What is the point of GM's notes?

[Ovinomancer]

I posed the same question a few pages back.
Apparently it was to improve one's craft. The question is who's?

If you believe your craft cannot be improved, then not you. If you believe your craft may be improved, then you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@AnotherGuy

I followed the subtext of your question, but I dislike rhetorical questions where the questioner doesn't provide what they think the answer should be. Clearly, you're asking if the question has any merit to improve the craft of GMing, and, if you think it does not, or is ill posed, then I think you're missing a critical thrust of what it means to actually analyze your play. A similar question was instrumental for me to better understand how I play and helped me improve my craft in a number of styles.

I've talked about how I'm currently running an AP. I have a rather detailed set of notes for this game, in addition to the AP notes I also have all of Forgotten Realms lore to lean on. What does this do for me? A number of things, if I look at it critically. The background lore provides me with a solid structure with which to paint the world the PCs inhabit -- I can lean on it to provide details and coherence and even drop easter eggs for lore enthusiasts (I have one). But, this isn't the extent of the notes for this AP. I also have encounters, location, mysteries, and story notes. And these require serious review and consideration, because I need to make sure that these align with the play goals of my table, and they really don't for any table. This is because these notes are provided in a way that doesn't really have a coherent play agenda in mind -- there's some skilled play, some fuzzy-GM-interaction-as-roleplay, some exposition dumps, some Illusionism, and some outright Force (where the module tells you X happens no matter what, and gives ways of enforcing X happening). So, how are these notes used in play? Differently for each table, really, as they're meant to be modified (an approach I find somewhat disingenuous to the stated purpose of an AP -- easy, prepared play). Understanding how you use notes in various ways -- how notes inform and direct play -- is critical to getting the best out of an AP -- to align it to what you want at your table. If you want all skilled play, you'll have to make adjustments to do so, because the AP isn't all skilled play. If you want a mix, you'll have to adjust to make sure you get what you want where you want. You can do what's often done, here, and peruse many threads and blogs worth of how other people did this work and provided results, and just pick the ones that speak to you, but then you see people complain that such-and-such didn't work for them so others should avoid it because it's bad advice. This is, fundamentally, a failure to understand how notes work in your game -- how the plan translates to play in a pleasing manner.

So, if you're actually asking how the question of how you use the GM's notes in play can improve your craft, I'd say you've missed a pretty big part of how analysis of play works.

 

[Emerikol]

Is this ironic? You've again misused my name, I have to assume intentionally at this point, while claiming victimhood. Not a great look. I mean, I get it, it's a nice tactic, but it doesn't really bother me -- I've been called much worse. I point it out because of how small it makes you look.

I don't know why I see Ovidmancer instead of Ovinomancer when I read your name. No tactic or offense intended. I was just trying to abbreviate. It does play to my point about your mindset though.

And, here we are with "different tastes" again. This is a motte argument, because how can someone disagree with people having different tastes? You can't. But, what you do with this argument is what I pointed out above -- different tastes is being used to negate analysis, as if what you like means you cannot deconstruct play at all. It's like saying that no one can successfully deconstruct what makes mac and cheese good, or the various ways you can make mac and cheese, or the impact of ingredient quality, because different people like different kinds of mac and cheese (or don't like it at all), so such discussion is pointless.

Because seemingly people keep not getting it. I guess repetition doesn't always work. Perhaps it's born out of frustration. When I say such and such is shallow, it is shallow to me. There is so much subjectivism here. You keep wanting to turn that subjectivism into science.

One shouldn't be making assumptions about other people's answers when engaging in analysis. The point of the question was twofold, in my opinion. Firstly, it was collect information about how other people use GM notes in play. And, secondly, to cause people to stop and think about how they use notes in play -- to do a bit of self-analysis to tease out a procedure of play that they use and how GM notes work within that procedure. It's this latter that seems to be the point of contention -- some seem to strongly dislike analyzing their procedures of play in clear terms of process, for reasons I'm still unsure of. There seems to be a great deal of fear that there's some kind of trap, and that somehow in providing clear statements of process you'll stumble into given away a stick that will then be used to beat you. Which is weird, to me, because others have clearly done so without concern. I am currently running a game where the GM notes work exactly as you state above, and it's also a railroad (which isn't implied by what you state above), and which has little to no protagonism, as defined previously in this thread. None of this phases me, it's an honest statement of what's happening at my table, and it doesn't phase me because we're having fun.

