What is the point of GM's notes?

[Imaro]

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.

Wait what? First let's distinguish between players and PC's. The players are not the protagonists of the game... their characters are and their characters aren't established until play takes place so if they change their backstory to better fit the world that doesn't suddenly change their characters from protagonist to non-protagonist it means they've become protagonists with different backstory, goals, etc.

 

[Imaro]

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

If the players create goals and dramatic needs that align with the pre-noted setting... is this still necessary for protagonism or can it be achieved without the setting emerging, changing, etc, with respect to this orbit?

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, that's all fine.

I just asked some questions. You ignored them in favor of complaining about how someone else phrased something. I get that you didn't like how he worded it. That's fine.

But how about we move past that.....maybe start by replying to what I posted? That'd likely get things moving along again before this all gets shut down for becoming a shouting match.

"What do you literally do as a GM to foster protagonism? How do your notes help or hinder this?"

Which protagonism? Their side's definition or ours? If it's the other side's definition, the notes don't help or hinder. It's simply a matter of different playstyles. One side allows players to author content, and the other doesn't does so in very limited capacity which is up to individual DMs. For example, I allow the players to create villages, NPCs, specific monsters, etc. during background creation. They write up their background, and as long as it's not conflicting with known Forgotten Realm lore or Forgotten Realm lore as created by my prior campaigns, it's all good.

"What other actual practices do you use/follow/apply to achieve protagonism?"

Again, if we're talking about the definition the other side uses, very little. I did an experiment with my group about 4-5 years ago. I ran a 3.5 campaign where I made each PCs the offspring of a Realms god. Then I had a lost Imaskari artifact which hadn't been used before their fall, be found and triggered by Imaskari remnants. The artifact basically locked the gods out of the Realms and divine magic failed completely, or almost completely. Each PC, whose parent I rolled randomly and they discovered early in game play, had a direct connection through their blood to their god, so their divine powers worked. Each PC also had "powers" that matched their parents sphere of influence and I let them know that they could try anything they liked that fit that theme. For instance, one PC had Talos the Destroyer as his father. If he came to a door, he could attempt to cause the wood and iron in the door to rot and rust away, destroying it. I wanted to see how they would react to being able to just create abilities(within the theme) to influence the world, but they did surprisingly little with it. Most of what they tried, despite my reminding them a number of times that they could get creative, was just duplication spells that were in theme.

If we're talking our definition of protagonism, which is complete control over what their characters do, then my notes don't help or hinder that, either. The players let me know what kind of campaign they want me to run during session 0, so they have at least that much control. Then I work on stuff, mostly outlining a story that will go through the world on that theme. They then usually, since they picked the theme, decide to undertake that story. However, they will often skip portions of what I have prepared and/or insert their own ideas on how to go about succeeding at their goal. Often those ideas come out of left field and I have nothing prepared for it, but I'm pretty good at improv so we go in that direction anyway. Once, they decided that the theme as I prepared it wasn't to their liking and not only did they decide to ignore it, but they went the opposite direction and decided to become pirates. Sooooooooo, I ran a pirate campaign while the original story ran on without them. They heard rumors and pieces of what was going on, and because it was world spanning a few of their adventures did touch on the story tangentially, but by and large it happened without them and went much worse than it should have, because no PC group was there to stem the damage.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think this whole idea is better envisioned as a sliding scale rather than a binary. Also, to quickly address @Manbearcat from just above, I think that from the list of emerges, accretes and changes, the word people are going to get stuck on is probably emerges. In a heavy GM prep game where the players don't have input into the setting outside the action-adjudication cycle I think you can still have protagonism, or -ists, or whatever. Accretes and changes are easy to picture and describe in terms of protagonist play, but emerges gets sticky.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

No, else we're back to Monopoly featuring protagonism. To use my prior example, Infinity Wars features Iron Man making choices, which drive the emergent story, but he is not the protagonist of that film, Thanos is. That story is entirely about Thanos meeting his dramatic needs, his goals, and the trials and tribulations he faces along the way to realizing them. Then, he does, and his protagonism ends, and the second Infinity Wars movie switches back to the Avengers being the protagonists.

