What is the point of GM's notes?

[Ovinomancer]

No it doesn't. I can't drive my monopoly car anywhere I want. It's a highly restricted mode board game and in no way resembles the freedom in an rpg.

You can't do anything you want in an RPG, either, you're bound within the rules of the system, the genre constraints, and what the table allows.

You see being able to do whatever we want as our characters seems to us to be a great amount of control. To you it seems restrictive. I get that.

I don't understand what you're trying to say, here.

 

[Umbran]

Interesting points but why was it a mod note?

Mod Note:
Because this is a moderator observation about the dynamic of the conversation so people can choose how they want to proceed. It is not intended as a matter of discussion or argument. Normal "don't argue with moderator notes in-thread" applies.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don’t have time to engage in the way I like to but I skimming. I’ll try to tonight if I ca.

Briefly...

Ive written a lot about Protagonistic Play (and how players become Deprotagonized). Just like in movies/theatre/books, the screen time per character isn’t how protagonism is evaluated (not in any critical sense...which Websters or whatever doesn’t engage with).

I wrote a long post that started with how My Life With Master is structured (with respect to Protagonism) which I think has the most explanatory power. I then wrote a big follow-up. Everyone in this thread was there so I’m assuming they read those words.

I think another way to look at it is “why does the trope of dysfunctional play emerge when ‘the GM’s partner/best friend’ starts playing?” Because suddenly the volitional force of play becomes his/her dramatic need. Troupe play (where Protagonism becomes so backgrounded or so diffuse so as to either not exist or to not become an issue...and everyone is good with that) suddenly shifts to Ars Magica. The other players become Deprotagonized and they know it (it’s impactful even losing extremely diffuse Protagonism or suddenly having a Protagonist - Bit Players relationship constructed when Protagonism was backgrounded beforehand). It’s why there are hard feelings and suddenly things devolve. Everyone witnessing it knows it. It’s why it’s “a thing.”

It’s why Paladins have historically been an issue in the thematically muted and/or neutral troupe play of D&D. Their Protagonism cannot be backgrounded or rendered diffuse. It’s fundamentally foregrounded at every moment of play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Honestly and take this in the right spirit. You are using a word that doesn't mean what you think it means. I understand your idea and how it works. You call it protagonism. I get that. But protagonism in plain english does not mean what you think it means which is why everyone is opposing you. They aren't arguing the concept. They are arguing the term.

You said:
If I create a world that doesn't care about the PCs and then turn them loose in it to see what they uncover/do, is the story actually about those PCs?

My answer:
Absolutely it is about the PCs. Yes it is about the PCs. As you have reminded me so often, what happens off camera is not central to the players playing of their characters. The real action is with the group. They are absolutely protagonists in their story.

What you've done is add a bunch of qualifiers around protagonism that are not at all required. You needed a name for your game constructs and chose protagonism. Fine. Just realize that the raw meaning of the word is absolutely not the definition of that game construct. If it's gamer speak shorthand that is fine but realize you may need to explain yourself. You redefine a word and then get upset everyone balks at it. You don't get to redefine english.

At this point if you disagree I don't see much further point to continuing the discussion. We just don't agree with you. So your use of that word is a stumbling block to the discussion that could be had about your actual style versus word definitions.

No, I understand what protagonist means. It means you're the focus of the story. Pick a story with a protagonist, and it will revolve around that character's dramatic needs. The issue here is the translation into an RPG, where agency is being confused with protagonism. I can be free to choose what my character does, but that doesn't mean the story is centered on my character. These are separate concepts. There's a case for a high protagonism, low agency form of play, where the game is totally centered on the PC's dramatic needs, but the player has few meaningful choices. Similarly, there's the case for low protagonism, high agency play, which looks like a Moldvay Dungeon Crawl -- the game isn't about the character's dramatic needs, but about exploring the dungeon created by the GM, but the players have quite a lot of agency in how they do this.

Protagonism isn't about the PCs being able to make choices, it's about what does the game focus on. If you're writing up things that happen offscreen that the PCs can discover if they do the right things/go the right places, then this is not protagonism. It can have a lot of agency, though.

 

[hawkeyefan]

PCs have backgrounds that they develop before starting the campaign. Usually they state their desires in vague terms because they don't know the world. I work with them to make it campaign specific if at all possible. When rarely it's not possible, we table that idea for the next campaign.

I think this may be a good example to discuss.