You may play every style known. We only have your words here on the page and they came across as dismissive and antagonistic. Your responses to fairly innocuous posts by me and your imputing of all sorts of crazy motives to what I am saying, says a lot. When you act like that you usually get like kind in return and then the conversation degenerates and derails. So Physician heal thyself.

When I say that a style doesn't feel as real to me as my style, I'm giving my impression. It's indisputable that this is true as it is about my subjective experience. What I find more interesting that while there are perhaps a good variety of things about games that we can differ upon, we tend to cluster our preferences far more than randomness would imply. I bet sandbox people are also skilled play people and also don't like dissociative mechanics. Because all of that revolves around how we experience roleplaying games and how they impact our sense of verisimilitude. I get that the two sides are wired so differently that they struggle even to communicate.

I was reading the release notes on the new game "Swords Under The Sun" and the way the game was couched I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it. She explained how her sessions flowed and what were the key elements of that playstyle. I am not looking for that kind of experience in a roleplaying game. I'd lose interest fast. I'm happy though that many will enjoy it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'd like to share a couple of examples from games that I've run recently. One is 5E D&D and the other is Blades in the Dark. I want to summarize how my notes shaped play in each game, both at the very start of play, and also as part of ongoing play.

D&D 5e
So my group played "Lost Mines of Phandelve" when it came out in order to check out the new D&D rules. I was growing incredibly weary of Pathfinder as our go to fantasy game, and I was hoping for something simpler. Despite its flaws, we found it much to our liking for what we wanted. It helps that we're long time friends and we generally have a good idea of what works for us as a group, and individually. We decided to continue playing. When we did, I asked my players what they wanted the campaign to be about. I received a few different responses, but one through line was that they wanted to see the resolution of some long standing elements of our D&D games. They wanted to finish some unfinished stories.

With this in mind, I approached the game with a very nostalgic outlook. I decided that we'd use everything we'd ever played in D&D as canon for this game. All our old campaigns? They all happened. All the classic D&D lore that we've used in our games? It's all there. So I just kind of crafted a very loose backstory that connected elements as disparate as Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental Eye and the Lady of Pain and Rajaat of Athas. This story is central to play. Essentially, there are five shards of a divine castle/dwelling, and they've been scattered across the cosmos, and different groups seek to recover these magical castles, and the PCs have become embroiled in the hunt for one such castle.

So my notes at the start of play determined:

• Several of the opposing factions to the PCs
• The motivations of many of the movers and shakers in the game
• They mystery of the castles and their true nature- largely unknown to the PCs until they piece it together (i.e. learn my notes)
• The D&D cosmology was the setting- from Faerun to Oerth to Athas to Sigil and the Outlands and the planes beyond- this is the sandbox
• The central threat, or main villains, of the campaign and their goal

The central idea of the campaign is one I came up with. Yes, I based it on ideas that I knew my players wanted to see, and ideas that connected to their characters, but I still had to craft the connections of all of that, and make it coherent. But it also has to be playable so that they don't just feel like interchangeable characters in a story, that could be subbed out by any other PCs.

Then as we actually play, my notes consist mostly of bullet points. I don't commit too strongly to anything because I want the players to have the freedom to interact with these ideas as they like, and to pursue things their own way. So classic D&D Map & Key style prep, is almost impossible. I have some maps for specific locations that I've kind of assembled, but I may not know if/when they'll be needed at any given time.

So what I do is in between each session, I just make a few bullet points of what I think is likely for the next session based on what's happened previously. Usually, we have a good idea of next steps. So I list the following:

• Possible goals for next session
• Possible threats/antagonists- if I need stats, I try to gather these and collect them all in as easy to reference a way as possible; otherwise I just think about the goals of the NPCs and their means and personality and decide how they may become involved
• Running threads- any active or prominent PC goals or situations and how they may come up
• Outstanding Items- this is a catch all, and it can be very important- it's anything that's been introduced in some way, but which hasn't been resolved- a lot of times if we don't have a clear agenda for a session, I'll bring these up as possibilities for the group

These notes are very loose, as you can see. So they don't really constrain the players too much- they're free to do whatever they like. Sometimes it's very obvious what they'll be doing, and so my job is easy. At other times it's not, and so these notes may help prompt some action and get things going.

