Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Doesn't count if there's no chamberlains involved!
What is the point of GM's notes?
- Thread starter pemerton
- Start date
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Using individual modules rather than whole APs as my basis, I have to disagree.
Many, many times I've read a module and thought "this would be cool to run as is, or close" and then found in play that it had read far better than it played. Sometimes I can fix it on the fly, more often I can't, and once or twice in the past I've even thrown up my hands and said "Sorry, guys, this ones's just not working out but we're committed now, for the sake of continuity let's just plow through it and call it a bad idea".
The converse is also true: there's many times I've read a module and been left uninspired, then on later running it found it to be awesomesauce.
I’ve been following along for several pages now (and finally caught up). I picked up on the inversion from “Play to find out what happens” to “Play to find out what’s in the GM’s notes” pretty early on. I don’t think it works. “Play to find out what happens” effects protagonistic play in e.g., Apocalypse World because of the principles that support it. If instead of asking provocative questions and building on the answers, you portray a living world and respond to change with consequences, then you can still play to find out what happens, but the nature of that will be different (e.g., the game is a sandbox of the GM’s creation where the PCs can effect change).
Older Beholder
Hero
I like to have a session written up beforehand, (D&D 5E) for the last couple of games I ran, I had 17 pages for about 7-8 hours of gaming.
I do rewrite blocks of monster stats in my notes which can take up a bit of space, (If there's a fight involving a group of different monsters, I just find it easier to have them all in one spot) it also helps me remember their abilities a little better.
Sometimes this can be heavily scripted, other times it's more open and just some dot points or rough ideas. Usually a combo of the two depending on what's happening in the adventure.
I'm not the greatest public speaker / improv guy, so it's just easier and more comfortable for me to go in prepared.
Most the time when things go well and everything flows I barely even need to refer to the notes. But for me at least, there will always be details and ideas that get missed during play even at the best of times, so GM notes just increase the chances of me not missing stuff.
I always had a (pipe) dream to write an adventure and send it in, back when Dungeon Magazine was still a thing. So I think it's carried over from that a little, where I'm still trying to write adventure ideas that can be edited and re-used for different groups further down the track.
I do rewrite blocks of monster stats in my notes which can take up a bit of space, (If there's a fight involving a group of different monsters, I just find it easier to have them all in one spot) it also helps me remember their abilities a little better.
Sometimes this can be heavily scripted, other times it's more open and just some dot points or rough ideas. Usually a combo of the two depending on what's happening in the adventure.
I'm not the greatest public speaker / improv guy, so it's just easier and more comfortable for me to go in prepared.
Most the time when things go well and everything flows I barely even need to refer to the notes. But for me at least, there will always be details and ideas that get missed during play even at the best of times, so GM notes just increase the chances of me not missing stuff.
I always had a (pipe) dream to write an adventure and send it in, back when Dungeon Magazine was still a thing. So I think it's carried over from that a little, where I'm still trying to write adventure ideas that can be edited and re-used for different groups further down the track.
Which post of mine are you referring to here?
Aldarc
Legend
"My post" (i.e., singular) as in the post that included an analogy among the rest of its content rather than in regards to all my posts in this thread.
Again, as someone who also likes running these style games, I don't find this label particularly insulting. It's aromantic, but apt. Styles can have more than one label. Sometimes these styles will overlap, be included with or excluded from other styles depending on the label.
Okay. Having followed pemerton's discussions elsewhere, I take "play to discover what's in the GM's notes" as more figurative than literal, as per the bold. The "notes" may or may not be pre-written in any sense, though they may exist in the GM's headspace. They could even be generated on the fly through the setting FAQ that players engage in. MAR Barker was once asked what food one of the local cultures ate in his Tekumél world. He thought about it based upon his pre-existing notes and understanding of the world, and then provided the players with a pretty detailed answer. Even if Barker was inventing this up mostly on the spot and had not written it down as part of his game prep, there is still a sense that the players must defer to the GM as author and their "notes" for the fiction.
