What is the point of GM's notes?

[Imaro]

I'll requote:

a skill challenge is a complex situation in which you must make several successful checks, often using a variety of skills, before you can claim success in the encounter (4e D&D PHB, p 179)​

​

Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal. (4e D&D DMG, p 72)​

If the players succeed at the skill challenge, they achieve the goal of the challenge and thus "claim success in the encounter".


The challenge is not defined in terms of a goal nor in terms of success in the encounter.

So the PC can avoid the guards (that are about to come around the corner) but not successfully avoid discovery in the current situation (in virtue of climbing the wall into the line of sight of a hitherto-unnoticed guard).

That is all @Ovinomancer is saying.

So from the 5e PHB...

The DM calls for an ability check when a character or
monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that
has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain,
the dice determine the results.

So I define my action (avoid the guards) and the DM calls for a roll to determine it's success I roll and...

If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check
is a success-the creature overcomes the challenge
at hand. Otherwise, it's a failure, which means the
character or monster makes no progress toward the
objective or makes progress combined with a setback
determined by the DM.

 

[pemerton]

The thieves guild & other off screen stuff are quantum when they aren't being observed or interacted with. In games like fate mentioning it like in the example can actually cost(and potentially gain) the player a resource but it gets done anyway because they are already there if at any point in the future their presence there can improve something in an interesting way so why not spice it up by putting them there now so things are interesting today.

I'm familiar with how "think offscreen" works in AW and other PbtA games; I know how a similar approach works in Burning Wheel (based especially on the discussion of the topic in the Adventure Burner); and while I don't have experience with Fate I am familiar enough with it general terms to have a sense of how it works in this respect.

I was explicitly asking @pming what is happening in his game, which as best I can tell from long familiarity with his posts is not adjudicated in a PbtA or similar style.

D&d doesn't have anything like compels & frankly unless your vin diesel most of the group probably doesn't much care about you getting revenge or whatever. Instead of asking if the guy who killed your family is in town, the players engaged in this sort of play should focus on ways to make their goal connect to an inclusive thing like "this seems a lot like the town I remember my family meeting the killer and some of the killer's loyalists back when I was a kid, maybe the veg we are fighting is related to the killer"if the gm says yes they are the player now has all kinds of ties and maybe imperfect memories of the visit

I think here you are expressing broad agreement with @Ovinomancer, namely, that D&D tends to rest on a number of assumptions, including about the role of the GM in establishing the fiction and the way that party play works, which do not easily accommodate protagonistic RPGing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The thieves guild & other off screen stuff are quantum when they aren't being observed or interacted with. In games like fate mentioning it like in the example can actually cost(and potentially gain) the player a resource but it gets done anyway because they are already there if at any point in the future their presence there can improve something in an interesting way so why not spice it up by putting them there now so things are interesting today.


I think that touches on a lot of the problem I have with some of @Ovinomancer's protagonistic examples. D&d doesn't have anything like compels & frankly unless your vin diesel most of the group probably doesn't much care about you getting revenge or whatever. Instead of asking if the guy who killed your family is in town, the players engaged in this sort of play should focus on ways to make their goal connect to an inclusive thing like "this seems a lot like the town I remember my family meeting the killer and some of the killer's loyalists back when I was a kid, maybe the veg we are fighting is related to the killer"if the gm says yes they are the player now has all kinds of ties and maybe imperfect memories of the visit(including maybe those "traps") that could prove useful or sticky so the rest of the group has reason to care. Game systems that support thst type of play tend to assume dynamic characters that grow and include ways to change your goals as you complete them or realize they are obsolete/you irrelevant

I don't disagree, except to say that this kind of play isn't about protagonism -- and that's absolutely fine. D&D does a great job at being the fun, entertaining game it is without any focus on protagonism. It doesn't need to. And your advice and approaches here are very much in line with this lack of protagonism, which, again, is a strength of D&D, not a weakness.

Again, I run 5e, and am running an AP right now. There's very little protagonism in this game. I've carved out a bit in my run, but this is by largely ignoring how the game is structured and inviting my players to add things to the game and then, later, determine when/if those things are important focuses of play.

 

[el-remmen]

This is what my notes look like when I have a pretty clear idea of what the PCs will do in a session. Of course, they can go in a completely unexpected direction and most of this will be delayed or wasted - but even then, it acts as a basis for thinking about what happens/consequences for doing or not doing.

I have also included a pre-drawn map of the encounter location (again, they could end up not confronting here by their choices - but this is where they will be led if nothing else changes).



