What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

There is no objective model of Ravenloft which answers the question where should this character be right now, and what is she doing? That has to be decided.

Ravenloft is probably not serviceable here simply because its nature makes it amorphous (and one could argue that a character need not be in any one place at the whim of the mists), but if you take a typical setting, I would disagree somewhat here. Granted I can't look at a map of my world and say "Bronze Master must be here". However I can look at a map of my world once Bronze master is in play and say "he can only have reached these places". Further I can look at a map of the setting and narrow down locations he is likely to be based on the setting details, what is on the map, and what I know about Bronze master. These are all details I've created. I am not denying the act of creation. But I am saying it isn't as simple as "living world doesn't exist objectively" and "living world exists objectively" something is clearly being modeled that can place objective parameters on things and can be used as a kind of primitive (or not so primitive depending on your viewpoint) simulation of a setting. Will every GM look at that map and reach the same conclusions? No, but it also isn't arbitrary: there are places noted on the map where Bronze Master resides, where he is known to travel, and there are even tables for helping determine if he shows up in a particular place (but importantly those tables would not be allowed to violate things like distance if he were already established to have been somewhere else, and getting to the location in question is too far).

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand how this process of the players asking questions from you, or otherwise prompting you to share this sort of information with them, does not count as you communicating to them your conception of the fiction.

That makes it sound as though the fiction is mostly-mine, and the experience feels like entirely-ours. It appears to miss the possibility that I don't know that I know the answer to a given question before asked (which is why I've talked about free-writing fiction as a comparison).

I don't understand why you assert the bolded bit.

I think it's very common in RPGing for the GM to not know an answer to a question before it is asked. The GM then makes up an answer, having regard to whatever constraints the system and the context require. For instance, in my most recent Traveller session the PCs travelled to a gas giant moon that they knew to have been of interest to psionically-inclined aliens 2 billion years ago. I therefore had to narrate something about the moon. Here's how I did that:

Looking at the information I had generated for this moon - an orbit barely more than 100,000 km above a small gas giant, with a rapid orbital period - suggested severe "tides" that would make it highly volcanic. I had also generated a population in the neighbourhood of 10,000 people. So I explained to the players that the moon is populated by miners engaged in mineral-extraction-from-magma operations, a bit like oil wells but using complex ceramic structures.

I didn't know this in advance. I made it up on the spot. And then told the players. There was probably some back-and-forth in that - one of the players is an engineer who sometimes winces at my "science" - but the quoted passage gives the gist.

In the same session, one of the PCs, Alissa, was put on trial by the NPC Toru von Taxiwan. The trial was being held inside a pinnace - a small spacefaring vessel with capacity for 8 passengers/crew. Here's how that unfolded:

I said that Toru stood at the bridge of the pinnace while the others (3 NPCs, Bobby and Alissa) sat on the couches. Alissa's player then asked (as Alissa) to be allowed to speak in her defence. So she went to the bridge while Toru went to the couches.

The description began with me. But it was Alissa's player who established that Alissa went to the bridge when she spoke in her defence, after having first established that she could speak in her defence. I went along with all of this as GM: I had no prior conception of how a Taxiwanian trial would proceed.

The bit about the moon I would count as an instance of the players learning what is in the GM's notes. The bit about the trial I would not.

It seems to ignore that the players can change the fiction, or that they can change my conception of the fiction (which might be two different things, or they might not).

Obviously the players in my Traveller game might change the fiction, in the sense that (eg) they could use their starship beam lasers to destroy some or even all of the mining structures. (They probably can't change the orbit or volcanic character of the moon). In the case of the trial they did change the fiction - the player had his PC blow everyone else up with a concealed grenade. This was in fact why he wanted to establish that he went to the front of the pinnace.

But changing the established fiction (which I think is what you mean - as opposed to adding to it as happened in the play of the trial) requires the fiction to be established. And that has to come from someone.

A possibly unrelated question: From where you are, how much difference do you see between the posters here who have advocated strongly for a "living world" and my self-description?

