What is the point of GM's notes?

[Manbearcat]

Well, you have my apology; I had no intention of switching your word's form.

I still think your statement is so vague as to be meaningless in revealing process of play, though, regardless of how you use "naturally." But that's fine as we never seem to agree on much.

You SUCK!

You're doing this wrong!

Apologies are for the weak. We do not train to be weak apologizers in this dojo!

This is where you come back and say "NO, MY WORDS!"

 

[Maxperson]

This is where you come back and say "NO, MY WORDS!"

It's much more effective if you come back with, "NO, MY SWORD!"

 

[Maxperson]

Well, you have my apology; I had no intention of switching your word's form.

I still think your statement is so vague as to be meaningless in revealing process of play, though, regardless of how you use "naturally." But that's fine as we never seem to agree on much.

I don't find it to be meaningless or useless in play, so...

If a player tells me, "I get up and go outside the inn and see if I can see where the shifty fellow went," I am constrained by his action and the social contract not to say something like, "You go upstairs and go to sleep." or a million other non-responsive narrations. I have to narrate what the player tells me that he wants to do or something that follows naturally from his declaration and the situation at hand. It's very constraining.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The first paragraph ( (a) - (d) aspect) and the downstream consequences of my above post is relevant here:



When 5e initially came out, I had a hugely prolific and revealing (as to the dizzying application of the (a) - (d) matrix above by GMs on a case by case basis...which led to the absolute absence of mediation consensus on pretty much every scenario we talked about...which tells you there wasn't a "inferable by first principles" or intuitive thing happening under the hood) post entitled DC 30 or DC 35? I think a lot of people here engaged with that. It was enormously instructive. Unfortunately, the forum ate it.

And it wasn't just the all over the map collage of (a) - (d) matrix deployment above as the process to arrive at DCs...but it was the significant discrepancy in DC handling period (when you consider stepping up or stepping back a DC creates a 25 % spread on action resolution results!)!

The saving grace that people will rely upon is the accretion of data over the course of years of play under a GM. This will help to normalize the process of DC adjudication and the output of that adjudication. But it will never ensure it and outright remove the incidence of action resolution events that feel "Deprotagonizing." Going from 5 times per session out of 50 moments of action resolution is only a 10 % incidence of feeling/being "Deprotagonized." Reducing that to only 1 per session is a dramatic improvement. But 1 is not nothing and due to the way human's catalogue "losses" vs "wins", even that 1 incidence will have a disproportionate impact cognitively and emotionally on the player involved.

Its a greater than Herculean effort to reduce those incidences to 0...I'm not sure its possible.

How does deciding on the DC work differently within indie games?
Are players part of the process of deciding or is it GM decides/notes?

 

[Aldarc]

This is where I am saying you are wrong. I don't have a good word for it, but I do view the way I run the game as playing the living world. It isn't just a goal. The goal is to make it come alive.

...as a living world. I think that you prefer viewing how you run the game in terms of its aesthetical ends rather than its aromantic nitty gritty process. If you don't have a good word for it, then I would advise trying to come up with one, because "living world" isn't cutting the mustard.

But the way you make it come alive is by treating the NPCs as living characters (as pieces in the setting with volition who act when they decide). Again, maybe I am not conveying this well. For me that wandering major encounter section I quoted really crystalized this concept for me. And it is the same for all other living elements of the setting (its sects, its rulers, etc).

I can't see how imagining the NPCs as characters with personal volitions and motives of their own is distinctly "living world." This falls fairly squarely in how one of the chief duties of GMing is commonly described - i.e., controlling and giving life to the NPCs - in more bog standard TTRPG play. Making the pieces move on the board is basically just "leveling-up" the pre-existing toolkit for GMs.

Listening to you describe your "living world process," I (and likely others) feel about like Ricky Gervais listening to Sir Ian McKellen in Extras describing how he can act so well.

