What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not romanticizing it. Something isn't real until it exists. So your genre agreements and established fiction are all the reality your game has at any given moment. The world real here though was to something that existed prior to the players learning of it that you would have fidelity to. Maybe that clarifies my use of the term.

Also for me, when I see these kinds of quips (your 'romanticizing it', that is 'banal', or this is 'lazy writing'): they are just as opaque as the term they are attacking (you never really know how much effort a writer puts into something, lazy almost never seems to really link to effort that was put into a work, as much as it does to the work being something they've seen before elsewhere). I see them as rhetorical shaming words, where people try to get you agree by appealing to your desire to be great, to be more manly, to be intelligent, etc. With the romanticizing thing it feels similar to me. It comes up all the time in style debates. Even among people who share my style I would encounter it when I crossed lines they didn't like. I've learned to really stop worrying about these kinds of criticisms and just be who I am.

 

[Fenris-77]

In this case 'romanticizing' seems to mean using imprecise but evocative language chosen to valorize but not explain the thing at hand. That's less than ideal when what the discussion actually needs is very precise descriptions of the mechanics and practices at hand. Not much to discuss otherwise. When I read the term used upstream I didn't get the feeling it was a shot at anyone, just a pretty apt description of some of the verbiage being used. YMMV.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In this case 'romanticizing' seems to mean using imprecise but evocative language chosen to valorize but not explain the thing at hand. That's less than ideal when what the discussion actually needs is very precise descriptions of the mechanics and practices at hand. Not much to discuss otherwise. When I read the term used upstream I didn't get the feeling it was a shot at anyone, just a pretty apt description of some of the verbiage being used. YMMV.

Except that isn't what isn't what I was doing when I said living world, and it is a term that has some amount of currency (it denotes an approach to sandbox play that sandbox gamers would recognize). Either way, I think there is a lot of this rhetorical tactic that occurs online. I am not going to stop using the term living world, but I am happy to explain what I mean by it if people want more information. I think also, when in the context of the posts people are saying you are being trite and banal, it is a little hard to not perceive it as a shot

To be clear here too. I am not trying to resurrect this fight. I am just trying to suggest to @Emerikol he can ignore the emotional impact that term has when its invoked, since IMO, the point is to trigger the emotion to get you to back off an idea or agree with people so you are not feeling like you are romanticizing, trite, etc.

 

[Fenris-77]

Except that isn't what isn't what I was doing when I said living world, and it is a term that has some amount of currency (it denotes an approach to sandbox play that sandbox gamers would recognize). Either way, I think there is a lot of this rhetorical tactic that occurs online. I am not going to stop using the term living world, but I am happy to explain what I mean by it if people want more information.

No, I'd agree. Living World is a thing. Does that thing get romanticized as a goal for play? It assuredly does, but not so much by you. One of the problems (for this kind of discussion) with the term is that is really applies pretty specifically to a particular thing that's directly related to OSR-style sandbox play, and for a variety of reasons (both good and bad) doesn't really get at the equivalent gaming experience produced by other sorts of games. That makes comparisons between the two somewhat fraught.

 

[Maxperson]

Cool. Thanks for the clarification. Was worried I accidentally conveyed the wrong meaning in my last post

The current incarnation of the block feature is the worst this site has ever enacted. It causes a great deal of confusion to people.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, I'd agree. Living World is a thing. Does that thing get romanticized as a goal for play? It assuredly does, but not so much by you. One of the problems (for this kind of discussion) with the term is that is really applies pretty specifically to a particular thing that's directly related to OSR-style sandbox play, and for a variety of reasons (both good and bad) doesn't really get at the equivalent gaming experience produced by other sorts of games. That makes comparisons between the two somewhat fraught.

The only thing I'm aware of that (capitalized) Living World refers to is the approach for a shared setting across many tables, with many GMs running semi-concurrent games, where game reports are shared and so update everyone's conception of the setting fiction at the same time.

I do not think that this is how this term is being used in this thread at all.

 

[Manbearcat]

These discussions would better service us, silent onlookers, and the greater community if (a) the language used to describe games was “more engineering and less art” and (b) we used play excerpts to break down the engineering concepts we’re talking about.

