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By "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?

Once I get the campaign world devised, basically all the time. Planning ahead is pretty much useless, as the stuff I come up with on the fly is almost always better than anything I thought up beforehand.

Pretty much all the time, but I think I could prep a little more. I'm not thinking of much, just a few notes would do the trick.

All the time.

I might think through what might happen if the PCs take the most obvious route whilst cycling home from work on in the shower but very unlikely to write it down and chances are they will take previously unconsidered option 5.

If I am running for a Con I will prep all teh PCs with their skills and have a plot in mind, Con games benefit from more structure.

If I was starting off a new campaign I would design the setting framework, much like the pocket settings I posted on the design forum, I will do more of those.

As I have noted before I have even designed the genre, game system and rules at the table through a conversation with the players. Then as they make up PCs using the system we just created I think of a suitable adventure. These things aren't just one offs either they can run for months once they kick off is the players are enjoying it.

Most of the time I do minimal, sketchy prep, or no prep at all.

Sounds like my answer is pretty much on par with the others. I have to do more prep to start a campaign, but other than having a few maps and such most of my sessions are done more "on the fly." I may have a general plot arc in mind, but often the game doesn't follow it very closely. It all comes down to player actions.

Depends greatly on what the group wants to do. If they are wanting to explore a module or specific plots then I improv when they do something that calls for it. Or improv the plot they have initiated. Which is often.

Example: One of the players wants to try and overthrow the local baron. So I work out who this person is, motives, wheres the baron lives, possible cronies they may meet there etc. And then improv based on what the group does thereafter.

Other times I just have a base outline of plot hooks and see where the players go or not.

Example: Rumours of Orcs in the swamp. Increase in thefts locally, strange lights reported at a mountain, Merchant is hiring adventurers for a caravan trip.

But then I might be in the mood for total freeform and just react to what they are doing.

Example: Much like the first example. But with no pre-planning.

And sometimes I set up some events that will happen no matter if the players participate or not. If they dont then its just local news that might or might not impact them later. Thus the world around the characters is more alive.

Example: Orcs are setting up a base in the swamp. They dont have any interest in the local town the PCs base from. They are prepping to battle another tribe of Orcs who have been occasionally raiding locally. Assuming the PCs dont wipe out one or both groups, they might later come across a deserted and sacked Orc village in the hills.

85%  Even running a set adventure like B2 is mostly improv.

I am surprised about the answers.
I never run a session unprepared.

That's not to say that my sessions are pre-planned, quite the contrary. A given session may in fact be improvised if players "deviate" from the material that I have prepared, but in that case I have at least something to fall back on, and extrapolate from.

In a long campaign the prep is considerably less than with one-shots, since much of the setting is already defined and npcs still follow their relative agendas.
But even then, I don't run anything without further prep.

More often than I'd like. I prefer planning properly, but I often resort to a quick read through, hastily scrawled notes or just running the whole thing on the fly.

I generally spend all my prep time at once, before the campaign starts. I maintain - update NPCs, maps, and notes - usually during or right after sessions, while things are fresh in my mind. I do virtually no prep otherwise.

GMing, or the art of playing the Rest of the World, is almost always 50% or more improv.  I don't care how much prep you do or where the players are.  Even in the most controlled of circumstances (our friendly dungeon), we try to meld the unexpected actions of the players with logical seeming responses from the Rest of the World on the fly.

I enjoy have a lot of notes and stuff pre-set; I believe that the more preset information you have, the more you have to riff off of, and the more consistent and connected the game seems.  Every GM is a builder, the better the tools, the better the created structure.

These days I get a decent amount of prep done, though no where what I'd like.  I like writing all my own adventures and how they fit in with each other, I have a large game wiki that I add to.  And the more social interactions and political the game, the better one's note taking should be, and updating.

Quote from: flyingmice;735819I generally spend all my prep time at once, before the campaign starts. I maintain - update NPCs, maps, and notes - usually during or right after sessions, while things are fresh in my mind. I do virtually no prep otherwise.

that counts as more prep than many.

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

Zero planning? I ran a session with just a blank dungeon map, a vague idea that it was the haunt of evil sorcerors and just made the entire thing up to see if I could do it.

Mostly I rely on my Bag of Stuff, my experience and knowledge of genre tropes, game mechanics, and other stuff accumulated over 30 years of refereeing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;735793Do you do this most of the time? Half the time? Regularly? Very rarely? Or never at all?

I would say I have a lot of high level detail prepare but make up the low level stuff on the fly.

Right now I am running my own megadungeon. I have a high level overview of what each area has. Then use random generators to make up the content, then try to make sense of what been rolled. Discarding and adding what needed to make it consistent with my vision.

All the details of what's happening at the table are all improv for me. That said, as much as I like to improv details, I plan a lot for the big picture. But hear me well here: those are really about motivations of main characters, organizations, what type of ressources they do have access to ...
I'd say I can do that in about half an hour before the game.

I'm definitly planning not for a specific story (that's what the game is about), but for a very rich and coherent world that can sustain well my players breaking parts of it. And that needs planning.

I improv well over half the sessions I GM. I often feel that tons of prep is tedious.

Depends on which group and what game. So to answer this I will cover my groups and the last 3 games they played.


Mon Group (Now defunct)  Only ran one game

Ran Amber. So mostly zero prep beyond the initial campaign structure and thinking about what may happen and getting my ducks in a row mentally.


Wed Group

Current game simple Home brew system - Exploring a new continent as colonist. Since it is basically a hex crawl I usually make Zero prep and zero plans and just make it up as I go. I have a theme in mind and that's it. I have a bestiary that I can print off encounters as needed. At some point I will stat out the natives. Seldom even think about it outside game.

Previous Game - 3.5 Home brew campaign - Ass tons of prep. Got to be more and more and the reason I quit running instead of pushing on when some players left. Group needed to be lead along, Not quite a railroad but they only followed a path laid out, no Path meant they stood around and did nothing. Some people on here may hate railroads but sometimes its the only way to get people somewhere.

Before that Gamma world 4th edition - Decent amount of prep but not to bad as most creatures were used straight out of the book. So less than 3.5 but not by a huge amount. was more fun to do though/ easier more wild an crazy with mutations and such.


Sunday group

Current game 7th Sea hack used in a Firefly with a dash of BAB-5 (For psionics). Little prep. More thinking than most my other games. Players have a job they take on and I worry about what the opposition can do and that's it. Maybe write up an NPC every few months, but mostly don't need to bother.

Previous game - Home brew simple system used above on wed. - Another sand box game with little prep started in a small township at a river/road cross roads so had lots of potential for plots I just never threw any out letting the players wander and explore as the wanted. So more thought than others not much prep.

3.5 game - same issues as above with a on of prep and the whole campaign was presented as "this is a railroad. It will be more a roller coaster ride with stops you can get off and wander but eventually we get back on the train. " Players agreed and probably the best campaign I have ever run.


So Prep really depends on Game system and what it needs. I do a ton of thinking about situations and what could happen and spend time getting in the bad guys heads and such. Figuring out what might happen lets me be ready for what does even if it is a little different.  I usually use my prep as a fall back since what ever I come up with in game is almost always better and I have learned to trust my instincts and go with the impulses because I seem to always be able to figure out and fill in gaps later if I need to.

Just my thoughts!

If it's something I'm super familiar with (like B2), I just go with it.  Roll up your dudes, and let's start playing.

However, more often than not, even if it's an adventure I'm somewhat familar with (like ToEE) I will read through it a few times, make notes, add things, that sort of stuff.

Obviously adventures I write myself would be considered prep time since I wrote them myself.

Being older, with friends who are older and with kids, we have to plan our gaming sessions well in advance.  So until that day comes, I often send emails about PC histories, what's happened, etc.  And I'll review things again to make sure everything is in order.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;735832If it's something I'm super familiar with (like B2), I just go with it.  Roll up your dudes, and let's start playing.

However, more often than not, even if it's an adventure I'm somewhat familar with (like ToEE) I will read through it a few times, make notes, add things, that sort of stuff.

Obviously adventures I write myself would be considered prep time since I wrote them myself.

Being older, with friends who are older and with kids, we have to plan our gaming sessions well in advance.  So until that day comes, I often send emails about PC histories, what's happened, etc.  And I'll review things again to make sure everything is in order.

as an older gamer (I friggin' hate that term) my sessions are no longer 1 or 2 a week.  Family and work intrude.  
So there was a while that I was getting more available time for prep.  But now, adding in my online gaming means I have to prep as much as I ever did when I was younger.

I usually have an idea and spin off that during a session so mostly improv. Occassionally I write something down but with my groups in the past improv was the best solution.

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?

With zero planning whatsoever? That is rare for me. I'll at least take 15 minutes to whip up something in bullet points on a sheet of paper before running the game.

More often, what I will do is prep the world, prep the dungeon, the wilderness area, the murder scene and what actually happened before the PCs showed up, whatever else, and running the game itself, I will just role play the world as it lives and breathes, responding to the characters' actions as they affect the world through their exploration, investigations, role playing interactions, what-have-you.

This will sooner rather than later lead to moments, even huge sections of game play, that will be improvised, extrapolated on what I know of the world and how I role play it. It's based in my notes and my vision of the world and its attributes, but sometimes the party will just go into uncharted territories, and that's part of the game, for me. Between game sessions I might rationalize whatever I came up with while role playing the world during the game, prep some more in order to keep things consistent, and the world grows in detail and complexity from that process, as it is played and interacted with.

I run games like I make hobo stew. I get a bunch of ingredients within arm's reach, and then I add them to the stew as taste dictates. I will prep NPCs, settings, locations, and creatures beforehand with their own attached directions and motivations - then once the Players sit down and choose a direction, I can drop these prepped items in the mix depending on their actions to taste.

Completely improvisational and off the cuff? I can do that too, I even keep some simple games in the car with me, I just do not do it as often.

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

I never start running a game-night without some preparation.

I usually end up going totally off the cuff about ten minutes in, when the players go in a completely different direction from what I anticipated.

