Manbearcat
Legend
You're not playing the game right.
This is not the part where you console me. This is the part where you point at me and laugh.
What is the point of GM's notes?
You're not playing the game right.
This is not the part where you console me. This is the part where you point at me and laugh.
But we already did that with Dungeons in the Vineyard. To do it again would verge on bullying!
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yeah - everything down there wants to kill you.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Not me.
I mean, have you seen my attempts at digital mapping? You have my every sympathy!
Emerikol
Adventurer
I think you are close for me.
I'd probably put 2 parts classic, 1 part Nordic Larp, and 2 parts OSR. I believe though that there is some overlap between OSR and Nordic larp and my groups land there often.
For example,
1. My groups do adventure and those adventures are challenging to the players.
2. My groups have often started businesses. They've also started charities, built domains, etc...
3. My clerics are always strong advocates of their religions and interested in the affairs of the Gods.
4. I've had Wizards say they wanted to craft a particular type of magic item and spend game years pursuing that goal.
5. My PCs develop relationships with NPCs. Both allies and enemies. They will often go to the aid of an ally and just as often oppose the ambitions of an enemy.
So my games are not just a series of dungeon adventures disconnected from the world. Everything is very connected. I don't tend to build meaningless dungeons that have no connection to the world. Why build a detailed world with a rich history and not use it?
Emerikol
Adventurer
So, I was reading a book on world building for fantasy & sci-fi authors and I noticed an interesting point that I thought goes to what I am saying.
"Don't think that you will be including every ounce of what you have worked on. You won't. You shouldn't. I know. I know. You worked hard on it but it wasn't wasted even if it never makes it into your book. It helped you to understand you world, so that you can write about it in an informed, attached, and immersive way. So that you can make it all the more real for your readers" -- Angeline Trevena in the book "From Sanctity to Sorcery, An Author's Guide to Building Belief Structures"
In my style of roleplaying, this point is important. When a DM inevitably has to improv some detail of his world, he acts from a vast and detailed knowledge of that world and thus does a better job. So even the parts the PCs never encounter is still useful stuff. It will inform NPC actions and reactions. It will add to the verisimilitude.
"Don't think that you will be including every ounce of what you have worked on. You won't. You shouldn't. I know. I know. You worked hard on it but it wasn't wasted even if it never makes it into your book. It helped you to understand you world, so that you can write about it in an informed, attached, and immersive way. So that you can make it all the more real for your readers" -- Angeline Trevena in the book "From Sanctity to Sorcery, An Author's Guide to Building Belief Structures"
In my style of roleplaying, this point is important. When a DM inevitably has to improv some detail of his world, he acts from a vast and detailed knowledge of that world and thus does a better job. So even the parts the PCs never encounter is still useful stuff. It will inform NPC actions and reactions. It will add to the verisimilitude.
I think most other posters in this thread understand what you're saying here: the GM develops a "feel" for his/her world and extrapolates to new scenarios and situations in virtue of that.
What causes puzzlement and objection is combining the above with (i) denials that the GM is authoring this fiction, and (ii) denying that a good part of what the players do in a game like this is learn the GM's conception of his/her world.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Yes. I find this absolutely to be what's happening when I run certain games (like now, in 5e). I think the issue is that this blunt description is being taken as dismissive or insulting to this approach -- it's not that it's not true, it's that it feels bad, so therefore it must not be true. I don't see the bad -- my players are very much enjoying my conception of the world, and that's the only thing that really matters.
Bedrockgames
Legend
People are not denying that the GM is making creative decisions. I think what we are objecting to is the narrow focus on it as "fiction" and "scenarios" because a big part of sandbox play is to not prep plots but prep NPCs, Factions, Locations, etc. Further no one is denying the players learn about the GM's setting, what we reject is the idea that then heart of this play and this interaction is players learning what the GM made up. The Players are active participants through their characters. We've covered this ground. Yes the GM's conception of his or her world is crucial. That much is obvious. But what makes this work is live players in the setting forcing the GM to think on his her or feet, forcing him to move the pieces around, think of how the NPCs would respond, and, very, very importantly, the dice and mechanics of the game helping to shape that interaction. It is that your description feels very reductive to us and you can't use that description to actually guide someone to run and prepare this sort of campaign. It doesn't really seem to serve any function
Whether your position has moderated, or whether it's the wording, I find this much less objectionable (as in almost not at all) than your prior way of putting it, which A) focused on the GM's notes and B) at least seemed to imply that finding out what was in the GM's notes was almost the entirety of play.
EDIT: And I know exactly why that other phrasing bothered me so greatly: It sounds an awful lot like playing through an AP-style campaign, where the point--the only reason for play the style really supports--is to find out where the AP's story goes. Nothing any character brings to the game matters at all.
I loathe AP-style play, as a player. Even shorter published adventures intended as one-shots almost inevitably get on my nerves by the end. I make a concerted effort not to run an AP-style campaign--that's most of why I don't prep more than the current session.
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