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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7322716" data-attributes="member: 29398">And this is what I just don't get: from the player side, what's the difference?  The players/PCs are obtaining access to new information; why does it matter in the slightest on the player side what its metagame source might be?Either way, the DM is going to narrate the hopefully-informative results of whatever the PCs have tried to divinate.  Whether from notes or from top-of-mind that narration in theory should be and sound the same, though IME stuff made up on the fly can involve a lot more humming and hawing on the DM's part if she's caught off guard.Where the notes come in useful is from the DM side.  You've done the work ahead of time thus making it much easier to be consistent and clear with your narrations, and thus during the actual play you can focus on the here and now - action resolution, rules questions, playing NPCs and monsters, stuff like that.  This is where canned adventure modules come in handy - much of the pre-work is often also done for you.  And I'm all about the lazy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Ideally, though unfortunately wa-a-ay less often than I'd like, by the time I get behind the screen I've got things to the point where I can sit back and enjoy the entertainment.=========Thinking about it another way: I'm starting to realize you see your role in your game as much more of an actual participant - a player - than I do.  You want to share in the unexpected plot twists, and be surprised at how the story goes.  You don't want any spoilers, as it were; and you want your own game world to organically unfold around you just as if you were a player.Conversely I'm not there to play in my own game (other than via NPCs), I'm there to provide a game* for my players to play in; and if I want to be a player I need to find another game under a different DM in order to do so.  In my own game I already know all the spoilers, as such is my place and my job, and I know how the story might go at least for the time being.  I don't know how it *will* go - the PCs can certainly surprise me with what they do, and when that happens I have to react accordingly.  But that reaction is as a neutral arbiter, not as a fellow player.* - 'provide a game' includes pre-designing the world (maps, history, cultures), pre-designing and tweaking the rules (mostly homebrew these days) and then providing access to them, coming up with a possible storyline or three, and usually hosting.Lan-"I can have cake, or I can eat cake, but I can't do both"-efan</blockquote>

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