What is the point of GM's notes?

[kenada]

@kenada, that's a really good post. And contrasts your two games nicely.

Do you have a sense of how the Scum and Villainy GM is using their notes?

I don’t, but I’ve reached out to him to find out. I do know that he tracks progress clocks publicly. For example, I can log in and see on roll20 that “Stellar Flame needs Snarf back now” has one segment and that it’s a thing even though it hasn’t manifested yet in the fiction (but we [the players] know it’s coming).

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Suppose that the players do not blurt out anything about possibly being followed by guild thieves. What, then, is the effect on play of the GM having made notes about what the Thieves' Guild is doing?

On play? Well, most likely, more notes getting written down about what's going on "behind the scenes" and/or "right under the PC's noses".

I did have a group of PC's be so oblivious, so utterly obtuse, that they let an ENTIRE TOWN get 'stolen' from them. It was an Oriental Adventures campaign, everyone was around 5th or 6th level after about a year of playing. Short version, some "dignitaries" were sent by the Shogun to 'deal with the current Daimyo's ineffectual leadership' due to several natural disasters (one including a Gargantuan Preying Mantis named "Shidora"). They arrived, had a week of getting to know the town, local samurai, shukenja, etc., and attempting to determine if the Daimyo needed removing (lots of political intrigue). At the two week'ish mark, iirc, the head dignitary told the town he would be taking over and the last Daimyo's house. In celebration of this, a HUGE, mandatory, town-wide celebration was to take place outside the town walls so as to not cause more destruction or harm people (remember Shidora?... ) as parts were still under construction. The party started at noon and ramped up towards evening, when the gates were closed and samurai/bushi patrolled the streets arresting any stragglers. ... ... Come morning, most folks passed out in the tents and just in the fields and peasant mina's. But the gates didn't open. People gathered and yelled. No opening. No nothing. The PC's finally make the decision to scale the 25' high walls....they get to the top of the wall, look out over the town and the harbour of Tu'pe, and see the entire fleet, plus more, that had arrived two weeks ago, slowly sailing off into the rising sun.

Turns out the dignitaries were all wave-men (pirates/brigands/etc) and had scammed EVERYONE! During the night they had gathered up all the valuable they could carry, stuffed them onto their ships...and ships they just stole...and took off. They stole an entire town. Literally.
Best. Campaign storyline. Ever!

How does this relate? Simply put, I had notes for all the stuff that was going on 'behind the scenes', and the PC's had actually stumbled upon or saw thing that SHOULD have tipped them off.... but they said nothing due to RP'ing the whole social-cast-structure thing or just COMPLETLEY missing the boat. ... ... Without my "notes" of what was going on, it would have been much more difficult to pull it off because I might have stumbled over names, or incidents that happened that, in hind sight, the Players remembered and said "Oh....man! So THAT'S why there were all those fights in that Tea House! They needed it out of commission because it got to much traffic so close to the only area where they could sneak people in/out of the dock area without being seen for the last two weeks!", for example.

So that's how it affects "play"; by giving me a continuing "behind the scenes" story of what's going on, logically, due to player action or inaction.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Emerikol]

"I will get revenge on the man who killed my father."

"I will reclaim my lost one true love."

"I will be tge most famed explorer of my age."

Simply put, a dramatic need is something you can hang a complete story on. If it's driven by the character and not about someone or something else, this protagonizes the character. If the character is just responding to the GM, it's not protagonism. Ie, if I'm exploring because the GM dropped a dungeon, that's not protagonism. If I can drive play such that I can explore and discover world changing things without having to ask the GM, that's protagonism. Yes, D&D doesn't do this well because it's not structured to, and that's fine -- it's not aimimg for this.

And, this isn't binary. You can have a little or a lot. This is why I was pondering on protagonism as picking up things the GM put down as part of a character. I think this can be weak protagonism.

These examples helped I think as I was a bit in the dark what you meant myself in a few of those places. And with you an Umbran arguing, it's kind of like the Patriots and the Bengals playing each other. I'm probably just rooting for injuries. (kidding kidding). I enjoy our debates.

Now to get serious. I feel my PC's often seek to satisfy a dramatic need but they choose one based upon the world I've presented. I very much think having goals as a PC are what drives the dungeon crawling in sandbox games. It's why domain management is often a chapter in the Old School books like ACKS.

