What is the point of GM's notes?

[Manbearcat]

It is possible that what you see as "circumnavigated" is my awareness that my experience with the game and playstyle is scant, and being well aware there are things--oceans--I do not know.

I don't mean circumnavigated as to "avoid." I actually meant you were extremely thorough (as in you went around the whole thing).

 

[Manbearcat]

@Emerikol

Forget habitation or immersion for a moment.

When you get to play a PC (which it seems is not often) and/or anecdotally from your players:

Is there a sense of "following" the PC?

Is there a sense of "leading/advocating for" the PC?

 

[Manbearcat]

@prabe

Final question. How do you think (as in the Fortify Downtime Action I've put in the Dungeon World game) having a limited resource you can spend for extra dice/bonuses/assurances that a 6- result won't stand, but which you have to manage because "tapping out of it" has a cost/imposes a character change, would affect your experience?

This is the Blades model I'm talking about here (and the Fortify rules for Downtime that you can use rather than Rest for HP, Recover for Debilities, Downtime Project, et al).

 

[Maxperson]

(Note--I don't know what you play, and I haven't ever that I know of played Moldvay.)

It's very moldy.

 

[prabe]

@prabe

Final question. How do you think (as in the Fortify Downtime Action I've put in the Dungeon World game) having a limited resource you can spend for extra dice/bonuses/assurances that a 6- result won't stand, but which you have to manage because "tapping out of it" has a cost/imposes a character change, would affect your experience?

This is the Blades model I'm talking about here (and the Fortify rules for Downtime that you can use rather than Rest for HP, Recover for Debilities, Downtime Project, et al).

I ... don't know. I think I'll need to experience it in play to see what difference it makes. We're already playing the characters a little recklessly (IMO) so I don't know how much more we'd push in that direction.

 

[Emerikol]

@Emerikol

Forget habitation or immersion for a moment.

When you get to play a PC (which it seems is not often) and/or anecdotally from your players:

Is there a sense of "following" the PC?

Is there a sense of "leading/advocating for" the PC?

I would definitely say that it's not following the PC.

Not sure about the second one. I see the players as thinking like their characters and having the same motives as their characters. Now if I as GM just give them exactly what they want the game will fall flat. So while they behave as if they want to defeat their enemies easily and to turn every battle into something simple, I'm sure subconsciously they know that would not be satisfying long term. Fortunately, as GM, through the NPC villains I make their life hard. They in turn never stop trying to win the fastest and easiest way they can. In the end it becomes a challenge because the NPCs don't cooperate.

I think in asking your questions though you may have dug out an insight. It's desirable to play characters and have natural motives just like you would if you were that character. So that's desirable in my style of play I think.

 

[Manbearcat]

The experience most-closely tracks with college-age-me sitting in a room with friends, all of us writers, and passing around stories for 15 or 30 minutes at a time, or maybe one of the small handful of times a band I was in set out to write lyrics together. There's a lot of bouncing off each other's ideas, and a lot of curiosity about where the story will be when it gets to be time to contribute. Here, I get to say that as with a writing circle, or a band, chemistry around a gaming table matters, a helluva lot; the time passes quickly for me while we're playing, an awful lot like good band times.

I have a sneaking suspicion some of the people in this thread wouldn't see it as not too much different from "passing the conch."

These two thoughts here.

I'm assuming what you're talking about the impact on play of the below GMing principle:

Ask questions and use the answers​

Part of playing to find out what happens is explicitly not knowing everything, and being curious. If you don’t know something, or you don’t have an idea, ask the players and use what they say.

 

[prabe]

These two thoughts here.

I'm assuming what you're talking about the impact on play of the below GMing principle:

Ask questions and use the answers​

Part of playing to find out what happens is explicitly not knowing everything, and being curious. If you don’t know something, or you don’t have an idea, ask the players and use what they say.

Pretty much, yes. I think it's also a play principle--as in, the players can ask the GM questions, and they can ask the other players questions.

I also was explicitly comparing the process to other things I have enjoyed, and not slagging on it at all; I hope that was clear.

 

[Manbearcat]

Pretty much, yes. I think it's also a play principle--as in, the players can ask the GM questions, and they can ask the other players questions.

I also was explicitly comparing the process to other things I have enjoyed, and not slagging on it at all; I hope that was clear.

Yup. All that was clear. It just wasn't written explicitly for everyone else so I wanted to make sure that they understood what you were talking about. And I agree that yes, it is a table principle along with being a GMing principle...this and some of the things you've written above hew exactly to Harper's Player's Best Practices in Blades; "Take Responsibility - as a co-author", "Act Now Plan Later", "Embrace the Scoundrel's Life", "Build Your Character Through Play."

You can look at this in Dungeon World terms - "Go boldly and headlong into danger/don't turtle" and "you're responsible for propelling - or stalling - play" and "follow your character around, be curious about your character and what may come, be curious about other characters and what may come of them."

 

[prabe]

Yup. All that was clear. It just wasn't written explicitly for everyone else so I wanted to make sure that they understood what you were talking about. And I agree that yes, it is a table principle along with being a GMing principle...this and some of the things you've written above hew exactly to Harper's Player's Best Practices in Blades; "Take Responsibility - as a co-author", "Act Now Plan Later", "Embrace the Scoundrel's Life", "Build Your Character Through Play."

You can look at this in Dungeon World terms - "Go boldly and headlong into danger/don't turtle" and "you're responsible for propelling - or stalling - play" and "follow your character around, be curious about your character and what may come, be curious about other characters and what may come of them."

I'll point out that none of those principles are, that I can see, strictly incompatible with 5E, at least as I run it. The two that would be most likely to cause problems would be "Act Now, Plan Later" (because I don't have a hack in place to replicate Flashbacks) and "Embrace the Scoundrel's Life" (because I prefer for the PCs to be willing to be heroes). In neither case do the problems seem insoluble--hacking in something like Flashbacks seems possible, and "Embrace the Hero's Life" seems to work roughly as well.