I can start with nothing... but given the choice I'd always rather have a chance to put down some notes regarding some notable persons of power, sources of friction, place a few overt threats... make up a few random tables suitable for the area.
I've long since stopped feeling bad because I didn't have the names and lineage of every farmer in every village mapped out.

I always prep. My preferred method is 15 minutes of brainstorm, 1 hour of daydreaming and 15 minutes of game mechanic prep to make sure I have the necessary "game stuff" at my fingertips.

For convention games, I will put in hours of prep because I have to create all the characters and make sure the scenario has a beginning, middle and end in the 4 hour time slot.

My prep is mostly imagining the base concept for the scenario, imagining the actions of the opposition and imagining what options the PCs may take. That all gives me lots to use when I improv, recast, remold whatever needs to happen at the table.

Plus, I enjoy prep. Except for chargen. That can be a chore so I tend to create stables of pregens and use them over and over. My WFRP pregens are nearly 20 years old now.

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?

Depends on the game. I used to a high prep GM but I have worked my way down to mostly improv, especially where I have metagame mechanics for enhanced player to GM communication.

I also tend to prep more for shorter games than longer ones.

Zero prep?  Almost never.  15 minutes or so prep?  All the time.

At the minimum, I've found that a few minutes of thinking about the consequences of the last session, and how the game world is going to respond to them can help keep the world "alive".

Quote from: Black Vulmea;735865I never start running a game-night without some preparation.

I usually end up going totally off the cuff about ten minutes in, when the players go in a completely different direction from what I anticipated.

I've just stopped trying to anticipate what players are going to do :)

I'm surprised how many people quote 15 minutes as a enough time to prep a game. I can't even have breakfast in 15 minutes. Coming up with a bunch guys, interesting motives for what they do, schemes for them to pursue that almost makes sense is a complicated business, and that is before you even start putting down stats to paper. You guys are way too efficient!

I'm a prepper. It can easily spend 1 - 2 hours per session. During play I will improvise as required, but I like to have a solid foundation to work from.  I like the luxury of being able to discard the first idea that comes to me mind and keep digging still I find something that I'm really happy with. Likewise I hate that feeling walking away from a game knowing that while it was okay, but that I missed a trick and that there was a really much interesting twist I could have introduced if only I had thought about it.

I have tried a few zero-prep games, the kind you are meant not to prepare in advance but I did really enjoy running them. They feel a little shallow to me.

Usually, I have a number of NPCs/etc. left over from the previous session.  That helps with the prep time.

1-2 hours prep for a five hour session. That includes brushing up on content from books (spells, monsters, items), drawings maps, musing about schemes and plots, and having a roster of potential foes written up. Once the game gets going, two-thirds of the stuff out of my mouth is improv. But I like to have some hardcopy content, like the monsters and named NPCs, on hand to work with as soon as an encounter kicks off.

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.

I prep according to the dictates of the party. I usually base it on things the party was endeavoring to do the previous week with ideas on tossing curveballs that are interesting into those stated goals that could prove to be lucrative (or not).

I'm notorious for littering my game with red-herrings that could lead to other entirely different sub-plots that even I myself have no idea about. I also introduce new NPC organically (i.e. spur of the moment as needed - with backgrounds and motivations that induce adventure tangents) that tends to shake things up. I love turning old tropes upside-down and inside out.

so I do a *lot* of Improv, though most players would never know it. I don't even consider it improv as much as I just consider it "gaming". To me, the game is like playing cards - where I can randomly pull a card from the deck and toss it on the table, which can shift the entire direction of things on the time.

I *LOVE* to test the moral convictions of my players - and I reward players for sticking to their guns as well as doing things for the right reasons despite their convictions as long as they're being honest with their characters about it.

I never "not prep" - but there is never a game-session where I'm not improving a lot. I'd almost say it's 25% prep 75% improv.

I've been doing this for too long - and its one of the enjoyments I get from the game primarily as a GM.

In terms of setting up a campaign: TONS of prep. I want to know the world, its big conflicts, why those conflicts exist, its mysteries, why those mysteries exist, it's secrets, etc. before we start playing. My last Pathfinder campaign which ran weekly for three-years - had over 32-pages of recurring NPC's in what I call short-hand stat-blocs. When I wrote out their stat-blocs for the main NPC's I gave myself carpal tunnel. My WoD games are similar - I have tons of secrets that I purposely work up for the players to find and indulge them with if they can figure it all out.

I see a lot of references to differfent length games; and this is one of those places where a differentiation is in order.

Doing a new, or short-term or one shot on the fly is a completely different animal than when keeping track of session 72 of a serious, in depth game with some 100+ NPCs used and multiple plotlines running through it.  Any middling GM can toss together the first, and make it look good.  

However, most GMs aren't good enough to keep a group interested more than 10-15 sessions.  And this is one of those places that a lot of the prep is just connecting all the dots and putting everthing in place and thinking out loud what some logical outcomes are of actions that the PCs and the game world might take.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736167Doing a new, or short-term or one shot on the fly is a completely different animal than when keeping track of session 72 of a serious, in depth game with some 100+ NPCs used and multiple plotlines running through it....

As a mostly non-prepper I still keep notes of what I did last session and I certainly re-use NPCs and the like that were met (and survived).  I don't think of that as prep because it's done in-game as I go.

Quote from: Brander;736162Bad 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)   :)

That RPGsite speak.
If I said it's not very hard to know when something was prepped compared to something "improv" people here would get all prune faced.
If it's a quick spur of the moment one shot, I have no issues with it.
If it's a "hey I wanna run for 4-9 sessions of X" and midway through the first session it's plain to see it's all "improv" I have issues.
If it's a long campaign and "improv" starts early(session 3 or so) I leave.

Quote from: Brander;736162I'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.

I don't know, between my job, family, and kids(4) I still have plenty of time for prepping that much.  
ymmv

Quote from: tenbones;736166so I do a *lot* of Improv, though most players would never know it. I don't even consider it improv as much as I just consider it "gaming".

I think most don't really care.

Quote from: tenbones;736166In terms of setting up a campaign: TONS of prep. I want to know the world, its big conflicts, why those conflicts exist, its mysteries, why those mysteries exist, it's secrets, etc. before we start playing. My last Pathfinder campaign which ran weekly for three-years - had over 32-pages of recurring NPC's in what I call short-hand stat-blocs. When I wrote out their stat-blocs for the main NPC's I gave myself carpal tunnel. My WoD games are similar - I have tons of secrets that I purposely work up for the players to find and indulge them with if they can figure it all out.

Same here.
If you don't know the plo...er woops that p word is bad, sorry 'schemes'  of the various factions/persons/etc. and all of those various concepts and ideas  I don't feel comfortable letting the players wonder around.
I feel it's cheating the players.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736167I see a lot of references to different length games; and this is one of those places where a differentiation is in order.

Doing a new, or short-term or one shot on the fly is a completely different animal than when keeping track of session 72 of a serious, in depth game with some 100+ NPCs used and multiple plotlines running through it.  Any middling GM can toss together the first, and make it look good.  

However, most GMs aren't good enough to keep a group interested more than 10-15 sessions.  And this is one of those places that a lot of the prep is just connecting all the dots and putting everthing in place and thinking out loud what some logical outcomes are of actions that the PCs and the game world might take.

True.  Hopefully that is why people have been distinguishing between the lengths.

I think there is some confusion here with people who think Improv means that NPCs have no background or that there are no world in motion stuff going on in the background or that there is no foreshadowing or secret stuff.

An improvised game can have different factions, NPCs with their own agendas, foreshadowing (whereby a thing you see sight of in week 4 turns out to be part of the Big Bad's major plot in week 12).

Take my current game. Set in the galaxy the PCs can go anywhere so its totally sandbox. Typically they check a list of perps round a certain bounty value. I give then between 3 and 6 options they pick one and travel off to the appropraite planet. Then they chase that guy down. Then they check other local bounties and try to complete a few more before heading somewhere else.

Now when I name those perps and I just pick the names from the air I also ascribe them, motivation, character, plot arcs. This guy is a ruthless killer but sloppy his men work for him out of fear, this one is involved in politics and has links to a web or corruption and organised crime, this one is a front for a revolutionary group that has genuinely valid issues with the corrupt corporation that owns this mining world.... etc
All of that happens when you write down the name , the crime and the bounty on the List. But the List just looks like

Denver Khan
Terrorist Activities, Murder, Arson
Bounty: 500K Cr
Location: Dansun System - Dansun 5 aka Donnersworld

etc

Now if they pick this guy then we do some condensed role play as they travel and do some research. For the research I give them a pottted history of the sector it's racial make up, politics, then I focus on the planet they are heading towards and I explain the way the Tritech Corproation effectively owns the place etc etc .
They might want more data, they might want less. I answer every and all questions. I give them names, probably the only stuff I write down in my book, I give them GDP numbers, population density records, etc etc whatever they want. In the background whist my mouth spouts off details of armoured landtrains that deliver minerals cross country between isolated mining colonies back to the 2 main space ports on separate continents, my brian is constructing the back story, the major NPCs the fact that Khan and his movement , The Ark, have a set of pretty justifiable concerns, there is indentured servitude, there are huge limits on personal freedoms, the corporation's elite do use the planet like a huge playground and enforce their will through arrogant armed thugs.
When they arrive on planet, say 30 minutes into the session I have a pretty workable scenario they have made a bunch of plans about how they will track and capture this guy, what extra equipment they might need etc .... and we start getting to the nitty gritty of it.

Now that is an improvised game. The party might capture Khan they might kill him they might get killed by him. This story arc might run for 2 sessions, 5 sessions, it could become a huge ongoing thread where the PCs change from bounty hunters to freedom figthers even going after Tritech's intergalatic concerns or tring to infiltrate the company and bring it down.