To leverage this example into RPGs, if the primary thrust of play is for the PCs to decide how they will deal with this or that threat (introduced by the GM), then they aren't the protagonists, but they may have agency in determining how the play will turn out.

The ability to affect the play is about agency. What the play is about is about protagonism. If play is about exploring a dungeon the GM thought of and created, then there's no protagonism here, because the play is not about the dramatic needs of the PCs. This is true even if the player manage to find ways to insert their own desires and wants, and is so because what the GM presents is orthogonal to the players doing this -- it's up to the players to find ways to do this, the game doesn't focus on this.

You keep mixing "the player can do what they want" with what the game is about.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think this whole idea is better envisioned as a sliding scale rather than a binary. Also, to quickly address @Manbearcat from just above, I think that from the list of emerges, accretes and changes, the word people are going to get stuck on is probably emerges. In a heavy GM prep game where the players don't have input into the setting outside the action-adjudication cycle I think you can still have protagonism, or -ists, or whatever. Accretes and changes are easy to picture and describe in terms of protagonist play, but emerges gets sticky.

Okay, let's go with this. In the example heavy GM prep game you mention, where/how does protagonism emerge? How does the focus of play become about the PCs dramatic needs?

I'm not disagreeing, I'm asking for you take on it. I have my own, which I've already presented upthread. I think that this either requires a player-side reduction in agency to forment the protagonism (ie, the GM tells a story about the PC's dramatic need), or it requires the GM to release part of the setting to accommodate the PCs dramatic goal (ie, the GM allows the player to instantiate some fiction that addresses the PC's dramatic need).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wait what? First let's distinguish between players and PC's. The players are not the protagonists of the game... their characters are and their characters aren't established until play takes place so if they change their backstory to better fit the world that doesn't suddenly change their characters from protagonist to non-protagonist it means they've become protagonists with different backstory, goals, etc.

Yes, I know that, I was specifically referring to the PCs being players in the story, as in referencing players in a play. I haven't made the mistake of confusing the two, so this isn't a telling vector of critique.

As for your latter point, no, it means that the setting's dramatic needs have a higher priority than the PCs'. If the PC's backstory, outside of genre conventions or established shared fiction, contradicts something in the GM's notes, and the GM requires it to be changed, then what's in the GM's notes is taking on the protagonist role, here -- the story is about that thing, and the PC has to adapt to this. If the player chooses a dramatic need that happens to precisely dovetail with the GM's notes such that it is a focus of play, then, sure, you have accidental protagonism. I'm not talking about accidental or coincidental protagonism, though, I'm speaking to protagonism as a way to play.

For instance, in my current 5e game, one of the players presented a backstory about how her family is cursed due to a past deal with a devil (the PC is a tiefling), and that her PC's goal is to confront that devil and end the curse. Now, it just so happens that a good part of Descent into Avernus is about dealing with devils, so this aligns well. I don't, however, consider this alignment protagonism, because the player could have chosen something else and nothing about the setting/AP would have changed. The alignment is accidental (and fortuitous), but not protagonism, because the dramatic needs of DiA aren't the PCs, but the NPCs. It's the NPCs plans and actions that drive the AP, the PCs just react to these and choose how they want to deal with them. The city of Elturel being dragged into Hell is not about the PCs at all, but play will absolutely be about what these PCs choose to do about it. This is agency, not protagonism.

 

[Fenris-77]

Okay, let's go with this. In the example heavy GM prep game you mention, where/how does protagonism emerge? How does the focus of play become about the PCs dramatic needs?

I'm not disagreeing, I'm asking for you take on it. I have my own, which I've already presented upthread. I think that this either requires a player-side reduction in agency to forment the protagonism (ie, the GM tells a story about the PC's dramatic need), or it requires the GM to release part of the setting to accommodate the PCs dramatic goal (ie, the GM allows the player to instantiate some fiction that addresses the PC's dramatic need).

