What is the point of GM's notes?

[hawkeyefan]

This is kind of my point. The bold exemplifies the fact that you change it. Why? You see, even with well laid encounters, solid plot hooks, character led encounters or plots, etc., it still boils down to DM execution. It all boils down to DM execution. And if a DM can execute well, even with errors in the AP, then they can do well pretty much anywhere.

I’ve run two of the 5E adventures in their entirety (also a few in bits and pieces), and I actually agree that the experiences have helped me.

The first was Curse of Strahd. I’m familiar with the previous incarnations of the adventure, and so I found the mew one to be very easy to run, and to make my own. I modifoed it as I needed and injected all kinds of ongoing threads and character bits from our play prior to beginning the adventure. It went well and we all had fun.

Then I ran Tomb of Annihilation. The first half, with the haxcrawl through Chult, we had a good time. Largely similar to our experience with CoS. But once we reached the Tomb of Annihilation, things quickly went sour. The shift in playstyle to a procedural dungeon crawl was just too heavy a change for our group. The players became very tentative and indecisive, and I became frustrated. Because it was a dungeon crawl, I felt the need to be very “by the book”, and that didn’t suit our style at all.

After a couple of frustrating sessions, I addressed it with the group, and we adjusted going forward. Things got much better after that.

But it was a good learning experience. Or a good reminder, maybe is more accurate.

 

[Scott Christian]

Then I ran Tomb of Annihilation. The first half, with the haxcrawl through Chult, we had a good time. Largely similar to our experience with CoS. But once we reached the Tomb of Annihilation, things quickly went sour.

Your experience, imho, is shared by many when playing ToA. It can be applied to Ovinomancer's list of things that need to be changed. For example, the hexcrawl can lead to pacing issues. But, the AP can remind any good DM that pacing is really just reading the table.

But it was a good learning experience. Or a good reminder, maybe is more accurate.

Thank you for finding the words I was trying to express. APs can remind DMs how to control variables. Because, I will be honest, most DMs I know (including me), when they write something (an encounter or adventure or AP), they have a tendency to not change it as much as they would a store bought AP. In other words, we feel we know are table better (and for good reason), and thus believe we are not as afllable as those other adventure writers. Working within the confines of an AP teaches (or reminds) that truth might not be as real as what we think it is.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is kind of my point. The bold exemplifies the fact that you change it. Why? You see, even with well laid encounters, solid plot hooks, character led encounters or plots, etc., it still boils down to DM execution. It all boils down to DM execution. And if a DM can execute well, even with errors in the AP, then they can do well pretty much anywhere.

Yeah, no. The AP doesn't teach these things in any way that makes it easier to diagnose than any other game. If you're going to notice problems, APs aren't better for that than your own stuff, or even playing in other people's games. I can't get behind the argument that you'll learn execution any better from an AP than any other source. Your argument is more suited to "you'll learn to do better by doing," which is a bit cliche.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, to be honest. But I'll try...

If I write something down and the PC's don't engage with it, they are still there (the notes). The stuff that is 'happening' is still happening...the world doesn't stop when the PC's aren't there, for example.

<snip stuff about drawing upon notes, some time later, for ideas>

In short...these "notes" can, and do, become part of my campaigns history. Even if parts are never realized or discovered by the Players. It's for me, and for them if they happen to find interest.

Does that help?

Thanks, it gives a clearer picture, yes.

 

[pemerton]

For what it's worth, I've never run an AP and I don't think that has hurt me as a GM.

The only scenarios I've run whole cloth, at least in the past 20 years, are some Prince Valiant ones. These tend to be very short (a page or two) with a single situation and some notes suggesting a small number of ways that situation might evolve or yield complications.

Because I got my copy of Prince Valiant via the Kickstarter a few years ago, it also came with an Episode Book. Some of these scenarios are more elaborate than Greg Stafford's original ones. It's interesting to see which ones work and which ones don't.

