What is the point of GM's notes?

[Emerikol]

But none of that tells me why do I need to evolve Nightmarket, The Wraiths, or The Inspectors beyond their initial conditions in the game text when none of that stuff has come "on-line" yet?

That bolded is the question and what I'm asserting is the evolution of that off-line stuff is Setting Solitaire.

And we believe those things make the world have greater verisimilitude and thus ultimately is more satisfying to us. Our game play goals are "become a fantasy character" so we want to see things the best we can through our characters eyes. The character is not a playing piece such as a pawn in chess that we move around. We are achieving the greatest success when we fuse with our character and feel what our character feels.

I think since you don't really even play our style with similar goals that you don't value the same things we value.

 

[Emerikol]

I think a point should be made here. I've made it in snippets at various places.

1. I am not hating these other styles. I'm just equating them with the sort of satisfaction I'd get from playing a decent board game. I am not saying these other styles ARE a board game. I'm saying that the satisfaction I'd get would be similar. Kind of like saying you like apple or cherry pie. It's not like they taste the same but they may just be equal options for you at the local diner.

2. I really really love roleplaying and consider it far more satisfying than a lot of other forms of entertainment. Thus I am willing to commit a major time investment to play what I view as my favorite style of gaming.


Secondly,

I believe there are many out there playing what would appear to be my style of gaming. They have dungeon maps and skilled play is necessary. They have a world and sometimes even a sandbox. Yet their games would satisfy me no better than those in #1 above. Why? Because the engagement with the world would be perfunctory.

In my games, there are no random dungeon maps. I don't "stock" my dungeons using the wandering monster tables. There is a lot of world engagement in terms of NPC relations and alliances/enemies. I really try when bringing in a dungeon to make it fit the world and to provide some background. There was an article in Best of Dragon about building dungeons that I've always thought was a really good one. It was about dialing up the verisimilitude. When it works it's really great in my opinion. Players as their characters genuinely begin to care about not only their fellow party members but various NPCs in the game. It feels real to them. For a brief moment each Saturday, they step into another world.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here I'm with @Manbearcat and @hawkeyefan - everything else being equal, once the GM has decided what the Society of the Silver Sword is doing when the PCs first encounter them, does it need to be changed before the Society comes "online"?

As I said to Manbearcat, it is up to you. The point of sandbox (edit: living world) is so things don't feel like they are sitting their waiting for the party to come get them, like they are active characters and beings in the setting, like organizations are active and responsive. The point of living sandbox isn't to get hung up on whether something needs to be in motion and alive prior to the players encountering it in play (this is more a philosophical question I suppose: and ultimately what matters if you are trying to run a living world is whether doing so is worth your time in this instance and whether it makes a difference----or whether it matters to you).

 

[Bedrockgames]

The "freeze frame" room is a classic in dungeon design. But I think it's pretty apparent that you don't use the same freeze frame if the PCs come back again; you present something new that makes sense.

Sure and the living adventure/living world way of managing this is to focus on the goals of the characters who inhabit (perhaps the major ones, but also the minor ones if you want), allow not just the overall situation to adjust if the players come back, but making decisions based on the NPCs as if they are characters (which could allow for example for an intelligent resident of the dungeon to leave, and even go after the PCs). Nothing is preventing you from doing this is you begin with the freeze approach, but a lot of GMs do treat it as static, and living world/living adventure is a reminder for the GM to make things more active and responsive (and to treat them more like objective entities in the setting). If it doesn't answer an issue you want to solve, if it runs up against some other playstyle or system thing you are interested in, then you don't have to do it. All I can say is this principle has made a night and day difference in my sessions.

 

[pemerton]

Players as their characters genuinely begin to care about not only their fellow party members but various NPCs in the game. It feels real to them. For a brief moment each Saturday, they step into another world.

You have a tendency to post as if this is not common in other posters' games. But in fact it is.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You have a tendency to post as if this is not common in other posters' games. But in fact it is.

He isn't saying anything about your campaign or anyone else's he is responding to the bolded test in @Manbearcat's post asking why he should use this technique and calling it setting solitaire. @Emerikol's response is about the reason why you would use a living world approach here and pointing to it not being a solitary activity by the GM.