So in an ongoing way, my notes are there as a list of prompts to help facilitate play, or to hep narrow focus when things are specific. But at the start? To get the ball rolling, and then to serve as the skeleton on which the entire game hangs? My notes are vital. They are, essentially, what the game is about.

Blades in the Dark
When my group played a Blades in the Dark campaign, I had no requests for or inclinations toward having any kind of essential backstory of the kind that is so big in our D&D game (this is largely BECAUSE of all that stuff for D&D, I wanted something different). So my notes at the start of play for Blades in the Dark were virtually non-existent. I took the default setting as described in the book as pretty much what we'd work with, but that default setting is sketched in the book; just enough detail is given to get things going, but plenty of leeway is available to shape things how you'd like.

So with no backstory, we proceeded with character and crew creation. These are what I would say became the essential "notes" of our game. The players decided to be a crew of Hawkers, dealers of illicit goods. They selected as their Crew Ability "The Good Stuff" which means that their product is of very high quality. What was the product? The group decided that they wanted to sell a drug called "Third Eye" which had supernatural qualities. Additional questions that you ask during crew creation involve selecting Factions within the city who are either enemies or allies of the crew. In making these decisions, we determined that the Crew Ally was a deal broker who had put them in touch with a gang of ex-cops called the Grey Cloaks, and the Grey Cloaks are the ones who provided the initial supply of the Third Eye. Additionally, it was determined that the Spirit Wardens (basically the magic police) would be on the lookout for anyone involved in distributing or manufacturing such a substance, so the crew took a negative standing with them.

One of the players made a Leech, a kind of alchemist/artificer type character, and his goal was to learn how to produce more of the Third Eye. This led the players to select "Workshop" as one of their starting Lair Upgrades. For that upgrade, we needed to select another negative faction, so we decided he stole a bunch of equipment from the Sparkwrights (a guild of engineers with a lot of influence).

Then the players decided to select the district of Nightmarket for their "hunting grounds" which is where they'd do business. In looking at the entry in the book about Nightmarket, it's the city's hub of commerce, with a large rail station where goods are imported and exported to the rest of the world. It's also an area that is seeing an injection of money....so it's a kind of gentrified or new money type area. As a result, some gangs have expanded into the area to capitalize on that, and they'll likely be obstacles of some sort for our crew.

So our starting situation in this game is pretty well defined. We have a crew of dealers who is hoping to be able to make more of their fine product, and to rise up in an area that is kind of "frontier territory" for the gangs. They have some influential institutions against them. A few things kind of immediately jumped out at me, especially in relation to my D&D campaign. Those were:

• What is Third Eye? Who created it? Why does it do what it does?
• Who wanted to get it into the hands of the PC crew? Why?
• Who assembled this crew for this purpose?

These questions jumped out at me, but I fought the urge to craft that backstory for the players to find out. Instead, I just left all those questions unanswered, and I didn't even bring them up to the players. If the players never really thought of them, then maybe the answers weren't important. But if they did, then maybe we'd examine them through play.

So for Blades, I really had no notes at the start of play, or if I did, then it was ones that the players and I crafted as a group. In an ongoing way from week to week, I'd just track progress of items and goals (usually in the form of Clocks) and almost always something would present itself as a logical or likely next step for the crew (usually more than one thing) so we would have a good idea of what our next session would be. Sometimes they'd change their mind, but they were always driving that. Any notes I had might be a little list of possible obstacles they could face depending on the score they had in mind.

I know that's a really long post, and I didn't get into the mechanics of it too much, but my input as a GM is far heavier with D&D. That's by design. Games like D&D empower the GM to take a strong hand in guiding the game, even when using an open world or sandbox approach. Games like Blades and those that inspired it, actively avoid that by limiting the GM's ability to steer things, and by giving establishing formalized processes that promote player driven play.

