What is the point of GM's notes?

[prabe]

@Fenris-77 I think there's a difference between expecting the players to do something because you prepped it, and expecting them to do something because you know them (and/or how they're playing these specific characters). I think the former is closer to insisting. I do the latter, but I have no problem tossing prep if the PCs end up going other places or doing other things (the fact I don't prep more than the next session keeps me from wasting as much prep, I think).

 

[Campbell]

Not that I agree with your sword of MSG, but are you saying indie gamers in this thread feel less than or hard done by?

Not presently, but a less creatively secure version of myself absolutely did. During my development as a gamer and a GM there have been a number of people on this particular board, elsewhere online, and in meat space have said and done things that made me feel unwelcome in this hobby. I'm 36 right now. I was like 14 when I started posting on Eric Noah's message boards. Several posters are still posting in this thread. There are times where I have felt like my discontent with mainstream play meant there must be something wrong with me or like that I was in the wrong hobby.

Posters like @Imaro , @Bedrockgames (although in other spaces) and @Ovinomancer definitely contributed to that experience for me back then. For awhile they became like my Detroit Pistons. This was especially true in the 4e era where I was still finding my footing as a GM. I used every time someone would say that I was basically irrelevant, that I just did not have experience with good GMs, or that I was not really playing a roleplaying game as motivation. I developed a Michael Jordan size chip on my shoulder.

I feel like I have gotten to a place where I do not have as much of a chip on my shoulder and can address this stuff in more reasoned ways, but I probably still have a bit of a chip on my shoulders. As a pretty competitive person and a lifelong athlete I tend to use motivation where I can get it. I think I'm older, somewhat wiser, and definitely more experienced now. Things have a lot less stakes (to me) now because I have gotten to experience what I was looking for and not finding when I was younger.

For one I am a lot more open to more mainstream games now to the point where some of my favorite games like Pathfinder 2, Exalted 3e, Vampire 5e, Legend of the Five Rings 5e and Worlds Without Number are fairly mainstream in approach.

The living world stuff is a bit of a cultural thing for me, largely because I have heard overly romantic depictions of it sold to me for years when I was struggling as a young GM. They made it sound so easy, like it just happens naturally. There was no road map. No procedures. Just throw yourself to the fire repeatedly. It led to years of frustration for me personally.

I also really do think it's impossible to actually do. I think it's pursuit is valuable. There are all sorts of impossible that are valuable to pursue. However, I think it's really frustrating when you are someone trying to do it and not getting there when people act like they are routinely achieving the impossible. You can feel like an imposter even when the people you are playing with are really enjoying themselves. I spent years feeling like I could not measure up because it seemed like everyone was doing what I could not until I realized they weren't actually doing it.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Fenris-77 I think there's a difference between expecting the players to do something because you prepped it, and expecting them to do something because you know them (and/or how they're playing these specific characters). I think the former is closer to insisting. I do the latter, but I have no problem tossing prep if the PCs end up going other places or doing other things (the fact I don't prep more than the next session keeps me from wasting as much prep, I think).

Those are two pretty different uses of expect. The former indexes the point I'm making about negative uses of GM prep, but the latter is more about anticipation of player direction or interest, which is non-problematic IMO.

 

[prabe]

Those are two pretty different uses if expect. The former indexes the point I'm making about negative uses of GM prep, but the latter is more about anticipation of player direction or interest, which is non-problematic IMO.

I don't disagree. I just kept having to think through it every time I saw the word, because my brain occasionally does me dirt that way. Figured it was worth a little clarification.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not presently, but a less creatively secure version of myself absolutely did. During my development as a gamer and a GM there have been a number of people on this particular board, elsewhere online, and in meat space have said and done things that made me feel unwelcome in this hobby. I'm 36 right now. I was like 14 when I started posting on Eric Noah's message boards. Several posters are still posting in this thread. There are times where I have felt like my discontent with mainstream play meant there must be something wrong with me or like that I was in the wrong hobby.

Posters like @Imaro , @Bedrockgames (although in other spaces) and @Ovinomancer definitely contributed to that experience for me back then. For awhile they became like my Detroit Pistons. This was especially true in the 4e era where I was still finding my footing as a GM. I used every time someone would say that I was basically irrelevant, that I just did not have experience with good GMs, or that I was not really playing a roleplaying game as motivation. I developed a Michael Jordan size chip on my shoulder.

