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?

Got a response. He said is prep is very light. He has an outline of a job with the main NPCs involved (target, employer), and some details about obstacles the PCs are likely to encounter. He compared it to a dungeon room network and added that most of it is improvised based on the world, the factions, and people the PCs know. He also said there is some overall story arc prep based on what you want the factions to be doing in the guideline, but the guidelines tell you to do light prep and be very flexible based on the narrative.

And (which he went on to note) we didn’t even interact with the target NPC at all in our last job (the one I described in my example). whistles innocently

 

[Lanefan]

That's not really an answerable question. Writing fiction in a setting inevitably involves fleshing it out in different ways from running a game in it. One notable example of that is the "voices" of characters, the individual ways they express themselves in language. That's really important in prose fiction, but not usually in a game.

As someone who at least tries (not always that successfully, but hey) to give different voices and expressions to his NPCs, I have to disagree. In this particular example the two things are closer than you might realize.

That said, I'm thinking more in terms of the depths of imagination the setting you've built provides you. If it's deep enough to use for writing then your challenge moves from designing it to somehow imparting that same space for imagination to your players.

 

[Lanefan]

Classic Traveller does not have any hyper-lightspeed communications beyond the travel of starships. If a world is under interdiction, and the interdiction is successful, news will not travel.

OK. I'm thinking more of a Star Wars or Star Trek scenario where ships travelling at warp speed (or the SW equivalent) can still receive comm, meanign the comm signal can travel faster than the ship.

 

[pemerton]

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".

So if you as GM are making these notes about things that are going on 'behind the scenes", but the players are not engaging with it via their PCs, are you able to say what they are for?

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.

I think this is an illustration of the sort of thing that @Manbearcat identified upthread as alternatives to "protagonistic" play.

 

[Scott Christian]

I see the AP approach as something popular with beginners. It takes very little DM work and the players can learn the basics of skilled play. It's just best if they can eventually go on to a sandbox as they'll enjoy it even more I think. I probably did the equivalent of an AP when I was really you. I'd do B2, then the Slavers A1-A4 and then the G1-3 Giants/D1-3 Drow/Q1 Demonweb series. Somewhere in there I might squeeze in White Plume mountain or at the end Tomb of Horrors. It's not what I like now but for beginners it's not a terrible way to learn the game.

I agree, it is not a terrible way to learn to play. In fact, it helps a lot.

I would take it one step further though. Those experienced DMs should g back to basics and try running an AP every now and then. In my experience watching open concept/improv/sandbox DMs, these refreshers could hone their skill (or remind them of something they may have stopped using and forgotten about).

I am lucky. Every DM I have had for years and years has been great. But all of them could have benefitted from running an AP as is.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree, it is not a terrible way to learn to play. In fact, it helps a lot.

I would take it one step further though. Those experienced DMs should g back to basics and try running an AP every now and then. In my experience watching open concept/improv/sandbox DMs, these refreshers could hone their skill (or remind them of something they may have stopped using and forgotten about).

I am lucky. Every DM I have had for years and years has been great. But all of them could have benefitted from running an AP as is.

Blink. I... could not disagree more, and I'm currently running an AP. I have to fix so many things, from bad pacing, to poor encounter design, to blatant applications of Force. I get reminded why I don't usually run APs every time I run one. I mean, sure, if you've no experience, they're a place to start, but a refresher course on how to GM? I cannot agree at all.

Of course, it takes all types, so if you're finding the best GM practices to be exemplified by APs, then I'm glad you have an easy way to find fun in the hobby.

 

[Lanefan]

The players in my game, as their PCs, were curious to learn more about the pendulum. It was clearly part of the apparatus of a technically complex establishment. There was no sense in which it would be a "distraction" - when the goal is to find out what the establishment is for and how it works, learning what a part of it is for and how it works is not a distraction. It's the point.

Given this context, yes. Absent context, a big pendulum swinging in a bigger chamber could be highly relevant, tangentially relevant, or not relevant at all to what the PCs are doing; and they won't know until-unless they investigate further.

Here is what @Manbearcat actually posted upthread, that you (@Lanefan) quoted:

There is nothing at all there about consequences, naturalistic or otherwise.

Then what is naturalistic extrapolation, if not a fancy term for consequences (or cause-and-effect, same thing)?

