What is the point of GM's notes?

[Emerikol]

I didn't say you were "judging" Protagonist Play. My response to you doesn't imply that. You were responding to a statement about Protagonist Play by pivoting entirely to something else. So it wasn't clear to me that you understood that you were pivoting. Therefore I attempted to highlight the pivot to clarify that you're talking about something else.

If your point was just to pivot and talk about something else...then I guess...fair enough.



I read your whole post.

This is an empirical claim (which I've seen many times before):

"A deep well developed world has a consistency that is lacking in off the cuff designs."

No. You are wrong. I'm going to put "in my opinion" before and after everything I write. It is implied. Especially on something subjective.

This is a conjecture:

"I just don't think DMs can pull it off (a deep, consistent world that isn't trite)."

Of course it is but it is my experience. Thus the discussion of theoretical vs practical. While I can't possibly disagree that it is theoretically possible to run an immersive world for me in an off the cuff way, my practical experience says I've yet to see it accomplished and it is sufficiently rare that in thirty years of gaming no one has as yet pulled it off.

My response to this is the same as it always is:

Your empirical claim isn't true. Your conjecture based on your practical experience (its unclear exactly how much this is) with these games (a) isn't true (GMs can pull it off) and (b) your feelings may change with sufficient exposure of deftly played games that feature heavy improv. Run more games and play more games (with people who are proficient in running them) that do these things. You may still end up hating them but I don't see any evidence that you've run or played these games enough to know.

There can be no empirical claim about a game. Not possible. Anything could or could not immerse someone.

Play Dogs in the Vineyard. Play Torchbearer. Play Blades in the Dark. Play Apocalypse/Dungeon World. You know what, once I free myself up from one or more games, I'd be MORE THAN HAPPY to run one of these games for you and one of your friends. If you still feel that these games only bear out trite play, that is completely cool. I'm TOTALLY fine with that orientation toward these games as a judgement from experience. But you actually have to have a reasonable amount of play (or any?) to make that claim and not get pushback (even if your claim is just "I feel").

I have experience with people running games off the cuff which is what I was talking about. You take that and add it to something else but that is my assertion. And it is an undeniable fact that you don't have to read a book to realize the type of book is not for you. I have sat in briefly on dungeonworld sessions. I even went to a dungeonworld session at Gen Con one year just to see what it was about. I thought "interesting" but not for me.

And you can push all you want but on the matter of taste in games, I am an expert on my own. I don't claim to be an expert on yours or anyone else's. I don't think my approach is unique in the world but I realize there are many approaches people like. I don't really care whether people like or don't like some approach. If they like a game and enjoy it then in my mind they are doing what is intended with A GAME. I though will seek the most entertainment bang for my investment of time.

 

[Emerikol]

The GM's construct of the "world," or the "fiction," or the "milieu," or whatever you want to call it, is just that---a construct. At what point is the construct "complete" enough for it to feel "real" to you?

Well typically, I do a sandbox and the detail lessens the farther out from the starting point you get. So in a small village, almost everyone may be detailed. Oh I'm sure there are generic farmers passing through that may just be covered by a random encounters table. Meaning I come up with a list of logical scenarios in advance and just roll for what is the current state. So on a given day at a farmers market there may be any number of people there but not all of them. So who is there and who is not on a given moment. I roll for it.

Does there have to be detailed background information for every point or line drawn on the map of the world? Every city? Does every town need to have 20 fully realized NPCs before it will feel "real" to you? Do all 20 NPCs need to have fully realized daily schedules so you can roll on random tables to see if the PCs encounter them?

No. I do have an amazing amount of information by most people's standards though. I tend to be ready so that major off the cuff stuff is not necessary. Obviously a conversation is off the cuff as I can't predict what the PCs would ask. But I base answers on a deep knowledge of the characters that enables me to roleplay them effectively.

Does every nation-state in the world have to have a detailed 3,000 year history, with a list of kings, queens, regents before it will feel "real"?

It would depend of course. A tend to have a lot of detail though about history in the campaign world. I don't have every Ruler from every era detailed out. I might though in the sandbox area have a particular Kingdom detailed out in such a way.

And if not, what components of the construct do you decide is privileged / has primacy in making it "feel real" to you?