The difference I think is that achieving that dramatic end is a test of player skill. Can he overcome the obstacles that the world will inevitable present and achieve his goal? When you achieve the goal it can be very satisfying as a player. In fact, that is part of the appeal of my campaigns I think. It is also possible to not achieve the goal. So as GM, my job is not to make sure the goal happens. My job is to present a world that provides challenges in a reasonable way that the PC can overcome or not. At least in my approach to the game that is my job of course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

These examples helped I think as I was a bit in the dark what you meant myself in a few of those places. And with you an Umbran arguing, it's kind of like the Patriots and the Bengals playing each other. I'm probably just rooting for injuries. (kidding kidding). I enjoy our debates.

Now to get serious. I feel my PC's often seek to satisfy a dramatic need but they choose one based upon the world I've presented. I very much think having goals as a PC are what drives the dungeon crawling in sandbox games. It's why domain management is often a chapter in the Old School books like ACKS.

The difference I think is that achieving that dramatic end is a test of player skill. Can he overcome the obstacles that the world will inevitable present and achieve his goal? When you achieve the goal it can be very satisfying as a player. In fact, that is part of the appeal of my campaigns I think. It is also possible to not achieve the goal. So as GM, my job is not to make sure the goal happens. My job is to present a world that provides challenges in a reasonable way that the PC can overcome or not. At least in my approach to the game that is my job of course.

Right. Choosing a dramatic need is just a necessary step -- it's not sufficient for protagonism. The also necessary step is that play must center on that dramatic goal. The play you're describing doesn't do this (which is cool) but instead puts the setting/notes first and the player can then navigate them as they wish, which may or may not be in pursuit of their dramatic goal. Meanwhile, the GM will be adding things to play that don't concern the dramatic goal(s) of any PCs at all.

This is a great way to play, it's just not protagonism. Which is, as I've said repeatedly, perfectly fine. No one would be upset if I said their way of playing wasn't like Monopoly, and this is a similar kind of observation -- play is not aligned to the play goal of protagonism just like it's not aligned to the play goal of seizing all of the capital to bankrupt your fellow players.

 

[tetrasodium]

These examples helped I think as I was a bit in the dark what you meant myself in a few of those places. And with you an Umbran arguing, it's kind of like the Patriots and the Bengals playing each other. I'm probably just rooting for injuries. (kidding kidding). I enjoy our debates.

Now to get serious. I feel my PC's often seek to satisfy a dramatic need but they choose one based upon the world I've presented. I very much think having goals as a PC are what drives the dungeon crawling in sandbox games. It's why domain management is often a chapter in the Old School books like ACKS.

The difference I think is that achieving that dramatic end is a test of player skill. Can he overcome the obstacles that the world will inevitable present and achieve his goal? When you achieve the goal it can be very satisfying as a player. In fact, that is part of the appeal of my campaigns I think. It is also possible to not achieve the goal. So as GM, my job is not to make sure the goal happens. My job is to present a world that provides challenges in a reasonable way that the PC can overcome or not. At least in my approach to the game that is my job of course.

Its definitely a matter of player skill to achieve them but there are some system differences between 5e and older editions*. In the past there was extremely little room to hang any of that kind of stuff on a character so accomplishing it meant going out of your way to fit it into the GM's world and (if present) campaign story. Even the old phb used words like "ask your gm" "talk with your GM about" & similar.

5e largely carves out a space for that sort of thing where it very much does not belong in ideals bonds &flaws examples and in player facing material largely avoids talking about working with the gm setting up a vicious cycle of badly set expectations often trying to back the gm into a cornered role of providing life support for the story of 4-6 2d Mary & Gary sues.

On the other side of things the GM facing stuff is now largely void of any discussion about insight into or even design space to tweak the rules for the game/campaign they want to run or the advice & tools for working with their players to that end.

At the end of the day both players and GM need to pick up the skills for all of that from years of older editions or some other system entirely and hope to build the missing bits whole cloth to fit the needs of using the ideals bonds and flaws in the way it's presented as but not designed for and given no guidance or tools to work across the table on it other thsn "yea, no."

* systems with a more shared narrative framework are a different ball of wax

 

[Manbearcat]

Then why in hell would anyone ever GM such a game? Seriously.

I'll answer that in a way that engages with some of the thoughts (and misconceptions) below as well.

1) Impromptu problem-and-puzzle-solving as GM due to responsibility of fitting the puzzle pieces of player action declaration + results of action resolution + prior fiction together in a way that addresses thematic interests, follows from the preceding fiction, follows from genre, is sufficiently provocative/interesting.

