What is the point of GM's notes?

[Ovinomancer]

You are an naughty word (and that is a fact, not an opinion)

I wouldn't dare disagree.

Look in the mirror. People on my side of the fence spent the better part of the thread having to defend their use of the two words "Living World". This isn't just me coming in and storming a happy and productive thread

No one's asked you defend it. They asked you to define it.

 

[Umbran]

You are an a*****e (and that is a fact, not an opinion)

Mod Note:
Okay, that's enough for you. You're done. Please go take a breather, and maybe find something to engage with that doesn't grind your gears until you lose your composure.

 

[Umbran]

Comma, not colon.

Mod Note:
And guess what? You're done too. This was trolling nonsense. The next time someone disengages from you, STOP POKING THEM.

 

[Lanefan]

My problem with the term fiction, is its a loaded term.

Meh - there's various terms that get chucked around here (usually by the same few people) that are pretty loaded, but IMO "fiction" ain't one of 'em.

...he says, 20 pages later...yikes, has this thing gone nuts in the last few days!

 

[Lanefan]

Slowly grinding my way through here...

Which would you say is greater? Player influence on GM's ideas of the fiction, or GM's influence on players' ideas of the fiction?


It's a genuine question.....one I don't think has an objective answer, but I think it is kind of central to the idea here.

I'd say the answer varies based on scale.

On a large or background scale, the GM's influence is always greater. On a small here-and-now or character scale, the players' influence may be greater should they choose to use it (not all do, and-or not all the time).

As for the whole "play to find out what's in the GM's notes" business:

I get the connotations and why people have an issue with the first. But mostly this thread has just confirmed for me that it's a pretty accurate description. I don't think it must be a pejorative, even if that's how it may seem or may have been intended (although I think it was meant more to provoke a response than to really put a style down).

Every time I see the phrase I also see an implied "just" or "only" or "all you're doing is" in front of it; largely because of all those occasions when one of those preceding pieces has been actually present. So yes, as IMO the phrase is intentionally and consistently being used as a put-down by a few posters, that sense of belittlement remains even when someone else uses the phrase perfectly neutrally.

 

[Lanefan]

Works for me. I just make an effort to have the PCs not encounter the same place twice, even if they go back to a location. And, if the narrative has planted a timeline, I keep track of it. Other than that I don't do background stuff.

Wait, what?

You try to stop your PCs from going back to the same town, or the same tavern, just because they've been there before?

Or am I missing something?

 

[Lanefan]

Interesting. What role do your notes have in this horrorscape?

Remember The Monster Book of Monsters in Harry Potter?

Now make it bigger. Mu-u-u-uch bigger. As in planet-size bigger.....

 

[Lanefan]

In any standard FRPG, if the PCs find a castle then that castle will have existed in the setting prior to them finding it. And it would have existed even if they had not. In the BW game in which my characters found Evard's Tower, the tower existed before they found it. How else could they have found it?! In fact my PC found evidence in the tower - ie letters apparently written by his mother as a child - which implied the tower had existed from well before he was born.

So it is not at all distinctive of a sandbox that a castle, or tower, or any other relatively permanent thing should exist in the setting independent of who finds it.

Similarly for Emerikol's dungeons: presumably if Emerikol decides to use a campaign world for another campaign, set a year or so after the previous campaign, and drops in a new dungeon that is 1,000 years old, then that dungeon existed in the world during the last campaign too (and was about 999 years old when that old campaign finished).

So when Emerikiol says it may not have existed in the sandbox earlier I think that means the GM hadn't thought of it yet, and so hadn't written it down. And when Bedrockgames says it should exist in a sandbox whether or not they find it I think that means the GM should have thought of it already and written it down, so that (eg) the GM can narrate signs of its existence.

I don't know how those two claims - and related claims about verisimilitude, feeling "real", etc - are to be reconciled.

I don't see a need for reconciliation, because in effect the two claims very much support each other: the GM hadn't thought of it yet and so hadn't written it down [but] the GM should have thought of it already and written it down so [as to be able to] narrate signs of its existence are part and parcel of what is IMO a blatant and very avoidable GM* error: putting something into the setting later that would unquestionably have previously come up in either in play or narration had it been there earlier.

Solid pre-campaign prep maybe can't completely eliminate this sort of occurrence but it sure helps minimize it.

* - in games where players have some setting control it could also be a player error.

This seems to fit with what Bedrockgames said about the castle But I don't see how it is supposed to be reconciled with the possibility of subsequently authoring in a 1,000 year old dungeon. Obviously the GM will not have narrated signs of the existence of that dungeon prior to thinking it up; yet presumably such signs ought to have been present.

Absolutely. GM mistake, all day long.

 

[Lanefan]

Then you'd be wrong. I've run many games with little prep and some with no prep.

Here are links to games I ran with no prep. The first two were Cthulhu Dark. The third was Wuthering Heights. All went very well: the PCs were created, starting situations were envisaged, events unfolded as imagined by the participants and guided by the action resolution processes; and in each case a satisfying resolution was reached which no one had any anticipation of when we started.

Might I ask how long (as in, how many sessions) those games/campaigns lasted?

Reason I ask is that if the game's only expected/designed to last a few sessions or sort out one story arc (this would include a typical hard-line AP as well) the underlying setting doesn't have to do nearly as much work as if the game's expected to last for many years and have many adventuring parties tromping around in not-always-predictable directions; meaning the shorter game requires massively less (or even no) setting prep, and on a much smaller scale, than does the long one.

 

[Lanefan]

Reading the argument over the word "equivocation", a stray thought wandered by:

Could the difference in how the word is viewed be culture-based?

From what I recall of where some posters are in the world and looking at their takes in this thread, I'm starting to wonder if in the USA the word "equivocation" carries much more of a sense of malicious-intent-to-deceive than it does in the UK.