What is the point of GM's notes?

[hawkeyefan]

As I understand it, the Living Word in the traditional form of play, doesn't require a bad roll for the GM to introduce consequences.
In many indie games, it appears that the Living part of the world sometimes requires a mechanic to drive such consequences. i.e. for the GM to author stuff in.

EDIT: Therefore, sometimes the mechanic (the results of the dice) may not allow for consequences, which you normally would expect in a Living World. Ofcourse, in defense of the mechanic, one could always create reasons/explanations why consequence did not come to exist.

Well it depends on what you mean. A living world would be one in which I'd expect consequences for actions. And that things can take place without the PCs' direct involvement.

Some games may have consequences on a roll, but I don't think that those games ONLY allow for consequences related to a roll.

Did you have a specific game in mind?

 

[Bedrockgames]

You've said in this thread that you like to run a lot of investigative adventures. Do they not take place in a sandbox? Or a living world?

Usually they do not; sone investigations have a living adventure element but when I run these I do tend to either think of them as their own adventure structures or, sometimes, as a limited sandbox

 

[Lanefan]

To zoom in here, because this is a point of disagreement between us, I'm not sure what value would be gained by expanding the definition of protagonist play to something other than focusing on the dramatic needs of the character.

What about the dramatic needs of the party as a whole? In my view those (should, always!) outweigh the dramatic needs of any one character; though at times there may be overlap between one and the other.

The party - singular - is the protagonist - singular.

Sure, individual characters have their own dramas going on underneath it all, and that's fine; but the primary dramatic focus is getting the Ring to Mordor, not Aragorn sorting out his love life.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You've said in this thread that you like to run a lot of investigative adventures. Do they not take place in a sandbox? Or a living world?

Here's the thing.....Sandbox and Living Worlds are Nouns. I know many folks have taken Sandbox as an Adjective to describe a type of game.

I'm looking for your Verbs. How do you do what you do? You shoot down any actual verbs suggested in favor of describing your technique with Nouns and then tell others they're equivocating. As if you can't grasp the idea that making believe can be described as "authoring". And now I'm silly? Okay.

living world is a concept, an approach. Sandbox is an adventure structure and campaign structure. In terms of verbs, I am not sure I see what you hope to discover here. In terms of what the GM does? I probably wouldn’t reduce it to one verb. Again I find this kind of analysis very reductive. If I were to offer verbs they would be things like facilitate, referee, design, judge, etc. but it wouldn’t be just one thing

 

[Bedrockgames]

Let's go with your last session. What happened in it? What kinds of GMing decisions did it require? What did the players do? I don't need a play by play, but a few examples would be great.

i posted that information on my previous session earlier in the thread (with notes, maps, etc). Though as I pointed out, that wasn’t a strict sandbox. I was taking something of a living adventure approach but they were trying to solve a mystery. Still it does get into procedures, techniques, how npcs are managed, etc

also, an FYI: I am happy to have a conversation. Not here to answer a set of demands or strong of questions. I have made an effort to provide information when asked. But posts like the one above (in its entirety) feels like you are asking me to dance for you: especially when these are questions I have answered

 

[prabe]

What about the dramatic needs of the party as a whole? In my view those (should, always!) outweigh the dramatic needs of any one character; though at times there may be overlap between one and the other.

The party - singular - is the protagonist - singular.

Sure, individual characters have their own dramas going on underneath it all, and that's fine; but the primary dramatic focus is getting the Ring to Mordor, not Aragorn sorting out his love life.

This seems like a bit of a false dichotomy. It's possible to have multiple story-threads going at a time at a TRPG table. It's just a matter of not letting anything important get too far out of focus--and it's not just the GM's responsibility, IMO.

 

[Maxperson]

What this is missing is that there is a mechanic present in the so-called "living world" -- the GM decides that it is so. This mechanic, which is the core mechanic of many games, is so often overlooked because it's so omnipresent in these games.

1) Characters do action A.
2) The GM applies the mechanic of GM deciding, and assigns consequences because he believes this action has failed in some way and so deserves a consequence.
3) GM narrates the consequence.

When you put this against games that require an explicitly stated mechanic, the process loop looks similar. The real difference is that in the above, the GM can decide about consequences now or later -- a past action can be deemed to have consequences not thought of at the time because it fits the GM's new idea. Plus, all of this gets obfuscated a good bit, as the reason for a consequence is not always, possibly rarely, known by the players. Good play in this approach, in my opinion, would be that the players usually know why, and always can and usually do find out. Poor play is when the players cannot find out why on a regular basis. I also think the danger here is when consequences are not well forshadowed, because this leads to players feeling like they have no understanding of what's at stake and aren't making meaningful choices -- they're just guessing.

Numbers 2 and 3 aren't entirely correct.

With number 2, the consequence naturally evolves from the results of an action. Success or failure are not really relevant other than to possibly help inform the DM on which way it should go.

With number 3, the narration isn't usually immediate. The whole point is to make the world feel alive(hence living world) via events happening outside of the PCs vision.

The process as you describe it above can happen, but it would have nothing to do with a living world.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What about the dramatic needs of the party as a whole? In my view those (should, always!) outweigh the dramatic needs of any one character; though at times there may be overlap between one and the other.

The party - singular - is the protagonist - singular.

Sure, individual characters have their own dramas going on underneath it all, and that's fine; but the primary dramatic focus is getting the Ring to Mordor, not Aragorn sorting out his love life.

Can you describe a party dramaric need, as opposed to a party goal?

 

[Lanefan]

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.

The problem with deconstructive analysis, be it here or of any other art form, is that when boiled down it's an attempt to explain art using science; and while doing this might produce some interesting discussion along the way, in the end any such analysis is doomed to fail under the weight of all the non-quantifyable intangibles involved.

 

[Lanefan]

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

They do want the airwaves...