In short there is nothing you do when you improv a session that you don't do when you plan it in advance but there is little you don't do either short of writing it all down last week. Yes you need to be familiar enough with the rules to know what stats a bunch of bandits, goblins, professional Assassins will have off the top of your head, and it helps to be able to generate unique NPCs on the fly. Aside from that its the same stuff everyone does.
There are some tricks that make improv really hard to spot. One of these is Foreshadowing as I said. When you foreshadow you mention a small detail, a newpaper headline , what is showing on a TV, maybe an overheard coversation in a tavern whatever, and you bring that back to make it a major plot point down the line. Done well this makes it look like there is a vast layer of complex prep underlying the world. Think about the first 6 seasons of LOST or read Nine Princes in Amber.
Retconning is another tool. I avoid it most often because it smacks of Illusionism but sometimes when the PCs lay out a ridiculously laberynthine plot to explain what's goign on its hard to resist taking chunks of it and retconning it into play. It makes them feel great that they worked out the Big Bad's plan and it can create game gaming opportunities.

Now having said all that sometimes Improv leads you down a cul de sac can you have to cut your losses close out that thread and it is more suited for episodic games than it is for great quests. However for sandbox play improv is ideal.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736167I see a lot of references to differfent length games; and this is one of those places where a differentiation is in order.

Doing a new, or short-term or one shot on the fly is a completely different animal than when keeping track of session 72 of a serious, in depth game with some 100+ NPCs used and multiple plotlines running through it.  Any middling GM can toss together the first, and make it look good.  

However, most GMs aren't good enough to keep a group interested more than 10-15 sessions.  And this is one of those places that a lot of the prep is just connecting all the dots and putting everthing in place and thinking out loud what some logical outcomes are of actions that the PCs and the game world might take.

Are you saying a game is only good if it lasts longer than 15 sessions? That seems like a weird value judgement to make about all games, players, and GMs.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736183(in reference to 80+ hours of prep before a campaign)
I don't know, between my job, family, and kids(4) I still have plenty of time for prepping that much.  
ymmv

This is blowing my mind, I have to know more!

In preparation for a campaign, how many hours a week would you spend preparing to get to the 80 hours?
Is the prep just writing or do you create your own props? Maps? Handouts? Light shows? Costumes? I'm getting images of D&D on ice level production values for that kind of time investment.
How much of your prepped material generally goes unused?

Quote from: Sommerjon;736183...

If it's a "hey I wanna run for 4-9 sessions of X" and midway through the first session it's plain to see it's all "improv" I have issues.
If it's a long campaign and "improv" starts early(session 3 or so) I leave.

Like I said, you are confusing a style of GMing with bad GMing.  Doesn't matter if it's RPGsite speak or not, it's still true.  Sorry you haven't had a good improv GM to game with (you might have already had oneor more and not realized it, good improv looks and feels scripted).  However, if your hangups are causing you not to have fun, it's probably best you do leave a game, no point in torturing yourself if you don't like it.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736183I don't know, between my job, family, and kids(4) I still have plenty of time for prepping that much.  
ymmv

Good for you.  Your job, family, and kids might require less time than mine.  Everyone is different.  You might also play less often than I do, which would give you plenty of time for "...a huge amount of prep(80+ hours) before the campaign starts and then continue with 1-3 hours of prep per game session.."

Quote from: Adric;736238This is blowing my mind, I have to know more!

In preparation for a campaign, how many hours a week would you spend preparing to get to the 80 hours?
Is the prep just writing or do you create your own props? Maps? Handouts? Light shows? Costumes? I'm getting images of D&D on ice level production values for that kind of time investment.
How much of your prepped material generally goes unused?

On average 10 a week for a couple months.  It never ends up that way I usually get done before that, but I always use a 2 month lead time for a new campaign.

If I am gaming at my house, I use FX recordings to help set the stage.  Wind, rain, thunderstorms, dripping water, crowds, spell effects, animal sounds, etc.
Handouts are prettily done up,
Maps made.
Game tiles laid out
Miniatures bought and painted(if needed)
I place every settlement on the main map and detail* them out.
I create 95% of the creatures I use in D&D.  Too many players metagame creatures, so I don't use standard creatures anymore.
And finally timelines.

Hell back in the day I had a tactile box.  A box player would put their hand into to feel various textures(think Dune Movie).  I had quite a collection of real and synthetic skins and other textiles.

* meaning everything I can think of over the course of those two months.  Plots, Schemes, Secret Societies, Plans, etc. etc.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736222...
In short there is nothing you do when you improv a session that you don't do when you plan it in advance but there is little you don't do either short of writing it all down last week. Yes you need to be familiar enough with the rules to know what stats a bunch of bandits, goblins, professional Assassins will have off the top of your head, and it helps to be able to generate unique NPCs on the fly. Aside from that its the same stuff everyone does.

QFT

Improv is just one of the ways to achieve a fun game.  So to with prepping.  Either can work better or worse for different GMs and/or players.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736222Retconning is another tool. I avoid it most often because it smacks of Illusionism but sometimes when the PCs lay out a ridiculously laberynthine plot to explain what's goign on its hard to resist taking chunks of it and retconning it into play. It makes them feel great that they worked out the Big Bad's plan and it can create game gaming opportunities.

I don't avoid it, I consider it one of the best tools in the toolbox.  No matter how smart or witty I think I am, when it comes to ideas, the players usually outnumber me and are thinking in parallel with one another.  It's hard for one mind, no matter how smart or witty, to compete with that.  If one or more of their ideas is better, I steal it.

Quote from: Brander;736240Like I said, you are confusing a style of GMing with bad GMing.  Doesn't matter if it's RPGsite speak or not, it's still true.  Sorry you haven't had a good improv GM to game with (you might have already had one or more and not realized it, good improv looks and feels scripted).  However, if your hangups are causing you not to have fun, it's probably best you do leave a game, no point in torturing yourself if you don't like it.

No it's like I said it's not very hard to spot 'improv'.

Quote from: Brander;736240Good for you.  Your job, family, and kids might require less time than mine.  Everyone is different.  You might also play less often than I do, which would give you plenty of time for "...a huge amount of prep(80+ hours) before the campaign starts and then continue with 1-3 hours of prep per game session.."

Whatever.

No, I have never found it hard to grab a half hour to hour a day prepping for a campaign/game.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736243No it's like I said it's not very hard to spot 'improv'.

And yet you said it was "Bad Dms". To quote:

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

So because Bad DMs couldn't do it well, no DM can...  Sorry, that doesn't compute.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736243No, I have never found it hard to grab a half hour to hour a day prepping for a campaign/game.

And I no longer find it necessary, which has helped as the demands of my family and job have increased, while still allowing me to run games periodically.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736241On average 10 a week for a couple months.  It never ends up that way I usually get done before that, but I always use a 2 month lead time for a new campaign.

If I am gaming at my house, I use FX recordings to help set the stage.  Wind, rain, thunderstorms, dripping water, crowds, spell effects, animal sounds, etc.
Handouts are prettily done up,
Maps made.
Game tiles laid out
Miniatures bought and painted(if needed)
I place every settlement on the main map and detail* them out.
I create 95% of the creatures I use in D&D.  Too many players metagame creatures, so I don't use standard creatures anymore.
And finally timelines.

Hell back in the day I had a tactile box.  A box player would put their hand into to feel various textures(think Dune Movie).  I had quite a collection of real and synthetic skins and other textiles.

* meaning everything I can think of over the course of those two months.  Plots, Schemes, Secret Societies, Plans, etc. etc.

Ithink you have a specific play style that requires a lot of prep.
Whether you developed the style because you like prep or you like the games it produces and I assume enjoy the prep enough to make it worth while.

In the past I have done stuff like preparing a complex dungeon on tiles cut out and stuck to black card so you can it all out as you go blah blah but then the Players just don't go to the at dungeon and its a waste of 2 hours of my life :)

My Mum used to do insane prep. So take a city have an A5 index card for each building which NPCs, story hooks all that a bit liek a MMO or something. Vast ammount of effort.
But at the end of the day you can spoof that with imagination and experience.

I am more concerned that you can tell each of my NPCs apart by their vocal nuance (not accent per se more the style and timbre of speech) and that all the NPC plans are well concieved and executed as well as that NPC can maange with out exceeding their horizon (the limit of their knowldge, skill experience etc) than I am that the dungeon is laid out in an interesting manner or the maps look pretty.
I like a nice prop but I tend to use them more for the Murdery Mystery Business than a RPG session because in an RPG session me describing the book, daggger, goblet is probably more useful than me bringing a simulacrum.

So I get your love of prep and I bet it produces some great games but I don't think that means improv games are weaker, have less depth or less immersion.

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 improve about 90% for my sandboxes.  I have no outline or any sequence of events that need to be done in any order.  I just have to watch out that my scope (bubble space for the players) doesn't contain too much in it.  It resizes according to the scope of what the players are currently doing.  I have other things going on besides just the PCs in the sandbox.  Sometimes, two scopes can meet.  Then some thought has to be put in for what just happened if a disaster is about to go down.

Someone had mentioned to me about a train of boxcars, each boxcar having its own sandbox.  Mine is more sandboxes inside of sandboxes.

I'm curious how a DM can improv a sandbox campaign that has dungeons and such. Generate the maps randomly as you go?

Quote from: Haffrung;736284I'm curious how a DM can improv a sandbox campaign that has dungeons and such. Generate the maps randomly as you go?

Yep. I've done that with AD&D. Or just described/drawn it on the fly.

Dungeons and such though I personally prefer to at least draw out before hand. Even if its just some boxes (rooms) connected by lines (passages).

Quote from: Haffrung;736284I'm curious how a DM can improv a sandbox campaign that has dungeons and such. Generate the maps randomly as you go?

You know when you draw a dungeon as part of prep, you do that only at the table.
I would agree that improvising a dungeon is tricky. It tends to be easier if you take a place you know really well and port that you can port. So for example your old high school. You just need the layout then you can riff off it and its simple.

Its easy to fall into illusionism as well. You get a great idea for a set of rooms say based round a wizards laboratory or something but the party don't bother to open that door. To avoid this I always decide what is behind a door before I put it into play. If it doesn't get opened then ...

Like with any dungeon you design you want to try and make it make sense this zone the ruined temple is populated by bugbears the old mine is populated by whatever etc etc. If you do that and you have a rough floorplan in mind you can ad lib a dungeon complex fairly easily and the PCs will enjoy it like you worked it all out last night

Not a whole lot actually. I start the campaign with a wide sketch of big events that are probably going to happen, then add to this stuff all the time various NPCs with ambitions, usually focusing on wherever the party is at the moment. I also have a few backup adventures with me, in case they get off the map pretty heavily. I also prepare key NPCs and locations (such as dungeons) in advance, so I can also get hang of their tactics.