But I get it. You want a world that fees vibrant, organic, and alive. You want a world that feels like it's in motion independent of the PCs. However, it is abundantly clear to me that the "living world" is an aesthetic goal of play rather than the actual process of how it unfolds. I think it's fine to say "the GM decides what's believable." They may be deciding based upon the constraints of their ideas in a given moment, their notes, their preconceptions of "realism" or the NPCs, or the actions of the PCs. The wholistic approach to describe what's fundamentally going on isn't "living world," but, rather, "the GM decides (based upon their desire to cultivate a particular aesthetic of play)." There is nothing wrong with this, as I and others who have also run sandbox games have told you numerous times before. Even if "living world" helps you understand what you do, I just don't think that mystifying "living world" helps anything for everyone, as evidenced by @Campbell's own experiences.

 

[Manbearcat]

How does deciding on the DC work differently within indie games?
Are players part of the process of deciding or is it GM decides/notes?

Different games handle it differently.

4e (basically "indie" D&D)

* "Subjective" Core Action Resolution means the DCs are codified, player-facing, scale with the level of the PCs, and are mathematically encoded to achieve a particular spread of results in action resolution (eg - a 67 - 75 % hit rate in combat). So if your PCs are level 5, your Easy/Medium/Hard DC will be x, y, z. Skill Challenges are codified to tell the GM what DCs are involved (eg a level 5, Complexity 1 Skill Challenge will require 4 * Medium DC obstacles to be overcome). Stunting/Hazards/Traps works the same. Monster math (HP, AC, Fort/Ref/Will, Damage) scales with PC level the same way (with adjustments based on type/role).

Powered By the Apocalypse

* Just like 4e, PBtA DCs are a subjective spread of numbers (eg, there is no DC based on of-world obstacle) built to create a mathematical distribution of results (a bell curve). However, due to the maths in PBtA games, they don't change at all (unlike 4e where the numbers aggressively move up, but the % chances are roughly the same, regardless of level). Roll 2d6 + modifier and compare:

6 or less = Mark xp and GM makes a Move against you (typically Hard Move)
7-9 = Success w/ Cost/Complication/Hard Choice (eg you get what you want but GM makes a Soft Move against you)
10+ = You get what you want

Forged in the Dark

* Like PBta but this is a dice pool game that includes the same spread but also a critical success and there is Position and Effect. Throw you pool and compare:

1-3 = Bad outcome. Things go poorly. You probably don’t achieve your goal and you suffer complications, too.
4-5 = Partial success. You do what you were trying to do, but there are consequences: trouble, harm, reduced effect, etc
6 = Full success. Things go well. If you roll more than one 6, it’s a critical success—you gain a boon/advantage.

Then you have Position. Position is how dangerous or troublesome an action might be. If things go wrong, it tells you how wrong (and that scales). Position is Desperate (mark xp if you make an Action Roll w/ Controlled Position), Risky (normal), Controlled (danger/complications reduced). Position is determined by (a) the situational circumstance for the danger/trouble involved (look at it like Normal/Advantage/Disadvantage in 4e/5e), (b) a prior roll/complication (Position opens at Risky unless (i) you've got a complication due to a prior Action Roll and that complication is worse Position or (ii) some other aspect of system, eg Devil's Bargain, has been leveraged to increase the danger/threat

Effect is about Assessing the Factors involved in the situation of the Action Roll; Tier, Scale, Potency, Magnitude (for supernatural). If it tilts away from you or in your favor, you go from the default Standard to Limited/Great. Just like with Position, there are either ways this can be changed by player actions/resource expenditure or Costs/Boons in prior Action Rolls.

Mouse Guard

* Dice pool game like FitD. Assemble your pool and throw. Get a number off successes that equal or exceed the game's DC (Ob) and you succeed.