My experience is when things are made up, they don't fit together very well. There is no underlying rhyme or reason for things. Having a very solid foundation makes these small off the cuff decisions far easier. It's like method acting. if you have to make up the entire character from scratch, or you just have to handle a particular situation using a well known well defined character, then to me it seems clear it's easier to roleplay the latter effectively.

The thing of it is, a GM has to constantly generate off-the-cuff / in-the-moment "stuff to add to the fictional construct" no matter how much of the construct is prefabricated.

While I agree, I think you exaggerate the level of off the cuff thinking that goes on. There may be entire sessions where I don't have to do anything off the cuff. My most common off the cuff thing is a conversation between a well defined NPC and the PCs. I don't make up NPCs wholecloth. I create a bunch of NPCs, a rogues gallery if you will, and introduce them into play when the party stumbles across someone in a random sort of way. Like as a wandering encounter etc....

There's constant additions as the players interact with things in the world that simply didn't exist until the very moment the player says, "I look at / touch / act on X." It doesn't matter how much prefabrication happens beforehand, these situations still arise in every single moment of every single game session.

Again you exaggerate though I concede some of it happens sure.

Yet somehow, a GM having to constantly make these spur-of-the-moment additions to the prefabricated construct don't make gameplay / the gameworld trite---but using a ruleset that systematically enables these additions coherently does?

To me it is very similar to an author who crafts a book carefully and an author who just told a story off the cuff. In theory could they be equally good? In theory yes. I doubt that would be true in very many cases though.

I mean, you're entitled to your own preference. But it's my impression that if you really analyzed your preference as stated ("I prefer the world to be largely prefabricated, because it feels more real to me"), that you'd find there's a lot of un-analyzed assumptions and process gaps around the nature of what all that "prefabricated world fiction stuff" is actually doing.

I know, because I once believed EXACTLY as you do. I used to believe that without a "fully realized," "coherent," pre-fabricated fictional milieu, that RPG play would consistently fall short of reaching my goals of "realism" and "immersion."

I understand the zeal of the newly converted. I really do. I confess that roleplayers are looking for different things out of play and that at one time my own approach was the dominant style. So of course many who started in my style are going to realize another style is to their taste. If everyone started in your style, there would be zealous people telling you that your "old" style is not as good as their new one.
It's like potato chips. I like plain without ruffles. Some people think chips really didn't get good until they came in all different flavors and got ruffled. I can't argue with their tastes but I thought the original chip was already perfect for me. Now since chips aren't heavily invested roleplaying experiences, I have tried the other types and I can eat them in polite company but given a choice I always choose plain without ruffles.

In gaming, I don't have time to engage in for me low quality experiences. Time is too short. I have other things to do including other forms of entertainment. I've asked myself if my only choice to roleplay was this new style would I continue. I think I wouldn't. I have many other things to do. I would not view the time investment worth it for what I'd get out of it.

That does not mean I condemn other styles. It's inevitable that the growth and success of a hobby will lead to variations. It's inevitable. You guys buying books funds the hobby the same as I when I buy books. And hey, I'm even help fund some of your games even though I'll never play them. I am fascinated by rules mechanisms and often buy game rules to just read. I've been wanting to buy cortex plus to read. I am already certain I would not play it because of the primary dissociative mechanic they use when rolling ones. I still find reading all the various approaches to be interesting. It's probably why it is fun to debate here with you guys. I know myself quiet well though so if conversion is your only payoff I would not waste any more of your time if I were you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

the Blades game I'm running for @hawkeyefan and @Fenris-77

Just can't stop rubbing this in, huh.

 

[pemerton]

Let's imagine that what the players see is the land above the sea. The parts they don't see are underwater. The underwater part though is connected to and supports what is above the water. So, in some styles what is above water has no underlying basis other than off the cuff imagination. They try to backfill the undersea parts to fit some new idea they have. For us, the well established landscape, enables us to provide things new to the group but having a strong basis in the environment.

I don't really follow your metaphor, especially because I think the "above" I've bolded seems like it would make more sense if it read "below".

The example given about the young girl and the bad boy thief is a good example. If for some reason the PCs cross paths with those NPCs, having them already existing for me is far better than just making them up at the moment. I don't doubt "in theory" you can have the same result either way but my "practical" experience is they are not nearly the same.

There can be no empirical claim about a game. Not possible. Anything could or could not immerse someone.

<snip>

I have experience with people running games off the cuff which is what I was talking about.

