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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8228265" data-attributes="member: 85870">I've been following this thread with great interest, but haven't really had a strong point to interject.Our group just recently switched systems (at my prodding) from Savage Worlds to Ironsworn, in large part because something was just . . . off . . . with the way the Savage Worlds campaign was going (I was running Weird Wars Rome, and as the GM, I fully accept that if the campaign wasn't working, the fault was squarely with me).Some of the problem was I wasn't sure if I was prepping enough. With the pandemic, and the switch to VTT, my desire to do a lot of prep work was very, very low. Besides which, I trust my players to find interesting things to pursue with their characters without a lot of prodding on my part. But for some reason, it just wasn't working in this instance.With Savage Worlds I was caught in this weird middle ground, where the system doesn't really lend itself protagonistic play, but I wasn't doing much legwork to flesh out all of the tidbits that could have given the players more things to hook into / care about. And the problem was, if the system doesn't push towards PCs-as-protagonists, it was my job as GM to fill in the gaps.With Ironsworn, the exact opposite has been true. I took the basic premise of the Ironsworn setting, modified it slightly, and then ran with it. The whole prep of the campaign was a nearly blank map (exactly 2 points of interest were identified), a basic premise (party are members of a frontier settlement of Norse-like people), and threw out an inciting incident---in a drunken stupor, one of the village warriors (not a member of the party) returns to the village carrying the unconscious body of a woman of a frontier tribe with which the village has had almost no contact.So the inciting incident really established only a couple of things about the fiction.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's tribe of people out there that are not culturally related to the village.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The drunken warrior has probably set off a chain of events that will likely end badly for your village if not resolved to the satisfaction of the aggrieved tribe. </li> </ul>Since then, I've done almost zero prep/notes, other than maybe 2 bullet points.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's probably another (culturally similar) Cyngael tribe settlement on this rugged frontier, but the party doesn't know where it is. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's probably a settlement of Ancient Ones (elves) somewhere in the deep woods to the south. </li> </ul>And it's been interesting, because unlike Savage Worlds, Ironsworn has a myriad of scaffolds and pillars on which the players can address their PCs' dramatic needs, the biggest one being the game system's namesake---the players "swear an Iron Vow" that they must then attempt to complete or suffer grave consequences of failure or abandonment of the quest.Here's an example of play that happened with absolutely zero pre-prep / notes before hand.The PCs had just returned the aforementioned tribeswoman back to her home. They'd already endured a somewhat perilous journey to get there, and were hoping to return back to their village quickly and without incident.But since one of PbtA's core principles is to throw adversity at the players, I figured I should at least make a roll on the "Oracles" table in the book. I set a reasonably low probability of trouble (like less than 20%), but of course promptly rolled a 12 on my percentile roll.This is all done openly in front of the players, who agreed that while they'd like to avoid trouble on the return journey, that it made complete sense that fate might have different ideas for them.At this point, we had an open group discussion---"So what kind of trouble do you think would happen?" I suggested weather---it's late October in a cold, rugged, northern frontier (think Iceland/Norway/Labrador coast). A sudden snowstorm seemed to be appropriate. And the players immediately agreed that in context, this totally made sense.And suddenly what was going to be a handwave "arrive back at the village" for the players turned into a Grade 2 (dangerous) journey. Now they had to make rolls to successfully navigate the weather, manage supplies, etc. They barely made it back to the village with 1 supply left (if their supply level hit 0, it causes a number of deleterious effects).However, on the very last leg of their journey, they rolled a "weak hit", which indicates that though they succeed at their intent, an unforeseen complication arises.Without hesitation, one of the players immediately suggested, "Well obviously we run into someone from the rival Cyngael tribe that you mentioned earlier!"At which point, the players run a combat scene to subdue a rival scout---but at the end, completely without any intervention from me, the player of the PC who subdued the captive suggests that in this world, being captured in this manner means the captive would become the player's manservant.And because I was trying to play to see what happens, of course this was true!It became very apparent, very early on with Ironsworn, that having copious/detailed notes of the setting, inhabitants, is not the intended mode of play. Everything about the system pushes towards collaboration on the fiction.Interestingly, though, having read through this thread, I've become more convinced that in the absence of a player-facing / PC protagonistic style, that as a GM I need to change my approach to include more prep. And part of that prep needs to include significant drilling down into the PCs' dramatic needs. Since those dramatic needs aren't really expressed on the character sheet directly, it takes more diligence and care on my part to suss out just what, exactly, "the game is going to be about" by discussing it with my players.In retrospect, it feels like one of the key "points" of having GM's notes, is that in the absence of player-facing cues---because the system isn't providing them---the GM's notes largely establish the premise of play.</blockquote>

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