I was there. I can tell you how the players learned about the shaft: I told them! And I can tell you how I learned about it: I read the module. (Double Adventure 1, Shadows)pemerton said:How did the players in my Classic Traveller game learn that, in the complex their PCs were exploring, there was a nearly 100 metre deep shaft with a great pendulum swinging in it? Because I told them. How did I know? Because I read it in the module.
How do the players in your game learn about the setting that you as GM have created?
No, because they decided to go into the complex in the first place, and then they decided to examine the complex enough, to make choices that eventually led them to that deep meter shaft. And there are two approaches here: one in which you have a model in your mind of the complex and the players are genuinely exploring a space (however fictional) with clear parameters that matter, versus you just decide there is a shaft. Most games and campaigns are going to lean toward one or the other of these (and there will certainly be blending-----as I pointed out, sometimes the GM never even thinks if there ought to be a shaft, and the players asking about it will cause him or her to conclude 'yes, there ought to be one here'. Again, what you are doing here is zooming in so much we only see the binary of players ask what they see, the GM tells them....but anyone who has played an RPG knows the process is so much more organic and involved than that, and what drives the GMs 'decision' is going to be predicated on things like choices the players have made, what details the GM has established about the world, what ways the system constrains the GM's choices, etc.
The fact that the players decided to have their PCs enter the complex doesn't change anything about the truth of the above paragraph. The fact that they declared actions for their PCs that obliged me to tell them about the pendulum in the deep shaft doesn't change anything about the above paragraph, other than to explain why I told them.
There is no "model in my mind of a space": There's a map and some words. What do the shadows look like in the shaft? I have no idea, because the words don't tell me and I don't know how to work that out even if enough detail were provided to do so, which I don't think it is. And if that detail were provided, that's just more authorship.
The players are not genuinely exploring a place. They were sitting in a living room. They are genuinely learning what it is that Marc Miller made up 40 or so years ago.
The difference between me having a map and module text that describes the shaft, compared to just making it up on the spot, is part of the whole point of this thread ie what is the point of the GM's notes? So I don't know why you think I'm not aware it makes a difference to play. But an obvious part of the difference is that I tell the players stuff that's in the notes. In this particular context, that's what they're for.