<snip>

I have sat in briefly on dungeonworld sessions. I even went to a dungeonworld session at Gen Con one year just to see what it was about. I thought "interesting" but not for me.

What practical experience? Having sat in briefly on a Dungeonworld game?

And when you say not nearly the same, in what respect? Of course DW doesn't play the same as Moldvay Basic. It's standard, in DW, for the GM to ask the player questions about the PCs' expectations, experiences and so on. That is not standard for Moldvay Basic. But what is supposed to follow from this, besides @Emerikol doesn't like it?

A deep well developed world has a consistency that is lacking in off the cuff designs. That is my practical experience. I just don't think DMs can pull it off. I doubt for me you could do it. I would find a lot of peoples games on here "trite".

This is not a claim about what you do or don't like. It is a claim about the consistency, depth and non-triteness of other peoples games. What's the evidence for it?

I have a lot of actual play posts on these boards. They're easy to find. Are you saying they seem trite? You posted in this thread which has a description of play from my Classic Traveller game in the OP. Is this something you're saying is trite?

 

[innerdude]

@Emerikol -- I appreciate the detailed response. My line of questioning isn't to "convert" you specifically.

My hope, I suppose, is that what I say may be of some use to other readers who may be going through a similar situation that I've gone through in the past. I wanted to improve the quality of the games I was running, but the amount of pre-session preparation / notes / fictional "prefabrication" didn't seem to have any correlation to the success of my sessions.

I've had sessions where I had little more than a basic scene and maybe 1 rough NPC sketch go off amazingly well. I've had sessions where I had 5 or 6 single-spaced pages of typed notes, with 6 or 7 highly detailed NPC stat blocks, and the session thoroughly bombed. I've had small, medium, and large-sized batches of prefabricated notes where the sessions were just . . . okay.

Full disclosure --- even at the height of my "prefabricated backstory" days, I didn't do as much detailed work as you outlined above. And it's clear that as a GM, you find that level of prefabrication necessary to having the experience you want.

Right after I finished my Pathfinder campaign in 2011, I realized that though I love the process of GM-ing, the amount of work required to run Pathfinder / D&D 3 was not tenable. Even if I had loved the system itself (which I didn't; it was more of a lukewarm "like"), I simply didn't have the time to bother with it anymore. And this was using the Golarion campaign setting, where at least 30% of the prefabricating of the game world was already done for me.

This kicked off my journey to find ways to create satisfying roleplaying experiences that didn't require huge amounts of prep time, and also just find a different experience than the one found in the D&D 3.x family of games (which is all I played from 2000 through 2011).

And lo and behold, there was this group of GMs on EnWorld espousing all these crazy ideas like, Let the players have the ability to exert some authorial control, and Frame scenes, not settings, and Play to see what happens, and Say yes or roll the dice, and The fiction is a shared construct; it doesn't have any 'reality' except what is agreed upon.

And even though a lot of those GMs were running 4e (which for many reasons was a non-starter at the time), I couldn't dismiss out of hand that a lot of seemingly smart, well-intentioned people seemed to be having success adopting these principles.

So I tried Savage Worlds to radically reduce prep time and started trying out some of the espoused principles. And lo and behold, it worked exactly as described. My players were more engaged, they had more stakes in the fiction---holy crapizoid, Batman! Suddenly I didn't have to define every piece of every little bit of the fiction. I could frame my players into the action and trust that they'd find their way.

I still did more prefabrication than I'm doing now, but not nearly as much with Pathfinder. And there were still moments where I slipped into "secret backstory" GM-mode more than I should have. But interestingly, the more I let go of the need to prefabricate, the more fun I and my players seemed to have.

Now having moved to Ironsworn, combined with my own existing experiences, I can more clearly see the potential "dark side" to prefabricating so much of the game world beforehand. It's very, very hard to let go of something I've created. If I spent the time to create it, there is an accompanying, strong impulse to use it in play, even if doing so doesn't serve the greater good of the fun of the group. It's very, very easy to let prefabricated content become a GM indulgence, justified under the banners of "realism" and "continuity," when really it's just an exercise in self-gratification. And I've very much come around on @pemerton's belief that GM "secret backstory", while potentially "useful" in terms of trying to create "continuity" and "realism" and "intrigue," is very much a danger to stifling player engagement.