There is something about not using secret backstory to oppose PCs. Which is something that I do not do (with one prominent exception in our Traveller game: the game calls for a secret roll to determine if a branch of the Psionics Institute exists on a world, and I have used that mechanic).

Saying all of the consequences could as easily have been based on pre-made notes is like saying instead of rolling the dice in a D&D combat, the GM might have just narrated all the outcomes of all the declared attacks. That's true, but it doesn't entail that there is no difference between using the combat mechanics to find out what happens in combat, and having the GM just tell you.

You're comparing apples and rabbits here...and at the same time, not. Both things really break down to being glorified if-then-else loops nested within others; only in the psionics-use case the if-then-else is written down in the notes and the branch taken each time is determined by the PCs' actions where in combat the if-then-else is coded into the game rules and the dice determine which path is taken each time.

The apples-and-rabbits bit is that one is reliant on rules coding and the other not; also greatly different degrees of granularity. IMO a better comparison at the scale/granularity level might be a step up, at the point of the PCs' decision whether or not to engage in combat.

There are a million possible things I could tell my players about what is happening in the galaxy, and what they encounter. I choose to tell them about things that engage the dramatic needs of their PCs. That's why I have no use for the technique of setting up "agnostic" rosters of events. These do not enhance the game I want to play. Somewhat similarly, in REH's Conan we don't hear random news of things that don't matter to Conan; in Raiders of the Lost Ark we don't hear about random German military operations, but only the ones that implicate the ruins that Indiana Jones wants to explore; in an X-Man film or comic we don't hear about changes in interest rates, and the only hearing of the "World Court" we ever learn about is the one where Magneto is on trial for crimes against humanity.

It's a question of scope and available time. A movie has a limited run-time and thus has to harshly limit* the scope of what it covers in terms of both in-setting time and in-setting story. An RPG, on the other hand, has no such limits; the scope and period of what it covers can be immense if so desired, and things that happen elsewhere in the setting now could have knock-on effects later that impact the PCs. Which perforce means that even if the focus of at-the-table play is on the here-and-now PCs, someone (usually the GM) has to keep an eye on the bigger picture with a view to what events are happening elsewhere and how said events might (or might not) impact the PCs depending what they do and-or where they go in the future.

So in Indy's case, in the movie we don't hear about random German military operations elsewhere but in an RPG - where Indy's going to do many more things (i.e. have many more adventures) than just recover the Lost Ark; and where his movements are controlled by his player and thus unpredictable, knowing what the Germans - and other armies - are doing elsewhere could come in really handy in terms of determining what he's liable to bump into on his travels and when. (personally for this I'd likely just quietly haul out a history of WWII-era military movements and keep it behind the screen for reference)

* - sometimes much too harshly, IMO: the LotR movies should have each been about three hours longer in order to do full justice to the tale.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

So if you as GM are making these notes about things that are going on 'behind the scenes", but the players are not engaging with it via their PCs, are you able to say what they are for?

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, to be honest. But I'll try...

If I write something down and the PC's don't engage with it, they are still there (the notes). The stuff that is 'happening' is still happening...the world doesn't stop when the PC's aren't there, for example.

Lets say I make a note that "The bakers 14 year old daughter is being extra rebellious and has been smitten by a rather 'bad guy' older teen who is a freelance thief who refuses to join the guild...he is CN. The baker and his wife are both stressed over her behaviour and the 'boy'".

So that's a note. That is something that is going on. IT's also something that has nothing to do with the PC's or any of the storyline. If the Players never have their PC's "engage" with the baker (for example, they never ever go to buy bread and never encounter him or his daughter, or the 'bad boy')...that doesn't mean it isn't still happening.

Lets say the campaign progresses and the next time the PC's are in this town it's been 6 years. I can look at my notes about this town and see this note about the baker, his family and his daughter. I can then extrapolate; I can use that as a 'seed'...maybe the girl got into all that 'bad stuff' too and she and her bad-boy-lover are the towns current guildmasters, having removed the other guildmasters...or maybe she had a bad experience that woke her up and she is now an Acolyte of Yondalla and her ex-bad-boy-boyfriend is now a mortal enemy...or maybe he want's her back and they have an understanding that they are from two different 'worlds' and can never be together....or...or...or...