Because I tend to run sandbox games, I make very extensive notes to ensure that the players can feel free to wander about without running into areas where I have nothing planned or described.  I aim to make the game-world feel richly detailed and immersive.  My current Planescape campaign, for example, has around 350 single-spaced pages of notes, give or take.  What I don't prepare beforehand are "stories": quest seeds and encounters, sure, but not "plots."  Once the game actually starts, I end up improvising extensively all the time.  I also take lots of notes during a given game to keep track of things I make up, which is as or more important than preparing notes ahead of time.

It's possible to improvise dungeons and stuff, sure, but in my experience they're rarely as well thought-out and constructed as prepared dungeons.  I like to include unique magic items, puzzle-rooms, patrol patterns, passwords, specific sets of keys that go to specific locks, etc.  This level of complexity is challenging to come up with on the fly, and in my experience a totally improvised section will inevitably feel cruder and less polished or verismilar than one that's been at least sketched beforehand.

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?

Define the scale. Zero planning beforehand is in a way almost impossible, as I did choose setting locale and premise. Even continuing into a campaign where we left off with no new added material, the "past is still prologue" if you will.

That said I very much work as an artist does: start with topic and choose perspective, this goes into a sketch, sketch fleshes into depth, depth into value, value into color, and color into details and highlights. And I rely heavily on randomness creating content as much as character interest focusing my efforts. So I may have a town in basic topic and perspective, but players who focus on inn food menus and gossip among the laundry women will get eventually more until there's detail. And if I am dry for ideas, or ambivalent, I roll the dice to choose for me.

Creating interesting prep blind often can lead to wasted time if my players end up ignore it. I still make some of course, especially around mover and shaker NPCs. However I have embraced openly talking to my players beforehand about what they are interested in doing next session. This saves me so much time on prep because they already expressed where they plan to focus their energies -- and in turn I can do the same.

Once I get a few sessions in however, and finally fleshed interesting locales and NPCs, I feel bolder in knowing my world. That's when I feel really free in letting the characters (a place can be a character, too!) speak for themselves. That's a different level of improv, and likely unrelated to your meaning here. That's when stuff like motivations and actions can just about create themselves.

Quote from: Brander;736246And yet you said it was "Bad Dms". To quote:
So because Bad DMs couldn't do it well, no DM can...  Sorry, that doesn't compute.

Which I explained was me being rpgsite pc to soothe egos here.  Evidently yours has been bruised regardless.

Quote from: Brander;736246And I no longer find it necessary, which has helped as the demands of my family and job have increased, while still allowing me to run games periodically.

More power to yas.  I wouldn't enjoy your games.
ymmv

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248I think you have a specific play style that requires a lot of prep.
Whether you developed the style because you like prep or you like the games it produces and I assume enjoy the prep enough to make it worth while.

I think you are cheating the players if you are merely bullshitting your way through a session

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248In the past I have done stuff like preparing a complex dungeon on tiles cut out and stuck to black card so you can it all out as you go blah blah but then the Players just don't go to the at dungeon and its a waste of 2 hours of my life :)

Why I have dungeon tiles, 20 minutes, done.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248My Mum used to do insane prep. So take a city have an A5 index card for each building which NPCs, story hooks all that a bit liek a MMO or something. Vast ammount of effort.
But at the end of the day you can spoof that with imagination and experience.

And you don't think the people sitting on the other side of the screen has those same imaginations and experiences?

Why I said most people don't give a shit, they want to play so they accept that you have a standard set of npcs.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248I am more concerned that you can tell each of my NPCs apart by their vocal nuance (not accent per se more the style and timbre of speech) and that all the NPC plans are well conceived and executed as well as that NPC can manage with out exceeding their horizon (the limit of their knowledge, skill experience etc) than I am that the dungeon is laid out in an interesting manner or the maps look pretty.

And you think you are far better at this spur of the moment then taking some time and triple checking that your environments are distinct?

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248I like a nice prop but I tend to use them more for the Murdery Mystery Business than a RPG session because in an RPG session me describing the book, dagger, goblet is probably more useful than me bringing a simulacrum.

Hitting as many of the senses as you can heightens the experience particularly for 'jaded' or experienced players.  

Quote from: jibbajibba;736248So I get your love of prep and I bet it produces some great games but I don't think that means improv games are weaker, have less depth or less immersion.

I do.
ymmv.

Quote from: Haffrung;736284I'm curious how a DM can improv a sandbox campaign that has dungeons and such. Generate the maps randomly as you go?

Just takes practice, describing landmarks that PCs and NPCs will remember.  Can't use a map though.  I mean players will make maps for themselves if they like.  But then they realize after a bit that they don't need to be drawing or writing anything down for role-playing.

Quote from: jibbajibba;735976One 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.

Yay, someone does the same as I do! :cheerleader:

As I played and collected Magic the Gathering, Jyhad, and Legend of the Five Rings, I have a right gold mine of random content generators.

One of the neater tools I am testing out is using these cards in Random Encounter Tables. Besides personalities you can use certain cards, like Jyhad minion cards, or L5R fate cards, as responses or immediate NPC motivations. For example, draw Deflection (Jyhad)? Vampire is trying to dominate the conversation into getting you to believe his version of blaming someone else.

In some ways tables are easier, but there's these neat little 3x5 index card accordions that'd be perfect for transport. Coolest thing about cards is you can readjust your tables dynamically, even mid game. i.e. Scorpion personality you met at Beiden Pass on the way to the Crane lands? Move that card into the Crane or Lion encounter deck.

This is a awesome tidbit of prefab content used as random content generation prep for aiding in-game improv.

I got me thinking about degrees of prep in rpg's.

So I concluded the following:

1) Prep is desirable, assuming the gm does not become a railroader or paralyzed  if the prepped material is bypassed by the characters.

2) Improv is desirable in the context of being flexible even if you do mammoth amounts of prep.

3) Pure improv with no prep is not ideal, but many gm's likely do quite well at improv.


I would classify myself as good at improv but vastly preferring lots of prep.

Great thread and interesting answers.

Quote from: Brander;736242I don't avoid it, I consider it one of the best tools in the toolbox.  No matter how smart or witty I think I am, when it comes to ideas, the players usually outnumber me and are thinking in parallel with one another.  It's hard for one mind, no matter how smart or witty, to compete with that.  If one or more of their ideas is better, I steal it.

However this is something I wouldn't care for as a player, unless it was explicitly stated we were in a collaborative storytelling game. In many situations, players are speculating about the unknown because they're trying to find a course of action or simply because speculation is an enjoyable pastime. In both cases part of the "payoff" is finding out whether you guessed right, which is quite different from finding out whether the GM liked your idea. Using the latter as a criterion while allowing the players to think they're speculating about established reality is illusionistic. (And that's on a different level from letting players think they're trapping with established reality while you improvise based on pure extrapolation.)

I had a GM once who deliberately avoided listening to player planning sessions in order to avoid being influenced in her creation of the opposition. This allowed all parties to be genuinely surprised by the results.

I honestly cannot see them in opposition. You cannot have one without the other. All RPGs in my mind take both concepts in various measures to create the state of play.

Sort of like when estar talks about one's "bag of stuff," we cannot really be separated from what we already know and experienced (sans amnesia). So just the mere act of choosing a game system, selecting a setting -- even a prefab one -- and running a module cold will still have prepared choices baked into the session before the word "GO!" You chose subject, structure, time, place, viewpoint, etc. and all with the bundle of everyday assumptions that go with them.

Same goes for improvisation, otherwise the RPG notion of nigh-infinite human response to a given situation is empty. Creatures are too ingenious to predict all their responses. Prep is wonderful, but if you cannot attempt what would be unexpected and sense that which is not already detailed, your GM is either a god or you have restraint on your choices.

In a way it's like trying to divide out what's nature versus nurture to me. I cannot really imagine an RPG session existing without the other. That's sort of what makes these games exciting compared to other stuff on the market.

Is that a followup to Bill or me?

Quote from: Sommerjon;736303I think you are cheating the players if you are merely bullshitting your way through a session


 Hitting as many of the senses as you can heightens the experience particularly for 'jaded' or experienced players.  

I think we disagree on the GM's job here. The GM's job is to portray an exciting  world, drive the game forward and help craft a fun experience. Prep is one of the tools that can help with that, but it's not a baked-in part of the job description. If two GMs describe the same room using the same words, and one has written the description beforehand, while the other thought it up on the spot at the table, the effect for the players is exactly the same.

It's interesting that you use the word cheating. Do you mean someone breaking the rules, or someone taking the easy way to get the same result?

I agree that trying to hit as many of the senses in your descriptions makes for better play, I definitely describe things in the sense of "You hear, you see, it feels, it tastes" etc. Sensory descriptions aren't exclusive to preparation, though.

I see people bandying about the term "Illusionism". Everything said about the world at the table is an illusion. Everything the GM has written beforehand is illusionism. These worlds are imaginary, and writing them out before the game doesn't make them any more objectively real. All it means is you are making more of the creative decisions before the game than you are during the game.

Prep is useful. It's a good way for GMs to play, especially if they find the act of preparation enjoyable. Improv is also useful, and an equally valid way to play. Each method has their strengths and weaknesses, and they aren't mutually exclusive. Plan as much as you want, and improvise as much as you need. Neither style inherently makes you a bad or good GM.

Quote from: Adric;736377Prep is useful. It's a good way for GMs to play, especially if they find the act of preparation enjoyable.

Most of the enjoyment I get from GMing is as a solitary creative outlet. Sitting at a table in the evening writing up a lair, a faction, some NPCs, a geographic feature. I don't have a lot of time for it, and sometimes the inspiration runs cold. But I can always manage a few hours a month. If GMing to me was just the live monthly session, I'd just as soon be a player.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;735814That's not to say that my sessions are pre-planned, quite the contrary. A given session may in fact be improvised if players "deviate" from the material that I have prepared, but in that case I have at least something to fall back on, and extrapolate from.

