What is the point of GM's notes?

[Aldarc]

I don't see it as GM as spirit medium. I see it as the GM is literally imagining a spirit, and the players are trying to explore the spirit the players are imagining through a two way street of communication via the GM (Game Medium).

Little difference to me.

But what the players try to assert they are doing in that mental model is an important piece of the exchange here. The idea is what the GM is thinking is a mental model of a world. On a small scale that is very possible. I can imagine a house with six rooms, what is in those rooms, or better yet, I can imagine a house with six rooms lived in by a family of four (and know who each of those people are, what kinds of things they like to do, and what they have in the house). And the players can force the GM to expand this model ("who lives next door"----which will force him to form a model of another place). My point is it isn't the telling of things that matter here. What matters is the models the GM keeps producing in his head, and how the players tackle that model. I can also imagine very broad scale a world (who the gods of the world are, what the rough sketches of its past are, what key places there are etc). This is where notes, maps, etc help the GM to elaborate on the mental model and pin things down for the purpose of memory. So the model can get quite extensive.

So playing to discover the GM's models? Either way, the major emphasis that repeatedly comes up in your descriptions of your play process is that the players are primarily engaging the GM, whether that's the GM's mind, notes, or models in order to suss out the world. The GM is basically the sole intermediary (and adjudicator) - i.e., the Pontifex Maximus, the Primate of the Table, the Vicar of Fiction, the Supreme Pontiff of the Imagined Setting, etc. - between the players and the GM's world in this process. IMHO, any formulation of "playing to discover X_____" for such a game will have to take stock of the GM as the predominate intermediary/filter of this fictional discovery process.

Sure and these tools exist in a variety of forms (I mentioned my tables for having world events for example). But I think the issue is: this is not the purpose of play.

I didn't say that they are the purpose of play, but, rather, that they are meant to support that "Setting Solitaire" process, so to speak.

So if setting solitaire describes that the setting can be managed by the GM alone. That is fair, except the isn't the point of play. I can manage a setting in a vacuum I suppose. But what purpose would that serve? I can't really have this situation with Harkon Lukas come to life unless I have active players with wills of their own pushing against it. It just isn't the same. For me the fun is my own discovery as GM of what this whole situation leads to. Again, I would invoke here the character driven-situational GMing I spoke of earlier as a part of this process.

I suspect that to some the issue with the idea of this being "character drive-situational GMing" is that it can feel, again for others who aren't necessarily you, that the characters aren't so much driving the car, but, rather, sitting in the back seats of the car and making assorted requests of the driver. They may feel like they are making choices, but they are still at the whim of the driver. It may feel like a difference of semantics, but that's where the rub may lie.

Also I want to be clear about something I just said: I think one could probably have a sandbox where the NPCs acted at dramatically appropriate moments, but I don't know how you would do it while avoiding the problem of it feeling like the NPC is just waiting for the players to show up at the lair at the right time, or the NPC is destined to appear at a dramatic moment regardless of what choices the players have made. I like to do genre, but this is one area I have been cautious around because, at least as far as I can see, it seems to undermine some of the living world assumptions I find important. I just might have not thought about it enough. Maybe someone has tackled this issue. What I find tends to happen with genre in sandboxes I run, is there are genre features and logic you can easily pull into a living world sandbox, and there are some that feel at odds with the core idea. I don't think it is a choice between 'historical realism' on one hand and 'flash gordon' on the other though

Have you tried Clocks?

 

[Bedrockgames]

I suspect that to some the issue with the idea of this being "character drive-situational GMing" is that it can feel, again for others who aren't necessarily you, that the characters aren't so much driving the car, but, rather, sitting in the back seats of the car and making assorted requests of the driver. They may feel like they are making choices, but they are still at the whim of the driver. It may feel like a difference of semantics, but that's where the rub may lie.