I am 44, so I probably wasn't interacting with you until you were in your mid-20s is my guess, but if I posted anything that made you feel unwelcome to the hobby, that definitely wasn't my intent. And I wasn't trying to say living world sandboxes are easy: it took me a long time to find my way with RPGs and figure out what worked for me (this is why I point to that feast of Goblyns section as a bit of a genesis for me, but then I didn't really start going into the desert and figuring things out for myself until around 2004 or so: I know where I was living in Boston at the time, but can't recall the precise year). And for me it wasn't until after 4E that living world sandbox became a style I was really wrapping my head around (prior to that I was focused mostly on standard type adventures, mysteries/investigations, and character driven situational adventures). It took a while for me to find a way to make sandbox work (realizing that half of the puzzle was basically that box from Feast of Goblyns was a big part of it, because I already was taking that into my games---especially for monster hunt scenarios and investigations).

 

[Imaro]

Not presently, but a less creatively secure version of myself absolutely did. During my development as a gamer and a GM there have been a number of people on this particular board, elsewhere online, and in meat space have said and done things that made me feel unwelcome in this hobby. I'm 36 right now. I was like 14 when I started posting on Eric Noah's message boards. Several posters are still posting in this thread. There are times where I have felt like my discontent with mainstream play meant there must be something wrong with me or like that I was in the wrong hobby.

Posters like @Imaro , @Bedrockgames (although in other spaces) and @Ovinomancer definitely contributed to that experience for me back then. For awhile they became like my Detroit Pistons. This was especially true in the 4e era where I was still finding my footing as a GM. I used every time someone would say that I was basically irrelevant, that I just did not have experience with good GMs, or that I was not really playing a roleplaying game as motivation. I developed a Michael Jordan size chip on my shoulder.

I feel like I have gotten to a place where I do not have as much of a chip on my shoulder and can address this stuff in more reasoned ways, but I probably still have a bit of a chip on my shoulders. As a pretty competitive person and a lifelong athlete I tend to use motivation where I can get it. I think I'm older, somewhat wiser, and definitely more experienced now. Things have a lot less stakes (to me) now because I have gotten to experience what I was looking for and not finding when I was younger.

For one I am a lot more open to more mainstream games now to the point where some of my favorite games like Pathfinder 2, Exalted 3e, Vampire 5e, Legend of the Five Rings 5e and Worlds Without Number are fairly mainstream in approach.

The living world stuff is a bit of a cultural thing for me, largely because I have heard overly romantic depictions of it sold to me for years when I was struggling as a young GM. They made it sound so easy, like it just happens naturally. There was no road map. No procedures. Just throw yourself to the fire repeatedly. It led to years of frustration for me personally.

I also really do think it's impossible to actually do. I think it's pursuit is valuable. There are all sorts of impossible that are valuable to pursue. However, I think it's really frustrating when you are someone trying to do it and not getting there when people act like they are routinely achieving the impossible. You can feel like an imposter even when the people you are playing with are really enjoying themselves. I spent years feeling like I could not measure up because it seemed like everyone was doing what I could not until I realized they weren't actually doing it.

@Campbell just wanted to say I apologize, I definitely don't intend to make anyone feel like they don't belong in the hobby but with that said I do know that during the 4e time period (And even now) many discussions get heated and I shoulder my fair share of blame for taking many of them too far. So I apologize for making you feel uncomfortable in our hobby and I will endeavor to try and dial back some in these discussions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Campbell just wanted to say I apologize, I definitely don't intend to make anyone feel like they don't belong in the hobby but with that said I do know that during the 4e time period (And even now) many discussions get heated and I shoulder my fair share of blame for taking many of them too far. So I apologize for making you feel uncomfortable in our hobby and I will endeavor to try and dial back some in these discussions.

I agree with this. Definitely extend my apologies to you if I made you feel this way. I think one thing to keep in mind is we don't know anything about one another besides the name we choose for ourselves and how we speak. If you were very young when you came onto En World, and you received strong push back, my guess is people probably mistook you for being older (because generally it seems people try not to engage posters who seem like teenagers that way). One problem I often have is I just assume people are all my age when I am talking with them. I don't know why I make that assumption, but I find in my head I imagine an audience my own age.

 

[Campbell]

Back to the main topic.

One of the issues I have personally experienced with traditional sandbox techniques (particularly OSR style sandbox techniques) where a GM will spend months designing a setting with the expectation that players will want to actively explore it is that on both sides of the screen it often feels like space aliens coming to a new planet. Characters seldom feel like integrated parts of the setting, often because there is very little effort in actually building out a real life for them. Games like RuneQuest, Classic Traveller, and their modern cousins like Conan 2d20 feel slightly better here, but often the setting is constructed too high a level for my tastes.

