What is the point of GM's notes?

[darkbard]

Years ago, when I mostly ran bog-standard D&D (Basic, AD&D, 3E, and early 4E), I viewed preplay notes mainly as constraints on the GM and a facilitator for keeping the PCs within the bounds of the story (be it module, AP, or home design).

These days, as I've come to realize the disconnect between (a) evinced PC interests and GM-curated plot and (b) the kind of gaming I was really interested in: Story Now--and subsequently revised my 4E agendas and principles and explored PBtA/FitD games--I've moved to a minimum of preplay notetaking, both as GM and player.

I prefer terse but evocative bullet points with flexible application ... and rather, as a GM prior to and during a session, to make minimum use of even these, preferring improvisational creativity.

During play, either as GM or player, I take relatively sparse notes, generally of new elements introduced into the shared fiction. Postgame, I keep a log of major locations, personalities, events but those notes are themselves open to revision and reinterpretation as the consensus fiction evolves rather than as an attempt to establish canonicity.

My wife takes extensive notes as a player, which she uses to write fan fiction-esque journals in character, often with the objective of establishing not-yet-introduced PC thoughts, rationales, or even world details post hoc. Often, these become part of the shared fiction. At other times, they are merely the skewed understanding of one participant in the scene.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

In the OP I'm referring to notes made in preparation, not notes made ex-post as a record of what happened in the session. The point of that latter category of notes seems clear to me: it's a record of the shared fiction.

In this case...

I tend to end most sessions on a note where I have a pretty good idea of where things will go next. Doesn't always work. But when I can, I do that. It allows me to prepare more effectively. It's very hard to prepare when next session is right after a big closure and there's not anything floating.

That being said. My notes generally fall within two categories:

• I'll have some bullet points of things I have prepared. The general structure. Places, events or challenges they will most likely encounter. Ex: last session they were on their way to meet a crimelord. In most cases, he'll offer them a mission. This will most likely lead them to this town. Obviously, sometimes things don't go that way.
• I tend to write a few keywords for descriptions of places and locations. A few words, things they can see, hear, smell or touch. It's generally half a dozen keywords so I don't forget stuff.
• I tend to have the names of my NPCs, a few words of descriptions and one word that describes their attitude or personality for when I roleplay them: snarky, nervous, bored, insulting, helpful. This is especially true when my players are in or will be in a city with a ton of NPCs.
• Lore and exposition. If I know that I'll have go give some important exposition or lore, I write down the information I want to give. For example, in one of my Starfinder sessions, my party was on the verge of making their way into a criminal's room in an hotel. I knew that they would find: proof of his association with a terrorist organization. I also knew what information they needed to get from that to be able to move further in the plot. I didn't know how they would get it. But some of it could be shared through simple Recall Knowledge rolls depending on where the PCs were from, what their backgrounds are, etc.
• Sometimes I'll write down quick reminders of some rules I don't use often but might come handy. For example, the skills in Starfinder have pretty precise cases of use. You don't just guess the DC. A specific distance to jump will lead to a specific DC. That's something I might scribble.
• Generic content. I always have at least one combat encounters, one interesting NPC and one interesting event that can be plugged anywhere. A traveling merchant that can show up anytime, a thief that steals their purse as he passes them, etc. These can be used to fill some voids and are especially useful if the session goes in a very random direction.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that is absolutely the right place to start.

But taken further, I'd say when you look at the subculture that has accreted around Pathfinder Adventure Paths (and now 5e), and you see people recount their play, there is a clear element of (a) championing the efficacy of achieving the Win Con or (b) lamenting it I (if the GM thought the AP was poorly conceived/executed in terms of testing Skilled Play) or (c) lamenting it II (if the GM thought their players did a crap job of executing their Ops to achieve the AP Win Con...which...I'll note, often doesn't involve the GM reflecting on their own potential fault at executing their job in presenting the AP!).

There is a sort of "Abstract High Score" culture around this (akin to the 80s culture of Arcades and, of course, D&D dungeon crawling). I'm sure you're not familiar with it, but there is a "Speed Run" culture in modern Video Games that is another good analog.

The fact that play is a complete Railroad is irrelevant. What is relevant is "who can achieve the Win Con of the AP the best/quickest/with least resource expenditure or resource loss."

Good points; and I see the underlying root issue as being one of closed-endedness. Adventure Paths by their nature are closed-ended and have a known and specific point of ultimate victory; and on a broader scale 3e-4e-5e are somewhat closed-ended in that they have a capstone level (20-30-20 in order) and thus reaching that capstone level is the victory point.

Thus, the argument that wants to be made is against using closed-ended APs and-or systems rather than against using GM notes.

 

[Lanefan]

Goodness gracious, how did a discussion of notes become a thing about railroading? Sheesh!

Hardly unexpected, though, as there's a few here who seem to rather equate the two things....

My notes are there for me to remember stuff I thought of to use in game. That's it. There's no deep theory or style connotation to notes.

Agreed.

 

[TwoSix]

Good points; and I see the underlying root issue as being one of closed-endedness. Adventure Paths by their nature are closed-ended and have a known and specific point of ultimate victory; and on a broader scale 3e-4e-5e are somewhat closed-ended in that they have a capstone level (20-30-20 in order) and thus reaching that capstone level is the victory point.

Thus, the argument that wants to be made is against using closed-ended APs and-or systems rather than against using GM notes.

I'm not really seeing a root "issue"; closed adventures have the advantage of brevity and focus, so that we can get on to the next game or next set of characters to play. In my experience, players generally aren't particularly interested in authorship or in random adventures, they like the sense that they're generally working within the loose confines of a script. There's a reason AP play is so popular.