Two of the ways the GM sets Obstacle numbers similarly to how Effect is handled in FitD games; (1) Assessing Factors for a Skill in the Skill list and (2) by Assessing Factors in the Seasons and Territories chapters. Then there are versus/contests and that is determined by a roll of the dice from another player or the GM. DCs in this game scale similar to 5e but are called Ob (Obstacle). Roughly; Ob 1 = easy, Ob 2 = medium, Ob 3 = hard, Ob 4 = very hard, Ob 5 = nearly impossible.


There are plenty of other ways (Torchbearer is kindred to Mouse Guard with subtle difference), but that is all I have for now.

The key thing that all these games share is (a) follow the rules, (b) encoded procedure/maths for setting difficulty and determining success/complication/failure and fallout, (c) everything is player/table-facing.

They all have varying other tech/procedures (eg Blades gives players a ton of capability to manipulate Position and Effect and adjust their dice pool via resources to martial and moves to make).

 

[Lanefan]

GM says yes?

GM says no?

GM says roll the dice but due to their heavy mediation requirements, my chances of realizing my intent could be 50 % likely or 150 % more likely at 75 % (because GM a might choose Hard DC [...]

I misread the bolded word as "medication" on first pass...

 

[AnotherGuy]

The key thing that all these games share is (a) follow the rules, (b) encoded procedure/maths for setting difficulty and determining success/complication/failure and fallout, (c) everything is player/table-facing.

Thanks MBC
I just want to touch on 2 of these for now

(a) follow the rules - by including this here, I'd suspect that your thinking is that rules are not followed (or generally not followed) within D&D OR that there are no rules. Is this correct?
(c) player facing/table-facing - What do you mean by such a phrase? DC's are revealed to the player?

 

[AnotherGuy]

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?

I do not have a specific game in mind, I was speaking in the broadest of sense to perhaps suss out a difference amongst the various participants here with regards to a Living World.

My thinking was, that the party declares an action or a series of actions which may affect x faction directly or indirectly. X faction may be an offline faction - using the @Manbearcat's terminology or secret backstory using @pemerton's.
In the traditional game, the GM having understanding of x faction and the authorial authority, without a mechanic, narrates a hard move by x faction thus bringing consequence to the party's action/s, thus enforcing the idea of the Living World.

In an indie game, from my limited understanding the GM can only bring about such force if the mechanic via the die rolls allowed for it OR the force is limited, whereas in the above example the GM is only limited in terms of the setting's internal consistency. For an indie game the Living World lives so long as the die say so. Again, I'm speaking in the broadest sense with regards to an indie game, there are a multitude of indie games with various levers and mechanics which allow for various levels of GM authorial authority.

 

[Manbearcat]

Thanks MBC
I just want to touch on 2 of these for now

(a) follow the rules - by including this here, I'd suspect that your thinking is that rules are not followed (or generally not followed) within D&D OR that there are no rules. Is this correct?
(c) player facing/table-facing - What do you mean by such a phrase? DC's are revealed to the player?

You bet!

On D&D and rules:

There are many, many ways to play D&D (as we all know and we've probably exhaustively gone over them all in this thread). In D&D, the math works like this in terms of Follow the Rules (go back to my post and you can call this the Assessing Factors when it comes to Rules - like establishing Effect in Blades and setting Ob in MG). Play Priorities with respect to rules:

a) Skilled Play Priority (follow the rules)

b) Play to Find Out (What Happens) Priority (follow the rules)

c) GM Storyteller/AP Priority (don't follow/ignore the rules if they get in the way of "preferred/required story outcomes" or "fun")

On player/table-facing:

a) If the DCs to use and/or process for determining them are codified and the discussion of them is transparent at the table such that they are revealed and dice are rolled out in the open, this is player/table-facing.

b) If the DCs to use and/or process for determining them are not codified and/or the discussion of them at the table is either nonexistent or opaque and/or the dice are rolled in secret, this is GM-facing.

---

So, for instance. A game that features Skilled Play + Play to Find Out Priority + Table Facing will play/feel very different from a game that features GM Storyteller/AP Priority + GM-Facing.