Do you see those rare instances when it's not possible to incorporate the player's ideas about their character into the proposed campaign as being a case of not allowing protagonism? And I don't mean this as a challenge or anything....just general questions that come to mind based on this.

Do you regret not being able to figure out a way for this to work? Do you try and find another, more suitable idea/goal/concept for the character? So maybe the idea of a PC as a pirate won't work for this coming campaign, but instead you come up with the idea that he can be a bounty hunter (this is an admittedly rudimentary example, but I hope it suffices), and maybe save the pirate idea for another game where it will maybe be a better fit.

Is the setting more important? If the setting is more important, do you think that says anything about the idea of protagonism in that game? Could the setting be adjusted to fit the character rather than the character to fit the setting?

Does the presence of multiple players and potentially multiple character concepts with the chance of conflict make this harder? And is there any way to avoid that? Are there ways of taking multiple points of input from different players and making them all work both together and with the setting?

 

[Ovinomancer]

You claimed the game of Monopoly did this... This is not part of the rules of Monopoly. Are we really at the point where pure fabrications are being used to defend positions?

It's not part of the rules of (many) RPGs that I have to treat my pawn with any more care than I would in playing a game of Monopoly, either.

Look the point I was making is that you can smear a term into uselessness quite easily just by ignoring some key points about what it means. And also that there's a lot of assumptions built into how people approach a term that cause problems. I see this with protagonism, which has been clearly defined numerous times in this thread, consistent with the dictionary and with clear explanations. And, yet, people are bringing in other assumptions to attack that definition, like claiming that being able to make choices means protagonism is present, or that since the game focuses on the players that the game then also focuses on the PCs. This isn't true at all. Play absolutely focuses on the players, because that's the nature of the game. A descriptor of the kind of play cannot fall back on that without being useless. Protagonism doesn't, because it's not about how play focuses on what the players do, but rather on if the game focuses on and around the needs of the PCs. If you've statted up a dungeon, then you're not focusing on the needs of the PCs, even though the game will absolutely focus on the players navigating the dungeon with their PCs.

Protagonism is, fundamentally, about where the fiction starts. If it starts with the GM, it's not protagonism -- how could it be? It must start with the PCs -- by focusing on and generating content based on the PC's dramatic needs.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Fair enough, though again we probably don't agree on the term but I will pretend I've accepted your definition for the sake of continuing this discussion.

PCs have backgrounds that they develop before starting the campaign. Usually they state their desires in vague terms because they don't know the world. I work with them to make it campaign specific if at all possible. When rarely it's not possible, we table that idea for the next campaign.

In protagonism, you'd change the world to work with the backstory. As it is, you've set the primary locus on the world, and the players have to adapt their concepts of dramatic needs to align with that. This means they aren't the protagonists of the game, but rather just players in it.

 

[Aldarc]

I get the vague impression that what's at the heart of the discussion is more akin to a geocentric model of play vs. anthrocentric model of play. If we say that play is metaphorically about "players exploring and interacting with the GM's world," then the metaphorical alternative could be envisioned as play being about "the GM exploring and interacting with the PC's drama."

 

[Imaro]

Protagonism is, fundamentally, about where the fiction starts. If it starts with the GM, it's not protagonism -- how could it be? It must start with the PCs -- by focusing on and generating content based on the PC's dramatic needs.

No it's about where the focus is...If the focus during play is on the PC's, the focus of the emergent story is on their actions, choices, etc then they are the protagonists. The fiction doesn't have to start with them it only needs to focus on them for them to be considered the protagonists. There is nothing that precludes a prep-heavy game from focusing on the PC's and thus making them the protagonists. The issue arises because some feel it can only focus on them in a specific way with a specific methodology which just isn't true.

 

[Manbearcat]

I get the vague impression that what's at the heart of the discussion is more akin to a geocentric model of play vs. anthrocentric model of play. If we say that play is metaphorically about "players exploring and interacting with the GM's world," then the metaphorical alternative could be envisioned as play being about "the GM exploring and interacting with the PC's drama."

In the same post I posted above, my two big posts about Player Protagonism and Deprotagonizing, my comparison was exactly that.

The play orbits around PC Dramatic Need and the setting emerges, accretes, and changes with respect to this orbit (even if the orbit is initially centered around “the bad guy” like in My Life With Master where the players create the bad guy and play centers around wresting the volitional force of play from that GM character to one or more of the Minions).