P.S. Potential Ghosts of Saltmarsh spoilers.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Can we please just list out what is meant by protagonism concretely? Not what it isn't, or how games achieve it... but what it actually is, how it's defined? Like seriously what we are talking about here still seems to be be various games around this nebulous and shifting thing that changes depending on who is posting about it and what previous posts have been made concerning it.

I've done this twice, and you haven't responded to either post. The latest quoted you, so it should be easily found in your mentions. It would be good if there was some feedback to these posts to determine where confusion might still lie.

 

[Manbearcat]

Can we please just list out what is meant by protagonism concretely? Not what it isn't, or how games achieve it... but what it actually is, how it's defined? Like seriously what we are talking about here still seems to be be various games around this nebulous and shifting thing that changes depending on who is posting about it and what previous posts have been made concerning it.

I've tried to explain this a million times. If a holistic breaking down of the concept doesn't work for you, I will attempt to reduce it to its most basic fundamental nature. If this doesn't work for you because its not high enough resolution (because you asked for the reduction/distillation), then just use this reduction and look at what I posted above (and the other things I and others have posted) to then build out your understanding.

Ok, to reduce/distill (and therefore lose information):

Does your game (the setting, the obstacles, the antagonists) orbit pretty much entirely around expressed PC dramatic needs (PC dramatic needs are the sun, the obstacles/antagonists are the planets)? Yes? Protagonism.

* Note that general play premise or genre (this is a HEIST game, this is a DUNGEON EXPLORATION game) is not an expression of PC dramatic need. This is not Protagonism.

 

[Imaro]

I've tried to explain this a million times. If a holistic breaking down of the concept doesn't work for you, I will attempt to reduce it to its most basic fundamental nature. If this doesn't work for you because its not high enough resolution (because you asked for the reduction/distillation), then just use this reduction and look at what I posted above (and the other things I and others have posted) to then build out your understanding.

Ok, to reduce/distill (and therefore lose information):

Does your game (the setting, the obstacles, the antagonists) orbit pretty much entirely around expressed PC dramatic needs (PC dramatic needs are the sun, the obstacles/antagonists are the planets)? Yes? Protagonism.

* Note that general play premise or genre (this is a HEIST game, this is a DUNGEON EXPLORATION game) is not an expression of PC dramatic need. This is not Protagonism.

Okay so if it's simply this... why do we keep mixing in the rules of other games, peoples preferred methodologies, and opinions into the mix? That's the confusion. If we are simply discussing the definition above and whether it is doable in D&D or many other traditional games (with the caveat that it's what a particular group wants to focus their game on) then I don't get how one can argue it's bad or unsuited for it. This has been my point from the beginning, stating that D&D is bad at this type of play rings falsely in my ears unless we assume a group doesn't desire protagonism but instead needs to be forced to play in this manner by the ruleset.

 

[pemerton]

Since you include purposeful pre-prep around the players dramatic needs in the same category as no prep around the players dramatic needs (Both being no or low protagonism) but improvisation around the dramatic need is categorized differently (high protagonism) I can only conclude that improv vs pre-prep is the main (only??) difference... is that correct?

Let me provide an example. Let's say we have the character I used as an example previously, the one who's dramatic need is to get revenge on their family's murderer. Let's further say that the PCs have arrived in a new town. The example PC's player declares an action to search for clues to the murderer's location in this town, because the PC believes that it's likely the murderer passed through here (all on their own). The response from the GM can be a number of things, but here's the two big categories:

1. The GM checks their notes:
1a. The notes indicate that the murderer did indeed come through this town, and there are clues, and so play progresses with the player trying to discover these clues.
1b. The notes indicate either that the murderer when in a different direction, or say nothing about the murderer in this town, and so play on this matter stops or is thwarted because the GM narrates failure to the action (or provide some non-answer).

2. The GM goes with the player's action and assumes that the may be something in this town:
2a. The GM wings this entirely on their own estimation of the what's here.
2b. The GM uses the mechanics of the system to test the player's action, and honors the results, narrating clues on a success.

Not quite. The prep was establishing the story of the NPC, which the PC then discovered. This puts the story of the NPC in the place of primacy -- ie, the thing that is true.

Prep is difficult to do for protagonism, largely because it tends to protagonize the NPCs over the PCs. Prep, in this case, needs to be focused on having interesting complications handy, in case they become useful. "Hold on lightly" is the usual advice for prep in this case -- it's fine to think ahead, and jot down some notes, but you need to be ready to ditch that entirely on a moments notice if play moves in a different direction. This isn't entirely improvisational play, though, as systems that implement this also have strong constraints and tools for enabling this play.

