

When I play D&D with a GM, and that GM reveals to me his/her conception of the fiction, it is not more maths-like than JRRT!

This isn't a response to what I said that makes any sense. It doesn't at all address what I said about discovery.

 

[Maxperson]

There is emerging in this thread, and I have seen it emerge in many previous threads, an implicit assumption that there are four basic ways to produce the fiction of RPGing:

(1) GM authorship in advance;​

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(2) GM unilateral (or close to unilateral) authorship in the moment of play, which is like an ad-libbed version of (1);​

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(3) Player authorship in advance;​

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(4) Player authorship in the moment of play which requires stepping out of the character because it is very similar to (2) and hence to (1).​

The great insight which RPGs like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel try to systematise is that this list is in fact not exhaustive. There are at least two other possibilities:

(5) GM authorship in the moment of play based on constraints that emerge (significantly, probably not exclusively) from the player's play of his/her PC;​

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(6) Player authorship in the moment of play that does not require stepping out of character because it is part and parcel of action declaration for the player's PC.​

AW, DW and (to the best of my knowledge) many other PbtA games make extensive use of (5).

BW makes extensive use of (6) and uses (5) when it comes both to scene-framing and the narration of consequences of failed checks.

#5 is what those on my side of things have been describing for dozens and dozens of pages. 38 years of playing and I've never even seen #2 in action. I wouldn't know what that's like. You've altered our argument(#5) into #2 and then added back in our argument as if you thought of it.

This elaborates my explanation of why I don't think that @AnotherGuy's suggested labels are very helpful. It also relates to what @Aldarc and (I think) @Fenris-77 have posted upthread about "living world" describing a goal or a result rather than a process. (5) and (6) are eminently viable contributors to the generation of a living world in which (for instance) NPCs are not just "sitting about" in room A as pre-conceived by the GM waiting for a PC to turn up. But at least as @Bedrockgames and @Maxperson present their play, (5) and (6) do not seem to be important techniques in it.

Except that I told you personally, no less than three times, that I am very constrained by what the players do and their input is critical to what I narrate in response. You just keep ignoring that and minimizing what it is that I am doing, as evidenced by attempting to reduce it to #2 above.

 

[Fenris-77]

"enhances play" is purely subjective. I have no objective example to share. And as for supporting protagonism, one style of play has stolen the term and used to describe only their style play, excluding the playstyles of others, so no, I have no example of their definition of protagonism, because I don't play their style.

And a good start to that would be using different terms. It's not productive to use a term that you know people don't like and are resisting, and then tell them to suck it up(with nicer language) and just discuss things.

You don't have an example of how you use notes in your game to enhance play? I find that hard to believe.

Protagonism is a term that should be treated much like living world, or sandbox, or even immersion, in that they are goals for play that can be accomplished many ways in many different systems. No one has stolen anything as far as I can tell. This is why I'd say that both OSR play and Blades are sandbox games, for example, even though they go about managing and accomplishing that playstyle very differently.

As for the GM notes thing, I'm going to fall on the side of lets just talk about the actual sausage, not what brand name it is. Enough people on what you probably feel is the 'other side' of this conversation make copious use of GM notes in many games they run (me, @pemerton, @Ovinomancer ) that I don't think your accusation of pejorative term use really carries all that much water here. I often have bloody books worth of GM notes for OSR games I run, and I enjoy making them, so I'm obviously not against them. What is interesting is discussing what kind of notes different people make, what kind of content they generate, and how they feel that impacts the gaming experience at their tables.

 

[Bedrockgames]

All the mathematicians in the world agree that 2+2 = 4. That's part of what reveals mathematics to be a scientific discipline.

All the philologists in the world could ponder the possibility of a mythology for England, but only one would come up with LotR: JRRT.

When we read LotR and its appendices, we are learning what JRRT invented. When we read critical treatments of it (I am familiar with Christopher Tolkien's commentaries in Unfinished Tales, plus Thomas Shippey's book; some posters here might be familiar also with The History of Middle Earth series) we see how JRRT made decisions, and changed his mind.

When I play D&D with a GM, and that GM reveals to me his/her conception of the fiction, it is not more maths-like than JRRT!

But you could create a working model of Middle Earth and explore that, based on all the information JRR Tolkien has given us. These set parameters. Places exist on the map in particular locations. Towns are described with characteristics. etc. To say all you are discovering if you run an emulation of that world in an RPG, is what JRR Tolkien invented, I think misses something essential that is going on. There is a big difference between reading a passage in Lord of the Rings, looking at a map of Middle Earth, and traveling in a game with a GM and system emulating that world to explore those places. You are not simply discovering what JRR Tolkien invented, because things will be encountered that he never thought of (they may be extrapolations but they are new). You aren't just learning what the GM has prepped, because the players will make decisions that result in things emerging the GM never thought of, and the dice too will cause unexpected things to emerge.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't have an example of how you use notes in your game to enhance play? I find that hard to believe.