So again, the question becomes, why do all of that prefabrication? What purpose does it serve? I think this thread has identified a number of useful purposes (reminders, continuity, streamlining gameplay with preset stat blocks, fleshing out characterizations). But it's not a requirement for a game to work, or to feel "immersive" or "coherent."

As @Manbearcat alluded earlier, all I can do now when someone says, "BUT RPGs SIMPLY DON'T WORK UNLESS YOU HAVE A COHERENT, PREFABRICATED, LIVING WORLD!!" is either surreptitiously roll my eyes and say nothing, or offer a counter perspective.

I'm here to tell anyone that will listen that this stuff works---if you approach it from the right mindset and perspective, and are willing to be open to an experience other than what you already know.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So I think that when it comes to a GM’s notes and portrayal of a deep and consistent world, any possible connection is more about the GM than the players.

I mean this in the sense that it’s more about the GM’s comfort. If a GM feels confident portraying the world, then it doesn’t really matter from the player’s perspective if he’s made it up ahead of time or on the fly.

Some GMs will find one or the other a better fit for them, and that’s understandable. So for a given GM, they may indeed feel that their world lacks depth or consistency if they’re forced to make more stuff up in the moment. And, he may he right that this impacts his players too, but only because of his discomfort with the method, not because of the method itself.

There are elements in the hobby that have been around a very long time, and many if those reinforce this idea. Some games may indeed benefit from copious notes, typically old school map and key type gaming. But it’s certainly not universal by any means.

As my gaming style has shifted over the years, I’ve come to realize how much we do in gaming is done just because that’s the way it’s always been done. And once I realized that, I was able to redirect my efforts to find new ways that worked better.

 

[Emerikol]

I don't really follow your metaphor, especially because I think the "above" I've bolded seems like it would make more sense if it read "below".

Above the water is visible and what is below the water is not. That was the main use of the analogy.

What practical experience? Having sat in briefly on a Dungeonworld game?

People have been playing with poor prep for years. Long before Dungeonworld ever existed. Yes new games are perhaps catering to low prep and perhaps that makes them a bit better but what makes me dislike them likely hasn't changed. I also dislike dissociative mechanics and a lot of what these games do uses those techniques. I want to be acting from within my character and not using my character like a playing piece.

And when you say not nearly the same, in what respect? Of course DW doesn't play the same as Moldvay Basic. It's standard, in DW, for the GM to ask the player questions about the PCs' expectations, experiences and so on. That is not standard for Moldvay Basic. But what is supposed to follow from this, besides @Emerikol doesn't like it?

Of course.

This is not a claim about what you do or don't like. It is a claim about the consistency, depth and non-triteness of other peoples games. What's the evidence for it?

Much as you want to deny it. Depth, immersion, non-triteness are subjective. Consistency perhaps can be more an objective standard but from what I see even theoretically the best you can achieve with grandmaster level DMing is equality. I think the average run of the mill gamer playing both styles will find DMs that do more upfront prep are more consistent. Now having said that, you only care about your game and if you are pulling it off for you then good for you.

I have a lot of actual play posts on these boards. They're easy to find. Are you saying they seem trite? You posted in this thread which has a description of play from my Classic Traveller game in the OP. Is this something you're saying is trite?

I find play reports even for my games are turned into a more story like form so it is hard to judge without actually watching. Hey, I'm talking about a style's impact upon me. I'm not saying it is that way for you. Also, people play a particular style to different levels. So some may mix and match various approaches. I'm not condemning or judging your style for you. I'm saying what my reaction is when I encounter your style.

It's like food. If I taste something and make an ugly face, that is not in any way saying other people don't love the food. A matter of taste cannot be disputed. That is a philosophical absolute truth. When I give my opinion I am merely saying how your style impacts me.

 

[Emerikol]

@Emerikol -- I appreciate the detailed response. My line of questioning isn't to "convert" you specifically.

Hey we come here to talk. I admit I get triggered sometimes and I do my fair share of triggering. It's a game though and when we talk past each other we are just giving our experience and our preferences.

I do believe people want different things out of roleplaying. Roleplaying is too big to be just one thing. It's kind of like sports. At the beginning there was just sports and everyone played the same way. Now we have a big variety and people who play basketball think playing football is not that fun. Whereas some think otherwise. My only opposition and I admit a trigger is when people say "we have a new better way". The reality is you have a "new better way for you". And it may be true for many others but not for everyone. We all come to the game for different reasons. Ultimately the goal is fun but there are different payoffs in the search for fun.

