What is the point of GM's notes?

[Maxperson]

I can't speak for @Campbell, but I can provide an example: one player is looking to play a game of intense character-focused play, really trying to find out what makes a given character tick and what might be the limits of that; and another character is looking to goof around a bit and maybe talk in a funny voice after work.

I think I'm more tolerant of that sort of mis-match than @Campbell, but I agree that it's a mis-match.

Okay. I can see that. I've said time and time again, in thread after thread, that the DM/Players need to find like minded people to play with. I've used playstyle and not goal of the players, but it seems that I do the same thing that @Campbell does. I just didn't think of it in the same terms.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As BW is to you, so BitD is to me, or even less b/c I haven't read it, only heard you and other posters talk about it.

I believe that BitD uses the PbtA techniques of ask questions and build on the answers.

In BW the "space" of that technique tends to be filled by Wises-type checks: ie the player posits what his/her PC knows/recalls/is familiar with and then the precise stakes are established and then the check is made and then we know whether things are as the PC thought or whether there's some sort of wrinkle (or worse!). A tentative conjecture is that the BW approach makes it easier to adhere to the 100% "in character" approach.

Yes, I would think so. It certainly would seem that way to me. But I know that often gets a lot of push back because it's a shift in thinking from the way many games do that, where any kind of setting detail is subject to GM approval.

And yes, "ask questions and build on the answers" is a principle carried over from PbtA to FitD. I think Blades takes it a little further in that beyond just helping to establish setting details, there are points of player input which can shape the game even more dramatically.

When the crew picks a Score, they do so by selecting a Plan and a Detail. The Plan is the kind of mission they want to perform: Assault, Deception, Stealth, Occult, Social, or Transport. Then whichever Plan you choose, the players pick a Detail. This is something specific which informs how the Plan will work. So if you choose an Assault, then you would provide a Detail like "we're going to attack the building from behind", and if you choose Stealth, then you might say "we're sneaking into the compound from the tunnels underneath".

This gives the players a lot of say about what the thrust of play will be. It also gives the GM ideas on what kind of obstacles may be appropriate and what additional details may matter. To compare it to D&D, the players have the ability to help shape "the map" for what they're going to do.

I don't think this is the kind of authoring that many tend to think of when this comes up, but it's a pretty important point of player input.

 

[Emerikol]

Sure, it is a matter of preference, absolutely.

Challenges in Blades compared to D&D are a bit different, that is true, though there is still plenty of overlap. What's interesting for me is that I've found that my group seems to have a much stronger connection to their character and their roleplay is stronger in Blades versus D&D. Yes, there are elements that have them contributing in a more authorial way, beyond the view of their character. But instead of breaking immersion, those instances seem to actually enhance it in other ways.

Maybe it's my group and their desire to roleplay their characters but I would agree in general that plenty of D&D players are barely roleplaying at all.

I think the players feel more a part of creating the world, and as a result their characters feel more like an actual part of that world. There's a kind of sympathetic angle there.

Well I can only equate it with real life. As @pemerton says above and I believe him, he is more connected by authoring the fictional setting as a player. I have no analog myself for that. My experience of life is that I perceive the world and I act/react to what I perceive. The GM is my interface to this fantasy world so he provides my sensory input. Otherwise, I make decisions and think about the things my character would think about. So skilled play follows naturally from that premise. I don't want to die so I prepare and make plans to prevent it and overcome my enemies. Obviously it's a game so my fear of death is likely not equivalent to what it would be in real life. I'm not a superhero in real life either.

I think this is also enhanced by the XP/reward system in Blades versus D&D. Blades ties XP rewards to more character based things, where as D&D typically offers XP for either gaining treasure or for killing monsters. So as players try to get XP, they're actively defining their characters.

I think you mean that you adopt traits or characteristics for your character and that comes into play far more effectively than it does in D&D. D&D lacks any such system for sure. It's interesting but for me again it forces me to look at my character as something separate from me. No character ever wants to screw up due to alcoholism at a key moment in the game. A player might want to trigger such a thing but usually to incentivize such triggers there are metagame rewards.

Now, there's nothing to stop players in D&D from diving into their characters and really defining and portraying them....but there's very little in any iteration of D&D that actively supports that, or promotes it in play. I mean, ultimately, if we look at the reward system of any RPG, that's a really strong indicator of what the game is about.

That's just my experience with both games and the same group of players.

By that standard, I think we'd say that D&D is about going through dungeons and getting the treasure. If that were all D&D were for me, I'd have left the game long ago. My players are always embroiled in world events. They are always trying to change things and advance their standing in the world. How exactly they do that will depend on the world they are experiencing but they will find an interesting path from what I've observed. This might not become really pronounced though until they get out of the super low levels. Until then they'll just build alliances/friendships with various NPCs in the local town.