It's not so much about "playstyle" I don't think. Sure, most games could be taken and played in a way that's contrary to its intent, and if everyone involved enjoys the result, okay great. But most games are designed a specific way, and it's for a reason.

 

[pemerton]

This is a good point. When we desire a specific type of experience, faking it does not usually work. That is my experience at any rate.

I think if you stepped back and thought of a playstyle as a game in and of itself. There are rules and there are expectations. Meeting those rules and expectations is part of getting to success and hopefully fun.

For someone specifically of my playstyle:
GM notes mean the entirety of the creative process a GM spends outside of the session that is brought in as established truth even if unknown to the players. GM notes again has a dismissive connotation but I'm taking your meaning in good faith at this point and not taking any offense.

<snip>

I am assuming the discussion was about my usage of the concept. I think the question itself though implies the poster does not know the answer which would surprise me since my playstyle is not that obscure.

I'm not sure what you mean by assuming the discussion was about my usage of the concept. I didn't start this thread specifically to find out what you, Emerikol (or any other particular poster) uses notes for. I've posted various examples of my own actual play, trying to explain and reflect on how I used notes as a GM. I've engaged with other posters too, both their actual play accounts and their more abstract descriptions or itemisations of how notes can be used.

I still don't know why referring to "GM notes" has a dismissive connotation. I'm not sure who or what is being dismissed.

One shouldn't be making assumptions about other people's answers when engaging in analysis. The point of the question was twofold, in my opinion. Firstly, it was collect information about how other people use GM notes in play. And, secondly, to cause people to stop and think about how they use notes in play -- to do a bit of self-analysis to tease out a procedure of play that they use and how GM notes work within that procedure. It's this latter that seems to be the point of contention -- some seem to strongly dislike analyzing their procedures of play in clear terms of process, for reasons I'm still unsure of. There seems to be a great deal of fear that there's some kind of trap, and that somehow in providing clear statements of process you'll stumble into given away a stick that will then be used to beat you. Which is weird, to me, because others have clearly done so without concern.

This thread largely consists of people who balk at something they see as an accusation, and then in trying to “defend” their stance, essentially describe things exactly as they feared they were accused.

These two posts capture pretty well how I feel about the last nearly 50 pages of this thread.

I'm currently running an AP. I have a rather detailed set of notes for this game, in addition to the AP notes I also have all of Forgotten Realms lore to lean on.

I am currently running a game where the GM notes work exactly as you state above, and it's also a railroad (which isn't implied by what you state above), and which has little to no protagonism, as defined previously in this thread. None of this phases me, it's an honest statement of what's happening at my table, and it doesn't phase me because we're having fun.

My 5E D&D game is very much about the players finding out what’s in my notes. That’s not a bad thing. I love my 5E game, and I’m reasonably certain my players do to.

Is there more to my game than what’s in my notes? Of course. It’s a simplification. But in a thread where people can just hear the term “living world” and understand all that it implies about RPGing process and rules, balking at “notes” seems needlessly defensive.

My 5E game is about my players discovering through their characters, the world I’ve crafted as a GM. Yes, I’ve taken plenty of cues from them, and I’ve incorporated plenty of their ideas....but the game largely revolves around the ideas that I as GM introduce. This isn’t bad and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m confident that the fiction produced in my game is as immersive and “living” as similar games.

As I'm pretty sure I've posted upthread, the last 12 months of so of sessions in my Classic Traveller game (8 sessions) have involved notes, in the form of the two old scenarios Annic Nova and Shadows, from Double Adventure 1. I've also used the starmaps I posted about upthread. The relationship of these to play hasn't been the same as in the posts I've quoted here - for instance, I've used the maps as much as possible for framing rather than adjudication of declared actions - but there has been plenty of play which takes the form of player declares action, GM in response provides new information that becomes part of the shared fiction. I've posted about that before: a quick search turned up this from a thread earlier this year in which some of those posting in this thread participated:

Upthread I have described this as RPGing-as-puzzle-solving: the players declare actions for the PCs which elicit information from the GM, and they piece this information together to get a clearer picture of what the GM is imagining.

I do not regard it as involving a very high degree of player agency, because it makes the GM's pre-established conception of the fiction the focus of play.