My hope, I suppose, is that what I say may be of some use to other readers who may be going through a similar situation that I've gone through in the past. I wanted to improve the quality of the games I was running, but the amount of pre-session preparation / notes / fictional "prefabrication" didn't seem to have any correlation to the success of my sessions.

I've had sessions where I had little more than a basic scene and maybe 1 rough NPC sketch go off amazingly well. I've had sessions where I had 5 or 6 single-spaced pages of typed notes, with 6 or 7 highly detailed NPC stat blocks, and the session thoroughly bombed. I've had small, medium, and large-sized batches of prefabricated notes where the sessions were just . . . okay.

Full disclosure --- even at the height of my "prefabricated backstory" days, I didn't do as much detailed work as you outlined above. And it's clear that as a GM, you find that level of prefabrication necessary to having the experience you want.

I have read dozens if not hundreds of similar stories. Again as I said above. The game started out in my style and was taught that way. So all of the movement is to other styles. It doesn't invalidate my style. It is inevitable that my style wasn't fulfilling what some wanted out of roleplaying. I have tried on occasion to speculate but often when you do you get a lot of backlash because no one wants to admit that every choice gains something and gives something up.

Right after I finished my Pathfinder campaign in 2011, I realized that though I love the process of GM-ing, the amount of work required to run Pathfinder / D&D 3 was not tenable. Even if I had loved the system itself (which I didn't; it was more of a lukewarm "like"), I simply didn't have the time to bother with it anymore. And this was using the Golarion campaign setting, where at least 30% of the prefabricating of the game world was already done for me.

I will admit that while I never liked 4e, I was tired of 3e/PF myself at some point. I like some character built choices but I'm probably one of those who likes a bit less. That means I like some character building but not too much. I am probably one of those that is happy with four basic classes.

This kicked off my journey to find ways to create satisfying roleplaying experiences that didn't require huge amounts of prep time, and also just find a different experience than the one found in the D&D 3.x family of games (which is all I played from 2000 through 2011).

For me, prep is work but it is a labor of love. I feel great pleasure in providing something that my players enjoy and remember.

And lo and behold, there was this group of GMs on EnWorld espousing all these crazy ideas like, Let the players have the ability to exert some authorial control, and Frame scenes, not settings, and Play to see what happens, and Say yes or roll the dice, and The fiction is a shared construct; it doesn't have any 'reality' except what is agreed upon.

The reality is that there are a variety of things that makes up a gamer preference set. For example, I would say I'm a sandbox, skilled play, in-character always roleplayer. This set of preferences kind of precludes many of the new approaches. So even people like me in some ways are not like me in every way. You could be sandbox but not skilled play. You could be fine with dissociative mechanics and still have a sandbox. (4e proved that). It would be fascinating to try and build a list of gamer preferences because I don't have a list for people in your style.

And even though a lot of those GMs were running 4e (which for many reasons was a non-starter at the time), I couldn't dismiss out of hand that a lot of seemingly smart, well-intentioned people seemed to be having success adopting these principles.

Well, there are sports, soccer for example, that don't do anything for me. They just aren't interesting to me. But thousands, no millions, no billions love that game. I'm not against their loving it either. Enjoy! That is the beauty of entertainment. We can do what we like and others can too.

So I tried Savage Worlds to radically reduce prep time and started trying out some of the espoused principles. And lo and behold, it worked exactly as described. My players were more engaged, they had more stakes in the fiction---holy crapizoid, Batman! Suddenly I didn't have to define every piece of every little bit of the fiction. I could frame my players into the action and trust that they'd find their way.

I still did more prefabrication than I'm doing now, but not nearly as much with Pathfinder. And there were still moments where I slipped into "secret backstory" GM-mode more than I should have. But interestingly, the more I let go of the need to prefabricate, the more fun I and my players seemed to have.

Then you were obviously playing a game originally that wasn't your ideal fit. I guess I was lucky to find mine early on. Now we also know that there are those gamers, I can them beer and pretzel gamers, who are just happy to be there. Those types would likely play in your game and in mine and be happy either way. There are also those who have varied preferences so they view our styles as different games. Sometimes they play one game and sometimes they play another. So there is that too. Often times for example a D&D style game system fights against your style to some degree. Playing dungeonworld or savage worlds is better.