I find a lot of sandbox design tends to over focus on social groupings and not enough on characters as people with real relationships and connections to the outside world. In gaming I think there is often an over intellectualization of setting material where GMs often fall into the economist's trap of treating everyone like rational actors. In my personal experience most people (myself included) are phenomenal at posthoc rationalization, but not often guided by their rational minds when making decisions. This might be actor's bias creeping through though.

To a certain extent I think sometimes making exploration a central goal of play can harm the sense of being there in the moment. Mostly because I want my characters to feel like they live in the world rather than like they are exploring it. Things that are part of their everyday lives should not feel new to their player.

Generally when I'm playing a character focused game I do not want to have a detached view of the fiction. Within reason I want sense of my character's perspective of the world. That includes intuition, what they know, what they have experienced, who they care about, and their emotional responses to the events unfolding before them. I want things to feel like personal and not in a performative way.

Not saying people using more traditional sandbox techniques do not want that, but in my experience that sense of integration can often be lacking. That's why to a certain extent I tend to be a strong believer in a more integrated and ongoing approach to setting design for more character focused play. I tend to prefer that authority over framing and backstory still remains firmly in the GM's hands, but think a focus on the more immediate situation and the character's daily life is beneficial.

This all does assume that you are not really playing an adventuring game. My character focused games tend to focus on characters whose normal existence pretty much is an adventure.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Back to the main topic.

One of the issues I have personally experienced with traditional sandbox techniques (particularly OSR style sandbox techniques) where a GM will spend months designing a setting with the expectation that players will want to actively explore it is that on both sides of the screen it often feels like space aliens coming to a new planet. Characters seldom feel like integrated parts of the setting, often because there is very little effort in actually building out a real life for them. Games like RuneQuest, Classic Traveller, and their modern cousins like Conan 2d20 feel slightly better here, but often the setting is constructed too high a level for my tastes.

I find a lot of sandbox design tends to over focus on social groupings and not enough on characters as people with real relationships and connections to the outside world. In gaming I think there is often an over intellectualization of setting material where GMs often fall into the economist's trap of treating everyone like rational actors. In my personal experience most people (myself included) are phenomenal at posthoc rationalization, but not often guided by their rational minds when making decisions. This might be actor's bias creeping through though.

To a certain extent I think sometimes making exploration a central goal of play can harm the sense of being there in the moment. Mostly because I want my characters to feel like they live in the world rather than like they are exploring it. Things that are part of their everyday lives should not feel new to their player.

Generally when I'm playing a character focused game I do not want to have a detached view of the fiction. Within reason I want sense of my character's perspective of the world. That includes intuition, what they know, what they have experienced, who they care about, and their emotional responses to the events unfolding before them. I want things to feel like personal and not in a performative way.

Not saying people using more traditional sandbox techniques do not want that, but in my experience that sense of integration can often be lacking. That's why to a certain extent I tend to be a strong believer in a more integrated and ongoing approach to setting design for more character focused play. I tend to prefer that authority over framing and backstory still remains firmly in the GM's hands, but think a focus on the more immediate situation and the character's daily life is beneficial.

This all does assume that you are not really playing an adventuring game. My character focused games tend to focus on characters whose normal existence pretty much is an adventure.

I actually agree with a lot of this. I might quibble over specific phrasing in instances, but I agree that one of the big challenges of sandbox is getting players to feel connected to the world they live in initially (this is why I think in most of the advice and even in the Justin Alexander video there is usually a phrase like "eventually the sandbox should run itself because the players are finding their own hooks". It takes time to get the point where the players know enough about the setting to do that and where their characters have enough connections in the world to feel like they truly inhabit it. In my experience the first couple of months of play are sort of like movies where an out of town character shows up in the big city for the first time and they need to get their footing.

I also agree about exploration. I don't really see exploration as the focus, I see characters as the focus and I agree about PCs and NPCs not being purely rational actors. This is why I talk a lot about intuition and emotion. When I am running an NPC, obviously I know their stated motives and goals on the page, but I also feel how that character responds to the things and that guides my judgement just as much, often more.

And I think something you said here reminds me why things like family ties are so important. The more sandboxes I've run, the more I've tried to establish with players what their family background is and who their living relatives are (and I often let them have a lot of creative control here, though I will push back simply to avoid it being wish fulfillment----since I think their family members need to have goals, secrets and desires of their own). This has really helped make my sandboxes work much better. When characters are rooted to family it definitely makes them behave differently. That is also why I think characters getting married and having children can really be beneficial in a campaign.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This all does assume that you are not really playing an adventuring game. My character focused games tend to focus on characters whose normal existence pretty much is an adventure.

Mine are often still adventuring but family life is often very important too