Sure, the kind of game I was specifically thinking of there is what I would term (with fondness, not sarcasm) as a purist OSR kind of game. The setting is all GM and the players play entirely within their own character (no meta mechanics, no shared worldbuilding, etc). That game is also quite often the standard people put forth when they want to define a sandbox game. In that game, while the setting is GM notes and GM decisions, it's still entirely a response to player decisions made in-character. The world emerges (from notes perhaps), accretes and changes based on player decision making, and so very much to my mind in keeping with what we are defining as protagonist play. Where that same kind of game deprotagonizes players is when it emerges (especially) but also accretes and changes despite or regardless of player actions, at which point the word railroad probably fits. For dramatic needs, if the players are playing to those needs, and the GM is responding to player actions and decision making, those needs will inevitably take some significant portion of the spotlight.

That's not to say that events in the wider world can't happen at their own pace without deprotagonizing players, that's silly, but so long as player actions drive the game and the the teleos of play for the characters I think protagonist play is the label we're looking for. I don't think you need player agency over the fiction to make that work, although it certain does help in many of the games I enjoy. As for player agency, I don't think you need to remove agency either, at least in terms of decisions made in character. Where we might have some defining to do in the stakes of using or not using some of the meta mechanics and shared worldbuilding that many games use.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sure, the kind of game I was specifically thinking of there is what I would term (with fondness, not sarcasm) as a purist OSR kind of game. The setting is all GM and the players play entirely within their own character (no meta mechanics, no shared worldbuilding, etc). That game is also quite often the standard people put forth when they want to define a sandbox game. In that game, while the setting is GM notes and GM decisions, it's still entirely a response to player decisions made in-character. The world emerges (from notes perhaps), accretes and changes based on player decision making, and so very much to my mind in keeping with what we are defining as protagonist play.

Okay, let me stop you here. This doesn't at all align with what the people that introduced the term protagonism have defined it. It aligns only with those that are defining the term to mean that the PCs have agency. I do not know who "we" is in this statement.

To mean, this is clearly against the definition of protagonism as it was introduced and repeatedly defined -- play does not center on the dramatic needs of the PCs, it instead centers on how the players interact with the setting. You've defined agency, here, not protagonism.

Where that same kind of game deprotagonizes players is when it emerges (especially) but also accretes and changes despite or regardless of player actions, at which point the word railroad probably fits. For dramatic needs, if the players are playing to those needs, and the GM is responding to player actions and decision making, those needs will inevitably take some significant portion of the spotlight.

And here you've defined a reduction in agency.

That's not to say that events in the wider world can't happen at their own pace without deprotagonizing players, that's silly, but so long as player actions drive the game and the the teleos of play for the characters I think protagonist play is the label we're looking for. I don't think you need player agency over the fiction to make that work, although it certain does help in many of the games I enjoy. As for player agency, I don't think you need to remove agency either, at least in terms of decisions made in character. Where we might have some defining to do in the stakes of using or not using some of the meta mechanics and shared worldbuilding that many games use.

This is, again, agency. Protagonism is not about agency, but instead talks to what the game focuses on in terms of dramatic needs. If I run Keep on the Borderlands, it's not going to be protagonism at all, even as this module features a good deal of potential agency for the players.

In other words, your description of play is about honoring what the players choose to do through their PCs. It does not speak to how the game is centered on the PCs as characters themselves. The game you describe would start and play similarly with different PCs althogether -- ie, the play of this game isn't very sensitive to what the PCs are in terms of dramatic needs, but potentially very sensitive to PC builds and player choices.

 

[Fenris-77]

This is an interesting thing to disagree about. I fail to see how any game that is driven by player actions could not be about their dramatic needs. Unless you're positing some sort of arrangement where the players don't make decisions based on those needs but the GM is just supposed to insert them?