Quote from: RPGPundit;735793By "improv" I mean running a session with zero planning beforehand, going totally off the cuff?

Do you do this most of the time? Half the time? Regularly? Very rarely? Or never at all?

A significant, and notable amount. Generally I've got a brief "outline" of ideas, and follow that as much as players will let me. Mostly though, it ends up following the PC's doing cool stuff, thus lots of Improv.

It varies. I do a LOT of prep, though, but most of it is sandbox in nature. Further, I hardly ever approach a session without some drawings and such.

99.9% improv, except for convention games ,then it's probably 95% improv since I might show up with characters and a map or two for the very initial setup I described for the game.

I also steal ideas from the players as they brainstorm, they are many minds to my one.

One thing I fund very useful when I was runnign Vampire were my Jyhad cards.
When the PCs got to a new town I woudl randomly pull 1/2 a dozen jyhad cards and that made the adventure.

I reckon I could use magic cards to the same effect and since each set has a great theme and setting I could make some effort to read it and use that as the setting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;735793By "improv" I mean running a session with zero planning beforehand, going totally off the cuff?

Do you do this most of the time? Half the time? Regularly? Very rarely? Or never at all?

I love zero-prep play, so long as the game supports it.

For the first session, i will prep absolutely nothing. My players won't even have chosen classes or made characters, we all do that at the table and as we do, I'll ask them questions about their characters and their histories and scribble notes about the answers. I'll also ask them questions about the world and the types of adventures they have and use the answers.

Once chargen is done, I'll start the game off in a conflict, dangerous situation, or tense situation, ask the players what they do, and hit the ground running.

I rarely even used pre-created monsters or monsters from the system. I'll just make them up on the spot, and treat them like a dangerous part of the situation that does dangerous stuff which stops being dangerous after it's been hit a few times.

For longer campaign play, I'll browse over my notes for a few minutes to refresh my memory, and either pick up where we left off, or do a little timeskip to another dangerous situation.

Aside from the rules, character sheets, and dice the only other resource I'll have handy is a big list of names for places and npcs for whatever gets created during play.

On a few occasions, when I know something is going to feature in the next session, I might write a few custom rules for that particular situation. Otherwise, Zero Prep all the time, be constantly suprised by the players and react to them.

Quote from: Adric;736002I love zero-prep play, so long as the game supports it.

For the first session, i will prep absolutely nothing. My players won't even have chosen classes or made characters, we all do that at the table and as we do, I'll ask them questions about their characters and their histories and scribble notes about the answers. I'll also ask them questions about the world and the types of adventures they have and use the answers.

Once chargen is done, I'll start the game off in a conflict, dangerous situation, or tense situation, ask the players what they do, and hit the ground running.

I rarely even used pre-created monsters or monsters from the system. I'll just make them up on the spot, and treat them like a dangerous part of the situation that does dangerous stuff which stops being dangerous after it's been hit a few times.

For longer campaign play, I'll browse over my notes for a few minutes to refresh my memory, and either pick up where we left off, or do a little timeskip to another dangerous situation.

Aside from the rules, character sheets, and dice the only other resource I'll have handy is a big list of names for places and npcs for whatever gets created during play.

On a few occasions, when I know something is going to feature in the next session, I might write a few custom rules for that particular situation. Otherwise, Zero Prep all the time, be constantly suprised by the players and react to them.

Nice.

Its funny how people interpret no prep. I take it much as you do. I literally have nothing when I start apart from a head full of pop culture, books, myths and stuff I saw once I thought was cool.
When some people say I have the world drawn the npcs created and a map of the dungeon but apart from that its all improv I realise just how different we all are as a species.

Kevin, SGG content director and my GM from the get-go, does this almost all of the time.

Are we play-testing this week? No? Then it's either rolling up a setting via the generator or he just goes "I got it," and we go.

This took him -years- of GM'ing, but he can whip up a scenario and a time and place. We roll up the party and it is off for the adventure. ZERO preparation.