 

[Emerikol]

My experience as a player in Burning Wheel play contradicts Emerikol's conjecture. It does not feel like the collaborative crafting of a story. It feels like intense identification with my character. When I roll the dice I'm anxious for what will happen to me (ie me as a projection onto the persona of my character). There is no disconnect of the sort Emerikol points to. When I (as my character) try to recall the location of Evard's tower, or hope to meet my brother when I return to my ancestral estate, I don't feel like a setting author. I feel like I am moving through the world that my character inhabits.

I kind of discussed this a bit in my reply to @hawkeyefan.

For me there is no analog to player authored reality. I am used to perceiving it and reacting to it. So I don't doubt you like your character and you find the things he gets into interesting. I can even see where you might identify with your character the way you would identify with a friend who is telling you their troubles. I don't see how though you can feel like you are your character and lose yourself in the game that way. Not saying you don't. Just saying I don't see how you do it.

 

[pemerton]

I know that often gets a lot of push back because it's a shift in thinking from the way many games do that, where any kind of setting detail is subject to GM approval.

No dissent; but for elaboration I refer back to my post 1999 upthread, about action declaration and authorship. TL,DR: I think that notion of "setting detail" vs "outcome of action" is very often not well described.

When the crew picks a Score, they do so by selecting a Plan and a Detail. The Plan is the kind of mission they want to perform: Assault, Deception, Stealth, Occult, Social, or Transport. Then whichever Plan you choose, the players pick a Detail. This is something specific which informs how the Plan will work. So if you choose an Assault, then you would provide a Detail like "we're going to attack the building from behind", and if you choose Stealth, then you might say "we're sneaking into the compound from the tunnels underneath".

This gives the players a lot of say about what the thrust of play will be. It also gives the GM ideas on what kind of obstacles may be appropriate and what additional details may matter. To compare it to D&D, the players have the ability to help shape "the map" for what they're going to do.

I don't think this is the kind of authoring that many tend to think of when this comes up, but it's a pretty important point of player input.

In BW, to infiltrate via the tunnels would be a Wises-check (eg in the GM I GM one of the players kept declaring - and failing - Catacombs-wise checks to move around beneath the streets of Hardby).

Because it's an action declaration, the GM can "say 'yes'" and cut to the next scene. But it's still framed as action declaration and so can all be done in character.

 

[pemerton]

I kind of discussed this a bit in my reply to @hawkeyefan.

For me there is no analog to player authored reality. I am used to perceiving it and reacting to it. So I don't doubt you like your character and you find the things he gets into interesting. I can even see where you might identify with your character the way you would identify with a friend who is telling you their troubles. I don't see how though you can feel like you are your character and lose yourself in the game that way. Not saying you don't. Just saying I don't see how you do it.

As I'm returning to my homeland, I hope to meet my brother.

As we travel through the wildlands of the Pomarj, and I'm inhabiting a character whose goal is to locate spellbooks and who has studied the history of the great masters, I think Isn't Evard's tower around here somewhere.

These are not perceptions. They are the inner mental life of the character.

This goes back to the "space aliens" point that I made upthread (and @Campbell also posted something similar).

 

[Manbearcat]

I am not familiar enough with this setting to really walk through the process on it (and I am quite unclear on many of the events, causes, etc to run that through the procedures and process I would use). I think you need a high degree of familiarity with the setting. For example there was a time when I had a strong enough command of Ravenloft (pre-3E era) to run through situations like you seem to be describing: alas no more! Now I am focused primarily on my own campaign setting. What I can say is if a region in my world for whatever reason was struck by an even that caused a massive death toll, I would try to look at things like what institutions are in place to respond, what are the consequences given the location itself (and the specific nature of the event would determine if this were some kind of expanding threat or just an isolated instance: is it a zombie plague, is it a massive natural disaster, is it a supernatural catastrophe like you describe above--or seem to describe). I would also ask what sects might become involved etc.

I appreciate the response. There are a lot of interesting takeaways from the above. A few things that strike me and some questions as well:

1) When I put together my post, that felt like a massive info dump; the event itself, the backdrop of the setting for context, related infrastructure, personnel, and relevant factions potential response to such an event.

Your response to that information was the following:

I am not familiar enough with this setting to really walk through the process on it (and I am quite unclear on many of the events, causes, etc to run that through the procedures and process I would use). I think you need a high degree of familiarity with the setting.

That feels extremely instructive on bridging some of our divide in our conversations broadly and in this conversation specifically:

* I certainly wouldn't qualify myself as possessing "a high degree of familiarity with the setting." I know enough "to be dangerous." Where I don't know things in a pinch I make them up or I "ask questions and use the answers."