This is both a cortisol and adrenaline dump because there is a lot of stuff happening that you have to keep together and stitch together in the moment.

Bottom line, its exciting.

2) I get to encompass the duality of (a) common elements of GMing (framing, consequence handling, playing the "bad guys"/obstacles, interacting with interesting system elements) and (b) audience member in that I get to "find out what happens."

And interesting byproduct of (b) above is that I get to "find out about myself from myself." When I come up with something on the fly, there is a sensory experience of inhabiting multiple cognitive spaces. "Wow, I didn't think of that...that is cool/sucks...well actually you did, because it came from you/me!"

Its a unique cognitive experience, its nice to be able to be an audience member, and its an interesting test of self (and cognitive exercise that strengthens the brain for subsequent play and puzzle-solving on the fly).

---

Two examples from prior session play that are fresh in my mind:

EXAMPLE 1 - Dungeon World game with @darkbard and his wife

They (along with a 5 hirelings/followers) are on a multi-tiered (5 camps = 5 journey moves, then ascent to the top) journey akin to the hike and climb of K2 in the Himalayas. The first leg (we did the first 2 last session) entails a relatively simple but long switchback effort up a steep red clay cliff face to get to the frozen permafrost of the highlands. Their journey moves (the hired Sherpa = auto 10/success on Navigate move) were all successful; Scout/Navigate/Manage Provisions.

Darkbard's Paladin (Alastor) was the Scout. When he gets a 10+ on his Scout move, he gets to pick from a menu of results. Those results intersect with the Navigate results (which are resolved after Scout). Because he knows that Marwat is the most accomplished guide in the territory (he's guaranteed a 10+ on Navigate), this affords Alastor the player to do 1 of 2 things; (i) flash-cut to Camp 1 as the initial part of the journey is over or (ii) request the GM to introduce a Discovery (an interesting site that is not an immediate threat but could be beneficial or a threat given exploration of it).

He chose Discovery.

So that is my cue to generate some fiction with the above constraints (and that hews to the rest of GM's constraints/directives). Darkbard has placed many irons in the fire for Alastor in terms of proselytizing at this point (he has a pair of Clocks with separate Hirelings/Followers). His real life wife has a soft spot for the downtrodden and young females without parents (akin to her own beginnings). Further, this journey is EXTREMELY Gear and Ration sensitive. Things will go very pear-shaped as these things ablate in the course of the journey. They're precious.

So my brain goes something like this:

* Uh...shrine to deities for prayer and respite for the pilgrims making the journey...yeah, that's good...what else, self?

* Young, completely unequipped to make the journey (in all ways, but particularly gear), sisters. They're desperate...but from what?

* They lost their parents at a young age and have been drifters ever since, the eldest sister taking care of the youngest...living Cinderella-in-the-cellar servant lives just to survive at all. The last segment of their lives was getting taken advantage above by a brutal book-keeper. This is it for them. They're at a crisis of faith and all other things. They're praying for a "miracle from the mountain" (this is why pilgrims make this journey).

* Their worn boots/outfits won't hold much more than a day. Maraqli (the Wizard) gives them an extra pair of boots she's stowed for the journey, spending 1 of their precious Adventuring Gear to do so. This says something about Maraqli (and will trigger a Bond to be constructed that is a mechanical carrot).

* Alastor has to make his "Observe Memna's Pieties" move. He courts the girls with the strength of a believer and prays with them. He gets a 10+ so he gets his Quest Boons and another boon. In this case, I subbed his normal boon for something thematically appropriate here. When they finish their prayer, he sees a cache of Rations behind the altar. No one is certain if they were there before...maybe they were, maybe they weren't. He, of course, interprets this as an act of mercy from his Goddess. He gives the cache of Rations (which would certainly help bulwark their journey) to the starving girls.

This triggers a host of mechanical effects and attendant fiction (I'm not going to get into each of them). Suffice to say, his targets of proselytization move onward in their track toward inspired disciples and he's gained two more. And (like Maraqli, xp triggers will be ticked or new ones are in play).

And now we've got a potential Bookkeeper-as-villain for later (which is thematically tied to Maraqli).

All because of the intersection of snowballing aspects of play: a 10+ result of a Scout move + player-decision-point + GM framing + subsequent decision-points + subsequent action resolution.

None of this stuff existed before this journey (the shrine, the desperate sisters, the proselytization, the bookeeper villain, the extreme act of charity by Maraqli...and this was all perpetuated by the game engine with its PC advancement mechanics).