When I initiated Jerry Grayson's The Crimson Bull I was a bit anxious, because the scenario sets out a series of about 5 scenes, and I wasn't sure that it would work without heavy-handed/railroad-y GMing. But it turned out that the design was really well done. Like many Prince Valiant scenarios, the whole things rests on the premise that the PCs are knights-errant and hence will provide aid to people who request it from them. Once that happened, the subsequent scenes really served as further framing of the initial situation rather than genuine decision points - in this respect the scenario takes full advantage of the fact that, in Prince Valiant, travel from A to B is typically just an exercise in free narration rather than something involving action declaration and resolution. It turned out that there was really only one moment prior to the climax which pushed things beyond framing and a bit of player response to the associated events, and while that could have turned into the climax instead, at our table it served as part of the rising action in what I think was the fashion intended by the author. I don't think I have anything else by Jerry Grayson, but on the strength of this scenario I would say he's a pretty good RPG designer.

Mark Rein*Hagen also has a relatively intricate scenario in the Episode Book, and its contrast with Grayson's is pretty marked. Just reading it through was enough to trigger alarm bells: its scene descriptions begin with phrases like "The Adventurers must now scour the forest to find Quink" and "As soon as they enter the duchy" and "Bryce’s sister . . . receives the conquerors in the great hall . . . One way or another, the Adventurers should be in attendance of this meeting". When I used this scenario I took up most of its key ideas, and the NPCs, but used a different framing and just ignored Rein*Hagen's railroaded sequence of events.

My general sense of APs is that they are closer to the Rein*Hagen scenario only longer and hence with even more railroaded sequences of events.

 

[prabe]

I don't have any argument with your thinking about AP-type adventures, but I wanted to see how closely we agreed about this:

When I initiated Jerry Grayson's The Crimson Bull I was a bit anxious, because the scenario sets out a series of about 5 scenes, and I wasn't sure that it would work without heavy-handed/railroad-y GMing. But it turned out that the design was really well done. Like many Prince Valiant scenarios, the whole things rests on the premise that the PCs are knights-errant and hence will provide aid to people who request it from them. Once that happened, the subsequent scenes really served as further framing of the initial situation rather than genuine decision points - in this respect the scenario takes full advantage of the fact that, in Prince Valiant, travel from A to B is typically just an exercise in free narration rather than something involving action declaration and resolution. It turned out that there was really only one moment prior to the climax which pushed things beyond framing and a bit of player response to the associated events, and while that could have turned into the climax instead, at our table it served as part of the rising action in what I think was the fashion intended by the author. I don't think I have anything else by Jerry Grayson, but on the strength of this scenario I would say he's a pretty good RPG designer.

So, what you're talking about here, where the scenario designer is making good use of the premise of the game--it seems as though a GM who knows how the players are playing their characters might be able to manage something similar. I don't think doing so is railroading or bad design, provided the GM isn't going to insist on a sequence of events.

 

[pemerton]

Then what is naturalistic extrapolation, if not a fancy term for consequences (or cause-and-effect, same thing)?

The cause-and-effect that leads to the creation of fiction is not the imaginary causation that is taking place in the imagined world, but the actual causation that is taking place in human brains. When it comes to mainstream RPGing, we can put those brains into two broad categories: GM and player. In other words, we can identify which participant did the authoring, using what sort of process.

This is a special case, for RPGs, of a general phenomenon in the playing of games: people participate in games not just to learn how the state of the game unfolded over time, but to be part of the causal process of driving those changes in the state of the game. When I watch two other people play chess, that is not the same experience as when I play chess. And when I say that I play chess I don't mean that I move the pieces in accordance with someone else's directions - I mean that I make the decisions about what moves are made.

When @Manbearcat says that protagonistic RPGing requires that the GM not engage in naturalistic extrapolation to oppose the PCs, he means just what he says: when the players declare actions for their PCs, the GM does not engage in naturalistic extrapolation - which is to say, authorship in accordance with certain principles - in order to specify what happens unless that is done so as not to oppose the PCs ie unless the GM says "yes" to what the players want for their PCs.

If the GM does not wish to say "yes" to what the players want, then the system mechanics are to be invoked. One upshot of this may be that the players fail their checks, in which case the GM has to narrate consequences. That is a point at which naturalistic extrapolation has a role to play, though it is not the be-all and end-all (eg sometimes an enemy force suddenly appearing over the horizon will be a more exciting consequence than having one's tools break before the job can be completed, even though the latter consequence might seem more naturalistic and less contrived).

