What is the point of GM's notes?

[Campbell]

you are putting words in our mouths. Obviously these things are created. I think what we are saying is there is an imaginary playing field and there is more going on than just the GM making things up (and there is more than simply what is happening in that moment of play: setting is established, history is established, etc. You are not 100% free to have your character behave and do whatever. The character may be fictional but they exist in the sense that you have established things about them that shape future behavior. For example the hulk doesn’t exist, but we have an agreed upon sense of what the hulk looks like, what happens when he gets angry, and what his personality is. further it isn’t simple creative choices about ‘the fiction’. Often we are acting through life’s in play (even the GM is doing so). And there are rules mediating the process

I am not trying to our words in anyone's mouth. I am saying who I genuinely see things. I have seen you and others in this thread use language that seems to erase the creative act. I have also seen what I view as a resistance to move past just the experience of play.

Of course the creative act is constrained, but there is not any point in which the setting/world or characters are fully formed things we do not have to make any creative decisions about. The creative work is never complete. The animus for all of it is done by humans living in meat space. In the course of running RPGs (including sandbox games) I find that no matter how well prepared I am constantly making creative decisions. There are obvious constraints and principles of play to consider, but that does not erase the creative work that is a constant feature of play even if we do not think about it or it comes naturally. Part of our analysis should involve the things we are subconsciously doing as part of the process of play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am not trying to our words in anyone's mouth. I am saying who I genuinely see things. I have seen you and others in this thread use language that seems to erase the creative act. I have also seen what I view as a resistance to move past just the experience of play.

And you guys use language that tries to erase the role of the setting, the existing of the living world concept. I mean I don't think any of us deny there are creative acts here. We are saying, at least when it comes to living worlds, your descriptions are just not an accurate account of what is going on.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Of course the creative act is constrained, but there is not any point in which the setting/world or characters are fully formed things we do not have to make any creative decisions about. The creative work is never complete. The animus for all of it is done by humans living in meat space. In the course of running RPGs (including sandbox games) I find that no matter how well prepared I am constantly making creative decisions. There are obvious constraints and principles of play to consider, but that does not erase the creative work that is a constant feature of play even if we do not think about it or it comes naturally. Part of our analysis should involve the things we are subconsciously doing as part of the process of play.

But that creative work also doesn't erase the setting. That you are adding to it, and elaborating, doesn't change the fact that if you run Ravenloft, you are working with a setting that has parameters, an internal logic, a history etc (albeit more malleable than Forgotten Realms or HARN). No one here would suggest Ravenloft truly exists, but you are operating on the model of Ravenloft when you run the setting (and that matters: you can't just say 'its all active creation-its all 'the fiction'). The characters are imaginary pieces moving in the imaginary model of ravenloft. That conceit is very important for running certain kinds of RPGs. You take away that conceit (as you and pemerton's argument seem to) and you effectively deny this stye of play even exists (or at the least you say it is built on an illusion). I am sorry but to me this is just like when sandbox people do things like argue narrative RPGS are not RPGs. It is an argument couched as analysis that is really a playstyle argument.

 

[Aldarc]

And you guys use language that tries to erase the role of the setting, the existing of the living world concept. I mean I don't think any of us deny there are creative acts here. We are saying, at least when it comes to living worlds, your descriptions are just not an accurate account of what is going on.

Alternatively, one could say that you're just trying to deify your living world concept and pretend that it has some sort of substantial non-fictive ontological reality that halts any further attempts at deconstructive analysis. You say that these descriptions are not accurate, but you're barely able to accurately describe what you do in your living world concept without appealing to vague and generic assertions about a living world and/or marketing-speak evocative language. If you're tired of others not getting it, then you're gonna need to actually put far more effort into explaining the play process than you put into complaining about how others are describing it.

 

[Campbell]

When I spoke of RPG play as a shared illusion we all maintain that was not pointed at any given way to play them. I mean all RPGs played in all ways. That in many ways we are all magicians trying to fool each other so that imaginary things feel real. This is pretty much how I view all media. If you feel I'm wrong about that please convince me otherwise.

 

[prabe]

Fundamentally what we disagree on is the concept that play is an act of active creation. I do not believe that anyone is really experiencing what their character experiences or that fantasy worlds have an independent existence in anyone's minds. Actually I know that they do not and it is always something I am mindful of. We may want to feel like we are experiencing that imaginary situation, but it is a shared illusion maintained through a dramatic amount of effort on everyone's parts. Perception is not reality no matter how we might wish it to be so.

I contend that even the simple act of playing a character is an actively creative act throughout every moment of play. That there is no real version of the character that I am channeling or portraying. I am not making decisions as Ariel Matan when I play him. I am making decision for him. I want to feel like I am literally experiencing what he does, but I am not. I am sitting around a table or on a Zoom call with a group of friends and we are having a conversation where we construct a shared illusion of an imaginary place and time. Our perception, our shared illusion, and the reality are all very different things.

Yes, very much this.