EXAMPLE 2 - Blades in the Dark game with @hawkeyefan and @Fenris-77 (this one should be more familiar to you)

Their last Score saw the Gang dealing with a Demon to pilfer some forged portraits of various members of nobility that were to be deployed in an extortion racket (in that they were alleging to depict true, scandalous scenes of various members of nobility in profound debauchery) before that extortion racket could unfold (which would thereby allow the nobility to have the "out" of buying off the manifestation of the scandals). This was for a combination of the typical Payoff in Blades (Coin) but also a vial of Demon's Blood (which will aid hawkeye's PC in his Crafting of a prototype item - he's a Leech, which is an alchemist/inventor type) and the ability to remove an annoying Clock with a Faction called the Dockers (as they framed the two guys from that Faction that they had a problem with) in the stead of gaining Rep (which you need to advance Tier).

So they did it. They gave the portaits to the Demon.

So what now? Why did this Demon want the portraits and how did the Demon manifest in the first place. We settled on:

* The Demon wants the nobility to suffer the consequences of these portraits (so remove their outs - eg remove the extortion racket component of this).

* The Demon was summoned by many sacrifices in Barrowcleft (where the Demon resides...tethered to its bridge).

Now the fallout of this could be significant for many different reasons, as follows:

1) Death is a big deal in the haunted, post-supernatural apocalypse city of Duskvol. If the Spirit Wardens can't track down (there is a localized "gong" when someone dies and a deathseeker crow flies from the belfry to the ward where the death occured) a corpse in time to secure it and have it cremated in their special crematorium, a spirit becomes loose upon Duskvol (the afterlife has been obliterated, so no spirits pass over anymore).

...we've got a lot of corpses here.

2) The nobility (really, in this case the City Council Faction is impacted by this.

3) Who killed all of these people?

So now...I have to go to the mechanics to resolve what emerges within the setting from the aggregation and intersection of all of this stuff.

In Blades, when something happens that involves the offscreen/forces that aren't the PCs specifically or their Gang/membership, this means Fortune roll formulated by the intersecting Factions and Magnitude/Scale/Potency.

When I did the maths, I settled on 1d6 Fortune Roll:

+ Spirit Wardens are Tier 4 (4 dice) + 1d6 * 3 due to assists from (The Ministry of Preservation, The Imperial Military, The Sparkwrights) for 7d6.

- The most important thing opposing them is the Scale of this event (a city block = 6 dice).

= 1d6 Fortune Roll.

They players rolled it. They got a 1-3. Which is a failure. In this case, a Bad Result. Given all that is in play, I have to move the situation in Duskvol forward appropriately. Now THIS is going look familiar to you. Not everything in Blades is centered around the thematic portfolio of the characters. This game does an incredibly good job of marrying Proper Sandbox play (mechanically hefty sandbox play) to Protagonist Play. Here, I have to extrapolate naturalistic consequence. The PCs are likely to have zero to do with the resolution of this emerging issue in Barrowcleft. They have an ever-developing menu of Scores to undertake. This is a 0 Tier gang that is much more likely to Grift (they're Grifters) or Steal (etc) than "Ghost-bust." If they don't involve themselves, we'll just handle "The Barrowcleft Disaster" as a Tug-of-War clock (with that 1d6 Fortune Roll) every Downtime to see if the city's concerted efforts can resolve it or if it fundamentally changes the setting.

But this is how the game works mechanically, and so we tally up the fallout of (a) portraits of members of high society strategically placed throughout Duskvol for maximum exposure and (b) a disturbing body count (with more still unaccounted for) in Barrowcleft.

1) Within 2 days time, word on the street and sensationalist headlines in the paper have crushed key members of the nobility. Some are in outright hiding. The City Council drops from Tier V to Tier IV.

2) The situation in Barrowcleft is an absolute disaster. Think Chernobyl meets NYC in Ghostbusters. The Spirit Wardens are overwhelmed with the poltergeist count. In a positive feedback loop, more are dying due to the haunts. This the breadbasket of the entire city with the Radiant Energy Farms. The Ministry of Preservation is desperate (and under imminent threat of losing Tier) as the looming specter of food shortages and famine have moved from hushed conversations in their offices to the street. A refugee crisis is underway as folks are being moved out in stages. The Imperial Military has set up makeshift barracks for troops to contain the crisis and triage for the harmed. The Sparkwrights are setting up emergency containment barriers but the process is slow. The Military, the Sparkwrights, and the Spirit Wardens are deputizing brave members of Duskvol (equipping them with Warden Masks - mitigate ghost manifestation effect, electromplasm pulse rifles, and electroplasm containment units..."I ain't afraid of no ghost"), paying them large sums to capture the spirits. But even that isn't working because not enough are coming forward and those that are losing at a bad "make more spirits : trap the spirits" ratio.