Now having moved to Ironsworn, combined with my own existing experiences, I can more clearly see the potential "dark side" to prefabricating so much of the game world beforehand. It's very, very hard to let go of something I've created. If I spent the time to create it, there is an accompanying, strong impulse to use it in play, even if doing so doesn't serve the greater good of the fun of the group. It's very, very easy to let prefabricated content become a GM indulgence, justified under the banners of "realism" and "continuity," when really it's just an exercise in self-gratification. And I've very much come around on @pemerton's belief that GM "secret backstory", while potentially "useful" in terms of trying to create "continuity" and "realism" and "intrigue," is very much a danger to stifling player engagement.

I would agree 100% that there are risks and pitfalls. That some of the worst DMs have acted in bad faith as representatives of my style. That doesn't really invalidate my style. I've seen some pretty bad ones using other styles too.

But....I do realize that there is a value choice in how you interact with the content. If the DM just decides that going left instead of right would be more fun and to hell with the underlying content that is a decision and it works for some people. It won't work for those who really embrace my style. In my style, failure and setbacks are more common. It feels a bit more like real life in that sense. The party knows the DM is not going to bail them out or twist things around to make it all work out.

Here is an example from years ago. Now in those days I was not nearly the world builder I am today so keep that in mind. This example is laser focused on one point. I had a group going through the Giants. There is a room where the King lives, I believe it is the frost giant G2 module, that has a secret escape door that the King would use if threatened. The party had foolishly alerted and attracted pretty much every giant in the place and they were being hunted in force. They had managed to dispatch the King though. They realized though they were going to die almost certainly but they decided to search the room to see if there was any place they could hide. They found the kings secret door and used it to escape the dungeon.

Now, if I had handwaved that escape route to enable the players to survive, I would have broke faith. They would not have enjoyed it nor would it have been a story. Now is it theoretically possible I could lie to them and try to keep it a secret? I guess so but that is a lousy way to live life. The fact they were saved by chance but chance that was real in the world made a difference.

So again, the question becomes, why do all of that prefabrication? What purpose does it serve? I think this thread has identified a number of useful purposes (reminders, continuity, streamlining gameplay with preset stat blocks, fleshing out characterizations). But it's not a requirement for a game to work, or to feel "immersive" or "coherent."

As @Manbearcat alluded earlier, all I can do now when someone says, "BUT RPGs SIMPLY DON'T WORK UNLESS YOU HAVE A COHERENT, PREFABRICATED, LIVING WORLD!!" is either surreptitiously roll my eyes and say nothing, or offer a counter perspective.

I'm here to tell anyone that will listen that this stuff works---if you approach it from the right mindset and perspective, and are willing to be open to an experience other than what you already know.

I think people like me are at heart explorers. They want to learn about a new world and explore it. It's a big motivation. They also want to achieve something by dint of their skill as players. So they feel they "earned" their PC's greatness.

Gygax speaks to this a lot in the 1e DMG. He of course is unaware of other styles and thus states it in absolute terms. Still his assertions are true for people who are seeking the payoff my style provides.

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright, working back to "what is the point of the GM's notes", here are how some Blades in the Dark Sandbox notes might be leveraged in play. The below are active Setting or Faction Clocks that get Fortune rolled and ticked during every Downtime phase.

ENTANGLEMENT - GANG TROUBLE

Hans and Piotr split up on the way back because of concern that they may have caught a tail. But Piotr doubled back (Flaw of Principled and Loyal to his brother) for concern for his brother. This actually ended up getting Piotr cornered by a trio of Crows (easily identified by their brashness and their tats). Hans heard the commotion and ran to his brothers defense. The two of them got the naughty word kicked out of each other but at least it was together (and it could have been worse if it was apart). The Crows left a not-so-veiled hanging in the air "stay the eff away from Miss Cues (pool hall that Roric frequented), or next time you'll be missing more than a few teeth..."


Not going to go with the standard Gang Trouble complication on this one. Going to go with Hans and Piotr are infirmary-bound - out one full Loop (Info Gather > Score > Downtime). They'll have recovered on your next Loop.

On the bright side, the experience of "getting tuned up" has toughened these two up. If at some point, you want to pay 2 Coin (1 apiece) for the pair of them to spar/go through some martial arts training with Shells' group (6 Downtime Project Clock w/ their Quality as the roll), you guys can add Thugs as a type for Hans and Piotr once that Clock completes.