 

[tetrasodium]

The setting is not a sandbox: the PCs get given missions, although they have a lot of freedom in how they carry them out. It is not a truly hard SF setting, but it's a lot closer to that than Star Trek or Star Wars (which I'd be utterly unwilling to run, or play in). This means that figuring out how to accomplish things is definitely required.

One of the simpler points was that the ship they were escorting to Vesta is much larger than their own ship, and has lower acceleration, but much more delta-V (semi-hard SF). The obvious solution, given the numbers, was for the small warship to be refuelled by the large passenger ship, and I suggested this to the players. They took up the idea (they've done this before), but if they'd come up with a different plan, I'd have been happy with that.

I also asked them how much trouble they wanted to be able to cope with at Vesta, where the situation was legally and politically very complicated. The warship the PCs fly was being sent to make sure that nobody tried violence; that had been established in the previous session. They decided that they wanted to be able to cope with not being able to refuel at Vesta, but also that they wanted to get there faster than a no-refuelling round trip would allow, so they needed to be able to refuel somewhere else. I then had to find somewhere for that to happen, and consider if Biotech Euphrates, the company which has just bought Vesta and is paying expenses, was willing to pay for the refuelling. It seemed like a sensible idea, so they went for it.

Why not? Over the course of 2-3 campaigns precovid my players took a small nothing town in droaam with a Cyran refugee meets band of war criminals conducting illegal & unethical experiments problem & built it up to develop an economy of sorts based on the exploration & study of discovered ancient dhakaani ruins till the dragonmarked houses were willing to station sentinal marshals build an airship dock and built an orien station with teleport room despite the 5 nations not wanting to recognize droaam in ways that make accomplishing those things easy. the DoSK who rule droaam were tickled pink with the PC's progress towards getting the hope to be nation recognized as legitimate enough & they may even have reshaped how politics would develop elsewhere in future campaigns because of the changes they made.

Even simply failing to save the world or doing a crap job of it can leave a mark on the setting as pathfinder's ill omens/darkest timeline attests by showing what the setting might look like if nobody saved the world over & over again.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not really seeing a root "issue"; closed adventures have the advantage of brevity and focus, so that we can get on to the next game or next set of characters to play.

Where you see a feature I see a bug; if you want to play another set of characters why not do so in an already-existing campaign to save the DM (or another DM) from having to design yet another campaign and-or setting? Of course, when most APs end at or near the game's capstone level the obvious question is "where do you go from there?", but to me that's a fault of both the AP design and the system's speed of advancement.

Focus is fine, brevity is not, assuming you and your group are intending to stay together for the long term.

In my experience, players generally aren't particularly interested in authorship or in random adventures, they like the sense that they're generally working within the loose confines of a script. There's a reason AP play is so popular.

IME players aren't generally interested in authorship* but are more interested in random adventures or a mix of adventures; in that they'll get bored if a single story arc goes on too long.

* - interesting timing in that I and the other main DM in our crew have just started an email exchange regarding adventure roots: whether a given adventure is something the players pushed for, the DM put them in, or some sort of mix. Early returns show that as a campaign goes on and develops more internal history, players (and their PCs) become more likely to drive adventures based on things that have already happened. That's still not authorship, in that the players aren't writing the adventures; it's more that the players are to a degree forcing what the DM will run next as opposed to the DM simply deciding.

 

[Blue]

Also, it's obvious that GM's notes are not essential to play a RPG. So any answer has to be more precise than just to facilitate RPG play.

The purpose of a GM's note is to facilitate play.

Sorry, couldn't resist the set up. You see, facilitate means make a process or action easier, and that's what a GM's notes do. They help the GM remember both lore and immediate needs, NPCs and plots. It helps the GM stay consistent. Remind them of things when lots is going on. The provide quick access to some things that would have to be looked up otherwise. All of these can potentially be done without notes, but GM's notes will improve the speed and quality of that.

 

[Umbran]

... they like the sense that they're generally working within the loose confines of a script.

Perhaps a bit more accurate to say that they like the sense that they're working within a thing that will result in a cohesive narrative when all is said and done?

Also, an AP provides context in which to make decisions that more sandbox or improvisational play can lack, for both the GM and the Player.

There is a persistent idea that play with minimal constraint necessarily yields the most fun for and creativity from the participants, but that idea is inaccurate. Some people do shine when they are allowed to do whatever they darned well please. Others blossom within a framework.

 

[Ibrandul]

When using published adventure content, I rarely need much in the way of notes. I may pull out stats on monsters or the like, because they are rarely included in a way that's easy to reference in play. But otherwise, I find the text of the adventure sufficient for my needs.

I mostly agree with this—if the published adventure is well organized. Right now I'm running Princes of the Apocalypse and that thing is an underrated adventure path but a total mess, organization-wise. Unless I had a very good memory and/or reread a great deal of the book between every play session, I wouldn't be able to run it (well) without rather thorough notes.

Also: maybe I should let the railroad discussion well enough alone, but, for me, when I run sandbox-style, I need notes much, much more than when I run things railroad-style. When railroading, it's not too hard to achieve a believable, detail-rich world without a ton of notes, because I only have to figure out rich details for one or two paths. When sandboxing, I want my players to be able to say at any moment "No, we're going over here instead," and for "here" to be somewhere I did not at all expect them to go—and, for me at least, that either means that "here" is hastily generated and rather light on detail, or I have a ton of "heres" with some level of interesting detail ready to go: usually in my notes.