3) There is background noise of worry about a serial killer on the loose (those missing are overwhelmingly laborers and "Ladies of the Night" from Silkshore...but there are waaaaay bigger fish to fry right now.

By reading this you can't do anything such as change or kitbash rules or define setting so as to make the game your own (yet the players, it seems, can to some extent do the latter), you can't present any sort of mystery for solving or later reveal, you can't present the players a living setting that has things happen - both now and in the past - independent of the PCs and-or their actions meaning said PCs and their players are largely operating in a vacuum beyond the here-and-now, and if by "naturalistic extrapolation" you mean "if the PCs do x, then y happens; if they do not, z happens" then their actions (or lack of) have no future consequences. What's the point?

Also, from the player side, no secrets = no mystery = no reason to pay attention.

People complain that some DMs would be better off as novel writers and in fairness, all too often those people have a point. However, I think it might be time to turn that same statement around and point it at the cadre of players whose primary interest is delving into the angst and emotions and troubles of their own PC: those players would be better off just writing a novel.

On this:

I'm certain that the Blades approach is INFINITELY more palatable for you.

However, I'm also wondering about how you feel about the systemitized resolution of these Offscreen/Non-PC setting issues are resolved. Instead of just doing some abstract, qualitative pondering in the GM's head and then they just move the pieces at their discretion, there is an actual formula for resolution, replete with constraints for "reading the tea leaves" when you interpret the results of the Fortune Roll.

Then, the subsequent effort is handled via more Fortune Rolls and a Tug-of-War Clock during Downtime (and if the PCs involve themselves, they'll tick the clock positively toward averting the disaster). In your game, again, I'm sure this is just abstract, qualitative pondering and extrapolation by the GM (rather than encoded and constrained resolution).

How do you feel about this? Do you think encoded and constrained resolution for this kind of stuff is something you could enjoy or do you think its no bueno.

 

[darkbard]

Great post, @Manbearcat, and one that, again, does excellent service in distinguishing the processes and mechanics of these two PbtA games.

 

[Maxperson]

Are you a teacher of a literary discipline? A published author? A frequent public speaker?

I am all these things. I will very confidently put myself in the top 1% of the population for both spoken and written English. I know how to use modal verbs. I have written a doctoral thesis that engages with the pragmatic and semantic workings of modal verbs.

Consider a referee's report that says "The author may wish to reconsider whether the argument presented fully supports the conclusion that is drawn." If you read that, as the author, you know the referee thinks your argument is weak! Similarly if I write a comment like that on a student's paper. Just as the style guide that I linked to states, the modal verbs may and might can serve a social function to show uncertainty or politeness. I used the verbs to show politeness, as I explained not far upthread - to blunt the force of a proposition that some readers will find controversial. As I also said, I was not in actual doubt.

If you want to suggest that polite usage can lack maximum sincerity, that is probably true. If you then want to quote REH's Conan on the point, by all means do so. But don't try and correct my impeccable usage.

Your appeal to your own authority aside, the way to use politeness is in a different context. "Might you bring the bowl over here?" is the polite way to say, "Bring the bowl over here." Saying, "So there may be more than one answer to this question." is using it in the context of possibilities. You're saying that it's possible that there is more than once answer to the question. The same with the referee in your example above. He's saying he thinks it's a weak argument and it's possible that the author will want to reconsider it. It's uncertain.

You presented your statement in an uncertain light and then expected me to glean from your other posts that you were actually certain. If you were certain, you should have said so in your OP.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Your appeal to your own authority aside, the way to use politeness is in a different context. "Might you bring the bowl over here?" is the polite way to say, "Bring the bowl over here." Saying, "So there may be more than one answer to this question." is using it in the context of possibilities. You're saying that it's possible that there is more than once answer to the question. The same with the referee in your example above. He's saying he thinks it's a weak argument and it's possible that the author will want to reconsider it. It's uncertain.

You presented your statement in an uncertain light and then expected me to glean from your other posts that you were actually certain. If you were certain, you should have said so in your OP.

Dunning-Kruger effect on display here folks

 

[Maxperson]

Dunning-Kruger effect on display here folks