My last few sessions of Traveller play have resembled this to a degree. (I posted about the second-last one quite a way upthread but I don't think anyone replied to that post.) Though the object of exploration has been an alien building rather than a NPC. In our most recent session I tried a few different techniques to try to shift things away from a GM-focus to a player-focus - those techniques included providing some more clarifying fiction of my own to try to round out "the mystery" and give the players all the information they seemed to want about it; narrating some instigating events (attacks by aliens which were also Aliens); and meta-level goading/poking - and those worked to some extent. I think we may also be starting to hit some limits of Classic Traveller as a system, but I'm not sure and I'm not sure yet if I can quite articulate what I have in mind. It's to do with the lack of player-accessible mechanics to engage the "big picture" - eg what are the Imperial navy doing "off-screen" - in a game that invites an escalation over the course of play to make that "big picture" of growing importance to the PCs.

A contrast in this particular respect would be 4e D&D, which has a resolution framework - skill challenges - that scales up nicely as the PCs move from Heroic to Epic tier.

In our most recent Traveller session, the play definitely shifted from this sort of "exploration"/puzzle-solving to something more player-driven.

 

[pemerton]

When I say such and such is shallow, it is shallow to me. There is so much subjectivism here. You keep wanting to turn that subjectivism into science.

In my experience, when I've posted that I tend to find your sort of approach an intolerable railroad, that has provoked some outrage from those who like "sandboxing" that is heavily driven by the GM's pre-conception of the setting. I don't know what you response is, but perhaps am about to find out!

 

[pemerton]

So my notes at the start of play determined:

• Several of the opposing factions to the PCs
• The motivations of many of the movers and shakers in the game
• They mystery of the castles and their true nature- largely unknown to the PCs until they piece it together (i.e. learn my notes)
• The D&D cosmology was the setting- from Faerun to Oerth to Athas to Sigil and the Outlands and the planes beyond- this is the sandbox
• The central threat, or main villains, of the campaign and their goal

<snip>

Then as we actually play, my notes consist mostly of bullet points. I don't commit too strongly to anything because I want the players to have the freedom to interact with these ideas as they like, and to pursue things their own way. So classic D&D Map & Key style prep, is almost impossible. I have some maps for specific locations that I've kind of assembled, but I may not know if/when they'll be needed at any given time.

So what I do is in between each session, I just make a few bullet points of what I think is likely for the next session based on what's happened previously. Usually, we have a good idea of next steps. So I list the following:

• Possible goals for next session
• Possible threats/antagonists- if I need stats, I try to gather these and collect them all in as easy to reference a way as possible; otherwise I just think about the goals of the NPCs and their means and personality and decide how they may become involved
• Running threads- any active or prominent PC goals or situations and how they may come up
• Outstanding Items- this is a catch all, and it can be very important- it's anything that's been introduced in some way, but which hasn't been resolved- a lot of times if we don't have a clear agenda for a session, I'll bring these up as possibilities for the group

These notes are very loose, as you can see. So they don't really constrain the players too much- they're free to do whatever they like. Sometimes it's very obvious what they'll be doing, and so my job is easy. At other times it's not, and so these notes may help prompt some action and get things going.

In a number of ways this reminds me of my approach to GMing Rolemaster.

I get the impression that for a lot of the "big picture" stuff - the piecing together of the bits of the puzzle, rather than the nitty-gritty of winning a combat or even talking to a particular NPC - resolution is fairly freeform with a lot of back-and-forth between players and GM. Is that fair? Or are their tighter action resolution processes around that that I've not picked up on?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know why I see Ovidmancer instead of Ovinomancer when I read your name. No tactic or offense intended. I was just trying to abbreviate. It does play to my point about your mindset though.

Does it? I mean, pointing out that you serially misstate my name for the third time goes to show that I'm being adversarial? I mean, that's like saying someone asking you to please stop punching them is just looking for a fight.

Because seemingly people keep not getting it. I guess repetition doesn't always work. Perhaps it's born out of frustration. When I say such and such is shallow, it is shallow to me. There is so much subjectivism here. You keep wanting to turn that subjectivism into science.