 

[pemerton]

He isn't saying anything about your campaign or anyone else's he is responding to the bolded test in @Manbearcat's post asking why he should use this technique and calling it setting solitaire. @Emerikol's response is about the reason why you would use a living world approach here and pointing to it not being a solitary activity by the GM.

I can read Emerikol's posts. The post I quoted in my post that you replied to was not a reply to @Manbearcat (or anyone else).

It was a post about "his style" vs boardgaming.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If it's something I've prepped, and they're getting to it well after I prepped it, then I'm changing things mostly because the PCs have different needs than they did when I originally prepped [place]. If this is a place they're returning to (not included in your original question, but still feels vaguely applicable) there are helpings of verisimilitude and not-stagnation, too.

EDIT: And I prepped it the first time because I thought the chances the PCs would go there made it worth doing.

I think this is really due to the fundamental difference in how these games do PCs and mechanics. In D&D, PC capabilities vary wildly as they progress -- the easiest to demonstrate is spellcasters, who gain massive changes in what's possible and not just in power. This is true of other classes as well, it's just most obvious in the spell lists. A character can switch from having to walk across a continent to doing so instantaneously in the blink of an eye at the table -- the player just levels up the PC to get teleport. This radical shift in capability (again, present in all classes), means that unused prep needs to be updated, if only to account for new abilities. Elsewise, prep must be discarded as not something that's relevant to these PCs anymore (a chasm, for instance, goes from a dangerous obstacle to a triviality very suddenly). In Blades, though, this doesn't happen -- PCs do not have sudden shifts in capability, they just improve at doing what they already could do.

The upshot of this is that, in D&D, prep is absolutely necessary, if only to account for the difference in capability. This applies to sandbox prep as well, as different areas/locations are prepped with different capabilities in mind (this is a challenging area with powerful opponents, this is a less challenging area with weaker opponents). With Blades, though, this isn't necessary -- threats are more about what's happening rather than quality of the opposition/accounting for increased abilities. PCs get more competent, but don't add entire new categories of capability.

I think this difference -- how you account for PC capabilities -- is a critical difference in how these games can and are prepped. Blades is fine with a thumbnail and an opening situation, because that's all that's needed to engage with play. When the PCs start interacting with the Billhooks, for instance, then what the Billhooks are doing will necessarily be an impediment to the PC's plans (elsewise, the GM will not invoke them in framing or consequence). They don't need to adapt, in any way, to the PCs, nor do they need to advance on their own because whatever they were doing is of little consequence to play, it's only what they're doing when the PCs encounter them. Now, that said, I'm not at all adverse to making a Fortune roll and advancing their clock as I introduce them, especially if that puts more pressure on what the PCs are trying to do (and this is a consequence framing). In D&D, prep absolutely has to account for the PC abilities -- either in adjusting previous prep to remain useful (which seems your approach), or by tiering threats in a sandbox so the PCs have a variety of challenges for whatever their current abilities are.

 

[Ovinomancer]

None of the above changes the reality of what occurred i.e. much of the focus, directly or indirectly, being on the thread's title with several posters addressing this exact issue.

Ah, more cryptic statements, where one is left to assume your intent. And, nice sidestep, there! You neatly avoided refuting that you're questioning @pemerton's honesty while continuing to suggest it. I'd ask again if you intend to question pem's honesty, but I figure, at this point, you'll just deflect while insinuating more. Surprise me, maybe?

Your disagreement with this has been noted.

I'm not sure what I disagreed with, at this point, as you've not actually said anything, just implied a bunch of stuff.

 

[prabe]

@Ovinomancer That's probably about right. I think I'm including the idea that revising prep might be about story stuff at least as much as character capability stuff; and I think some of the difference in prep between D&D 5E and BitD is about division of authority (in 5E the DM has authority over the setting unless he specifically shares it--and I mostly don't--whereas it's my understanding the DM in BitD has much less authority over the setting) but that's not so much disagreement as something you just didn't mention, I think.