For example: a player wants her PC to acquire a new sword. The current situation has the PC in a town where there are apt to be blacksmiths, sword-shops etc. And so the player says, "I buy a new sword." Now in my Prince Valiant game we've already spent too much time on this mundanity at this point, and so I just say "yes" and ask them to change their PC sheet appropriately. (The one mechanical wonkiness in Prince Valiant, for which Greg Stafford apologises in the rulebook, is that it requires the players to keep track of money on their PC sheets just like in D&D, even though that is completely irrelevant to the game play.)

But in Burning Wheel it's fair game to lean hard on this as GM rather than just say "yes", especially if the issue of access to armaments has been a recurring concern in play. (In my actual BW game access to arms hasn't been an issue, but access to enchanter's tools has.) BW is a game that typically does care about the nitty-gritty of gear load-outs. So the GM can say, OK, you want a sword? Make a resources check! And the GM is even free to say And as you know there's a war on here, so swords are in high demand - add +1 Ob to that check. The player, in turn, has stuff she can do on her side to buff her dice pool. Eg she might respond In that case, I'm going to go down to the local watering hole and ask the off-duty soldiers there for the name of a quartermaster whose loose with his supplies - and thus make a Soldier-wise check to get a bonus die on the Resources check. Or the player can spend Fate or Persona points to boost her dice pool or get re-rolls. Etc.

If the check ends up failing, the GM is free to narrate You call in all your favours and contacts, but there's not a sword to be found for love or money. That's a naturalistic consequence. She could even transition into the next scene: But you do get a visit from an aide to the local captain. They've heard you've been trying to procure military goods illegally, and want you to come down to their headquarters for a little chat. That's a naturalistic consequence too. The key feature is that the consequences are not only consequences in the fiction; they're consequences in the game play, consequent upon the resolutions of declared actions. They are not used to block or dictate the outcomes of declared actions.

You're comparing apples and rabbits here...and at the same time, not. Both things really break down to being glorified if-then-else loops nested within others; only in the psionics-use case the if-then-else is written down in the notes and the branch taken each time is determined by the PCs' actions where in combat the if-then-else is coded into the game rules and the dice determine which path is taken each time.

The apples-and-rabbits bit is that one is reliant on rules coding and the other not; also greatly different degrees of granularity. IMO a better comparison at the scale/granularity level might be a step up, at the point of the PCs' decision whether or not to engage in combat.

I don't understand this.

Gameplay is typically not algorithmic, in the following sense: the algorithm is punctuated periodically by external inputs (ie participant decisions).

There are some exceptions, such as snakes and ladders and similar children's board games. And there are games that do call for decisions but are so easily solved that for anyone but a child they do not really require decision-making: noughts-and-crosses is one example, and Monopoly tends to be another.

But RPGs are highly non-algorithmic because decisions about the content of the fiction have to be made all the time. And making those decisions is very different from being told what is happening in the fiction. This is further intensified in a RPG by a deliberate design feature that equates player decisions at the table with choices made by a protagonist in the fiction (ie the whole conceit of the player character). And some RPGs have systems that often float somewhat above the fiction - I'm thinking especially traditional D&D combat - but still involve participant decision-making that will shape the future state of the game.

The fact that there is (1) a hypothetical episode of GM stipulation of the fiction that yields the same fictional content as (2) an actual episode of game play that involved decision-making by multiple participants, action declarations and the resolution of those, does not remotely show that the game play of (2) didn't matter or is valueless.

It's a question of scope and available time. A movie has a limited run-time and thus has to harshly limit* the scope of what it covers in terms of both in-setting time and in-setting story. An RPG, on the other hand, has no such limits; the scope and period of what it covers can be immense if so desired

<snip>

So in Indy's case, in the movie we don't hear about random German military operations elsewhere but in an RPG - where Indy's going to do many more things (i.e. have many more adventures) than just recover the Lost Ark; and where his movements are controlled by his player and thus unpredictable, knowing what the Germans - and other armies - are doing elsewhere could come in really handy in terms of determining what he's liable to bump into on his travels and when.