I guess that's the "point" of me having these notes. If the PC's get involved, I have something to use as inspiration. If they don't...I still have them as inspiration. Given time, these notes can be read and traced for weeks, months or years (of real time), that may even span decades or centuries in game-time. If Players then, say 90 years later, find themselves using Contact Higher Plane or some other divination spell, they might learn of the "Trials of the Star-Struck Lovers"...which is a sad tale of two people, deeply in love, but one turned to religion and founded the now major religion in the town (that of the worship of Yondalla ; halfling deity of, well, a lot of stuff...protection, halflings, diplomacy, family, etc, if you are wondering ), and her true love, the Guildmaster of the Dark Hands thieves guild. The church was built by her, the now-mayors-mansion was the former Dark Hands guild-hall, and the big statue of the woman and man facing away from each other but each reaching out behind them to hold the other's hand are the bakers daughter and the bad-boy.

In short...these "notes" can, and do, become part of my campaigns history. Even if parts are never realized or discovered by the Players. It's for me, and for them if they happen to find interest.

Does that help?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Lanefan]

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).

Different motivations for GMing, I suppose - I'm in it for the laughs and entertainment both given and received, and any brain-strengthening that happens is purely an accidental side effect.

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).

This is really, really cool. I like it.

That said, there's no way in hell I'd be able to make it work without having some notes ahead of time e.g. "shrine near camp 1, two runaway sisters, will starve or freeze if not found/rescued by PCs but no fault if PCs miss entirely", stuff like that.

Why? Because notes ahead of time serve also as notes after the fact, so when I'm trying to remember a few days later what happened in the game I've at least got that framework to start from. If I stop to take notes during the run of play my train of thought gets derailed (which doesn't help anyone), and after a few beers I'm not going to remember all the details of anything that complicated or even get them all straight without some sort of notes to go by - unless I'm willing to risk creating in-setting inconsistencies and-or impossibilities through my winging-it getting carried away (e.g. putting the same space armada in three places at once, or in this example saying they could see the shrine from far below as I forget it's supposed to be somewhat discreet or hidden).

Put another way, after 35+ years of it I more or less know my GMing limits and am willing to play within them.

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.

I'm a bit confused here - they gave the portraits to a Demon, fine, but before this the Demon didn't exist in the fiction and you collectively had to retcon it in?

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.



On this:

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

Surprisingly, perhaps, given the way you wrote them up I think I like the first one better. It seems more fluid somehow, for lack of a better term; or maybe it's just that the first one deals with smaller-scale events. I do like how the consequences play out in the Blades example and the possibility of future impact on the PCs and-or what's around them; were it me I'd be making notes right now on what happens next and when (barring PC intervention) so as to codify events and as an aid to memory.

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.

I'm of two minds here. One of those minds says it works well. The other says that if the GM is grounded enough in the setting the same or similar results could and likely would be achieved without mechanics. A combination, where the mechanics are "soft" and there to support and-or suggest in cases where the GM is indecisive and-or just can't come up with good ideas, is probably where I'd lean.

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.

I wouldn't want it to be hard-coded, in that I-as-GM would want to retain the freedom to either overrule or eschew the mechanics if the results didn't make sense in the fiction and-or I thought I had a better idea. For example, if it made sense in the established Blades setting that the "Bad Result" consequences would be what happened next I might want to skip the mechanics and jump straight there. Or, if some other series of consequences made more sense I mught want to go straight there; and in any case I'd probably do some informal rolling to fine-tune the details (e.g. instead of "within 2 days time" it might be "within 1d4 days time" to add some variability; and I'd probably also roll to see what had become of each known member of the nobility by that point e.g. dead, in hiding, aware but no change, unaware, etc.)

That said, the whole thing would likely be much more granularly resolved in my game such that things would progress on a day by day or even hour by hour basis depending on what the players/PCs got up to.

 

[Scott Christian]

Blink. I... could not disagree more, and I'm currently running an AP. I have to fix so many things, from bad pacing, to poor encounter design, to blatant applications of Force. I get reminded why I don't usually run APs every time I run one. I mean, sure, if you've no experience, they're a place to start, but a refresher course on how to GM? I cannot agree at all.

Of course, it takes all types, so if you're finding the best GM practices to be exemplified by APs, then I'm glad you have an easy way to find fun in the hobby.

This is kind of my point. The bold exemplifies the fact that you change it. Why? You see, even with well laid encounters, solid plot hooks, character led encounters or plots, etc., it still boils down to DM execution. It all boils down to DM execution. And if a DM can execute well, even with errors in the AP, then they can do well pretty much anywhere.