In a long campaign the prep is considerably less than with one-shots, since much of the setting is already defined and npcs still follow their relative agendas.
But even then, I don't run anything without further prep.

I do this too, though I tend more towards one-shots or pre-written campaigns than campaign it myself (I don't think I have the concentration for it).

Quote from: Arminius;736368Is that a followup to Bill or me?

That would be Bill's "Improv versus Prep" tag. You're just too fast with the topic-fu for your own good. Caught in the crossfire!
:D

edit: Adric, to spare us all a conflagration, I'll note that illusionism has become a well established jargon, on this site at least, and similar elsewhere. Someone will come along and define it for you according to our specialized community usage. Needless to say you're not wrong per se, but we all know once you're on a board like this (fans, for fanatic!) everyday vernacular is going to eventually be redefined into jargon.

Thanks, Opa.

About illusionism, it's pretty old jargon, actually. The Forge attempted a slight redefinition but even there once you did all the unpacking, it came out to pretty much the same thing.

Fundamentally: negating the significance of player actions or mechanical results, while hiding it.

Quote from: Opaopajr;736392That would be Bill's "Improv versus Prep" tag. You're just too fast with the topic-fu for your own good. Caught in the crossfire!
:D

edit: Adric, to spare us all a conflagration, I'll note that illusionism has become a well established jargon, on this site at least, and similar elsewhere. Someone will come along and define it for you according to our specialized community usage. Needless to say you're not wrong per se, but we all know once you're on a board like this (fans, for fanatic!) everyday vernacular is going to eventually be redefined into jargon.

Yeah I think I introduced illusionism into the thread.

Illusioninsm is a form of railroading. You build a great encounter in the woods where the PCs meet an old witch. You then use that encounter no matter in which direction or where the PCs go or what they do.

It happens with premade railroads "at some point the PCs must meet Sir Peter and he will give them the puzzle box to deliver to the castle" but it's really easy to fall into it with improv. You have to make sure the player choices have an impact. You must be willing to drop stuff you just thought of, even if it has fantastic adventure potential if the PCs don't take that fork in the road.

So yeah that is illusionism the illusion of choice but leading to the same final set of encounters.

Oh and Shawn improv'ed dungeons can totally have maps of course they do don't talk crazy.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736303Which I explained was me being rpgsite pc to soothe egos here.  Evidently yours has been bruised regardless.

You got challenged for making a blanket assertion and tried to pass that off as being sensitive to some mythical PCness here.  It's not PC to recognize that different people have different aesthetics or did you really wander into cuckooland and start thinking everyone shares your aesthetics?

Quote from: Arminius;736335However this is something I wouldn't care for as a player, unless it was explicitly stated we were in a collaborative storytelling game. In many situations, players are speculating about the unknown because they're trying to find a course of action or simply because speculation is an enjoyable pastime. In both cases part of the "payoff" is finding out whether you guessed right, which is quite different from finding out whether the GM liked your idea. Using the latter as a criterion while allowing the players to think they're speculating about established reality is illusionistic. (And that's on a different level from letting players think they're trapping with established reality while you improvise based on pure extrapolation.)

I'd say that if you were noticing it and I wasn't being obvious on purpose then I was having a bad night.  I've certainly had bad nights, but in the 30+ years I've gamed, I've never heard a complaint about it from an actual player in one of my games (and I ask for explicit feedback, good or bad).

That said, roleplaying, even if it is just rollplaying, is a collaborative event.  I don't think it wanders into a storytelling game because the GM has no more idea of what happens next than the players or if the GM discards their ideas for better ideas from the players.

In my experience the players toss out tons of ideas and it's seldom just one idea I'm stealing and even if I steal just one idea from a player who notices (I don't recall this EVER happening, but I could have forgotten), I'm putting my twist on it with the details.

However, if you know I'm doing it and it bugs you, you probably aren't a prime candidate for being a player in my games.  I'm not saying I'm the best GM there is or that everyone else should improv, but I do end up GMing a LOT more than I prefer*, so even if most of that is just being willing,  I'm probably not horrible at it either.


*I have ended up as the GM or a co-GM for most every long term game I've ever tried to play in and end up being the usual GM for most groups I play with.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736303I think you are cheating the players if you are merely bullshitting your way through a session

I disagree. Firstly I have has players at cons congratulate me for great prep where all I had done was print off PC character sheets and made up the rest. My job is to create a real vibrate and immersive world that makes the players feel like they are characters on a fantastic adventure. I can do that from improv .

QuoteWhy I have dungeon tiles, 20 minutes, done.

Yeah I get fed up with square rooms and reguation 10 foot corridors designed by someone who has have been in a cave or a castle or dungeon.

QuoteAnd you don't think the people sitting on the other side of the screen has those same imaginations and experiences?

Oh course they do and unleasing their imagiantion is much more powerful prep or no prep is irrelevant

QuoteWhy I said most people don't give a shit, they want to play so they accept that you have a standard set of npcs.

My NPCs are never standard :)
 
I can come up with 20 different characters all unique  in 5 minutes.
Backstory, motivation, hangups, fears, dreams all that you just have to image a person and there they are fully formed
Generally each NPC has a unique vocal queues, a fair few have accents but its more about body language, tone and vocabulary than accent. I have been running a murder mystery company for years where I speak like a Southafrican/New Yorker/Irishman/Scote/eetc etc for 3 days straight so I can manage a few NPCS.
Why do you think thinkign of an NPC last tuesday is superior to thinking of him now?

QuoteAnd you think you are far better at this spur of the moment then taking some time and triple checking that your environments are distinct?

Yes, yes I am.

QuoteHitting as many of the senses as you can heightens the experience particularly for 'jaded' or experienced players.

Perhaps, so I won;t knock your method. However, if I describe a thing, say a book covered in human skin, that thing is easy to describe, to make it feel real, its fucking difficult to actually make ....

Quoteymmv.

Indeed but personally I try not to judge things until I have tried them at least once.

Quote from: Arminius;736335I had a GM once who deliberately avoided listening to player planning sessions in order to avoid being influenced in her creation of the opposition. This allowed all parties to be genuinely surprised by the results.

Yeah, I do this all the time.  Actually makes it easier to GM when I am riffing off what they are doing in the action; if I hear the planning then I start overthinking things.  

"Y'all spend a few minutes to figure out what you are gonna do.  I'm taking a smoke break."

Quote from: Sommerjon;736241On average 10 a week for a couple months.  It never ends up that way I usually get done before that, but I always use a 2 month lead time for a new campaign.

If I am gaming at my house, I use FX recordings to help set the stage.  Wind, rain, thunderstorms, dripping water, crowds, spell effects, animal sounds, etc.
Handouts are prettily done up,
Maps made.
Game tiles laid out
Miniatures bought and painted(if needed)
I place every settlement on the main map and detail* them out.
I create 95% of the creatures I use in D&D.  Too many players metagame creatures, so I don't use standard creatures anymore.
And finally timelines.

Hell back in the day I had a tactile box.  A box player would put their hand into to feel various textures(think Dune Movie).  I had quite a collection of real and synthetic skins and other textiles.

* meaning everything I can think of over the course of those two months.  Plots, Schemes, Secret Societies, Plans, etc. etc.

How do you effectively manage all of this at the table?  When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.  

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing.  Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

Quote from: jibbajibba;736408Yeah I think I introduced illusionism into the thread.

Illusioninsm is a form of railroading. You build a great encounter in the woods where the PCs meet an old witch. You then use that encounter no matter in which direction or where the PCs go or what they do.

It happens with premade railroads "at some point the PCs must meet Sir Peter and he will give them the puzzle box to deliver to the castle" but it's really easy to fall into it with improv. You have to make sure the player choices have an impact. You must be willing to drop stuff you just thought of, even if it has fantastic adventure potential if the PCs don't take that fork in the road.

So yeah that is illusionism the illusion of choice but leading to the same final set of encounters.

Oh and Shawn improv'ed dungeons can totally have maps of course they do don't talk crazy.

It's an interesting approach to prep, improv, and gaming, and perhaps draws lines in the sand I don't necessarily prefer for myself. If a GM were to say to me "I had this great idea for an encounter in the east of the forest, but you all went west so it didn't happen." and we had no hints what lay to the east or west, I would have wondered why they didn't either telegraph the choice better, or just move the encounter.

I approach the game world in a schroedinger's cat kind of mindset. Everything that has been explicitly stated to the players (including maps and handouts etc) is true, and everything else, including prep, is in flux. Prep or an idea may influence what the players experience with varying effects or hints, but no idea or concept is sacred or fact until the players know about it explicitly. Causes for interesting details can be refined or redefined in play.

As such, what happens next in an improv game I run is always influenced by what the players interpret and do. I have only one goal at the table, to have fun and make sure everyone else is having fun. Plans, preparation, and ideas are only there to facilitate that and can be changed when they conflict with the group's fun. The players' choices always matter because they always influence what happens next, whether that's good or bad for the characters.

Communicating with your players to make sure that when they make a choice they can understand the likely outcomes is still incredibly important, but that's the case with both prepped play and improv play.

Quote from: Old One EyeHow do you effectively manage all of this at the table? When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing. Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

I have a similar approach to Sommerjon in terms of being exhaustive (handouts, soundtracks, copious notes), and speaking for myself what I do is:

(1) Use word documents, a laptop, and liberal use of ctrl+F to facilitate note-retrieval as quickly and efficiently as possible.

(2) Establish several layers of detail.  In the case of towns/cities, I have the overview-level similar to your "one line per town," the slightly-more detailed level (districts, landmarks, major NPCs) and the hyper-detailed level when required (streets, individual buildings like taverns and temples, minor NPCs).  This means I can get a good idea of the broad strokes at a glance and then "zoom in" as needed.

(3) Review where the players are likely to go before any given session so that details are fresh in my mind.

(4) Casually browse my notes while players speak amongst themselves.

(5) Improvise to fill in gaps as required.

(BTW I don't know I meant to type which came out as "trapping." Probably an autocorrect goof.)

