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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8240581" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I'd like to share a couple of examples from games that I've run recently. One is 5E D&D and the other is Blades in the Dark. I want to summarize how my notes shaped play in each game, both at the very start of play, and also as part of ongoing play. D&D 5eSo my group played "Lost Mines of Phandelve" when it came out in order to check out the new D&D rules. I was growing incredibly weary of Pathfinder as our go to fantasy game, and I was hoping for something simpler. Despite its flaws, we found it much to our liking for what we wanted. It helps that we're long time friends and we generally have a good idea of what works for us as a group, and individually. We decided to continue playing. When we did, I asked my players what they wanted the campaign to  be about. I received a few different responses, but one through line was that they wanted to see the resolution of some long standing elements of our D&D games. They wanted to finish some unfinished stories. With this in mind, I approached the game with a very nostalgic outlook. I decided that we'd use everything we'd ever played in D&D as canon for this game. All our old campaigns? They all happened. All the classic D&D lore that we've used in our games? It's all there. So I just kind of crafted a very loose backstory that connected elements as disparate as Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental Eye and the Lady of Pain and Rajaat of Athas. This story is central to play. Essentially, there are five shards of a divine castle/dwelling, and they've been scattered across the cosmos, and different groups seek to recover these magical castles, and the PCs have become embroiled in the hunt for one such castle.So my notes at the start of play determined:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Several of the opposing factions to the PCs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The motivations of many of the movers and shakers in the game</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They mystery of the castles and their true nature- largely unknown to the PCs until they piece it together (i.e. learn my notes)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The D&D cosmology was the setting- from Faerun to Oerth to Athas to Sigil and the Outlands and the planes beyond- this is the sandbox</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The central threat, or main villains, of the campaign and their goal</li> </ul>The central idea of the campaign is one I came up with. Yes, I based it on ideas that I knew my players wanted to see, and ideas that connected to their characters, but I still had to craft the connections of all of that, and make it coherent. But it also has to be playable so that they don't just feel like interchangeable characters in a story, that could be subbed out by any other PCs. Then as we actually play, my notes consist mostly of bullet points. I don't commit too strongly to anything because I want the players to have the freedom to interact with these ideas as they like, and to pursue things their own way. So classic D&D Map & Key style prep, is almost impossible. I have some maps for specific locations that I've kind of assembled, but I may not know if/when they'll be needed at any given time. So what I do is in between each session, I just make a few bullet points of what I think is likely for the next session based on what's happened previously. Usually, we have a good idea of next steps. So I list the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Possible goals for next session</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Possible threats/antagonists- if I need stats, I try to gather these and collect them all in as easy to reference a way as possible; otherwise I just think about the goals of the NPCs and their means and personality and decide how they may become involved</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Running threads- any active or prominent PC goals or situations and how they may come up</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Outstanding Items- this is a catch all, and it can be very important- it's anything that's been introduced in some way, but which hasn't been resolved- a lot of times if we don't have a clear agenda for a session, I'll bring these up as possibilities for the group</li> </ul>These notes are very loose, as you can see. So they don't really constrain the players too much- they're free to do whatever they like. Sometimes it's very obvious what they'll be doing, and so my job is easy. At other times it's not, and so these notes may help prompt some action and get things going. So in an ongoing way, my notes are there as a list of prompts to help facilitate play, or to hep narrow focus when things are specific. But at the start? To get the ball rolling, and then to serve as the skeleton on which the entire game hangs? My notes are vital. They are, essentially, what the game is about.Blades in the DarkWhen my group played a Blades in the Dark campaign, I had no requests for or inclinations toward having any kind of essential backstory of the kind that is so big in our D&D game (this is largely BECAUSE of all that stuff for D&D, I wanted something different). So my notes at the start of play for Blades in the Dark were virtually non-existent. I took the default setting as described in the book as pretty much what we'd work with, but that default setting is sketched in the book; just enough detail is given to get things going, but plenty of leeway is available to shape things how you'd like. So with no backstory, we proceeded with character and crew creation. These are what I would say became the essential "notes" of our game. The players decided to be a crew of Hawkers, dealers of illicit goods. They selected as their Crew Ability "The Good Stuff" which means that their product is of very high quality. What was the product? The group decided that they wanted to sell a drug called "Third Eye" which had supernatural qualities. Additional questions that you ask during crew creation involve selecting Factions within the city who are either enemies or allies of the crew. In making these decisions, we determined that the Crew Ally was a deal broker who had put them in touch with a gang of ex-cops called the Grey Cloaks, and the Grey Cloaks are the ones who provided the initial supply of the Third Eye. Additionally, it was determined that the Spirit Wardens (basically the magic police) would be on the lookout for anyone involved in distributing or manufacturing such a substance, so the crew took a negative standing with them. One of the players made a Leech, a kind of alchemist/artificer type character, and his goal was to learn how to produce more of the Third Eye. This led the players to select "Workshop" as one of their starting Lair Upgrades. For that upgrade, we needed to select another negative faction, so we decided he stole a bunch of equipment from the Sparkwrights (a guild of engineers with a lot of influence). Then the players decided to select the district of Nightmarket for their "hunting grounds" which is where they'd do business. In looking at the entry in the book about Nightmarket, it's the city's hub of commerce, with a large rail station where goods are imported and exported to the rest of the world. It's also an area that is seeing an injection of money....so it's a kind of gentrified or new money type area. As a result, some gangs have expanded into the area to capitalize on that, and they'll likely be obstacles of some sort for our crew. So our starting situation in this game is pretty well defined. We have  a crew of dealers who is hoping to be able to make more of their fine product, and to rise up in an area that is kind of "frontier territory" for the gangs. They have some influential institutions against them. A few things kind of immediately jumped out at me, especially in relation to my D&D campaign. Those were:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What is Third Eye? Who created it? Why does it do what it does?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Who wanted to get it into the hands of the PC crew? Why?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Who assembled this crew for this purpose?</li> </ul>These questions jumped out at me, but I fought the urge to craft that backstory for the players to find out. Instead, I just left all those questions unanswered, and I didn't even bring them up to the players. If the players never really thought of them, then maybe the answers weren't important. But if they did, then maybe we'd examine them through play. So for Blades, I really had no notes at the start of play, or if I did, then it was ones that the players and I crafted as a group. In an ongoing way from week to week, I'd just track progress of items and goals (usually in the form of Clocks) and almost always something would present itself as a logical or likely next step for the crew (usually more than one thing) so we would have a good idea of what our next session would be. Sometimes they'd change their mind, but they were always driving that. Any notes I had might be a little list of possible obstacles they could face depending on the score they had in mind. I know that's a really long post, and I didn't get into the mechanics of it too much, but my input as a GM is far heavier with D&D. That's by design. Games like D&D empower the GM to take a strong hand in guiding the game, even when using an open world or sandbox approach. Games like Blades and those that inspired it, actively avoid that by limiting the GM's ability to steer things, and by giving establishing formalized processes that promote player driven play. It's not so much about "playstyle" I don't think. Sure, most games could be taken and played in a way that's contrary to its intent, and if everyone involved enjoys the result, okay great. But most games are designed a specific way, and it's for a reason.</blockquote>

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