I've highlighted a key part of @Ovinomancer's reply. This is consistent with my description, upthread, of the possible role of "aides memoire" in skill challenge adjudication. The preparation of "fronts" by an AW or DW GM is also (in part) for this purpose: when the rules and rhythm of the game tell the GM s/he has to introduce some new, oppositional fiction the AW or DW GM looks to his/her fronts for that material.

This is obviously very different from introducing fiction by first asking where are the PCs on the map and then asking what do my notes tell me is at that place on the map? (For a bit more about this map-and-key approach, see my discussion upthread with @jmartkdr2 and the hypothetical black marble temple of Olath with its evil high priest.)

In this structure, all of 1 is no or low protagonism. The PC's need are not centered in play, but rather the GM's notes are. By this I mean that the GM is protagonizing the murderer, and has written down their story, which the PC then can discover if the notes indicate the are in a place to be discovered.

2a is uncertain protagonism -- this is still very subject to the GM protagonizing other things, but may not be.

2b is high protagonism. Play centers on the PC's dramatic needs.

I really don't see a practical difference in the results generated by 1a and 2a since both are being determined by the GM (either in the moment or beforehand).

I don't disagree -- 2a, though, has a bit more space, which is why I put it down as uncertain and called out the same issues as likely.

On this point I do disagree. I've GMed 1a, and have played in a lot of 1a, and I have also GMed 2a. (2a is what eg Rolemaster and to some extent Classic Traveller tends to looks like when GMed in a protagonistic-oriented fashion.)

The difference between deciding the fiction in advance of play and deciding the fiction in the moment of play, in response to player cues, and the back-and-forth at the table (which can take place even in games that do not have the formal PbtA injunction to ask questions and build on the answers) is huge. In my own view, based on my own experience, it can hardly be exaggerated. If you've tried it and disagree, I'm very interested to hear more. If you've not tried it, then I strongly suggest doing so and seeing what happens.

While 2b seems to mostly be a principle (honor the result of testing a player's action where success equals clues) that can be applied to D&D pretty easily, especially in the method of 1a.

And, yes, 2b does follow the 'honor the result' philosophy.

Honouring the results will only produce protagonistic play if the player-authored PC's dramatic need was an input into those results.

To elaborate the above point: honouring the results is crucial to GMing Moldvay Basic. The GM advice section of the game is all about this. But Moldvay Basic, played in accordance with the guidelines and principles set out, won't produce protagonistic play. The notion of dramatic needs is nowhere to be found.

The most straightforward way to incorporate dramatic need as an input into action resolution is via (what Burning Wheel calls) Intent and Task and Let it Ride: ie if the check succeeds the PC achieves both the declared task and the player's intent, and the outcome is binding on all participants; and if the check fails then the GM establishes consequences that flow in some or other fashion from the task and that put pressure on the player's intent and hence constitute further adversity for the PC. Which goes back to what @Ovinomancer posted about the role of prep: you can't do this sort of thing if the fiction is already subject to the constraints of pre-authorship.

The BW procedures aren't the only feasible ones: PbtA games use their arrays of moves instead to incorporate dramatic need into resolution. But the implications for how and when fiction is established aren't that different.

 

[pemerton]

So from the 5e PHB...

The DM calls for an ability check when a character or
monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that
has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain,
the dice determine the results.

So I define my action (avoid the guards) and the DM calls for a roll to determine it's success I roll and...

If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check
is a success-the creature overcomes the challenge
at hand. Otherwise, it's a failure, which means the
character or monster makes no progress toward the
objective or makes progress combined with a setback
determined by the DM.

Which guards is the GM obliged to take you to be avoiding? The ones whose presence has been announced (as coming around the corner, the shadows cast by their lanterns already visible to the PC)? Or the one the player (and PC) doesn't yet know about, who has line of sight to the top of the wall?

The 5e PHB passage that you have quoted doesn't address this. Because it refers to actions and to the challenge at hand but does not refer to the situation or the player's goal for his/her PC in the situation.

It is obvious from reading any number of ENworld threads that the majority of 5e D&D GMs on this board treat the action and the challenge at hand as pertaining to what is known to the player in the course of declaring the action and as not pertaining to possible additional fiction stipulated by the GM in his/her notes but not yet revealed in play.