As such, there may be a hyper-focus on the use of the word "notes" rather than "GM's," which also appears in the whole "play to explore and interact with the GM's world." This last part in bold was a massive red flag for me personally as it emphasizes a sense of ownership and authorship of the world on behalf of the GM. If it's going to be referred to as the "GM's world" rather than the "PC's world," which they as living characters inhabit, then yeah that potentially suggests to me that the PCs exist more as tourists to the GM's theme park rather than protagonists. I find this more problematic than "GM's notes."
Lanefan, I know from your posting history that you write in, in advance, not just possibilities but actualities. For instance, based on the way you prep with maps, you make it actually the case that there are many places where secret doors will not be discovered.
And I'm pretty sure, from other posts you've made, that this generalises beyond secret doors, and even beyond the discovery of discrete items or architectural features. For instance, based on a map you would deem it the case that no one travelling north of a swamp will enter the foothills. (This was a topic of discussion in a thread I believe earlier this year, or perhaps late last year.)
You take a very strong view that a game in which these potential events are contemplated involves "Schroedinger's <whatever>."
Another distinction is that the first is literal and the second is metaphor. Are you able to give a non-metaphorical version of the second?
What is the relationship between "derived" (the verb you use) and decided?
In most RPGs the GM has to decide what a NPC does having reference to the PCs' words and approach: this is true of Classic Traveller, Moldvay Basic, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard, Prince Valiant, and numerous other games.
A big part of what differentiates some of these games, in this respect, is the basis for the decision. Glossing this as "with or without the aid of any game mechanics" without considering the nature of those mechanics, who gets to decide whether they're invoked, in what way they take "words and approach" as input, and in what way they constrain the GM decision as output, seems to be overlooking the substance of the discussion.
For instance, just to set up three possibilities:
* The GM has no default disposition in mind for the Chamberlain, and decides how the Chamberlain responds by calling for a reaction roll by the player of the PC who approaches the Chamberlain;
* The GM has a note, or at the moment of play creates a (perhaps literal, perhaps mental) note that the Chamberlain is ill-disposed to the PC, and hence will accede to any request only if a particularly difficult social check is made;
* As the previous dot point, but the GM decides to "inhabit" the mindset of the ill-disposed Chamberlain and hence will have the Chamberlain accede to any request only if s/he feels that the player of the PC has made a sufficiently persuasive case.
* The GM has a note, or at the moment of play creates a (perhaps literal, perhaps mental) note that the Chamberlain is ill-disposed to the PC, and hence will accede to any request only if a particularly difficult social check is made;
* As the previous dot point, but the GM decides to "inhabit" the mindset of the ill-disposed Chamberlain and hence will have the Chamberlain accede to any request only if s/he feels that the player of the PC has made a sufficiently persuasive case.
Each of these is an example of how the chamberlain responds to the PCs being derived in the moment - with or without the aid of any game mechanics - based on the PCs' words and approach. But I think it's obvious that they are very different approaches to adjudication.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
When I read "events happening in the future" my thoughts went to GM notes along the lines of "Three months into the new year a Huge Blue Dragon will attack the city of Praetos" or "The cult of Chronos will infiltrate the Apollo temple over the second half of next year and will have taken over by year's end". Not putting the word "potential" in there strongly implies these events are going to happen even if the PCs take out the Blue Dragon before it attacks or break up the Chronos cult before their plans get going; and that sort of thing really does stand to invalidate PC actions and-or effects on the setting.
Things on maps count, to me, as previously locked in: the map shows merely the results of history. Those walls that don't have any secret doors in them were (in the fiction) built long before the PCs started adventuring and as nobody's cut any secret doors through them since, that's what the map shows. Any hills that were once just north of where that swamp now lies were (in the fiction) eroded ages before any of the PCs' ancestors settled this region, and that's what the map shows. And so on.
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