Quote from: Brander;736413I'd say that if you were noticing it and I wasn't being obvious on purpose then I was having a bad night.  I've certainly had bad nights, but in the 30+ years I've gamed, I've never heard a complaint about it from an actual player in one of my games (and I ask for explicit feedback, good or bad).

That said, roleplaying, even if it is just rollplaying, is a collaborative event.  I don't think it wanders into a storytelling game because the GM has no more idea of what happens next than the players or if the GM discards their ideas for better ideas from the players.

In my experience the players toss out tons of ideas and it's seldom just one idea I'm stealing and even if I steal just one idea from a player who notices (I don't recall this EVER happening, but I could have forgotten), I'm putting my twist on it with the details.

However, if you know I'm doing it and it bugs you, you probably aren't a prime candidate for being a player in my games.  I'm not saying I'm the best GM there is or that everyone else should improv, but I do end up GMing a LOT more than I prefer*, so even if most of that is just being willing,  I'm probably not horrible at it either.

Yeah, if I had no idea, I wouldn't have a chance to complain, but if I noticed then it'd bug me just as other types of (pardon the term) deception do.

It reminds me of the poor fans of the X-Files who spent so much effort trying to solve the puzzles and mysteries of the show only to find that the writers were faking it and had painted themselves into a corner by the end.

It might depend on the nature of the campaign and the type of action, too. Again if something is presented as a mystery it ought to have a real answer behind the clues; if there's an opportunity for strategizing then there ought to be a real opposition to outwit.

It's not that I'm against improv or even incorporating player ideas about things which the GM hasn't yet determined--I would just have trouble with the GM presenting a mystery and then cobbling the answer out of player speculation.

Quote from: Arminius;736433(BTW I don't know I meant to type which came out as "trapping." Probably an autocorrect goof.)

Yeah, if I had no idea, I wouldn't have a chance to complain, but if I noticed then it'd bug me just as other types of (pardon the term) deception do.

It reminds me of the poor fans of the X-Files who spent so much effort trying to solve the puzzles and mysteries of the show only to find that the writers were faking it and had painted themselves into a corner by the end.

It might depend on the nature of the campaign and the type of action, too. Again if something is presented as a mystery it ought to have a real answer behind the clues; if there's an opportunity for strategizing then there ought to be a real opposition to outwit.

It's not that I'm against improv or even incorporating player ideas about things which the GM hasn't yet determined--I would just have trouble with the GM presenting a mystery and then cobbling the answer out of player speculation.

I agree which is why I first raised it as a thing to be avoided. Sometimes you can't help it becuase it's just so sweet.

Because I drive at realism where I can, the sad truth is most mysteries have a fairly mundane solution obsfucated by layers of other actions. This is something the Murder business has taught me very specificially.

Murder mystery solutions are worth a look as well actually. When I run a MM I know who will carry out the murder from the beginning and I know the justification etc. The murderer probably knows unless its a crime of passion they will commit on day 2. No other actors know.
Sometimes however somethign happens. One day the murderer got food poisoning on the first day and was out for the rest of the weekend, one day the murderer had a car accident (not major but enough not to make day 2) and one day 2 actors got drunk and got into a fight and one refused to come back the next day. When these things happen I have to change the plot. This has to be entirely transparent, IT IS PARAMOUNT, no guest can ever know that Reginal's absence is due to a car crash, they have to think the drunken brawl is part of the plot etc. For this reason I never write the solution until the Sunday morning at 6am (when you have been up to 2am drinking this can be a challenge :) ). I then have 45 mins to 1 hour to write an annotated 1,000 - 1,500 word "presentation" in the style of the detective doing their Poirot reveal. In this I cover all the stuff that was always in the plot but I add all the other stuff that clever guests observed or the actors fucked up. In 17 years I have never been caught out.

The very best Improv I have even done was in  Murder mystery (where obviously all dialogue and big chunks of backstory are always ad libbed). Set in Edwardian London as the meeting of a Secret Esoteric Society at the start of the 20th century  the plot involved some convoluted activity around the society crowning the new Estara, a young virgin who would be the embodiment of the goddess for the next year and the vessel through whom the elders of the sect would try to ensure the birth of the future King of the Morning (yes that is as sleazy as it sounds) anyway I had sourced some nice props long hooded robes and sun masks for a few of the main actors. I thought it would be great to run a ritual ceremony with all the guests, candle light us in the robes. Now I could have scripted that and relied on my actors learning lines and stage movements or I could improv the whole thing and minimise risk. So of course I improvised the whole thing.
I gave 3 other actors 1 line each to learn (5 minutes before the start of the evenign and scribbled on bits of paper cos I had just made them up) and told them when I touch you on the shoulder Do this one thing and say this one line. Then, between the main course and dessert, I ran the entire ritual with a section where the guests have to chant after me repeating my words, for 15 minutes in a suprisingly good Scottish Burr (kind of West Lothian I guess). Now if I can do that in front of 60 guests paying $250 a head most of whom have been to a few of these and 4 of whom turned out to actually be members of a real Esoteric Order, and only get compliments about how well rehersed it all was .... I reckon I can handle 4 geeks sitting round my dining table :)

I must give you props, jibbajabba, that is impressive to do at a professional level and with a far larger audience.

Reminds me of reading the how on sleight of hand tricks and listening to incredulous people trying to puzzle it out. You could explain it in all its simplicity only to have people insist it cannot be so simple and effective. But then reading up on magic tricks there's those with a lot of prep work, too.

So, what's your favorite brainstorm tactic? Your favorite content generator and or selector? And your favorite delaying tactic to mask behind? Either at table or MM will do, as I assume there'll be usable overlap.

I find brainstorming is one of those things I have to slip into the zone. Music, art, inner NPC dialogue, mimic NPC personality to get in the head, that type of stuff. I love dice equations and tables to generate % and select. Masking is hard, but I found acting out NPC bickering dialogue gives me cover with mental space to brainstorm oddly enough. Must be my inner cattiness as a second nature trait...

Quote from: Opaopajr;736392That would be Bill's "Improv versus Prep" tag. You're just too fast with the topic-fu for your own good. Caught in the crossfire!
:D

edit: Adric, to spare us all a conflagration, I'll note that illusionism has become a well established jargon, on this site at least, and similar elsewhere. Someone will come along and define it for you according to our specialized community usage. Needless to say you're not wrong per se, but we all know once you're on a board like this (fans, for fanatic!) everyday vernacular is going to eventually be redefined into jargon.

I should clarify that the gist of my post is that prep and improv are best used together, even if my title line might suggest opposition.

Quote from: Old One Eye;736422How do you effectively manage all of this at the table?  When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.  

I purposefully only write about one line on any town or whatever now so the game can keep flowing.  Just enough to glace at and have very high level idea of what is going on.

So how do you keep it about the players playing the game rather than GM reading months old notes?

I take that a step further, the name itself gives me a lot of information.

For a 'Podunkville' on my master map could be:
po'duncton: "po'd" = hillbilly town very deliverance-y  
Pudochnk:  = town where the population has an exaggerated sense of self importance. Mr/Mrs. Fussypants. "chnk" = secret group involved.
Actually the "po'd" doesn't mean anything, I tell the players the name is Duncton, it's shorthand for me to at a glance know what the town is about.
Players aren't given 'Pudochnk'  it's Pudoch  the 'nk' tells me it's actually a Podunkville type place that has hidden agendas involved the actual spelling tells me they are trying to be more important then they are.

"Zero" planning or prep?  Never.  Never never never.  The only times it comes close to happening is when a party's come back to home base after a long, long plot arc, and they will burn up most of a run with figuring out what they want to use their XP for, dealing with training, dealing with a few game-months of downtime, spending their loot, catching up with friends and rumors, and lots of shopping.

But even with that, I know they'll only suck up a few hours with that.  By hour four at the absolute max, they need some notion as to what they might be doing next ... if only to start to do the things they need to do to set that up.  So, obviously, I need some ideas in place.

Quote from: Old One Eye;736422How do you effectively manage all of this at the table?  When I used to detail a lot of things out, and then at the actual game PCs go to Podunkville where I have several paragraphs written months before, the game ground to a halt as I had to stop and read my scrawl.

Well, for one thing, why is it a "scrawl?"  I put my Podunkvilles onto my computer, and the printouts are in nice, large 12-pt Times New Roman.

I'm looking at a small village my group went through on a mountain trek last year.  It's got the village hall, the roadhouse, the hedge-wizard, the schoolhouse, the cobbler, the thatcher, the smith, three trappers, two hunters, a goatherder and a pigherder.  The whole thing runs only three pages, and the roadhouse is the only entry that runs more than two paragraphs.  Just having timed myself with a stopwatch, reading that entry -- which includes the NPC description for the innkeeper -- took me 34 seconds.

If reading a description for half a minute brings your gaming sessions to a screeching, fatal halt, that's a whole different problem!

Quote from: Ravenswing;736601Well, for one thing, why is it a "scrawl?"  I put my Podunkvilles onto my computer, and the printouts are in nice, large 12-pt Times New Roman.

I'm looking at a small village my group went through on a mountain trek last year.  It's got the village hall, the roadhouse, the hedge-wizard, the schoolhouse, the cobbler, the thatcher, the smith, three trappers, two hunters, a goatherder and a pigherder.  The whole thing runs only three pages, and the roadhouse is the only entry that runs more than two paragraphs.  Just having timed myself with a stopwatch, reading that entry -- which includes the NPC description for the innkeeper -- took me 34 seconds.

If reading a description for half a minute brings your gaming sessions to a screeching, fatal halt, that's a whole different problem!

Part and parcel with why I am asking, my organizational methods have historically been crap.  Getting some good ideas to digest.  Probably doesn't help that I am significantly slower reader.  

Having it printed out beforehand?  So you know where the PCs are going before game night, are printing things in the middle of gaming, or have a massive binder already?

I'm slowly coming about to utilizing technology rather than the old 3 ring binder.  Don't own a laptop and will never game in the same room as the tower, so the kindle is the only practical method for me.  Unfortunately all the DM apps I've looked at are either very buggy or too limited on utility.  If anyone knows of a good app, all ears.

Considering setting up a facebook page, pintrest, or learning how to make a wiki for my campaigns, just have not yet made that jump.