And if any given 5e D&D GM decides to interpret the action and the challenge at hand as pertaining to the whole situation, they have the obvious problem that it is often unsatisfying to resolve a dramatically significant situation via a single roll. But what process is to be used to increase the number of rolls? The obvious one is to narrow down the action to have the same meaning as I described in my previous paragraph. But now we have the issue of when is the scene finished? and how does that relate to the GM's prep, especially map-and-key prep.

There are protagonistically-oriented games that don't use skill challenge-style closed scene resolution: AW and DW are pre-eminent examples. But they use other techniques to deal with the issue which (among their other features) involve radical departures from map-and-key prep.

 

[pemerton]

Can we please just list out what is meant by protagonism concretely?

I've done this twice

I've tried to explain this a million times.

In addition to Ovinomancer's literally two attempts, and Manbearcats figurative millions, I also posted this upthread:

To paraphrase @Ovinomancer from post 112 upthread, what distinguishes these games is that the player-authored dramatic needs of the PCs are the primary focus of play.

******************************************

Okay so if it's simply this... why do we keep mixing in the rules of other games, peoples preferred methodologies, and opinions into the mix?

It's impossible to discuss protagonistic RPGing without discussing procedures or methodologies of play, because these are inherent to the notion of player-authored dramatic needs being the primary focus of play. In the preceding sentence, the two italicised phrases are central to the notion of protagonistic RPGing, and also implicate some and exclude other procedures of play.

You can't have protagonistic RPGing if the GM has sole, unilateral authority over the content of the shared fiction. That's a statement of procedures. In the context of this thread, it is obviously related to the point of GM's notes. It bears upon who gets to tell us what today's RPG session is going to be about, which bears upon the role of notes in determining what the session will be about. It bears upon the role of notes in framing, and in resolution.

The whole point of this thread is to discuss GMing techniques.

******************************************

If we are simply discussing the definition above and whether it is doable in D&D or many other traditional games (with the caveat that it's what a particular group wants to focus their game on) then I don't get how one can argue it's bad or unsuited for it.

Having done quite a bit of protagonistic play using a "traditional" RPG - namely, Rolemaster - I am pretty familiar with its limitations in this respect:

(1) It suffers from a lack of robust finality in non-combat resolution, although - in virtue of the design of many of its static action resolution tables - not quite as badly as non-skill challenge D&D resolution.

(2) It has many, many features that drag the focus of play away from the player-authored PC dramatic needs: spell durations, healing times, and the requirement that these impose to track time in a granular fashion and that make it hard to "close off" a scene.

(3) It has no clear procedures for resolving action declarations that involve large scale (in the fiction) space and time: travelling from A to B relies upon tracking movement on a map by applying movement rates and terrain modifiers; finding an armourer to sell you armour requires engaging with the fiction the GM narrates based on his/her map-and-key; etc. (It's no coincidence that in the RM games I GMed magical transport via teleport or flight became the default mode of moving from location to location and hence proceeding from event to event.)​

Another "traditional" RPG that I know fairly well - namely, RuneQuest - suffers from a worse case of (1) (because it lacks the static action tables) and has a further limitation that is not present in RM:

(4) There is no real way, in RQ, for a player to "try harder" when the stakes are high (as determined by the PC's player-authored dramatic need). Magic is perhaps an exception to this, but it doesn't flow quite as easily as it does in RM, and RM has other mechanical features beyond spell use that permit trying harder.​

There are probably other limitations I'm not thinking of right now, but those are some of the main ones.

Looking at "non-traditional" systems: Burning Wheel does not have (1), (3) or (4) and has some interesting ways of managing (2) by creating meaningful trade-offs around the passing of ingame time; Prince Valiant does not have (1), (2) or (3) and has a limited device - the Storyteller Certificate - for avoiding (4); Classic Traveller does not have (1) in its core activities of space travel, space trade, and fighting people and doesn't suffer too badly from (1) when it comes to talking to people, doesn't have much of (2) and doesn't have (3); AW and DW don't have (1), (2) or (3) and individual PCs may have individual moves that also avoid (4) at least in some contexts.

Based on my knowledge of 5e, it has (1) to about the same degree as RQ, mostly avoids (2) except in the context of resource recovery where the evidence of these boards is that that can be a huge issues, does have (3), and mostly deals with (4) via the magic system (the Inspiration subsystem often seems to be disregarded).

In any event, I don't believe that I have ever seen a single post on ENworld about 5e D&D play which provided an example of protagonistic RPGing using that system.

That's not to say that there are no black swans out there, but if you want to prove their existence can you at least point us to where they might be found?