I find it hard to tell. I get the feeling that your play might be similar to @Maxperson's, though I think you are a bit more self-conscious about techniques. I think both of you are different from @Bedrockgames who is in turn, I think, different from @Emerikol. But those are just impressions formed on a very thin evidence base.

 

[pemerton]

Roleplay is not action declaration. Often there is no action being declared at all and no rolls involved, yet it shapes how play progresses.

I don't understand this. What do you mean by action declaration. I mean a player saying what his/her PC does - if what his/her PC does is speak some words, then often that just takes the form of the player speaking those words as if s/he were the character.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If you were GMing a game of subversives and insurrectionists in the early 20th century Balkans, would you extrapolate from the assassination of the Archduke to the death of many many millions of soldiers across Europe and its near neighbours, and the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Russian governments?

This is well outside my area of interest (I've read a few books on WWI, and taken a survey course, but this isn't something I've developed a lot of deep knowledge of). But that said, I think in cases like this, it is really hard to say because our knowledge of how things played out makes it pretty impossible to know how well one would predict perfectly what unfolded. And I can't therefore say what my extrapolation would be. I imagine someone with good knowledge of the various treaties and alliances, and the politics of the time, might be able to determine that this act would result in a more expansive conflict. But some events are obviously unique or firsts of their kind so it is going to be hard. It is like the saying, history doesn't repeat so much as rhyme. But this is the point of counterfactuals. Counterfactual was always looked down upon when I was a student (like biography). But I always enjoyed the thought exercise of counterfactual and the way biography personalizes history. I think with a game world it is more about using those kinds of historical patterns to figure out what you think is the likely course of events. On the macro scale I think this is sufficient. On the micro scale I think things are much easier because you are thinking about things like how NPCs you created would react to something like an assassination. With the macro level 'assassination of the duke', there are going to be a lot of unknowns as well so there is wiggle room for the GM saying okay these factors all point to this happening, but I think this X factor is going to shake things up. That is all fair. No one is saying the GM can't actively create in this process, the GM should be doing that, but if your goal is a living world, you are generally applying your best logic (and really since you are the source of the model, your best logic is all that is needed: the players will come to understand generally the rhythm and pattern of your choices I think---i.e. "in Brendan's world we can expect during farming offseason, especially one with a famine like this, that many of the local farmers will resort to banditry, now may be the ideal time for us to recruit men to build an army and attack the duke's forces". That sort of thinking is based on real world history, but it recurs enough in campaigns that it is a pattern the players can see (and it was a pattern that people living in history discerned in the real world).

What you can do in a game setting is use an event like this as a model (I draw on historical analogues all the time when I am trying to reason through how something will pan out: i.e. well when the Romans experienced a devastating plague it eventually led to the decline of the western empire). And if you are dealing with something like a political assassination, you do know things about your setting that will help guide you into dealing with the outcome. For example if you understand the political structure and who has executive control in that region, what law enforcement mechanisms are in place (i.e. is this a matter the sheriff and his constables handle, or is this for the patrolling inspector, or is it for the local general and his army to handle), etc you can determine things fairly logical, perhaps with some rolls to reflect unknowns.

 

[pemerton]

That fact does change the process of how they learned about it, though. Unless you simply told them in session 1 before they ever got to a complex, "Hey, there's a complex with a shaft in it. I read about it in the module," there are more steps in the process which you are ignoring here. You are ignoring that they first had to make choices and explore to the point where the reached the shaft and trigger your statement to them

What do you mean I'm ignoring it. I'm telling you what happened at the table! The PCs were in an alien complex. Their players said things to the effect of Now we check out what's over there. And I told them about the shaft with the giant pendulum.

That is a true description of what happened. I know. I was there!

 

[Bedrockgames]

There's no model. There's a description of an imagined place or situation. Which is then referred to to facilitate framing and, in some approaches to RPGing, resolution.