Nope, this is a bald misrepresentation of what I've said. What I've said is that you're using your preferences as a means to discount and dismiss analysis, which you seem to admit to, here. What I've said is that analysis is a useful tool to understand preference and enhance play. For instance, without any experience, you've dismissed an entire approach as "shallow" (man, talk about loaded words) when you have no experience to say so. It's fine to think you won't like it, and no one's going to force you to try it, but you've removed yourself from any valid input when analysis involves comparing or contrasting with these approaches. You're trying to shoehorn yourself into having a valid input by claiming that it's all preference, but it isn't. Whether or not you like it is preference -- how it works in process is not.

You may play every style known. We only have your words here on the page and they came across as dismissive and antagonistic. Your responses to fairly innocuous posts by me and your imputing of all sorts of crazy motives to what I am saying, says a lot. When you act like that you usually get like kind in return and then the conversation degenerates and derails. So Physician heal thyself.

Ah, here we go. I am not to be taken as an honest participant while you are? I might be making things up, and you seem to think this likely, because I'm saying things you're taking as dishonest and dismissive? I mean, I'm extended every good faith -- it took three times of my broaching the subject of such a simple thing as my username before I moved to assuming you're doing it on purpose, which is apparently far more than you're willing to extend my claims on how I play. It's fine for you to directly question my honesty because I guess you feel attacked, but I MUST assume your good faith at all times, or I'm just looking to be antagonistic? Really?

When I say that a style doesn't feel as real to me as my style, I'm giving my impression. It's indisputable that this is true as it is about my subjective experience. What I find more interesting that while there are perhaps a good variety of things about games that we can differ upon, we tend to cluster our preferences far more than randomness would imply. I bet sandbox people are also skilled play people and also don't like dissociative mechanics. Because all of that revolves around how we experience roleplaying games and how they impact our sense of verisimilitude. I get that the two sides are wired so differently that they struggle even to communicate.

They aren't though, you're just resistant to hearing anything that is frank discussion of the processes of play. You throw out the term "dissociative mechanics" as if it's something you will not abide, but you do -- you use armor class, you use hitpoints, you use spells. These are all dissociated mechanics that either have a lampshade over them (spells are magic!) or that you're just used to and no longer notice (AC, hp). These things fail to model anything, and are narrative devices in play, even if you build subsystems to try to mitigate this (like people changing the rest mechanics in 5e). The reality is that your complaint is about authorities, not mechanics that don't reflect a simulated reality. You don't like mechanics that let a player enforce something that you view is the GM's domain, like a secret door being present that the GM didn't prep beforehand, or doing damage on a "miss" (as if hit and miss aren't dissociated in D&D). And, to be clear, not liking these things is fine, but it would be very beneficial, to you even, to deconstruct these things and look at what they are actually doing and why you do or do not like them. Honesty here can be painful, it's can be hard to admit that you dislike something because you feel it intrudes into your privileges, but then you can reach a point where you realize even that concept is silly, and you're not really talking about your privileges but how privileges are distributed to achieve a specific play goal. This is why I can say, without any feeling I'm doing something bad, that I'm running a hard railroad right now. I'm not concerned if I'm stepping on my players toes or doing something wrong because we had a clear discussion of what this game will entail, what privileges will be where, and what our shared play goals are. And those goals are skilled play scenes that are linked through an enforced plotline. Easy, nothing to be concerned about, everyone is happy, and I'm not at all looking at anything like "dissociated mechanics" because that's a term that has no real meaning in an RPG -- it's all make-believe. The trick is what tools exist for me to have the kind of make-believe I want, and there are absolutely mechanics that do this and mechanics that don't, so I'm going to pick and choose based not on some conception of "dissociation" with my make-believe, but rather which achieve my goals.

I was reading the release notes on the new game "Swords Under The Sun" and the way the game was couched I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it. She explained how her sessions flowed and what were the key elements of that playstyle. I am not looking for that kind of experience in a roleplaying game. I'd lose interest fast. I'm happy though that many will enjoy it.