When I am about to start a campaign, I do lots of prep: NPCs with their goals and plans, places, gathering pictures and drawings (usually in a Pinterest board), making up a master document of the rules so I don't have to lug around rules books, I do as much as I can. These days it's less than I would like, but still.

Once the campaign has started, I do a 25 minutes stretch of prep every single day of the week. As I usually run two games at once, it means I do prep for each game every other day. If time allows I do more, but with the baby girl 25 minutes a day it's as much as I can squeeze. But usually is enough, and you wold be surprised of how much you can do with a little bit a day. If one of the games oges into hiatus, I will prep 25 minutes a day every day, and you can get massive amounts of quality prep then.

I am perfectly able to run a game completely off-the-cuff, but I find my game to be much better when I can prep a lot.

Generally, yes. Charts and tables are our friend. I flesh them out in play. No need to get wordy about it. One of the great virtues of the dice is that they do not come with boxed text.

When I had intelligent and engaged players, strong planning was needed. Nowadays they're either a bit dumb or disengaged, so planning is neither necessary nor desirable. They just want to show up, kill things and take their stuff. Random shit will work admirably for that.

Now before a campaign starts up I usually at least fix in my mind or on paper some basics of the locale. Some basic history.

One of my players usually wants me to have prepped a "common knowledge" rundown before play. The things the PCs would know. (which might or might not be true of course.)

Once past that though I tend to let things develop on the fly.

Our other sometimes DM though was all prep. He spends a good portion of the week prepping maps in I think Maptool. Good with improving character reactions. Totally cannot improve encounters and adventures on the fly.

Quote from: RPGPundit;735793By "improv" I mean running a session with zero planning beforehand, going totally off the cuff?

Do you do this most of the time? Half the time? Regularly? Very rarely? Or never at all?

Very very rarely. One shots is the only time I ever do that, four in the last decade that I remember, those were actual other options the players never took in currently running campaigns.

I had too many Bad Dms touching me with "improv" sessions that were shit to ever think it is a viable option.

I do a huge amount of prep(80+ hours) before the campaign starts and then continue with 1-3 hours of prep per game session as the campaign continues along.

All the time.  I prep a lot but sometimes there isn't time or your aren't feeling inspired or your players do something you weren't expecting.  It is one of the main skills you gain as you gather more experience as a GM. In a way it is the only way I feel like you are actually playing a game as the GM. The main thing is making it so your players can't tell where the prepped information stops and the improv begins.

Quote from: RPGPundit;735793By "improv" I mean running a session with zero planning beforehand, going totally off the cuff?

Do you do this most of the time? Half the time? Regularly? Very rarely? Or never at all?

Very rarely, while I don't have a script, I will try to make some sort of outline.

These days, my energy levels on D&D night vary greatly. It's unfair to the rest of my group if we have a dud session because I had a crazy week at work, my son had a meltdown as soccer, my daughter spilled nail polish on the carpet, and I had to host a dinner party the night before. And frankly, I'm tired of doing all the heavy lifting on game night. So with only a monthly session these days, I'm far more likely to hit a creative and energy high note at some point in the four weeks between sessions and put something together, than I am to be especially inspired on game night.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736116I had too many Bad Dms touching me with "improv" sessions that were shit to ever think it is a viable option.

Bad GMs = Bad GMs, everything after that is kind of irrelevant.  That said, I'm sure I have similar issues in other areas (railroady GMs being one)  

Quote from: Sommerjon;736116I do a huge amount of prep(80+ hours) before the campaign starts and then continue with 1-3 hours of prep per game session as the campaign continues along.

I'd stop gaming if I had to prep that much, between my job, family, and kids, it wouldn't even be a choice, I simply wouldn't have the time.  Luckily, forgetting my prepped stuff for a couple convention games (pre-kids) convinced me it was a lot of work for very little gain.