Quote from: Doctor Jest;419677I used to do a lot of prep. Nowadays I don't. I'm the opposite of grimjesta in this regards: find my best games are off the cuff, rolling with the surprises the players throw my way.

Same here. I like games where everyone is surprised by the outcome, including me as the GM.

I'm not able to run high-prep games (like D&D or GURPS) off-the-cuff like that, however. If I'm gonna run a D&D game, I want to be well-prepared.

Some people can do it, I know, but I am not one of them.

Quote from: Cole;419681To me, a map says "you can go ANYWHERE on the map - and you can go off it!"

Of course I am not saying maps are always the beginning of railroad tracks, after all tons of people sandbox with maps just fine. When I see a map, my mind creates a mental checklist of things that need to be worked through, encounters on a string if you want, instead of organic gameplay where my stories happen naturally.

Quote from: DominikSchwager;419959Of course I am not saying maps are always the beginning of railroad tracks, after all tons of people sandbox with maps just fine. When I see a map, my mind creates a mental checklist of things that need to be worked through, encounters on a string if you want, instead of organic gameplay where my stories happen naturally.

That's a weird brain you've got there...

RPGPundit

Quote from: DominikSchwager;419959Of course I am not saying maps are always the beginning of railroad tracks, after all tons of people sandbox with maps just fine. When I see a map, my mind creates a mental checklist of things that need to be worked through, encounters on a string if you want, instead of organic gameplay where my stories happen naturally.

I don't at all doubt you, it's just that I have almost the opposite experience.

Quote from: Cole;420400I don't at all doubt you, it's just that I have almost the opposite experience.

Yes, exactly, a map fills my brain with ideas about wide-open possibilities.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;420554Yes, exactly, a map fills my brain with ideas about wide-open possibilities.

RPGPundit

Have you seen this site?

Strange Maps

Quote from: Cole;420576Have you seen this site?

Strange Maps

Very interesting stuff!

The "oh God you didn't" moments. Moments of plot or player manipulation of plot that make things awesome.

My experiences regarding maps and their use in RPGs are similar to Cole's and the Pundit's. I think that, for choices to exist in a role playing game, some of them should be at first presented to the players, in the sense that, if you have a completely open environment, then it actually plays AGAINST its sandbox nature in that many players will not know what to do or that choices even exist, to begin with.

The map is the most direct visual answer to this concern. It provides a support, in the form of locations, areas, cardinal points, towns and geographic features, which the players might refer to and say "alright. Now we decide which way we want to go". If the map was a blank space to begin with, there would be no available choice to the players: no matter what direction they choose to take, it would just take them to yet some more blank space.

I've mainly used maps for city type environments in sandbox type games.  Less so for wilderness, underground, etc ... areas.

I was never really into the megadungeon in the middle of nowhere thing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;420554Yes, exactly, a map fills my brain with ideas about wide-open possibilities.

RPGPundit

Same here. One of the things that attracted me to the Hellfrost setting is the large and extremely detailed map of the world. The map alone gave me endless ideas.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;419488Grimjesta is right that Call of Cthulhu requires detailed prep to be fully satisfying.

I run a lot of mystery/investigation games - a lot. And most of them are as heavily prepared as a typical CoC game. However, it is easier to prep what you might call more obviously pulpy detective games, with a lighter hand. In these sorts of games, which tend to feature more action than in a typical CoC game, you can make the clues more straightforward and then it's not so much the case of who did it but, "How do we get the bastartds?"

Lately I've become a bit burned out on deep mysteries. As I don't run fantasy games anymore, Atomic Highway has been a godsend. Put together a simple sandbox with minimal detail and make it up as you go along, riffing off the players.

I've enjoyed it so much that I've actually started running a modern day cop show game using Atomic Highway's V6 mechanics (with just a few changes). So yes, I'm running a mystery game again!

I still think that prep is fun - up to a point (I dislike statting up the opposition) - but lately I've really enjoyed the light prep approach.

You know, having been running CoC for about a quarter of a century now, I really don't need much prep any more.

The main simple pleasure of GMing is spending hours prepping maps and so on, fooling yourself about the ways that the party would "probably" make their way through the dungeon/wilderness/hideous gauntlet of traps and then they do something totally wayward that means you have to throw 50% of your idea out of the window.  It's the contrast between obsessiveness and control when prepping and then having a vastly reduced amount of "control" of structure (if any) in play.

Quote from: AndrewSFTSN;421875The main simple pleasure of GMing is pending hours prepping maps and so on, fooling yourself about the ways that the party would "probably" make their way through the dungeon/wilderness/hideous gauntlet of traps and then do something totally wayward that means you have to throw 50% of your idea out of the window.  It's the contrast between obsessiveness and control when prepping and then having a vastly reduced amount of "control" of structure (if any) in play.

That's a canny observation. When I am GMing one of the biggest rewards is getting to be surprised - it's really exciting when you have created an element and the players do something very different with it than you might have imagined.

Quote from: Cole;421886That's a canny observation. When I am GMing one of the biggest rewards is getting to be surprised - it's really exciting when you have created an element and the players do something very different with it than you might have imagined.

It took me a while to realise this, and I'd probably have listed it among the things I dislike most about gaming when I first started out.