What is the point of GM's notes?

[prabe]

Ovinomancer believed his written adventure needed fewer adjustments than a traditional AP that has been published.

I'm inclined to believe him. Not because I think @Ovinomancer is better at designing adventures than whoever designed that AP, but because when he designed his own adventure, he did it (I presume) taking into account the PCs and how they're being played, the players' play style/s, his own GMing style, table preferences and expectations, and such. The odds of a published adventure fitting his table as well as one he wrote seem to approach 0.

 

[Maxperson]

I was very direct in critiquing the OP. There is nothing passive aggressive here. I am describing what I have seen play out in these threads around the concept of "playing to discover what is in the GM's notes".

I see it, too. It's something that particular poster has a history of doing.

 

[Scott Christian]

This seems to assume a very specific point of the GM's notes: to describe imaginary events which will occur in the fiction. AD&D 2nd ed modules are full of notes of this sort.

As @Ovinomancer said, there are other RPGs that don't use this technique at all.

And I stated two times in that discussion, that I do not believe all players talk shop with their GM. I do. It is fun. The only reason I brought it up is because I was questioned on how I would know if something is changed. I know it has been changed. Why? Because I discuss the adventure with my GMs. Maybe it is because I am an experienced GM. But we talk. Sometimes for hours - about the entire campaign.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think I see the error here. (It might be my communication.) The skills needed to prevent flaws are different than the ones used on the fly when finding flaws. At least, that is my take.

The skills need to prevent flaws are predicated on the ones to find flaws. If I'm preventing flaws, its because I can already recognize them. You cannot prevent flaws (effectively) if you cannot find them.

Maybe you are misunderstanding. I am not dissing design work at all. I am saying, that when a GM uses an AP, they use and sometimes practice different skills that they would not use in adventures of their own design. Hence, my original claim, that APs can teach young and experienced GMs alike. It can create new tools and/or remind a GM of tools they haven't used in a long time.

There are two things going on here. Firstly, the ability to recognize flaws that need to be fixed isn't something that is special to APs. You've introduced that APs are special because they have more(?) chances of being flawed and therefore a GM learns more about recognizing flaws. This isn't clear because work done by a GM for their own games has already done this pass -- there are fewer flaws to recognize in play because the GM has already done most of this work in design. There's nothing unique about APs, except maybe the higher likelihood of poor design for a given GM's game.

Secondly, you're advocating for APs as teaching new tools. This is flawed because you must already be good enough at GMing to recognize when an AP is doing something clever and worth learning and when it's doing something badly than needs correction. The skill to recognize these things is not taught by APs, it's actually harmed by them, because there's the assumption that the AP is actually well-designed and so emulating all of it is something you should do. And, perhaps it is, for a given table, but there's nothing in the AP that teaches this especially over things generated by a GM. What I mean here is that it's just as likely for a GM to learn that things do or don't work with their own material as it is with an AP.

The presumed value of an AP is that the GM has less work to do to run a game that is presumably well-designed. I find most APs are full of very specific approaches that don't suit a number of tables, and that this isn't apparent at all. There's a reason why there are so many threads on fixing APs and/or blogs that do the same -- they dissect the adventure with the eye of an experienced GM and show how the adventure is poorly designed in places and how it might be modified. If the APs taught this easily, as you claim, then the need for these threads/blogs would be reduced and they wouldn't be as popular as they are. Except, they proliferate.

This is exactly my point. The difference between your creation and an AP is different, and sometimes those differences use different skill sets. So the experienced GM that has used their own material for twenty years might experience something brand new (or relived or re-experienced) when running an AP as is.

Yes, a poorly designed game that shows the GM why they long ago learned to not do that. Like the opening of Descent, where the PCs are pressganged during a scene where an NPC gets a whole scene as to how awesome they are, and then threatened with death unless they do the adventure for the NPC. This is absolutely terrible design -- the worst of railroading and Force. It utterly strips any attachment you might have built with the players to the adventure and makes it adversarial. And, the fun thing is that the adventure is written as if the players as supposed to like this, and be friendly with the NPC threatening them and press-ganging them. It's absolutely terrible! I learned nothing from this, because I had to completely rewrite the start of this AP so that it doesn't immediately send my players into adversarial mode.

