What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

But in any event, are you able to explain how the bolded bit is different, in its fundamentals, from a PbtA GM asking questions and building on the answers?

I don’t play PbtA (not really interested in it from what I have read) so I can’t. What I can say is this is fairly informal and dependent on the individual group. I find most groups have differing tastes here. It isn’t like the formal mechanisms you have in hillfolk for example (not sure if asking questions building answers is a formal mechanism).

 

[pemerton]

I missed this, but it strikes me again as having a fundamental lack of understanding of how to play our playstyle.

Would you know that person? Depends. If you are from a city like Waterdeep where the population is about 1.35 million people, it's highly unlikely that you will know any given person, but if it doesn't matter, like if it's some storekeeper or something, you can tell me. I'll trust you not to abuse it and tell me that you know everyone you run into. If you are from a village of 400, then you do know that person. Everyone knows everyone in places that small. A place in-between like a city of 100k, then maybe. You'll get a roll. Do you love that person? Why the hell are you asking me? It's your character and this is a background issue. If you know the person, then you tell me whether you are in love with that person or not. Same with the terms you left on.

As far as I'm concerned, this is just filling in your background kind of stuff and you get to do that as you see fit. Again, I trust my players not to abuse this.

I don't understand who you mean by "our". You and @Emerikol don't agree on the bolded sentence, for instance.

 

[Emerikol]

You seem to be reiterating here that the players declare actions for their PCs. But I am talking about the process of determining the outcome of that declaration.

It depends on whether the action declared is an attempt or not. If I say “I kill the orc”, that is in doubt. So yes we must have a combat to decide if that action declaration comes true.

Whereas, if a PC says he tosses back the last of his ale, there is little reason to oppose that unless he is in some other unusual peril that would prevent it.

 

[pemerton]

One issue I have with calling everything a living world is that if nothing happens without the PCs being present then it's not a living world as I define it. A living world is one that changes and continues whatever the PCs do even if they just fall into a sleep for ten years. When they wake up the world will be different. It's the fact that NPCs have agendas that may or may not cross paths with the PCs anyway.

Here is an example. I might have noted that a young girl is in love with a young boy in the village. I might have noted that her father is domineering and mean spirited and won't let them see each other. They try to see each other anyway. So that might be the starting situation in this village. The PCs could discover this information but they may never discover it if they don't look that way. I still have on my calendar the fact that the father beats the boy several weeks later and perhaps a week later both of them run away. In the meantime I have some notes where they might meet.

Is it possible the PCs could get involved? Maybe. Maybe it is just local color. Maybe for a few days after they run away it's local gossip in some places. Could the PCs agree to find the girl and bring her back for a fee? Could they aid the getaway? They could do all sorts of things. Most of the time they will not interact with these events at all. They are still events. So when I say the world is a living breathing world, that is what I mean. Things happen outside the purview of the characters.

Let's liken this to writing. Writers want you to feel like their world is real. Writers though generally don't spend a lot of time writing about things unrelated to the main characters. They do occasionally but this sort of example I gave likely doesn't get on a page unless the main character(s) absolutely will interact. But there are other things a writer does, providing all sorts of little details, that something happened in the background. So the gossip about the girl running away very much might make it into a story. When writing you generally just show the effects of off camera action but off camera action is important to deeping the story and creating verisimilitude.

I agree fully with what @Ovinomancer says about this.

If the GM is just writing stories for him-/herself, that may be fun for him/her, but doesn't make any difference to the fiction that is established and developed at the table.

And conversely, as a GM I can introduce rumours or gossip or whatever else I want to without establishing any further backstory.

Here are two fairly recent example from my Classic Traveller game:

* The players met Milo, an entrepreneur and explorer from the the world of Taxiwan. I told them that he had made his fortune through a computer skills training business. But what are the details of this? How is to be reconciled with the fact that Taxiwan has only a rudimentary starport and so isn't going to support the migration of very many computer technicians? Etc? Dunno. This can be worked out in the future if needed.

* The players heard rumours that an Imperial armada is in pursuit of them and will soon arrive where they are, across the galactic rift. Is the rumour true? Has it been deliberately spread? Etc? Not sure. There are various obvious and not-so-obvious possibilities that probably will be worked out in coming sessions.