FACTION CLOCKS


Ulf Ironborn - "Studying Your Game" - 8 Ticks (last Downtime and this Downtime)

The play in the tourney has incentivized him to ask around about you guys' Hold 'Em games and dispatch members of his Crew to home games you guys are involved with to get some experience against you. Once its full, they're going to be active in playing against you guys and Clocks to beat them will throttle up one (eg from 6 to 8 or from 8 to 10).

Tier 1 = 1 Fortune Dice.

6 = 3
1 = 1

4/8

The Crows - "Moving in on the Silver Stags Territory/your Hunting Grounds" - 8 Ticks.

Their agents have grown increasingly more brazen in moving in on you guys and the Stags' turf. Last week a smoke shop had its windows broken and a clerk roughed up and a few Crows unsurprisingly showed up afterward promising they could protect the shop for a price. This week, you guys have seen several of their agents running 3 Card Monty in the alleys nearby.

Tier 2 vs Tier 3 = Worst of 2d6 Fortune Dice

3/5 = 1

1/8

"Save Barrowcleft vs Barrowcleft Apocalypse" - 10 Tick Competing Clocks

Tier 6 apiece so d6 apiece.

Save = 2 so 1/10
Apocalypse = 4 so 2/10

The tide turns against the ward, its citizens, and the city. A few brave souls enlist to fight the ghosts. They don't return...

"Ramon's Suit" - His 6 Tick vs your 4 Tick (whenever you take it up)

Tier 2 but we'll throttle it back to 0 so worst of 2d6 due to Scale

4/5 = 2

2/6

A bad scrap on the street opened up the elbow of his suit something fierce and out man can't mend it.

"Hutch's Vendetta" - His 8 Tick vs your 4 Tick (whenever you take it up)

Tier 2 but we'll throttle it back to 0 so worst of 2d6 due to Scale

2/6 = 1

1/8

Hutch is too wasted to thirst for vengeance.

The above may get used in the following ways during the next play loop:

1) One of them may inform some Situation Framing of Free Play or of an aspect of the Score (particularly the Barrowcleft Apocalypse one as the Crew arranged for a "Kill Pool <+ Prop Bets>" game in their last Score where they compete with several other Gangs to try to suss out and stamp out the serial killer of Barrowcleft).

The odds of using some of the above as framing is doubly likely if I can figure out a way to tie it into one of PC's Vice, Heritage, Background, Allies/Enemies.

2) One of them may inform a Complication from a Move in Free Play or a Score (particularly the Barrowcleft Apocalypse one as the Crew arranged for a "Kill Pool <+ Prop Bets>" game in their last Score where they compete with several other Gangs to try to suss out and stamp out the serial killer of Barrowcleft).

The odds of using some of the above as framing is doubly likely if I can figure out a way to tie it into one of PC's Vice, Heritage, Background, Allies/Enemies.

3) One of them may inform a Devil's Bargain I propose or another player proposes in the Score (particularly the Barrowcleft Apocalypse one as the Crew arranged for a "Kill Pool <+ Prop Bets>" game in their last Score where they compete with several other Gangs to try to suss out and stamp out the serial killer of Barrowcleft).

The odds of using some of the above as framing is doubly likely if I can figure out a way to tie it into one of PC's Vice, Heritage, Background, Allies/Enemies.

4) A player may use one of the above to help inform or to generate a Flashback during the Score.

5) To help inform the Entanglement rolled during the Downtime phase.

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Note that the "GM notes" are table-facing and players can use them to inform their own proposed Devil's Bargains or Flashbacks (which then could feed back into further "GM notes" being generated).

 

[Fenris-77]

Just can't stop rubbing this in, huh.

To be fair, referencing a specific game of game X being played by competent and experienced people isn't really off topic. This is the first time I've gone back to playing Blades in a while, as I mostly GM, and I found my experience GMing it really adds to my enjoyment being on the player end. The recursive process of uncovering the setting in play is awesome when everyone, ahem, knows what they're doing. In this case both I and @hawkeyefan have added significant details to the setting in terms of places, NPCs and factions and the result isn't muddled, or unclear, or lacking depth. If I were looking for an example in @Manbearcat 's shoes I'd probably use this game too.