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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8253788" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Yeah, I expect that's the case, too....or close to it. Yeah, I agree with all of this. I think this is all happening, or at least potentially happening, as we play. It will vary of course, as many examples in this thread have shown. Would you say that the purpose of the GM's notes in this kind of game is to offer something for which the GM/players to interact with in order to facilitate your A through C?I can't really say how your game goes, but I imagine it is similar to mine in this regard. I feel that my 5E D&D game allows much more player freedom than the default 5E expectations, and most other similar games. This is not always 100% true at all times.....in my campaign I've incorporated some published materials, and they do constrain this somewhat. But overall and in general, I think that my approach to 5E grants them a lot more ability to determine how play will go. But even then, it's largely shaped by my input. Not entirely of course....but a significant portion such that I would say it's still the majority.Sure. There's also influence in the other direction. The players make decisions that are influenced by the GM. It's a loop, for sure, and the GM's influence on that loop is significant. 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 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). Does it undersell the importance of the players? I don't know. I get what you're saying, but it talks about the players role as "discovering" so that's in there. I feel like maybe it undersells the fictional world, since that's what's being discovered and that's what's actually in the GM's notes. But that then brings us to the original question, what are the GM's notes for. If you wanted to say "To help construct a fictional world in a collaborative manner with the players, where we are free to discover things about the world and the characters through play" then I think that's a more complete picture.</blockquote>

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