 

[pemerton]

Isn't consistency and shallowness a matter of opinion? If you play a game and think it is tremendously consistent and deeply immersive, does that mean I would automatically think the same? Are we discussing matters of taste? So when I give my taste preference, that is not an assault upon your own tastes. It is my perspective and experience.

Let's get down to brass tacks. How deep is your game? Where are the actual play posts that will let me assess that?

I've been a player in the sort of game you describe. It was shallow and basically a vehicle for the GM to show of his half-a-dozen clever ideas. Everything that was deep about it was introduced by the players via intra-party roleplay - that is, in effect, in respect of fiction that the GM couldn't easily touch or control.

The GM's response to this was to trigger some magical effect that teleported all the PCs 100 years into the gameworld's future. Which, in effect, invalidated or rendered moot all the ideas that we as a player group had built up about the campaign. This reinforced the shallowness and pointlessness and the game fizzled not long after.

I've also been a GM in the sort of game that you describe. Over time I realised that the good bits were the ones that were player-facing and player-driven. And that the backstory that I had developed, which would have "the world" unfolding behind-the-scenes in accordance with pre-scripted defaults, was essentially pointless. So I stopped preparing that stuff.

I am extremely satisfied with the depth of the gameworlds that emerge out of my current RPGing. They are not as deep as can be conceived of - I think RPGers like Paul Czege and Ron Edwards, for instance, are doing deeper things - but they're as deep or deeper than anything I've ever seen posted on ENworld.

 

[pemerton]

There is a lot of celebration of both elaborate world-building and theatricality + heavy exposition dumps in D&D culture

This isn't a big part of how I approach RPGing.

 

[Maxperson]

The player input here is the action declaration, isn't it?

It's more than that, as it says in the part you just quoted

You seem to be reiterating here that the players declare actions for their PCs. But I am talking about the process of determining the outcome of that declaration.

Sure. You want to limit their input to being not input so that your style allows it and ours doesn't. That's simply not going to be the case. Our players also have input into the action resolution, even if to a lesser degree.

There is an approach to RPGing where the GM makes that determination, and does so by reference to his/her prior conception of the fiction. For instance, s/he might have decided that the princess is allergic to roses.

Sure. I already said that if there is no PC involved, the DM decides it all. Most of the action resolutions, though, are going to involve actions and/or roleplaying. That means players have input into that resolution more often that not. It isn't the tiny amount of input you implied previously. It's a considerable amount of input as it puts great constraints upon the DM.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't get the impression that @Emerikol is a big fan of what I have bolded. He has repeatedly stated that he favours strictly in-character play.

I can't speak for Emerikol and I don't know the limits of his style. I would say when I run a sandbox like this, generally things are done in character, but I still have players at the table there with me, talking out of character (whether it is asking someone to pass the chips or telling me if they are addressing me out of character to explain their rationale for something). I consider those fairly soft boundaries. And I don't get overly rigid about the in character thing (I feel that can become way too intense if you only allow in character stuff). I think the only distinction here for me is the player has no formal power to countermand or intrude anything: there is just an informal exchange that can take place which might inform my choices.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't understand who you mean by "our". You and @Emerkiol don't agree on the bolded sentence, for instance.

Our playstyle has multiple variations. He and I play the same playstyle, but different variants of it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Second, if a player says, as his/her PC, I put on a cloak she has now narrated something into existence - her PC is wearing a cloak. But I assume you don't count that as narrative power. If a player says to the GM can my guy pay for a new lantern and the GM says sure, just knock off the gps, does that count as narrative power?

Just to revisit this: I think for something to be a real narrative power, it has to be a power the player formally possess through the rules or as a procedure in the game. This fails that because the player is making a valid assumption (or what that player believes to be a valid assumption) about what they might possess. The player only has the power to assert the cloak until the GM says no. Just like if the player narratives "I swing my sword at the orc" that isn't narrative power in a meaningful sense ("I swing my sword and cut off the orc's head" or "I remind the orc that his uncle Chester [not introduced until the PC mentions it] told him never to kill a man without good cause" would be narrative power in a meaningful sense).