Sure, this is subjective. And I've certainly been in purported sandbox/living world games where I felt like my stated actions and words were not really being given consideration and due weight. And for some people this may be an insurmountable problem (they may simply never be happy with a model where the GM has this kind of power). For me, and in my games, I like being surprised as a GM, and I like feeling like the players are driving the direction of the campaign. All I can say is for myself, and for the players I've spoken with when we've run these games, everyone seems to have the same sense of the players choices really mattering, of them not being passive passengers but active forgers of the campaign. Again, this might simply be an experience that sandbox can never make you feel. It might not click. But what I am saying is not that different from what Crawford talks about in the sandbox entry of Stars without Number.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Have you tried Clocks?

I have been reading BitD, and these were the reason I picked up the book in the first place. I may use them, but one issue I think could emerge, and its an issue anytime I've tried to develop similar tools for managing things like sect wars and criminal campaigns, is they might be too abstract and not specific enough. It may depend on the group of players though. I've just always had a little trouble deploying tools like this in my games because a lot of the fun for the players is the specifics. However, I may simply not understand clocks well enough. i definitely don't have an issue with clocks. I think they are fine. I just tend to get into specifics when dealing with gang wars, heists, and sect conflict. I've been reading BitD among other RPG books so I still need to set aside a weekend to try out the mechanics rather than just read them. My view so far is it definitely has a different philosophy than I do when it comes to a sandbox, but I think that is welcome (like I said, I think more schools of thought and styles around sandbox are good: I just think making distinctions between them can also be helpful)

That said I have used things like clocks in the past. Not that same model. But just as an example, I've made a lot of rulings in my wuxia campaign when players try to do something like invent a new technique in response to an existing one that is really powerful and needs a counter (think snake in the eagle's shadow), that they need to make a relevant skill roll until they get a 10, and that every ten advances them towards devising the technique (and how many tens they need can vary depending on the technique itself, but lets say they need 5 tens). I might also space out the number of rolls they can make by day or weeks depending on the technique. When players are managing sects similar things have come up (i.e. they want to recruit 200 new disciples, so I rule on how that can incrementally progress in a similar way: and progression may be the result of a roll, or it may be the result of particular actions or achievements). However I've always found it hard to codify and reduce this to one thing (like a clock). I've tried for many years now and always end up running into holes. I've had the same issue with sect building rules. Been making those for years too (have a bunch of documents). And the specifics always end up punching holes in them, so I've leaned on rulings instead. I think I mentioned here or in another thread how this even happened to my official Crimes and Rackets rules I made for Crime Network, where in my own house games I eventually jettisoned them in favor of just handling it based on specifics).

 

[Bedrockgames]

So playing to discover the GM's models? Either way, the major emphasis that repeatedly comes up in your descriptions of your play process is that the players are primarily engaging the GM, whether that's the GM's mind, notes, or models in order to suss out the world. The GM is basically the sole intermediary (and adjudicator) - i.e., the Pontifex Maximus, the Primate of the Table, the Vicar of Fiction, the Supreme Pontiff of the Imagined Setting, etc. - between the players and the GM's world in this process. IMHO, any formulation of "playing to discover X_____" for such a game will have to take stock of the GM as the predominate intermediary/filter of this fictional discovery process.

I am certainly not denying the GM has power over the world. The GM is arbiter of the setting. That is, I think, part of the point of contention here. But I don't think that power is absolute even in the hardest old school sandbox. The GM still has to consider the sensibilities of the players. What I mean is, my rulings, my decisions about what happens in the setting, they can only steer so far away from the players sense of what is believable. It isn't just about satisfying my own sense of believability. I have a group of people before me, who will make their opinions known if I make a questionable call, if they feel they are not being given adequate freedom to explore, if they feel something should have succeeded that didn't, etc. Their power isn't codified into mechanic like it is in Drama System, and that lack of codification does make for a different experience, and I think that different experience is very important in a living world sandbox, but its still a more fluid and porous conversation than the GM just telling players what they see and what happens. The players have input. But yes, everyone at the table in this kind of game is on board with the GM being the intermediary. That is considered the feature and what makes it work. But it is important for the Gm to be guided by principles that make a living world sandbox functional. A GM who imposes a story on the players, a GM who doesn't follow a lot of the kind of advice you see in the stars without numbers GM section, is going to provide a frustrating sandbox experience to the players (and I think in a sandbox frustration usually emerges as players feeling like there is no sense of direction OR feeling like their agency is being thwarted)