There's another way to work out that stuff - using checks, much as I described in my example above of the purchasing of a sword. Classic Traveller also relies heavily on random content generation (eg encounter tables).

And the key word is desired. The reason that no one watches Warhol's Sleep isn't just because they don't have a spare five hours. Even people with lots of time on their hands want to engage with something more interesting. All the same considerations that inform writing, and film-making, as far as what makes for interesting stories is concerned, can inform RPGing. As its very label suggests, protagonistic RPGing is not indifferent to these things. It is about the focus of play being player-authored PC dramatic needs. Unless one of the PCs is a banker, fluctuations in interest rates, however important to events in the imagined world, are simply not going to figure as something engaged with in play.

 

[pemerton]

what you're talking about here, where the scenario designer is making good use of the premise of the game--it seems as though a GM who knows how the players are playing their characters might be able to manage something similar. I don't think doing so is railroading or bad design, provided the GM isn't going to insist on a sequence of events.

What is very clever in the design of the Crimson Bull is that the initial setup is straightforward - an old man who is leading a bull to a wise woman asks the PCs for help - and that the downstream scenes are really just elaborations on the set-up, with one exception that I mentioned.

As they lead the bull, the PCs are attacked by falling branches, by wild dogs, by wild men, and by fire sprites from their camp fire. But none of these require any protagonistic decision-making. They just serve as elaborations on the basic premise - this old man needs help taking this bull from A to B. And they allow the backstory to the bull (ie it has had a demon bound in it, and hence is a locus for misfortune and supernatural occurrences) to emerge gradually (I would say, at our table, probably over an hour or so) rather than in a single plot-dump. It's very nicely done. The only D&D module I can think of with anything like this sort of design is the early part of Night's Dark Terror.

The exception that arises prior to the climax of the journey with the bull is when "In the voice of a small boy, the bull whispers to the hero with the lowest Presence (if there is a tie, the hero with the lowest Fame). It says that it is the victim and that the old man is the evil one and begs for release of his corded thrall. The bull says that is why the old man cannot speak about his true intent." There is more advice about how to handle this, including that "During this encounter, it is recommended the Storyteller play up the uncertainty and make the Bull sound as sincere as possible." This obviously does require protagonistic decision-making, and has the potential to be the climax of the scenario. At my table it wasn't, though - it served as rising action which then supported the pay-off at the climax.

One element of the scenario that was prominent at our table but isn't really addressed by Grayson as he presents it was Christianity vs paganism. The PCs in my Prince Valiant game incline to religiosity, and at the climax one of them used his silver dagger blessed by the waters of St Sigobert to dispel the demon - and then followed up on this miracle with an insistence that the Wise Woman convert. Which she did. (The resolution for these checks was Brawn and Presence respectively.)

I don't regard it as railroading to frame a scene. A well-framed scene will speak to the premise of the game and the dramatic needs of the PCs: part of the design of Prince Valiant is to make this relatively easy, by having the game foreground at every point the non-gritty aspects of romantic fantasy, Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, etc.

That's not what I regard as clever in Grayson's scenario design. What I think is clever is leaning into the system features (eg that travel is just free narration, and hence can be built into framing rather than demanding resolution) and using the conflicts I described to build colour and allow backstory to emerge in the course of that framing, so that when the climax comes (either the pre-climax or the assumed climax) there is some heft to it. I don't know if Grayson has ever written Cthulhu Scenarios, but I think he shows how this can be done in a way that (with the right system) can avoid railroading, build the atmosphere, and rest on one big pay-off.

 

[innerdude]

I've been following this thread with great interest, but haven't really had a strong point to interject.

Our group just recently switched systems (at my prodding) from Savage Worlds to Ironsworn, in large part because something was just . . . off . . . with the way the Savage Worlds campaign was going (I was running Weird Wars Rome, and as the GM, I fully accept that if the campaign wasn't working, the fault was squarely with me).

Some of the problem was I wasn't sure if I was prepping enough. With the pandemic, and the switch to VTT, my desire to do a lot of prep work was very, very low. Besides which, I trust my players to find interesting things to pursue with their characters without a lot of prodding on my part. But for some reason, it just wasn't working in this instance.