I can describe the process in general terms. I have ADD and my memory just doesn't work like that. I've always had a lot of trouble coming up with specific examples of things when put on the spot.

How do notes facilitate game play? In part by providing a framework of the world that the players can then easily use to build their story on. They can pick and choose which parts to use in the pursuit of their goals and desires, rather than have to come up with all or nearly all of it themselves.

Protagonism is a term that should be treated much like living world, or sandbox, or even immersion, in that they are goals for play that can be accomplished many ways in many different systems. No one has stolen anything as far as I can tell. This is why I'd say that both OSR play and Blades are sandbox games, for example, even though they go about managing and accomplishing that playstyle very differently.

A protagonist is the central person in a story. In an RPG it would be the group. There's no real requirement for such play to focus on dramatic needs to make play protagonistic. They just need to be the primary characters of the story. Yet there are those here who say that for play to be protagonistic, it has to focus on the dramatic needs of the players.

As for the GM notes thing, I'm going to fall on the side of lets just talk about the actual sausage, not what brand name it is. Enough people on what you probably feel is the 'other side' of this conversation make copious use of GM notes in many games they run (me, @pemerton, @Ovinomancer ) that I don't think your accusation of pejorative term use really carries all that much water here. I often have bloody books worth of GM notes for OSR games I run, and I enjoy making them, so I'm obviously not against them. What is interesting is discussing what kind of notes different people make, what kind of content they generate, and how they feel that impacts the gaming experience at their tables.

There are a lot of terms which are only really offensive to minorities. Yet those are still insulting and racist. That you guys use these things and don't feel the insult, doesn't cause it to cease to exist. Enough people on this side feel it's pejorative to make it so.

 

[Fenris-77]

Would you prefer GM scribbles? GM planning? GM back of an Applebee's napkin? GM drippings of genius? IDK, throw out some variants. I thought GM notes was pretty vanilla, as is playing to find out what's in the GM notes. I have notes, and the players, during play, often find out what's in them, and to some extent are even playing to find out what's in them because what's in them is at least the seed(s) of the solution to whatever action is at hand. The pejorative part is all in the treatment and deployment of those notes.

You can have multiple protagonists, I don't know why you're hung up on that. I don't know that protagonist play needs to focus on dramatic need either. That's one reading, but not one I'm completely happy with. I think a stable definition there would cast a wider net in terms of what a GM can do do implement and foster the idea. (Same with dramatic needs, frankly, lots of ways to get there to, and lots of degrees to which it can be used or thought to be important).

I have pretty significant ADD too, so I feel ya there. I wasn't capable of summoning detail from a game session afterwards until I started taking copious notes. It's a pain sometimes in play, but the value to me has been high. YMMV, of course.

 

[Maxperson]

Would you prefer GM scribbles? GM planning? GM back of an Applebee's napkin? GM drippings of genius? IDK, throw out some variants. I thought GM notes was pretty vanilla, as is playing to find out what's in the GM notes. I have notes, and the players, during play, often find out what's in them, and to some extent are even playing to find out what's in them because what's in them is at least the seed(s) of the solution to whatever action is at hand. The pejorative part is all in the treatment and deployment of those notes.

If it's not the purpose of their game play, then they are not playing to find out what's in them. Their purpose determines why they are playing. For instance, I don't care what is specifically in your notes. When I play D&D, I'm "playing to achieve the goals I set forth for my PC." Your notes are there for me to use in the pursuit of why I am playing the game or to ignore if I'm not interested in them.

You can have multiple protagonists,

I agree.

I don't know that protagonist play needs to focus on dramatic need either. That's one reading, but not one I'm completely happy with.

I agree with that as well.

I think a stable definition there would cast a wider net in terms of what a GM can do do implement and foster the idea. (Same with dramatic needs, frankly, lots of ways to get there to, and lots of degrees to which it can be used or thought to be important).

A stable definition would be nice, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I have pretty significant ADD too, so I feel ya there. I wasn't capable of summoning detail from a game session afterwards until I started taking copious notes. It's a pain sometimes in play, but the value to me has been high. YMMV, of course.

I don't detail out my games to the same degree as many on "my side" of things here. I don't have time. As a result I have to do a lot of improv play, which fortunately I'm very good at. By the end of the session I will have forgotten most of the small details and I'm not going to hold up the game so that I can write detailed notes.

 

[cmad1977]

Most of my notes are written post game as a response to the characters actions.