This is where we disagree. I think there is a model, and it is a product of the GMs notes, maps, NPC descriptions, the GMs thinking on what is going on in the campaign setting, etc. There is an image the GM is sustaining that he is meant to refer to when making decisions about the present situation. There isn't just the present. There is the surrounding imaginary world (and I think calling that a model is reasonable here. If you disagree that is fair. I can't force you to agree, and you can't force me to agree with you. I think we have both made pretty persuasive cases for our positions.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't understand this. What do you mean by action declaration. I mean a player saying what his/her PC does - if what his/her PC does is speak some words, then often that just takes the form of the player speaking those words as if s/he were the character.

In games that I've played, which include primarily D&D, actions are more mechanical in nature. I break the door down. I throw the rock at the window. I stab the goblin. Roleplaying, and yes I understand that simply playing a role is roleplaying, but in the context that I'm using it here, is interaction with NPCs. There may end up being mechanics involved in the form of skill rolls, but those don't have to happen and the player doesn't generally call for those.

 

[pemerton]

Ravenloft is probably not serviceable here simply because its nature makes it amorphous

I only mentioned it because you did.

There is knowledge. Again, no one is saying he is going off somewhere to verify the facts at a library how the faction would act. But he is checking against his own canon for the setting (which is part of the model: and that is going to include fact he has established in his head, facts he has written down, principles he has laid out governing how things work in the setting, in the subculture the organizations in question belong to, etc). If I make a faction and give them a clear set of motivations, goals, conflicts, etc; it is very easy for me to know how they will respond to certain actions taken by the party, and it is very easy to think through their response to make sure it is logical outgrowth of things existent in the sect

Again, this isn't just a decision. Maxperson has to consult his model of the setting to weigh and judge what courses of action would result from the assassination. Maybe he doesn't have information on that, and will make things up. Maybe though he has the Duke's family tree laid out, the line of succession, the political and legal structures described enough that he knows what the standard procedures are going to be when a duke is assassinated. He has to assess his setting details and his NPCs.

But this is the point of counterfactuals. Counterfactual was always looked down upon when I was a student (like biography). But I always enjoyed the thought exercise of counterfactual and the way biography personalizes history. I think with a game world it is more about using those kinds of historical patterns to figure out what you think is the likely course of events.

Are you asserting that there are unique solutions here, like 2+2 =4? I can't tell.

What I will add is that only one thing occurs to me is not the same thing as a unique solution. The point of a unique solution is that anyone who considers the parameters and reasons correctly will arrive at it.

This is well outside my area of interest (I've read a few books on WWI, and taken a survey course, but this isn't something I've developed a lot of deep knowledge of). But that said, I think in cases like this, it is really hard to say because our knowledge of how things played out makes it pretty impossible to know how well one would predict perfectly what unfolded. And I can't therefore say what my extrapolation would be. I imagine someone with good knowledge of the various treaties and alliances, and the politics of the time, might be able to determine that this act would result in a more expansive conflict.

I chose this example because it's low-hanging fruit: there is so much written about what was or was not inevitable in relation to the First World War that I think it amply demonstrates my point about a lack of unique solutions.

But the more general point is that there is almost always more than one plausible way things can unfold. Even with your factions - suppose that the party's action involves a lost kitten. How do we know that the faction leader doesn't have a soft spot for lost kittens, dating from his/her own childhood, which affects how s/he responds to what the PCs do?

The answer seems to be we know that because the GM hasn't thought of it. And when the players learn that the faction leader is as heartless towards lost kittens as s/he is to everyone and everything else, then the players are learning that fact about what the GM thought of.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I only mentioned it because you did.

I realize that. It just occurred to me Ravenloft is probably not the best example for me to have brought up because of its nature

 

[Bedrockgames]

Are you asserting that there are unique solutions here, like 2+2 =4? I can't tell.

No, more like there are better conclusions and worse conclusions about where he might be. And sometimes there will be 2+2=4 situations (you may know where is he is based on circumstance and setting details in some situations---or at least have a 99 percent level of certainty barring freak occurrences).