I'm pretty sure the fact that I run games very much with a GM-authored setting, but still consider the players as co-creators (or co-authors) of the story that emerges in-game, and consider that story very much to be about the PCs, and to be very much about the PCs' goals and needs, is why I have in the past gotten very bristly when other posters have seemed to me to imply that the play in the games I run boiled down to the players finding out what I already knew. It seems reasonable that some posters who seem to run similarly to me might be feeling similarly provoked by similar language, here.

What I am interested in talking about when it comes to RPGs is how we really construct that shared illusion, what the conversation looks like at the table, and how that impacts our experience of the shared illusion. There are a significant number of people who want to only speak to the experience of that shared illusion and want to maintain their experience of it. I see that as a fundamentally limited conversation because it will never teach us how to do this thing or even acknowledge that how we actually do this thing matters a great deal.

That's a fair desire, and I suspect it's one that isn't met much in these threads.

At the tables I DM, I construct the setting, because I find it easier for me to sustain the illusion in play that way. The players (best I can tell) engage: They ask questions, some of which I haven't previously considered, and I answer them. Their characters do stuff like cast legend lore on a thing that directly connects to a Great Old One, and I take a few minutes to write this:

Spoiler

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba we accept you one of us
gabbagabba you accept us into yourself
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba coming soon to a world near you
gabbagabba ending soon on a world with you
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba mountains won't stay green for long
gabbagabba talking all of your words at the same time
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

And the players decide what their characters do with that information.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, very much this.

I'm pretty sure the fact that I run games very much with a GM-authored setting, but still consider the players as co-creators (or co-authors) of the story that emerges in-game, and consider that story very much to be about the PCs, and to be very much about the PCs' goals and needs, is why I have in the past gotten very bristly when other posters have seemed to me to imply that the play in the games I run boiled down to the players finding out what I already knew. It seems reasonable that some posters who seem to run similarly to me might be feeling similarly provoked by similar language, here.

This. Yep.

That's a fair desire, and I suspect it's one that isn't met much in these threads.

At the tables I DM, I construct the setting, because I find it easier for me to sustain the illusion in play that way. The players (best I can tell) engage: They ask questions, some of which I haven't previously considered, and I answer them. Their characters do stuff like cast legend lore on a thing that directly connects to a Great Old One, and I take a few minutes to write this:

Spoiler

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba we accept you one of us
gabbagabba you accept us into yourself
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba coming soon to a world near you
gabbagabba ending soon on a world with you
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabba mountains won't stay green for long
gabbagabba talking all of your words at the same time
gabbagabbahey
gabbagabbahey

And the players decide what their characters do with that information.

Love that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Alternatively, one could say that you're just trying to deify your living world concept and pretend that it has some sort of substantial non-fictive ontological reality that halts any further attempts at deconstructive analysis. You say that these descriptions are not accurate, but you're barely able to accurately describe what you do in your living world concept without appealing to vague and generic assertions about a living world and/or marketing-speak evocative language. If you're tired of others not getting it, then you're gonna need to actually put far more effort into explaining the play process than you put into complaining about how others are describing it.

Except 95% of people I talk to 'get it'. This is a small group of posters on a thread who say they don't (and I am not sure that is even the case, I am sure some here get it but reject our claims). And we have gone into detail, without being vague. We have taken it step by step, we've highlighted how you manage things like NPCs and groups in play, the kind of logic and thinking that goes into the GM making decisions about things, the kind of fidelity that is maintained with the background setting, explained how the GM needs to be open to things that the players propose that he or she hadn't planned in advance. I think perhaps what you want is something like the binary Pemerton keeps pointing to, but as I have explained, that is not a good place to put our focus because you miss out on the organic and open process of exchange. There is an ongoing exchange of the players saying what they try, the GM saying what happens or what they see. But that doesn't capture the fullness of the process and it is a process governed by all the things we've been trying to tell you about. Look, I defined what a living world was (I think pretty clearly) and I think in a way that doesn't obfuscate or 'deify'. You keep getting hung up on that. I don't know why you do. No one is saying we are inhabiting real worlds, we are saying there is an imagined place, and that place can be modeled by the GM, and it can be run as a living world (as I defined it) where the players actions and choices not only matter a great deal, but ultimately become the engine of the sandbox.

 

[prabe]

Love that.

Apparently the Ramones are a Great Old One on my world. That ... wasn't something I anticipated when I started writing it up.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Part of our analysis should involve the things we are subconsciously doing as part of the process of play.

I think what we are saying is make it conscious. If you are going to add something in as a GM tether it to the pieces in the living world, constrain it by the history of the campaign to this point, by the details of the setting you've established (or as extensions of that---obviously this last point could vary depending on the style of living world one is running). If you are not actively modeling the setting in your head and your notes, modeling the pieces moving on the board (and maintaining fidelity to them) then your living world will slip away. A lot of it is about restraining what kind of choices you make as a GM, cultivating a sense of openness and fairness, while also trying to imagine these things in your head and in your notes moving around the setting as described