With Savage Worlds I was caught in this weird middle ground, where the system doesn't really lend itself protagonistic play, but I wasn't doing much legwork to flesh out all of the tidbits that could have given the players more things to hook into / care about. And the problem was, if the system doesn't push towards PCs-as-protagonists, it was my job as GM to fill in the gaps.

With Ironsworn, the exact opposite has been true. I took the basic premise of the Ironsworn setting, modified it slightly, and then ran with it. The whole prep of the campaign was a nearly blank map (exactly 2 points of interest were identified), a basic premise (party are members of a frontier settlement of Norse-like people), and threw out an inciting incident---in a drunken stupor, one of the village warriors (not a member of the party) returns to the village carrying the unconscious body of a woman of a frontier tribe with which the village has had almost no contact.

So the inciting incident really established only a couple of things about the fiction.

• There's tribe of people out there that are not culturally related to the village.
• The drunken warrior has probably set off a chain of events that will likely end badly for your village if not resolved to the satisfaction of the aggrieved tribe.

Since then, I've done almost zero prep/notes, other than maybe 2 bullet points.

• There's probably another (culturally similar) Cyngael tribe settlement on this rugged frontier, but the party doesn't know where it is.
• There's probably a settlement of Ancient Ones (elves) somewhere in the deep woods to the south.

And it's been interesting, because unlike Savage Worlds, Ironsworn has a myriad of scaffolds and pillars on which the players can address their PCs' dramatic needs, the biggest one being the game system's namesake---the players "swear an Iron Vow" that they must then attempt to complete or suffer grave consequences of failure or abandonment of the quest.

Here's an example of play that happened with absolutely zero pre-prep / notes before hand.

The PCs had just returned the aforementioned tribeswoman back to her home. They'd already endured a somewhat perilous journey to get there, and were hoping to return back to their village quickly and without incident.

But since one of PbtA's core principles is to throw adversity at the players, I figured I should at least make a roll on the "Oracles" table in the book. I set a reasonably low probability of trouble (like less than 20%), but of course promptly rolled a 12 on my percentile roll.

This is all done openly in front of the players, who agreed that while they'd like to avoid trouble on the return journey, that it made complete sense that fate might have different ideas for them.

At this point, we had an open group discussion---"So what kind of trouble do you think would happen?" I suggested weather---it's late October in a cold, rugged, northern frontier (think Iceland/Norway/Labrador coast). A sudden snowstorm seemed to be appropriate. And the players immediately agreed that in context, this totally made sense.

And suddenly what was going to be a handwave "arrive back at the village" for the players turned into a Grade 2 (dangerous) journey. Now they had to make rolls to successfully navigate the weather, manage supplies, etc. They barely made it back to the village with 1 supply left (if their supply level hit 0, it causes a number of deleterious effects).

However, on the very last leg of their journey, they rolled a "weak hit", which indicates that though they succeed at their intent, an unforeseen complication arises.

Without hesitation, one of the players immediately suggested, "Well obviously we run into someone from the rival Cyngael tribe that you mentioned earlier!"

At which point, the players run a combat scene to subdue a rival scout---but at the end, completely without any intervention from me, the player of the PC who subdued the captive suggests that in this world, being captured in this manner means the captive would become the player's manservant.

And because I was trying to play to see what happens, of course this was true!

It became very apparent, very early on with Ironsworn, that having copious/detailed notes of the setting, inhabitants, is not the intended mode of play. Everything about the system pushes towards collaboration on the fiction.

Interestingly, though, having read through this thread, I've become more convinced that in the absence of a player-facing / PC protagonistic style, that as a GM I need to change my approach to include more prep. And part of that prep needs to include significant drilling down into the PCs' dramatic needs. Since those dramatic needs aren't really expressed on the character sheet directly, it takes more diligence and care on my part to suss out just what, exactly, "the game is going to be about" by discussing it with my players.

In retrospect, it feels like one of the key "points" of having GM's notes, is that in the absence of player-facing cues---because the system isn't providing them---the GM's notes largely establish the premise of play.

 

[AnotherGuy]

nvm