What is the point of GM's notes?

[Fenris-77]

It's more disruptive to my immersion. If I have to step out to roll a die and then step back in, very little disruption has happened. If I have to step out to quickly formulate a dream, very little disruption has happened. If I'm stepping completely out of the timeline and going back to play something in some other time, then come back and have what I just played impact what is currently going on, it's a significant disruption to my immersion in the character.

Just to clarify, are you saying this having actually done it, or are you speaking hypothetically?

 

[Maxperson]

Just to clarify, are you saying this having actually done it, or are you speaking hypothetically?

I've done flashbacks, but not the kind where it would affect current play. However, I know myself very well and am really good at putting myself into situation and other people's shoes to see how I or they might feel.

 

[Fenris-77]

I've done flashbacks, but not the kind where it would affect current play. However, I know myself very well and am really good at putting myself into situation and other people's shoes to see how I or they might feel.

I wasn't questioning the veracity of your opinion at all (that would be silly), just curious about the background for it. Thanks.

 

[Maxperson]

I wasn't questioning the veracity of your opinion at all (that would be silly), just curious about the background for it. Thanks.

Sure. And to clarify a bit further. Even the flashbacks that don't affect the present I find to be moderately disruptive, but I also find that what you get out of them to be positive enough to warrant it. I'll sometimes flash myself back and roleplay out a moment in my character's past that is relevant to the current situation as a way to show the players and DM more of my motivation about why I'm about to take the action that I'm going to be taking. Flashbacks can be a very powerful tool.

 

[Emerikol]

When you say larger here can you winnow down what you mean exactly?

Do you mean one or all of these three things (and @Emerikol , you may be interested in answering this as well)?

1) It (a Flashback where you convince the maitre-d to stuff a revolver in a kettle) is a larger interval of prior elided time (than the morning ritual of having/not-having coffee and interacting with the people/place/stuff).

The player may be able to time travel just like you do when reading a novel and encounter a flashback. A character can't do that. When the character charges off without planning, and makes such a decision it's an in game decision. Later the character, can't decide something happened earlier. That would be a player decision.

I think the disconnect between player knowledge over time and character knowledge over time. It matches in my games and does not in yours. Again if it is relevant in any way to in game success.

A,B,X are facts.
Player Character
1 Time A AX
2 Time B B
3 Flashback X

As you can see at time 1 the player only knows facts A but the character knows facts A and X. The player then finds out about X at time 3 and backfills them to time 1.

2) It is a more consequential (in terms of impact on the gamestate/fiction trajectory) interval of prior elided time.

I would think this is a case by case thing whatever the method.

3) It is a more Skilled Play intensive (in terms of preferred Skilled Play priorities) interval of prior elided time.

Well for sure it goes against traditional skilled play as we've discussed and that would be a deal breaker even without the continuity breaks and immersion losses.

(1) has to do with immersion. Its setting up a qualitative evaluation of "jarringitude" based on the proportion of elided time.

(2) may be immersion-adjacent though not necessarily. It looks to me to look more like about the aesthetic of play (I want to be devoting table time to this stuff vs this other stuff).

(3) is entirely about Skilled Play preference.

 

[Lanefan]

@prabe

Returning to my questions above:

My character asks your character “what were your dreams last night” and “did you try my coffee I brewed over the spit this morning?”

How is you channeling your character and providing an answer not “experiencing things out of chronological order?”

Because here you're asking the character to tell you about things that it has in theory already experienced in chronological order at the time.

The character had some dreams during sleep, and then it might have tried your coffee, and then this conversation with your character takes place. If desired, these events could have been roleplayed out in sequence. It's the same as your character and mine telling war stories about our past (roleplayed) adventures together.

Also, note there's no mechanical advantage to be gained anywhere here; in sharp contrast with a situation where you can determine in the moment what equipment you earlier-in-time decided to bring along based on the problems you're facing now. Worse, you don't get the opportunity to roleplay those equipment-load decisions ahead of time and thus maybe get it wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

The flashback mechanic is no different in the way it affects the relationship in-fiction time sequences to at-the-table time sequences except that instead of a leisurely question about coffee or dreams which is mere colour, it's more like - as a fight breaks out in a D&D game - one character asks my character Did you cast Stoneskin on all of us this morning? The affect on the time sequence is no different; it's just that the stakes of one rather than another answer are a bit higher.

And as DM I'd probably interject at this point and say "If you haven't already cast it and knocked off the spell slots, those spells haven't been cast." As player, if I hadn't knocked off the slots etc. my reply would be "Oops. Guess not."

 

[Lanefan]

The formulation is the following:

* All TTRPGs elide a significant amount of what would otherwise be experienced temporal continuity (and the events which unfold within those elided intervals) as a matter of course.

Yet the characters still experienced that temporal continuity in the fictional reality; and saying they didn't just because it wasn't all roleplayed through at the table is false.

Both in the fiction and at the table, time only moves in one direction.

 

[Lanefan]

At the table, the (2)(a) event comes after the (1)(a) event. In the fiction, the (2)(b) event (drinking, or not, the coffee) comes before the (1)(b) event (being asked the question).

And as all that matters is what happens in the fiction, if drinking this coffee is important enough to be relevant then it should have been roleplayed through while the characters were still having breakfast....

Notice that if we change coffee to potion of longevity and we change the situation from after-breakfast free roleplaying to an encounter with an AD&D ghost, nothing changes about either the (a) sequence or the (b) sequence, but that @Emerikol and @Lanefan would insist that the player can't "retroactively" change the fictional past to make it the case that his/her PC drank the potion to get younger and hence build up a buffer against the ghost's aging power.

... because of this. Retconning as described here would, I think, qualify as cheating pretty much everywhere.

So, the dividing line pretty much becomes one of whether something like this can or does have any mechanical impact. Unless the coffee was poisoned or gave some mechanical benefit or whatever, whether or not you drank some this morning has no real bearing on anything other than flavour. Flavour is good. Go for it!

Contrast this with retroactively introducing a hidden gun in the kettle: irrelevant if no-one ever finds it but which does have mechanical impact the moment it's discovered by anyone. This is bad.

Or the Potion of Longevity, introduced retroactively with the specific intent of giving a mechanical advantage now. This is worse.

 

[Fenris-77]

Using a flashback to acquire a potion of longevity would make sense if the characters knew (or could have reasonably known) there was a monster involved that aged people, somehow. Otherwise not so much. It's really not the retcon tool people seem to be imagining.