What is the point of GM's notes?

[innerdude]

What are the limits of the players' ability to do that? I assume that they can't just sit down and agree that aliens come and beam Cowstantinopleville off planet and then start a farm in the crater.

Well, yeah, obviously. Principled PbtA play doesn't allow players to completely run off the rails in changing established fiction.

It's actually been quite surprising, really, just how careful my players have been about really shaping the results of their "moves" into the fiction. It's been refreshing, and gratifying, and collaborative, and very much harmonious. The players themselves are keenly interested in helping the other players have fun, and push the fiction towards things that address the characters' respective dramatic needs (aka, Iron Vows).

In these instances, really, the GM's role is kind of like the role of the Vice-President of the U.S. in relation to the Senate. (S)he doesn't have a vote on any actual proposed legislation, but can act as a tie-breaker in a deadlock.

Occasional I drop into "senator mode" and propose certain resolutions/additions to fiction, just as a matter of course, but I'm really just an equal among peers, and all ideas are considered.

So I get that there are major differences in the two styles. I'm not saying otherwise, but the parts I've bolded above don't happen in my playstyle, either. Not unless the DM is violating the social contract himself, which is not a playstyle issue. While the DM has the authority to do so, he just plain won't. If the PCs spoil McDizzle's plans, good on them. If they stop what was supposed to happen in Cowstantinopleville, then they've put their mark on the world and made it their own like I've been saying.

I see what you're saying; I think in Ironsworn it just goes a step further, which is, don't lament or celebrate the fact that McDizzle's plans and Cowstantinopleville's plot line have been counteracted.

Rather, don't have things to be counteracted in the first place.

 

[Imaro]

So, compatible techniques, or ones that serve a play goal, tend to cluster up in groups that are easily described by the playstyles. There's some blur, sure, but it's not a matter of the playstyles obscuring the tools, but that they're convenient labels for tools that work well together.

I'd rather be the judge of what does or doesn't work in what combination at my table.

 

[Lanefan]

Over the past few years I've GMed two AD&D one-offs: one using X2 Castle Amber, one using random dungeon generation from DMG Appendix A.

In both games the players made choices that drove the action in the sense that (i) those actions moved the PCs on the map and hence (ii) determined who/what the PCs encountered, leading to (iii) player decisions about what to do with those encounters. Neither was a game about the dramatic needs of the PCs. The PCs didn't even have dramatic needs! They had races, classes, names, alignments, a little bit of colour, but otherwise these games were just for fun with a bit of skilled play.

This is somewhat self-fulfilling, though, in that if it's known going in that these are to be just one-offs there's not much reason for the players to bother developing any sort of dramatic arcs, nor is there really enough time for any to develop during play.

 

[pemerton]

I know what "collectively determines" means. The exact method may vary, but it's still the group figuring it out, so there is no real discovery going on. He also mentioned random rolls on charts, but that isn't the group determining anything.

Re random charts: look at the actual system @innerdude is referring to. It's the Ironsworn Oracles. These require interpretation and application. You can learn more about them by downloading the system for free from DTRPG, like I did.

Re collective decision-making: of course there can be discovery. I work through ideas with groups of people all the time. (Including in RPGing.) And discovery is one frequent outcome of doing that.

If I've pre-determined something, it's established fiction, just like if you've come up with some piece of fiction on the fly and established it. So we're both starting from the same point. Established fiction. Now the players make declarations of actions or the equivalent. Happens in both styles of games. We're still paralleling. Now, the DM comes with an extrapolation based on the established fiction and the players actions and comes up with a result(fictional element).

The fact that both processes result in established fiction doesn't make them the same process.

Whether I buy a cake or make a cake, I end up with a cake. But the process and experiences are different. Whether I sing a song or put on a record, I and my family and housemates get to hear a song. The process and experiences are different.

RPGing is also a creative endeavour that has some resemblance to both those examples.

 

[Maxperson]

Setting tourism is definitely something I feel I strive to avoid (just like I threw my hands up and said "might as well just hand the players my notes" when I got sick of linear adventures, this would be a similar exclamation of frustration I think for a sandbox that isn't really doing what it should). The synergy in a sandbox really is at the core of it and if you aren't having players actively engaging and helping the shape the direction of things through their characters then it is a sandbox with no fuel and it probably can just start to become setting tourism

Absolutely. Proactive players are a must for a Sandbox.

 

[Maxperson]

The fact that both processes result in established fiction doesn't make them the same process.

I never claimed it was the same process. But there are a lot of similarities as I just showed.

Whether I buy a cake or make a cake, I end up with a cake. But the process and experiences are different. Whether I sing a song or put on a record, I and my family and housemates get to hear a song. The process and experiences are different.

Yep, but in this case we're both making cake with many similar ingredients. We just have different flavors and frostings, and you put cherries in yours. Maybe you mix yours by hand and I use a mixer.

 

[pemerton]

This is somewhat self-fulfilling, though, in that if it's known going in that these are to be just one-offs there's not much reason for the players to bother developing any sort of dramatic arcs, nor is there really enough time for any to develop during play.

And yet our one-off sessions of Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights have had dramatic arcs aplenty.

So did our first session of Prince Valiant - and at that point we didn't know whether or not it would be a one-off.

The reason there was no dramatic need for those PCs in the AD&D games was because AD&D - especially played via X2 or Appendix A - simply does not make these any sort of priority for play. And as I've posted, Classic Traveller does not foreground them in the way that Burning Wheel does. Classic Traveller has quite a bit of procedural play as part of its overall package.