And this is 100% hunky-dory, no issues at all with this statement. I'm sure, though, that you'd call those elements "shallow" and not think twice about deploying a description others would find dismissive (and which you intend dismissively), but you'll certainly stand up if anyone uses "protagonism" and says your approach isn't that, because, I guess, "protagonist" is a word you think is "good" and so should be owned by your approach as well, because your approach is "good." Meanwhile, you'll causally say that these other games, the ones you don't like, probably shouldn't even be considered to be real RPGs.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In a number of ways this reminds me of my approach to GMing Rolemaster.

I get the impression that for a lot of the "big picture" stuff - the piecing together of the bits of the puzzle, rather than the nitty-gritty of winning a combat or even talking to a particular NPC - resolution is fairly freeform with a lot of back-and-forth between players and GM. Is that fair? Or are their tighter action resolution processes around that that I've not picked up on?

For the most part, yeah. Like the central mystery of the true nature of the castles and all that was largely gleaned from different NPCs along the way. I didn’t want to prolong discovery of these central ideas once things started moving toward them, so very often there weren’t even skill checks involved. I’d place the knowledge behind some other obstacle....so if the elven sage knew about how the castles were all connected, the challenge was in rescuing him from an opposing faction rather than in convincing him to reveal what he knows. Rescue him, and he’ll share the information.

And of course I had multiple such sources in mind so that the players could pursue different avenues in the fiction and still have the chance to learn the lore. I didn’t want it gated behind rolls, for the most part. Nor did I want there to be only one route to the information.

There are a few exceptions to this, though, but only when it made sense to do so. A Dabus named Fell in Sigil who only “speaks” in images comes to mind. He knows the Lady of Pain’s history and how it connects to the castles, and I had the players make some checks to determine how clear his images were. So I gave them the “essential” details as soon as they interacted with Fell, and then allowed follow up questions for additional details, and I based the clarity of those details on the results of their rolls. So they got the “actionable” information for sure, and anything else was a bonus.

We’ve now passed the point where learning that campaign history is still necessary, though. I didn’t want that to be the focus of play for too long. Now that they have all that info, they’re able to steer the direction of play more easily. I read a good bit of advice a couple years back that was along the lines “a secret revealed is always more interesting than a secret kept”. I kind of look at it as players being able to act on what they know rather than on what they don’t know. The former seems much more suited to gaming.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I've talked about how I'm currently running an AP. I have a rather detailed set of notes for this game, in addition to the AP notes I also have all of Forgotten Realms lore to lean on. What does this do for me? A number of things, if I look at it critically. The background lore provides me with a solid structure with which to paint the world the PCs inhabit -- I can lean on it to provide details and coherence and even drop easter eggs for lore enthusiasts (I have one). But, this isn't the extent of the notes for this AP. I also have encounters, location, mysteries, and story notes. And these require serious review and consideration, because I need to make sure that these align with the play goals of my table, and they really don't for any table. This is because these notes are provided in a way that doesn't really have a coherent play agenda in mind -- there's some skilled play, some fuzzy-GM-interaction-as-roleplay, some exposition dumps, some Illusionism, and some outright Force (where the module tells you X happens no matter what, and gives ways of enforcing X happening). So, how are these notes used in play? Differently for each table, really, as they're meant to be modified (an approach I find somewhat disingenuous to the stated purpose of an AP -- easy, prepared play). Understanding how you use notes in various ways -- how notes inform and direct play -- is critical to getting the best out of an AP -- to align it to what you want at your table. If you want all skilled play, you'll have to make adjustments to do so, because the AP isn't all skilled play. If you want a mix, you'll have to adjust to make sure you get what you want where you want. You can do what's often done, here, and peruse many threads and blogs worth of how other people did this work and provided results, and just pick the ones that speak to you, but then you see people complain that such-and-such didn't work for them so others should avoid it because it's bad advice. This is, fundamentally, a failure to understand how notes work in your game -- how the plan translates to play in a pleasing manner.

I agree with all the above.

I followed the subtext of your question ...(snip)...Clearly, you're asking if the question has any merit to improve the craft of GMing...

No, I'm not asking that question.
The original question was posed, IMO knowingly, in such a manner which invited aggravated dialogue between the usual suspects, engaging in much definition bickering with no real headway being made, while some engaging in earnest without ego were often and sadly met with sharp replies.