 

[Bedrockgames]

I didn't say that they are the purpose of play, but, rather, that they are meant to support that "Setting Solitaire" process, so to speak.

Fair enough. But why call it setting solitaire if that isn't the main purpose? I can say I keep getting hung up on 'the solitaire' bit and my mind goes to an idea of the GM literally playing the game on their own.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Little difference to me.

The difference is, spirits don't exist (or at least their existence is very much in dispute and not acknowledged by science), but mental models of concepts do exist (at least as thoughts). When you call it being a spirit medium, you are pointing to it being all illusionary and con-artistry. When you describe it more accurately as the GM imagines a model in his mind, and the players explore that model (by communicating with the GM) that is a more ground depiction of what is going on (and I think a lot less dismissive---EDIT: not trying to accuse you of being dismissive, just saying that the term feels like a dismissive term).

 

[Ovinomancer]

I had a thought this morning, dunno how illuminating it is, but here goes:

It occurs to me that there's some similarity in the objectives of GMing, even playing, an RPG and some of the things that surround artificial intelligence. I'm not talking about simulation of a world, a la a video game, but actually what defines artificial intelligence. This is a murky line, so, in that regard, is similar to what defines successful approaches to game goals. I'm sure we're all familiar with the Turing test, but for clarity, it's simply the idea that a system achieves AI when it can hold a conversation with a real person and that person cannot tell they are not conversing with another real person. This is muddy, but I bring it up because of one of the refutations, or criticisms, of the Turing test seems to have some similarities to the topics discussed here -- the Chinese room.

For those unfamiliar, the concept here is that you have a sealed room, where you communicate through an input where you insert things written in Chinese (and this is just the original example, it can be any language), and then the receive a response, also in Chinese, that is so realistic that one can be convinced that there's an actual Chinese speaker in the room. In reality, the concept is that there's a program, presented as a man in the room, who has a detailed set of responses in books (memory/storage) and just looks up the input in the book and responds with the listed output. If these books are sufficiently detailed and structured, then the result is indistinguishable from a native speaker, even though the man/computer does not actually speak Chinese.

So, what's my point? To start, in a number (most? all?) of the approaches, the GM is the man in the room. The job is to take the inputs from the players (action declarations, questions, etc.) and provide a response that feels like it represents a world so well as to fool the receiver into thinking/feeling that it is real. The obvious difference here is that we see the man in the room, and we know the 'world' is make-believe, but still this is the fundamental goal, I think, of RPGs -- to feel like/convince yourself that the action/world/story you're playing has some reality. And, now, we get to my point -- various approaches to GMing are built on both how the instructions "in the room" are encoded and also how these operations are obfuscated so as to increase the level of "convincingness."

The goal that's based on the GM as the central font of fiction for the setting/resolution of actions is much closer, in effect, to the original Chinese room throught experiment. The GM is receiving the inputs and providing outputs in a way to make the players feel like they're interacting with a "real" world. I think a large problem in these discussions is that the GMs have convinced themselves of this as well, and it's hard to step back at look at the role clinically. Still, this is, obviously, an effective approach to generating the "feel" sought. In this example, the GM is using a strong set of "instructions" to respond to inputs -- the prep or conception of the fiction based on prep and forethought. The GM has put a lot of work into their instruction books and so is creating responses to inputs that have a coherence and "feel" that is convincing (as always, I'm assuming competent and good faith play).