Quote from: Adric;736238Are you saying a game is only good if it lasts longer than 15 sessions? That seems like a weird value judgement to make about all games, players, and GMs.

Sorry, been traveling.
No, what I was saying is that the complexity is different.  We're talking like all games are roughly equal; but if you are worrying about one plotline vs 10, or relationships with 30 groups in 3 cities vs a shorter set up with the party knowing a few people in a single locale.

There is a complexity differential, not a enjoyment differential or any value judgment.  But since prep and complexity have a relationship, the more complex a game, the more prep will affect the quality of the game.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736628There is a complexity differential, not a enjoyment differential or any value judgment.  But since prep and complexity have a relationship, the more complex a game, the more prep will affect the quality of the game.

This sounds more like a record-keeping issue than a prep one.  I can end up with a thick folder full of notes after running a long-term campaign that I never spent a minute of prep on.  I ran an ~20 session game once that I didn't even know I was running until I showed up at the table.  I was unaware I had been invited to GM rather than play, I wasn't super happy about it, but I jumped right in nonetheless and we had fun.

Quote from: Brander;736675This sounds more like a record-keeping issue than a prep one.  I can end up with a thick folder full of notes after running a long-term campaign that I never spent a minute of prep on.  I ran an ~20 session game once that I didn't even know I was running until I showed up at the table.  I was unaware I had been invited to GM rather than play, I wasn't super happy about it, but I jumped right in nonetheless and we had fun.

I usually end up with alot of notes after a while as the area builds itself. Where towns are, names, terrain, etc if I am letting the place develop totally on the fly.

As for DMing unannounced. I feel your pain. This is a common thing for me.

"Hey Omega! We have visitors over we NEVER mentioned were coming over and we want you to run a 8-12 hour session tonight!" ooog. But Im awesome and can do that.

Quote from: Brander;736675This sounds more like a record-keeping issue than a prep one.  I can end up with a thick folder full of notes after running a long-term campaign that I never spent a minute of prep on.  I ran an ~20 session game once that I didn't even know I was running until I showed up at the table.  I was unaware I had been invited to GM rather than play, I wasn't super happy about it, but I jumped right in nonetheless and we had fun.

see, that's where i think the difference lies.  I'm glad you had fun, and made the right cost/benefit for yourself, but there is zero chance it was anywhere near as good a game as it could have been with some work put into it.  Record keeping is an important component, but it is an ingredient to a good game.

Please feel free to tell me that I'm not at your table and all the other usual things.  But I feel like games are like writing; short ones are part of a chapter, or a whole chapter, then a whole book, or even a series.  And prep is perfectly analogous to editing.  

Personal opinion.

Also sounds like record keeping to me. Complexity and prep do relate, but with good enough notes I've seen people simulate it right close.

For me the difference would be between a finished oil painting and a painting being sketched and finished in as you go. Considering players experience the setting a bit at a time, versus seeing it all at once, it's like then seeing either of those paintings through an uncovered index card sized piece at a time. If you sketch fast enough, and your paints dry fast enough, you *can* create an amazingly similar experience.

That said prep matters in campaign longevity, because that is where there is greater scrutiny. When you stare at the two long enough you can notice that detail and luminosity will differ. A piece layered in detail and imbued with NPC history and attitude, like a heavily glazed oil painting, will be noticeably more vibrant than those without as much prep attention.

It's an issue of time staring at the product looking for differences.

Quote from: Old One Eye;736617Having it printed out beforehand?  So you know where the PCs are going before game night, are printing things in the middle of gaming, or have a massive binder already?

I'm slowly coming about to utilizing technology rather than the old 3 ring binder.  Don't own a laptop and will never game in the same room as the tower, so the kindle is the only practical method for me.  Unfortunately all the DM apps I've looked at are either very buggy or too limited on utility.  If anyone knows of a good app, all ears.

Considering setting up a facebook page, pintrest, or learning how to make a wiki for my campaigns, just have not yet made that jump.

I have several massive binders already, two for the kingdom in which my lead party is based: one with the capital city (I've sketched out 1100 businesses), and the other with the kingdom itself.  Since I've got every significant city and town within a week's ride of the capital in the second binder, I'm pretty much covered.  I won't claim that didn't take a lot of prep work.

Beyond that, I've got several sheets to cover me: a document full of simple, generic information: the name of a business owner, his/her appearance if noteworthy, a handful of pertinent personality traits, how high the price/quality of the goods ... all without reference to what that business produces.  If the PCs just happen to pop in a weird direction and pop into a hamlet looking (say) for a farrier to fix a horseshoe?  Terrific: I pick the first one on the list and improv from there.  And now I know something about the farrier in Village X, for the next time a group comes through -- in that goes in the next update.  Move on down to the next name, if the party decides to pop into the hamlet's teensy tavern while they're waiting for the farrier to get done.

I do own an ancient laptop (it's about a dozen years old), but the configuration of my living room doesn't allow it without it getting in my way.  I'd use it otherwise, simply to handle WIP documents that I wasn't yet ready to print out, clipart, and having Wikipedia on speed dial.  :pundit:  

(That being said, perhaps you could pick up a used, ancient laptop for cheap on Craigslist or somesuch.  It's not that you need it to run high-end gaming software -- it's that you need it to run a word processor and a web browser.)

I do have a Yahoo group set up for my game, and it does allow me to do one gimmick.  All my players bring laptops (which, happily, they really do use solely for gaming aids), and I've had occasion to tell them that the key NPC's portrait, or the cliff face they're planning on scaling, is up in a certain spot in the photos section: just surf on over.

ravenswing, i ported everything over to the wiki a while back, it build on itself nicely.  And as you mentioned, it does not need a lot of power, just web access.   And w have 100% laptop/tablet compliance as well.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736717see, that's where i think the difference lies.  I'm glad you had fun, and made the right cost/benefit for yourself, but there is zero chance it was anywhere near as good a game as it could have been with some work put into it.  Record keeping is an important component, but it is an ingredient to a good game.

I think this would be a case of "perfect is the enemy of best", if I agreed with it.  Even if you believe that greater prep over improv can make for a better game, the fact is that most games won't even come close to their potential.  For me, the tradeoff is that all that prep time can be spent playing (or doing something else).  While I don't believe for a second that it's true, if the maximum improv can give me is say 98% of it's potential or even 90%, then it's more than enough when the vast majority of games are probably lucky to hit 80% of their potential.  I generally give my all when I run games, but even that will at times fall short or even just be a mismatch with other people's style.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736717Please feel free to tell me that I'm not at your table and all the other usual things.  But I feel like games are like writing; short ones are part of a chapter, or a whole chapter, then a whole book, or even a series.  And prep is perfectly analogous to editing.

While I think games have almost nothing to do with writing, think of improv as discovery writing.  Some authors outline, other's discovery write, most probably do a bit of both.  Under this analogy, I'm in the discovery writing side of things trying to show the outliners that what works for them doesn't work for me.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736717Personal opinion.

Ditto :) , until and unless we can figure out some objective way to measure aesthetics of this kind (i.e. never).  After all, I'm sure most of us have played games where some people had a blast and others hated it.

Here's an interesting question: Do you use different levels of prep for your online games than you do you in person games? How about the difference between play by post and more 'live' games like roll20, Google hangouts, or IRC?

Another thing I'm interested in is how many of you use online resources like obsidian portal and the like to not only store information but organize games?

Quote from: Opaopajr;736444I must give you props, jibbajabba, that is impressive to do at a professional level and with a far larger audience.

Reminds me of reading the how on sleight of hand tricks and listening to incredulous people trying to puzzle it out. You could explain it in all its simplicity only to have people insist it cannot be so simple and effective. But then reading up on magic tricks there's those with a lot of prep work, too.

So, what's your favorite brainstorm tactic? Your favorite content generator and or selector? And your favorite delaying tactic to mask behind? Either at table or MM will do, as I assume there'll be usable overlap.

I find brainstorming is one of those things I have to slip into the zone. Music, art, inner NPC dialogue, mimic NPC personality to get in the head, that type of stuff. I love dice equations and tables to generate % and select. Masking is hard, but I found acting out NPC bickering dialogue gives me cover with mental space to brainstorm oddly enough. Must be my inner cattiness as a second nature trait...

I don't really brainstorm like that. I think we are always absorbing stuff. the story is the thing you are after, and i don't mean in a Forgist way I mean if I watch a cartoon with my daughter I can see 3 or 4 things that I think hey that would be cool to port into a game and I just file em away. there is so much tv so many books so many comics so many stories in the news that I have more ideas in my "file" than I will ever use.
Art has always been critically important to me as well. My dad was an artist, my cousin is an artist, my sister is an artist. I just grew up surrounded by it. A picture like this -
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110127152231/fallout/images/b/b7/NCR_Ranger_concept4.jpg (http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110127152231/fallout/images/b/b7/NCR_Ranger_concept4.jpg)
can inspire me to a campaign idea in zero time. My brain just extrapolates the culture, background, setting that this guy would come from and generates its own setting. Now I found that picture by typing ranger into google and scanning the thumbnails for one that was cool I looked at it for about 15 seconds and I could run a game about the setting this guy comes from now this moment with no prep (apparently its from fallout but I haven't played that and have no idea what its like so I doubt it would have much influence).

In an actual game all I care about really are NPCs. I really believe if you have great,living breathing NPCs you have the game nailed. For that you just project into the NPCs find their voice (quite literally as the voice gives you an insight into the character) and you are done and at that point I knwo everything about he character. reading helps with that reading gives you insight into what other people thing about character so is essential. Its liek when you area kid you read surveys in your sisters girl magazines about relationships and stuff, not because the articles are any good but because girls read them and so are conditioned to expect the proffered behaviours in certain ways. In NOC terms this gives you access to small nuances of character than people that read books think are indicative of certain personality types its like a shorthand.

Edit : sorry picture too big so I converted it to a link

Quote from: LordVreeg;736717see, that's where I think the difference lies.  I'm glad you had fun, and made the right cost/benefit for yourself, but there is zero chance it was anywhere near as good a game as it could have been with some work put into it.  Record keeping is an important component, but it is an ingredient to a good game.