This is why I feel like Story Now (When is the story generated? Now) and Setting Solitaire (as I laid it out upthread) are imminently more helpful for would-be GMs and players.

 

[Bedrockgames]

These discussions would better service us, silent onlookers, and the greater community if (a) the language used to describe games was “more engineering and less art” and (b) we used play excerpts to break down the engineering concepts we’re talking about.

I agree with B. I don't agree about the engineering bit though. Clearly there are plenty of posters in this thread who do have engineering mindsets, and there are plenty of gamers who do as well. But I think there are those of us who come at it more from an art or humanities mindset. And that impacts things like the kind of language we employ to talk about concepts, the kinds of concepts we are open to, etc. I am happy to clarify for you as best I can in terms that work for you, what I do, but I have to admit when I see the 'engineering' language you guys like to use, I just get lost. I am sure you find it very clarifying, so I don't object to you using it. It is just we are not all built like that.

I can compare it to music theory since music is something I have some background in. I know how to write music. I know how to play music. I have some basic understandings of music theory (I learned scales, I learned some modes but they never quite clicked for me, I learned to read music---though I've mostly lost that and it takes me forever to figure out sheet music---I learned basic things like chords and intervals.....but mostly I didn't use music theory to write. I tended to think of music i my head and then figure it out on the instrument (and sometimes I would let my hands find their way too). Sometimes though I did draw on music theory. But music theory has its limits. It is basically a language to communicate musical concepts. It isn't the only way musicians communicate with one another. Most people I played music with, unless they went to berkley or something, which most didn't, had formulated other ways of communicating ideas. They might not make immediate sense to a person who is only versed in music theory, but they make sense to the musicians using it. And there are some styles of music, that music theory isn't really good at discussing (music theory is built on European music from about the 17th century and is based on twelve notes---but some styles of music around the world are based on fewer or as many as 22 notes). So I think while an engineering language can be useful, it can also become, at least for me, a bit of a straight jacket. Which is one reason I prefer more open and 'flowery' language, then if people want to know more break down the actual techniques I am using as best I can. Importantly too, as I said before, I don't think we have anything quite like music theory in gaming. We have lots of different camps with their own vocabularies (often at odds with one another and very distrustful of one another)

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is why I feel like Story Now (When is the story generated? Now) and Setting Solitaire (as I laid it out upthread) are imminently more helpful for would-be GMs and players.

I may need some clarification on what setting solitaire is exactly. But I think if I came into the hobby and encountered Story Now and Setting Solitaire as my 'aha moment' rather than the setting is alive concept I pointed to in Feast of Goblyns (or at least the NPCs are alive), I don't know that either of those could have ever excited or resonated with me in the same way (I am still not even sure I fully understand how story now operates: and I have never really been heavily persuaded to the validity of GNS as a whole)

 

[Manbearcat]

The way I look at it this:

* Those who are artists because of savantry or because of something inherent that they cannot deconstruct and then articulate to a group of people who are wanting to learn (I am this way with Jiujitsu...I would NEVER attempt to teach it a la Ryan Hall) are not teachers.

These are the absolute tail of the distribution types. The only way they can teach is by merely doing and letting tactile and visual learners assimilate the craft.

* Then there are the rest of the population. They learn craft in classes and in conversations by engagement with well-deconstructed, well-articulated, digestible chunks of information.

They practice and improve.

Rinse/repeat that loop until they’ve attained a level of mastery.


The first group and approach offers very, very little to the faculty of everyone who is not a savant. I think this explains why D&D culture has been plagued by such a dearth of GMs (in proportion to its user base) and such a disproportionate amount of crap GMs; because this Master : Padawan relationship was how the craft was passed down historically (and, simply, it didn’t work at scale and created an enormous amount of discontent). So therefore demystifying the process so that people can actually learn it is how we get better (at large) as a culture of craftsfolk.


TLDR - GMs aren't Jedis and the only Force they wield is the kind that wrests the trajectory of play from the players/system to themselves...and acting like they are Jedis has made our hobby worse than it could be (because it doesn't produce capable Gamesmasters at scale).