Other approaches, such as story now, modify this in various ways. They focus more on an algorithmic instruction set rather than a detailed one. This produces results, but those results are far more dependent on the inputs because the algorithm doesn't have a detailed set of instructions/responses and so must create based on input.

In both cases, there are large windows into the room where players can actually watch the operations, if they're inclined. Or, they can not look in the windows and focus on the outputs. I think a lot of discussions here get bogged down in claims that you can see through the window of approach 2, but not through approach 1, when, in reality, the windows are just in different places, or look into different parts of the room.

This makes sense to me, and seems to put the different approaches into the same place -- attempting to model/create/describe a world that feels "real" to the players. It addresses the different approaches, and how they work, within the analogy to the Chinese room. It, to me, also explains why it's difficult to grasp the differences in approach if you're unwilling to look critically at how your chosen approach works. For me, I use a lot of different instruction sets in my rooms, depending on the game I want to play and what I want out of it. None of them are creating an actual "real" world, just like the Chinese room doesn't create an actual "real" Chinese speaker, but we can all hope to pass our own Turing tests, right?

 

[Maxperson]

All "real as thought" means here is imagined. Unicorns are also "real as thought" in exactly the same way. But that doesn't mean they're real. In fact they're not. And their non-reality is not just a lack of tangible reality. It's a lack of reality per se.

Either thoughts are real, or they are not. If they are real, and you've already stated that they are, then so are the the worlds comprised of such thought. They are real while you are imagining them, and are not when nobody is thinking of them. In a group playing roleplaying games, the world is a shared imagined(thought) reality. And yes, unicorns are also just as real while you are thinking of them. They just don't have an independent reality like my car does.

 

[Manbearcat]

Is this true though? I find more young people DMing than ever, and while new DM’s might not be as good as someone that’s been doing it for 20+ years. Personally I’ve found 1st time DMs these days are much better than when I was starting out in high school in the late 80’s.

There are a number of videos out there on DMing. Some of them have a "DM as mystic" approach, while others are about "demystifying DMing." I find that its these latter ones that are the most helpful for newcomers, while the former seem to mostly exist to aggrandize the DM and their sense of authority.

My statement was about the totality of the last 40 years. Over that course of that span, the output of GMing (in any/all of % of user base, base competency, upper level competency, breadth of competency) has not been good. If we’ve seen a recent upward tick in any/all of the above 4, that doesn't make a case for the 40 year model of Jedi : Padawan relationship and the mystifying of the craft as being helpful. In fact, it’s almost surely has to be the opposite (as @Aldarc notes above) given the regime change we’ve seen as of late with respect to this (recent spate of extremely well-designed games, more robust analysis on game design and how to design to specific play priorities, how to GM to specific play priorities, and greater access to functional/technical tutorials) would be the corresponding factor to any uptick in GMing capability.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think a lot of discussions here get bogged down in claims that you can see through the window of approach 2, but not through approach 1, when, in reality, the windows are just in different places, or look into different parts of the room.

This is a great post and I agree with most of it. I think I would add the following however:

* A much larger part of the output of this instantiation of a "Turing Test" is the product of observer bias vs the classical Turing Test.

There are serious culture war echoes, native cognitive states, and applied exposure to alternative approaches to play that haunt this discussion whereas the typical Turing Test isn't saddled with baggage like an "AI Culture War" and/or humans who are neurologically or experientially positioned such that they are challenged when tasked with grokking the nature/veracity of interaction with other humans (or simulacrums thereof).

The above creates a situation where its more than just haggling over location of the windows in various approaches. Its that + one side is all windows and the other is no windows + "the first rule of Window Club is we do not talk about Window Club + "these window washers have brain damage and here is a deluge of academic theory that turns off 99 % of humans on the planet" + "these ivory tower window washers have these wrong ideas about how we play, they think they're better than us, they're douchey Swine, don't cede any point/term/piece of analysis to them ever."