* The information that I gave you above is precisely the info I use to deploy the procedures for the game to determine "what happens now?" No more, no less. So when I look at the information, it feels like an information surplus to me.

* However, when you look at the above info you feel like you're working from an information deficit of sufficient capacity to make it impossible for either you to (i) entirely extrapolate what comes next, (ii) deploy your procedures, or (iii) some combination of the two (from your post it seems like a combination).

I wonder if some other posters look at what I typed out on the situation/setting/context and also felt like they would be working from an insurmountable information deficit if they attempted to engage with it? I'd be curious to hear from them, if so.

The above shouldn't read like "I'm right, you're wrong." It should read like "this is interesting insight into the cognitive framing divide on the same info/circumstances."

2) For your MCS, your Combat Rating and Strength actually looks very kindred with Blades Scale, Potency, Quality, and Tier. Do you have some procedure like this that determines the magnitude of things that are the collision of other events (not Mass Combat); eg pestilence + hysteria/panic vs a church's response + a city's physickers?

In Blades Fortune Roll procedure to handle something like this, you assess the relevant parts in play and build a singular dice pool if its just a Mission Clock or multiple dice pools if its Racing Clocks (Take top result; 1-3 result = 1 Tick, 4-5 = 2 Ticks, 6 = 3 Ticks). Here is what that this has looked like over the last weeks of the game:

"Save Barrowcleft vs Barrowcleft Apocalypse" - 10 Tick Competing Clocks

Tier 6 apiece so d6 apiece.

Save = 2 so 1/10
Apocalypse = 4 so 2/10

The tide turns against the ward, its citizens, and the city. A few brave souls enlist to fight the ghosts. They don't return...

"Save Barrowcleft vs Barrowcleft Apocalypse" - 10 Tick Competing Clocks

Tier 6 + 2d6 for 2 * Major Advantages for Save due to your Score results, so 2d6 Save vs W[2d6] Apocalypse.

Save = 5 & 6 = 2 so 4/10
Apocalypse = 1 & 4 = 1 so 3/10

The tide turns back the other way. Your successful apprehension of some of the ghosts and deployment of the gear have led to a breakthrough for the Sparkwrights tweaking the gear to be more potent. Its also led to more enlistment of competent field personnel against the threat. Finally, the discovery of the two epicenters of death have led to the Spirit Wardens being able to work directly on those areas.

"Save Barrowcleft vs Barrowcleft Apocalypse" - 10 Tick Competing Clocks

Tier 6 + 2d6 for 2 * Major Advantages for Save, so 2d6 Save vs W[2d6] Apocalypse.

Save = 5 & 4 = 2 so 6/10
Apocalypse = 1 & 6 = 1 so 4/10

A shipment of fruit comes in via the Electro-rail Trains. Whitehollow's orchards (the immediately adjacent Imperium city) alleviates the immediate threat of food shortage hysteria. Things are looking up.

As is hopefully clear in the above, the process is:

• Set up Racing Clocks.
• Assess Factors to build opposing Dice Pools.
• Every Downtime Phase, roll opposing Dice Pools (take top result; 1-3 result = 1 Tick, 4-5 = 2 Ticks, 6 = 3 Ticks).
• Interpret results and evolve the situation.
• If situation changes between phases (as it did here), adjust opposing Dice Pools.

---

Given what I've written above here, do you think you could either:

* Ask questions that would give you sufficient resolution for you to work with the depicted situation then use my answers to show us the exact procedure that you would use to evolve the situation?

or

* Break down a play excerpt where you did something similar (like I mentioned above - pestilence + hysteria/panic vs a prefecture's infrastructural and personnel driven response they could martial)? I'm particularly interested in if you use competing dice pools for something like this similar to how you deploy your Mass Combat System.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Maybe it's my group and their desire to roleplay their characters but I would agree in general that plenty of D&D players are barely roleplaying at all.

Yeah, there is a range of possibilities with D&D when it comes to that because there are so many editions, and it's been around so long that many folks have kind of used different bits from different editions to kind of craft their own version of the game. What almost every edition lacks, though, is any kind of robust system for promoting roleplay. It's something that's always been left up to the participants to decide.

Well I can only equate it with real life. As @pemerton says above and I believe him, he is more connected by authoring the fictional setting as a player. I have no analog myself for that. My experience of life is that I perceive the world and I act/react to what I perceive. The GM is my interface to this fantasy world so he provides my sensory input. Otherwise, I make decisions and think about the things my character would think about. So skilled play follows naturally from that premise. I don't want to die so I prepare and make plans to prevent it and overcome my enemies. Obviously it's a game so my fear of death is likely not equivalent to what it would be in real life. I'm not a superhero in real life either.

Well with this I think there are two ways to look at it, as far as the role of the GM as interface with the world.

