What is the point of GM's notes?

[pemerton]

Like the thread title asks: what is the point of GM's notes?

GM's notes can be pretty varied in their content - descriptions of imaginary places; mechanical labels and categories applied to imaginary people or imaginary phenomena; descriptions or lists of imaginary events, some of which are imagined to have already happened relative to the fiction of play and some of which are imagined as yet to happen relative that fiction.

So there may be more than one answer to this question.

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.

(This thread was provoked by some of what I read here: D&D 5E - Do You Prefer Sandbox or Party Level Areas In Your Game World?. But I thought a new thread seemed warranted.)

 

[Manbearcat]

Four possibilities immediately spring to life.

1) To set the scaffolding for GM Force to propel or constrain play toward a GM-desired course.

2) For GMs portraying a beloved setting as connected (or disconnected) nodes are uncovered (or funneled to/signposted), as backstory is revealed, and as metaplot churns.

3) To help kindle the GM’s imagination during play so they can provoke/prod players (through their PCs) with premise-addressing, thematically coherent obstacles and inciting situations.

4) To ensure that play is skillful (in the Classic D&D sense) as constrained/mapped adventuring site is explored and “solved” (or not) as a 3D, hazardous puzzle or obstacle course might be.

++++++++

1 is the primordial ooze and constituent parts of Railroading.

2 is either the recipe for neutral sandbox/hexcrawl play or Setting Tourism which typically rides right alongside passive players taking in metaplot imposition (Railroading).

3 is Story Now generation of content to oppose PC goals and find out what the crucible of the opposition turns out.

4 is required for Dungeon Crawling to test Skilled Play.

 

[Aldarc]

2 is either the recipe for neutral sandbox/hexcrawl play or Setting Tourism which typically rides right alongside passive players taking in metaplot imposition (Railroading).

While I agree that "metaplot imposition" is often part of Setting Tourism, I'm not necessarily sure if I would call that "railroading." If we were playing, for example, in Middle Earth, then the metaplot of Sauron and the One Ring would likely inform play in the world, if only in the background, but that need not necessarily railroad the players. If we were playing in Eberron, a game setting with lots of various metaplots, then are the players being railroaded if they engage those metaplot threads that are in the GM's Notes or Setting Guides?

 

[Manbearcat]

While I agree that "metaplot imposition" is often part of Setting Tourism, I'm not necessarily sure if I would call that "railroading." If we were playing, for example, in Middle Earth, then the metaplot of Sauron and the One Ring would likely inform play in the world, if only in the background, but that need not necessarily railroad the players. If we were playing in Eberron, a game setting with lots of various metaplots, then are the players being railroaded if they engage those metaplot threads that are in the GM's Notes or Setting Guides?

Let me clarify.

Whenever I say "metaplot imposition" I mean both inputs and outputs. Not just inputs.

So the GM isn't just framing situations around setting-derived conflicts, they're also imposing (or at least deeply curating/constraining) outcomes such that player input becomes muted. Put another way:

Instantiating this setting/metaplot's initiating conditions 100 times with varying groups (but the same GM) is going to arrive at significant homogeneity with respect to either/or/all (a) the endpoint of play or (b) the nature of node resolution or (c) the nature of node resolution is ultimately irrelevant to (a) (its just set-dressing/color). The distribution just don't show sufficient variance to conclude "this emerged organically rather than being imposed."


It doesn't have to be imposed (and when its not, its a legitimate sandbox/hexcrawl)...but when it is, you know it.

 

[Aldarc]

Let me clarify.

Okay. I appreciate your clarification. Would you mind providing some concrete examples of what you have in mind here in terms of "setting tourism railroading" with actual settings, metaplots, inputs/outputs, etc.?

 

[S'mon]

So that when the PCs go to a place, I have material to work from/riff off.

Personally I make 90%+ of my (non-adventure) campaign material publicly available to the players. Only a small minority ever read it, of course!

 

[John Dallman]

The notes I was using last night were about the mission that the PCs (a spaceship crew) had been assigned by their superiors in the Royal Navy, the vessel they would be escorting to Vesta, who'd be travelling on said vessel, and names of people at the destination. I work these things up beforehand because it's easier than improvisation, especially for the names. I also had a list of groups that they'd be likely to run into.

Some of what happened was what I had anticipated, because it was the sensible thing to do in the circumstances. I really had not expected that they'd want to improvise a ship to recover people from Io, the innermost of Jupiter's large moons, too deep inside Jupiter's radiation belts for their own ship. Said people are actually fairly safe where they are, they're just going to be stuck there for several months until the ship that put them there can get back to pick them up.

Once they decided to stage their own rescue, I had to come up with places they could get the necessary resources (a suitable small asteroid, engines, fuel, etc.). This definitely had me on the hop, but it was all actually practical. Next session, they'll try to actually do it.

 

[Manbearcat]

Okay. I appreciate your clarification. Would you mind providing some concrete examples of what you have in mind here in terms of "setting tourism railroading" with actual settings, metaplots, inputs/outputs, etc.?

You're welcome.

Sure.

Going to make this pithy (time-limited and hopefully there is better explanatory power).

A big published setting like FR has all of the following:

• High resolution NPCs, organizations, deities
• High resolution geography/backstory/continuity
• Conflicts (deeply cosmological but plenty mundane) that intersects with all of that high resolution stuff

A GM buys an Adventuring Path or they come up with their own. Almost invariably there will be the classic "node-based design" as the architecture for play. These nodes will be signposted via exposition dumps or not-so-gentle prodding. There will be an overarching (sometimes 2) metaplot as a byproduct of Conflicts above. This metaplot will have a track with a through-line related to some or all of those nodes, with participant NPCs playing their roles, with contingencies to "re-rail" if the track is perturbed, and a few inescapable endstates and their attendant fallout in mind.

The players role is overwhelmingly passive. They take in the signposts. They take in the well-rendered exposition dumps. They willingly go along when prodded (or push back only marginally or superficially). They game progresses in such a way that (again), if you instantiated it 100 times with different groups, there would be extreme homogeneity.

Yes, things might happen in different order. Some GMs may be better tour-guides (they signpost better, their exposition dumps are better rendered or more theatrical, their NPCs are more vigorously characterized) for the setting than others. Some GMs may deploy their Illusionism better than others. But broadly, the priority of play (to experience the setting and metaplot) and the execution of play yields recognizably homogenous results (in terms of the (a), (b), and (c) in my post above).

 

[Manbearcat]

Let me say 2 other things about "Metaplot Imposition."

1) There is a case where Metaplot Imposition actually doesn't have to be about inputs and outputs. It can be exclusively about the inputs. This case is when two things converge:

a) The table expectation by the players is that play will be driven by their PC's individual dramatic needs and whatever through-line emerges in the way of collective dramatic need. They expect to be the protagonists (not to win...but for play to be centered around their dramatic need(s) ).

b) The GM instead imposes their own metaplot as the relevant arc of play that isn't driven by PC dramatic need(s). This metaplot will have its own NPCs with dramatic needs that are the focal point of play. This subverts PCs as protagonists and, in their place, puts an NPC villain (or villain) as the protagonist(s). The players are deprotagonized.

2) There is a Metaplot Imposition that actually dovetails with my # 4 in my lead post above. In this case, play should be looked at more like a CRPG game where the table is "keeping score" about how well the players "solve" the imposed metaplot. So its basically a form of Skilled Play.

 

[Marc_C]

The point of GM notes:

You are not as good at improvising as you think you are. It's good to have prep notes and lists to fall back on when caught off guard.

Your memory will fail you. GM notes should also be written after the game to keep a record of important stuff that happened.