APs are not, in any way, unique or special in how they can let a GM learn. Most GMs learn more when they go off and do their own stuff, and not from APs. Is there a possibility a GM can learn something from an AP? Sure. But, they aren't particularly good teachers, on average.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And I stated two times in that discussion, that I do not believe all players talk shop with their GM. I do. It is fun. The only reason I brought it up is because I was questioned on how I would know if something is changed. I know it has been changed. Why? Because I discuss the adventure with my GMs. Maybe it is because I am an experienced GM. But we talk. Sometimes for hours - about the entire campaign.

I don't see how this illuminates anything, or is at all presumed to be normal. This is your experience, and not universal. However, to leverage this, is your GM a good GM? What skill from an AP do you think your GM could learn, specifically?

 

[Umbran]

How does what I said mean authors do not need editors? That makes zero sense.

What I said is people who write, and are confident in their abilities, believe they need fewer editorial adjustments.

Yeah. And I'm just opining that they'd often be wrong in that assessment. Authors tend to be a bit blind to the flaws in their own work.

And it can definitely be found in a GM that wrote something for their players and their table, versus a traditional published piece.

I don't argue that a GM can't target their own players better than a published work can. But I don't expect targeting is as large an issue in the broad scheme of things.

 

[pemerton]

The lead post wasn't what I was talking about, I was talking about the first post I responded to here, where it looked like the same old "gaming to discover what's in the GMs notes" critique Pemerton always leverages at people who play things like a more traditional sandbox or living world (it is a simplistic and reductive criticism: and it is a playstyle attack disguised as inquiry IMO).

You seem to confuse description with critique. Also, you may note that I was responding to a post that referred to other peoples' games being trite and shallow. Obviously that's the sort of playstyle critique you don't find objectionable!

 

[pemerton]

It's not an accurate description of that playstyle, especially if you have proactive players. The DMs notes may say that there are scattered barbarian tribes in the north, but I'm not playing to discover what's going on with those tribes. I'm playing to take over the Bear tribe and become chief. Then I'm playing to merge the rest of the tribes into a cohesive barbarian host and lead them as we descend upon Silverymoon to loot it and raze it to the ground. I guarantee you that there's nothing in the DMs notes about what I'm playing for. His notes are there for our purposes, not just so that we can discover what's in them.

How would you declare any of those actions if you hadn't first learned what was written in the GM's notes?

EDIT: @prabe made the point before I did:

There's a reasonable argument that the reason stuff exists in the setting is for the PCs to interact with it, and (probably) change it. There's also a reasonable argument that before the PCs can change something they have to find it, or find out it exists.

 

[pemerton]

More than that, the stuff on the page can change before the players interact with it because this stuff can all be living, moving elements in the setting

That just sounds like changing what is written on the page. More notes, or different notes, don't make notes not notes.

 

[pemerton]

@Maxperson, @Bedrockgames, here is the post that I replied to:

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.

I have posted about this approach to play probably more than anyone else on these boards. I call it playing to find out what is in the GM's notes. The play process consists in the player's making moves with their PCs which oblige the GM to provide the players with information from the GM's notes: this is how the players "learn about a new world" (information) by "exploring it" (making moves that trigger the GM to provide that information).

Where is the unfairness or pejorative in what I say. In a GMed RPG, what else would "exploring" and "learning about a new world" consist in?

Here are some posts from Maxperson:

It's not an accurate description of that playstyle, especially if you have proactive players. The DMs notes may say that there are scattered barbarian tribes in the north, but I'm not playing to discover what's going on with those tribes. I'm playing to take over the Bear tribe and become chief. Then I'm playing to merge the rest of the tribes into a cohesive barbarian host and lead them as we descend upon Silverymoon to loot it and raze it to the ground. I guarantee you that there's nothing in the DMs notes about what I'm playing for. His notes are there for our purposes, not just so that we can discover what's in them.

Yeah. Done right, the playstyle is the DM entirely reacting to what the players are doing, but doing so with the prepped game world. The DM is not leading the players, the players are leading the DM.

The two of you seem to assume that these describe the same thing that @Emerikol described. Why? To me they seem to be describing something quite different. Emerikol says I want to learn about a new world and explore it. Maxperson says I'm not playing to discover what's going on with those tribes. Those look like contradictory descriptions, not synonymous ones.

It seems relevant to this that Emerikol's approach depends upon there being pre-authored notes, where Maxperson's does not and seems like it would be equally well-served by "no myth" RPGing.