What is the point of GM's notes?

[Bedrockgames]

I was attempting to summarize the general sentiment of people who are pushing back against you in this thread. I thought that was abundantly clear. There's simply no need for you to engage in this sort of cheap rhetorical game of casting aspersions, @Bedrockgames. Cut it out.

Aldarc try practicing what you preach them. It is effort on my part not to be angered by your posts because they seem angry, hostile and aggressive

 

[pemerton]

One of the huge differences between (say) Dungeon World/Blades “Sandbox Story Now” play and Trad Sandbox play is the systematized avenues for player aggression to advocate for their PCs (and through that advocation, wrest control of play trajectory).

A related thought:

Does the GM, in narrating consequences, extrapolate from what s/he has already prepped or imagined about the gameworld? Or does the GM, in narrating consequences, have regard to the players' evinced desires about the trajectory of their PCs?

(Of course, this also relates back to the discussion upthread of protagonism.)

The first approach is neutral GMing. I think this is pretty typical of classic/trad sandboxing.

The second approach is one I associate first and foremost with Burning Wheel, but I've used it in other RPGs too: 4e D&D, Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark, and to some extent Classic Traveller.

Upthread I gave a brief account of the episode of play, in our Prince Valiant game, in which the squire PC was knighted by an NPC as the result of an attempt to just ride past him after he refused to joust with a mere squire. In a "neutral" approach the GM would consider the personality of the NPC, the customs of knighthood, etc and extrapolate a "realistic" likelihood of the NPC knighting the PC. But in our game I simply called for a Presence vs Presence check. This keeps the focus on what is at stake for the character in the scene rather than how often do squires get knighted by proud knights so as to create fitting opposition for those proud knights. I think only the second would count as exploring the GM's world.

In both cases, the world of course is living and breathing. That description doesn't at all capture the difference between the two approaches to adjudication.

 

[pemerton]

No. But I am not misdescribing your games or imposing terms on your games you feel are immaculate or insulting. If I did so, it would be fair for you to object

Huh? Every time you use the phrase "narrative power" I object, because it's useless and inaccurate - to the extent that you use it to mean "the ability to spend points to establish new fictional details by fiat" then the only game I play that has anything like that is Cortex+ Heroic. Yet you continue to use it.

No I don’t. I have said repeatedly I don’t play PbtA and can’t really comment on its mechanics. I was just using narrative mechanics to distinguish between games like my own (where players don’t have narrative power) and ones like drama system (where they do: and which is a game I enjoy playing). I sometimes make assumptions about your playstyle but I am not bent in defining it or imposing my own language on it. I often do not understand your description of your style so I am sure there are times I get the things wrong. However I am happy to be corrected when that occurs.

Instead of making assumptions you might ask. I don't know what "drama system" is. But nothing I've ever seen you post about "narrative power" has ever made any sense to me.

 

[Aldarc]

No. But I am not misdescribing your games or imposing terms on your games you feel are immaculate or insulting. If I did so, it would be fair for you to object

Until you get off your keister and provide more accurate terms about the fundamental, underlying processes of play for your games - nope, not "living world" - then don't be surprised that others will continue using the term you find immaculate and/or insulting in this thread. I and others have been strongly encouraging you to develop your own replacement term that adequately describes the nuts and bolts process of your preferred play. Not the aesthetic. Not the evocative aims. The crude, gritty, underlying process. I agree with @TwoSix that your evasion on the literalism of the process has needlessly dragged out this argument of terminology far longer than it would have been otherwise.

 

[TwoSix]

We're not giving you platitudes and nothing burgers. We are telling you what is going on from an artists point of view. The artists who are "painters"(DM our style) understand it perfectly and in many ways intuitively, but you "sculpters"(different DMing style) just aren't getting it and are looking for us to explain how we chisel the game, but we don't use chisels.

The part you're missing (and keep forgetting) is that everyone on "our" side (and it's stupid how this becomes a tribal thing that has sides) already knows how to paint.

To get away from yet another pointless metaphor, everyone here knows how to run a "living world". It's honestly one of the easier ways to play, and works well for a wider variety of players, because you need much less player buy-in. Saying "The duke you wish to talk to is a devout member of the Pumplegimp sect, which go on religious pilgrimages every spring, and this he isn't available to talk to, but you can talk to his chamberlain who's (rolls Perception) actually a member of the Asmodeus cult, because you see a carefully covered tattoo on his left wrist" isn't some spiritual moment, it's just using your notes to push the game in a certain direction.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Huh? Every time you use the phrase "narrative power" I object, because it's useless and inaccurate - to the extent that you use it to mean "the ability to spend points to establish new fictional details by fiat" then the only game I play that has anything like that is Cortex+ Heroic. Yet you continue to use it.

what term do you want me to use (I haven’t read your posts as objections

 

[TwoSix]

One quick (lol?) thought.

That whole post almost fit on my screen, pretty terse by MBC standards.

 

[pemerton]

from the way you talk about our playstyle, you were one of the "painters" who never mastered the art.

I have run sandboxes. I know how it is done.

I'm pretty confident that this is also true for @Manbearcat, @Aldarc and @TwoSix. I'm not sure about @Campbell; but I imagine he has played in this sort of game even if he hasn't run it.

we have described ways in which a world becomes living, breathing to you more than once.

I don't think you have. If I missed a post could you point me to it?

@Bedrockgames has: he has referred to the GM having a mental model which is then communicated to the players.

 

[Manbearcat]

In both cases, the world of course is living and breathing. That description doesn't at all capture the difference between the two approaches to adjudication.

Agreed.

* Comparative thematic neutrality vs thematically-charged.

* Pregenerated and used for extrapolation in mediation vs generated during play

* GM mandate in content generation and content evolution vs systematized GM constraint.

* The comparative way varying procedures, varying level of transparency, and dearth/abundance of levers that players can pull (including by proxy due to authority distribution) to oblige a particular adjudication in any moment of play (and the downstream effects of that).


Those 4 are where the extreme difference in adjudication (and how the world evolves based on adjudication) emerge.

 

[Maxperson]

The part you're missing (and keep forgetting) is that everyone on "our" side (and it's stupid how this becomes a tribal thing that has sides) already knows how to paint.

To get away from yet another pointless metaphor, everyone here knows how to run a "living world". It's honestly one of the easier ways to play, and works well for a wider variety of players, because you need much less player buy-in. Saying "The duke you wish to talk to is a devout member of the Pumplegimp sect, which go on religious pilgrimages every spring, and this he isn't available to talk to, but you can talk to his chamberlain who's (rolls Perception) actually a member of the Asmodeus cult, because you see a carefully covered tattoo on his left wrist" isn't some spiritual moment, it's just using your notes to push the game in a certain direction.

The bolded part seems untrue, since one of the hallmarks of non-prep play is that you don't prep, and without prep, a living, breathing world isn't possible, yet @pemerton seems to be saying that his non-prep play produces living, breathing worlds.

If you don't prep, you can't have things going on in the world that the player may not even know about, if you haven't thought them out and enacted them prior to play. You have to have prepared who the NPCs are in advance, what their goals are and what they are doing about it, then plot out how they go about their goals and what the approximate timeline is. Just saying, "Hey, you hear a rumor of X going on somewhere else in the world." or "You see on the news that a helicopter crashed in Indonesia." doesn't make the world a living, breathing one.