 

[pemerton]

On collaborative creativity and discovery:

Humans tend to find it easy to tell stories, and imagine more things happening than came out expressly in the story. We can speculate about "what happens next" after the end of a film or book. We can debate about what the events of a story tell us about the personality of a character from it, and thereby debate about how that character would respond in some other situation that was not part of the story and hence has never been authored.

Sometimes those ideas are arrived at through reasoning. Sometimes they occur spontaneously.

The way that the sort of play @innerdude is describing works is by drawing upon, and deploying, these human tendencies and capacities. So the dice are rolled and the result dictates that the barkeep knows two useful things. And so then everyone at the table wonders, what might those things be? And one player says "Didn't we learn last session that the barkeep's cousin once fought in the shadow wars? And just before you (the GM) mentioned something the barkeep seemed to be keeping hidden under the bar. It's probably the cousin's sword or armour from their time as a warrior!" Of course, when the GM mentioned the barkeep's furtive glances to something under the bar she may, or may not, have had some idea about what it might be. But that's not established fiction and so doesn't matter at this point.

And then someone else says something, and at the same time the GM says "The barkeep reaches under the bar and pulls out something long and wrapped in oiled cloth. . . ." And so the conversation goes on. And all the participants experienced a revelation: the mechanically-generated obligation to add new fiction satisfying a particular requirement has led some throwaway or off-the-cuff remarks from a session ago, or 5 minutes ago, to crystallise into this new thing. But no one sat down and self-consciously authored it. They spun it out of what was already there, and the trajectories and possibilities it suggested, because that's what people do when they encounter stories and set their imagination to work.

The sort of thing I've just described happens all the time in my games, with players introducing new fiction because that's obviously how it is given what's already been established, and what seems to be implied by what came before. Sometimes as GM I will step in and throttle it back a bit if it seems to contradict something established or some part of the framing; but most of the time I just run with it.

As a player, it's pretty different from being told by the GM what s/he extrapolates from his/her notes. As a GM, it's pretty different from working with notes or extrapolations therefrom.

 

[Maxperson]

Sometimes those ideas are arrived at through reasoning. Sometimes they occur spontaneously.

The way that the sort of play @innerdude is describing works is by drawing upon, and deploying, these human tendencies and capacities. So the dice are rolled and the result dictates that the barkeep knows two useful things. And so then everyone at the table wonders, what might those things be? And one player says "Didn't we learn last session that the barkeep's cousin once fought in the shadow wars? And just before you (the GM) mentioned something the barkeep seemed to be keeping hidden under the bar. It's probably the cousin's sword or armour from their time as a warrior!" Of course, when the GM mentioned the barkeep's furtive glances to something under the bar she may, or may not, have had some idea about what it might be. But that's not established fiction and so doesn't matter at this point.

And then someone else says something, and at the same time the GM says "The barkeep reaches under the bar and pulls out something long and wrapped in oiled cloth. . . ." And so the conversation goes on. And all the participants experienced a revelation: the mechanically-generated obligation to add new fiction satisfying a particular requirement has led some throwaway or off-the-cuff remarks from a session ago, or 5 minutes ago, to crystallise into this new thing. But no one sat down and self-consciously authored it. They spun it out of what was already there, and the trajectories and possibilities it suggested, because that's what people do when they encounter stories and set their imagination to work.

The only difference between that and me as DM remembering his cousin fighting in the shadow wars and having him pull the sword in the oil cloth in response to their investigation(or whatever) roll, is that I did it instead of it being collaborative. The rest of the process is the same. It was founded on pre-established fiction and I created it in response to the players actions.

As a player, it's pretty different from being told by the GM what s/he extrapolates from his/her notes. As a GM, it's pretty different from working with notes or extrapolations therefrom.

It is different. All of you created the notes instead of the DM. That's pretty much it. Otherwise what you describe also happens outside of that style of play. It may not happen in every sandbox, because each DM is different, but for those like me who don't have time to prep every detail, we improv small things like that all the time.

 

[prabe]

The way that the sort of play @innerdude is describing works is by drawing upon, and deploying, these human tendencies and capacities. So the dice are rolled and the result dictates that the barkeep knows two useful things. And so then everyone at the table wonders, what might those things be? And one player says "Didn't we learn last session that the barkeep's cousin once fought in the shadow wars? And just before you (the GM) mentioned something the barkeep seemed to be keeping hidden under the bar. It's probably the cousin's sword or armour from their time as a warrior!" Of course, when the GM mentioned the barkeep's furtive glances to something under the bar she may, or may not, have had some idea about what it might be. But that's not established fiction and so doesn't matter at this point.

And then someone else says something, and at the same time the GM says "The barkeep reaches under the bar and pulls out something long and wrapped in oiled cloth. . . ." And so the conversation goes on. And all the participants experienced a revelation: the mechanically-generated obligation to add new fiction satisfying a particular requirement has led some throwaway or off-the-cuff remarks from a session ago, or 5 minutes ago, to crystallise into this new thing. But no one sat down and self-consciously authored it. They spun it out of what was already there, and the trajectories and possibilities it suggested, because that's what people do when they encounter stories and set their imagination to work.

The sort of thing I've just described happens all the time in my games, with players introducing new fiction because that's obviously how it is given what's already been established, and what seems to be implied by what came before. Sometimes as GM I will step in and throttle it back a bit if it seems to contradict something established or some part of the framing; but most of the time I just run with it.

This in large part how my 5E games run (though working out the properties of the sword in your example might need some out-of-band time) which I believe is ... not how you'd expect either from how you've tended to describe 5E or how you've tended to describe your understanding of my preferred playstyle. More broadly, there's no irreconcilable difference between the GM working things out beforehand and the table (as a whole) improvising things in actual play.