Your character reaches a new town and passes through the gates, and he looks around.....what does he see? It makes sense that he may not know, and the GM shares what he sees.

But what about what your character knows? You start play with a person who's likely a young adult or older.....so they have experiences that have already happened. They should KNOW things about themselves and about the world. Certainly, some of this knowledge may be limited, but where do you draw the line? While my PC may not know who is the king of all the orcs, he would know who his family and friends are, he would have some general knowledge about the world.

For many, having to rely on someone else to act as interface for these internal things that are a part of the character is disruptive to immersion.

I think you mean that you adopt traits or characteristics for your character and that comes into play far more effectively than it does in D&D. D&D lacks any such system for sure. It's interesting but for me again it forces me to look at my character as something separate from me. No character ever wants to screw up due to alcoholism at a key moment in the game. A player might want to trigger such a thing but usually to incentivize such triggers there are metagame rewards.

It depends, I think. In Blades, each PC has 3 XP Triggers, for each of which they can get up to 2 XP per session. This is what they look like:

• Addressing a challenge with your specialty (each class has this, so the fighter type gets it for addressing a challenge with violence, and the thief type for addressing with stealth, etc.)
• Portaying your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background
• Struggled with issues from your vice or traumas during the session

So the game rewards the player depicting a character. It isn't limited to the accumulation of wealth (like early D&D with XP for gold) or the killing of enemies (like 5E D&D), but the system actually may reward those kinds of actions.

What happens is that these characters become very vividly depicted, even with a player who speaks entirely third person and rarely actually acts in character. They still have a strong idea of who this person is.

By that standard, I think we'd say that D&D is about going through dungeons and getting the treasure. If that were all D&D were for me, I'd have left the game long ago. My players are always embroiled in world events. They are always trying to change things and advance their standing in the world. How exactly they do that will depend on the world they are experiencing but they will find an interesting path from what I've observed. This might not become really pronounced though until they get out of the super low levels. Until then they'll just build alliances/friendships with various NPCs in the local town.

Sure, I imagine many D&D games to play this way. Most of my own games probably fit your concept at least pretty well.

I think the thing with D&D is that there's some incoherence as it has changed over editions. Early versions were about a very specific mode of play. That mode has loosened over editions, or become only part of a bigger picture, and as that's happened, some rules have fallen out of use and others have come along, and they've never again added up to as coherent a whole as they did in early D&D.

But, having said that, I've had very satisfactory games across all editions, with plenty of role playing and plenty of interesting things happening. It's never something the game can't handle, it just doesn't promote it.

 

[pemerton]

A further comment about inhabiting the inner mental life of one's character, as a player (building on my post 2016 upthread).

It relates to what @Bedrockgames has said about "mental models", and what @prabe has said about spontaneous production of fiction.

When, as a player of a character who is trained in the lore of the great masters and who is intent on finding spellbooks to enhance her repertoire of magic, I think Isn't Evard's tower around here, I am engaging in the same mental process as the GM who, in response to a question from a player, feels that there is no logical or possible answer but this is how things are in the gameworld.

In my view both are acts of authorship. But to the extent that someone is hesitant to use that word, because it doesn't feel like making things up, then that is as true for the player playing the character as the GM "playing" the world.

 

[Manbearcat]

It depends, I think. In Blades, each PC has 3 XP Triggers, for each of which they can get up to 2 XP per session. This is what they look like:

• Addressing a challenge with your specialty (each class has this, so the fighter type gets it for addressing a challenge with violence, and the thief type for addressing with stealth, etc.)
• Portaying your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background
• Struggled with issues from your vice or traumas during the session

So the game rewards the player depicting a character. It isn't limited to the accumulation of wealth (like early D&D with XP for gold) or the killing of enemies (like 5E D&D), but the system actually may reward those kinds of actions.

What happens is that these characters become very vividly depicted, even with a player who speaks entirely third person and rarely actually acts in character. They still have a strong idea of who this person is.

The role of functional incentive structures cannot be underplayed (in both life broadly and in games).

Its no coincidence that 4e's recharge schedule plus Milestone mechanic (if you push forward, rather than attempt to recharge, your group gets HUGE Action Economy gains...even as your daily suite of resources erodes) propelled play forward compared to the stall-out (and/or mini-game/arms race of Team PC pushing to affect a recharge of spell loadout) of workday issues of D&D of yore (and present).

Its no coincidence that Dogs players bring in their Traits and Relationships (and even the ones that specifically complicate their lives) as conflicts progress...which in turn (a) ensures thematic focus and (b) drives the xp/erosion of PC engine.

Its no coincidence that, despite being a game being about violent scoundrels ensconced in gang warfare, Blades games feature a lot more thematic xp triggers than body count (because body count = Heat...which engages with a positive feedback loop you don't want).