Please feel free to tell me that I'm not at your table and all the other usual things.  But I feel like games are like writing; short ones are part of a chapter, or a whole chapter, then a whole book, or even a series.  And prep is perfectly analogous to editing.  

Personal opinion.

I agree.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736774In an actual game all I care about really are NPCs. I really believe if you have great,living breathing NPCs you have the game nailed. For that you just project into the NPCs find their voice (quite literally as the voice gives you an insight into the character) and you are done and at that point I know everything about he character. reading helps with that reading gives you insight into what other people thing about character so is essential. Its like when you are a kid you read surveys in your sisters girl magazines about relationships and stuff, not because the articles are any good but because girls read them and so are conditioned to expect the proffered behaviors in certain ways. In NOC terms this gives you access to small nuances of character than people that read books think are indicative of certain personality types its like a shorthand.

I think this is where we differ.  While I love me some good NPCs not everyone I game(d) with hang their gaming orgasms on NPCs.

Quote from: Brander;736760I think this would be a case of "perfect is the enemy of best", if I agreed with it.  Even if you believe that greater prep over improv can make for a better game, the fact is that most games won't even come close to their potential.  For me, the tradeoff is that all that prep time can be spent playing (or doing something else).  While I don't believe for a second that it's true, if the maximum improv can give me is say 98% of it's potential or even 90%, then it's more than enough when the vast majority of games are probably lucky to hit 80% of their potential.  I generally give my all when I run games, but even that will at times fall short or even just be a mismatch with other people's style.


While I think games have almost nothing to do with writing, think of improv as discovery writing.  Some authors outline, other's discovery write, most probably do a bit of both.  Under this analogy, I'm in the discovery writing side of things trying to show the outliners that what works for them doesn't work for me.


Ditto :) , until and unless we can figure out some objective way to measure aesthetics of this kind (i.e. never).  After all, I'm sure most of us have played games where some people had a blast and others hated it.

I also see I'm doing something wrong in terms of making a better explanation.  Prep is not mutually exclusive in any way to Improv.  Your comment above, "Prep over improv', makes it clear to me that you are hearing that come out in my comments, so I am being unclear.

I assume that a normal GM does a ton of improvisation in a game, no matter how much prep they have done.  It's a skill you have to have to be a GM, a core skill.  And players never go the way you think.

So my position is that all GMs have to improvise constantly; Prep is a choice that improves the performance/product.  And depending on the type of the game and depth of the game, it can improve it a lot or a very small amount.

Quote from: LordVreeg;736823I also see I'm doing something wrong in terms of making a better explanation.  Prep is not mutually exclusive in any way to Improv.  Your comment above, "Prep over improv', makes it clear to me that you are hearing that come out in my comments, so I am being unclear.

If it helps, I'm pretty sure I understood you the first time.  Maybe it would be better to phrase it "Amount of work done on game elements before players show up."  To me at least, the majority of disagreement is whether this impacts the resulting game much, if at all.  Which leads to:

Quote from: LordVreeg;736823I assume that a normal GM does a ton of improvisation in a game, no matter how much prep they have done.  It's a skill you have to have to be a GM, a core skill.  And players never go the way you think.

Like you, I'm still expecting most GMs to improv to varying degrees once the players hit the table.  I think for the sake of this discussion we have to hold all other variables (GM quality, players, environment, equipment, etc.) constant.  I hope we agree that a problem player or a poor GM can have a greater impact than whether the GM preps the game beforehand or not.  

Quote from: LordVreeg;736823So my position is that all GMs have to improvise constantly; Prep is a choice that improves the performance/product.  And depending on the type of the game and depth of the game, it can improve it a lot or a very small amount.

And my position is that this is clearly untrue and a position of opinion and aesthetics (and mostly a non-issue at the actual table where so many other variables can swing the game one way or another).

Quote from: Adric;736762Here's an interesting question: Do you use different levels of prep for your online games than you do you in person games? How about the difference between play by post and more 'live' games like roll20, Google hangouts, or IRC?

Another thing I'm interested in is how many of you use online resources like obsidian portal and the like to not only store information but organize games?

In addition to deciding whether I'm willing to run an online game, I am currently trying to decide whether I am going to use Roll20..  I've never run a game with such tools (though I have played in a few) mostly because I want to run an RPG, not fiddle with an interface**.  Roll20 seemed to be the first one to actually suggest and easily allow just using it as an interactive white board while you play (with little to no prep) and so far seems to have the most intuitive interface for doing this during game.  The search function for icons seems minimally intrusive in the short time I've looked at it as well.

That said, I might be happier with a camera pointed at my whiteboard and a chat server.  Either way, as much as possible, I think a tool should support the way I do things rather than force too much of a change to it.  At a certain point, I'm happier playing an MMO,.

I use Obsidian Portal as a player, but I haven't felt it was necessary for things I've run.  In a perhaps odd twist, I'm MUCH more willing to work on my characters out of game as a player than work on anything as a GM.


* My whiteboard is probably the most important tool I bring to a game.  I draw maps, relationships, diagrams, sketches of items or characters,whatever on it.  I take photos of it with my phone if I need to reference it later.  Back before carrying around a camera on my phone was normal, I did it with a stack of blank paper or a number of battlemats I could keep around.

** I work in IT/programming, I certainly can learn such things, but beyond a certain point, I'd rather be doing something else with my time.

Quote from: BranderI think games have almost nothing to do with writing

This statement confuses me.  Isn't a roleplaying game pretty much made of words?

Quote from: Steerpike;736857This statement confuses me.  Isn't a roleplaying game pretty much made of words?

I think improvisational theater is the closest thing to roleplaying, but I really think roleplaying is it's own thing.

Quote from: Brander;736865I think improvisational theater is the closest thing to roleplaying, but I really think roleplaying is it's own thing.

There are games that bring improv theatre to the forefront, others that focus more on tactical combat decisions, some focus on crafting a unique personal history or creating fantasy worlds, others still that focus on different elements of the hobby. While I have a personal preference for improv theatre set to certain themes, the other styles of play are no less valid, and games can mix them to certain degrees. Some will, through virtue of the rules require more preparation beforehand. It's just one of the dials that can be fiddled with.

Some games will deliver a more enjoyable experience when there is no prep. Others will be more enjoyable with more prep. There are plenty more that fall in the middle, with a balance of some prep and some "blank spots" that get defined through play. When I say games here, I don't just mean Gary's d&d campaign vs Fred's d&d campaign, though they are factors. I mean rule sets that enable different styles of play.

There's a big different between a game that let's you play how you want by not getting in the way, and a game that helps you play how you want by stepping in and guiding you when you need it.

Quote from: Adric;736762Another thing I'm interested in is how many of you use online resources like obsidian portal and the like to not only store information but organize games?

I don't.  I've seen Obsidian Portal, what with a bunch of people recommending it, but I haven't seen where it'd enhance my game.

Generally to the heavy prep GMs.

For me as I noted NPCs are the most important element.

As you can see from my Sig I also think tactical combat and creating a deep rich believable world are important (I call this story or the fiction but here I guess the gameworld is the popular term).

I don't need prep to do any of those things though.

I generally run games I understand the rules too , even if I just made those rules up which is common. So I can run a set of commandos in a very believable manner or a bunch of mindless zombies or a slick super trained assassin. To be honest all of that is just extension of the NPC character and personality. The way a character approaches conflict to me is as much about their character as how they speak, debate a point of politics or haggle for a discount at the tavern.

Rich believable worlds are a place where prep seems obviously advantageous but I can spin up a world in far less time than it takes me to write down. In the design thread I detailed a couple each of which took my less than 5 mins to think up but 20 minutes to actually write. When I think of a world the details are all there already, what sort of drink do they have in the bars, what is the local delicasy, where do the names for these things come from and how are they related to the archaic script the party might find on a tomb later on. All that stuff springs unbidden.
Now I do use shortcuts. So I might take a religion from a game I already ran years ago. Say the Cult of the Flame. Now that religion grew up over a 1 year game about 20 years ago. I understand it very well, it's theology, it's  types of priests, the way it interacts with the D&D mechanics (specifically 2e priests and differentiated priest subclasses). I know how it's temples look their design and layout etc.  Now if I am playing with my old game group in the UK who I have been gaming with since we were 10 using the Cult of the flame is great because they all have a working knowlege of the religion, at least from a layman's perspective. If I use it with a new group then its great because here is a rich fully formed religion much more than just "worship Zeus".  Or I could take the religion of Westeros straight from ASoFaI everyone worships the 7 etc etc again I am fully familiar and most players will be too. The ones that aren't will pick it up.

I could take that concept of the seven and I could play with it. They Worship the 5 gods of the Hand. The Father, the Mother, the Reaper, the Trickster and the Virgin. Again a religion falls out of there almost unbidden as these are all very familiar archetypes.

That is just religion you can do the same thing with architecture, weapons and armour, language, clothing and fashion. Where you have a good fresh idea you use it where you don't you can take something "classic" and it provides you with a homage to the original.

So yes you can do all this stuff last week and write it down or you can do it now as the game is unfolding about you. It's the same source, all your previous life experience :)

Describe a busy market, well I have been in busy markets from Oxford to Istanbul, from Cairo to Hong Kong so I can describe a market pretty well. Describe a castle, well again, I have clambered over the ruins of many a great castle, I have watched jousts at Warwick toured Chambord and Himeji. So no problem.

So where specifically do you spend the bulk of your prep time? What areas of the game do you think benefit most from good preparation? If say you had a 20 session game to plan out and you had 10 hours to prep it how would you spend that time (numbers picked deliberately due to ease of expression as % :D )?

Quote from: Brander;736840And my position is that this is clearly untrue and a position of opinion and aesthetics (and mostly a non-issue at the actual table where so many other variables can swing the game one way or another).

I would be remiss if I did not address this, a tangential pet peeve from proprietary dice/FFG EotE topic.

I agree with your assessment, Brander, on the whole. However I do agree from experience about Lord Vreeg's observation about prep leaving a noticeable mark on well-developed settings. If one spends lengthy amounts of campaign time you begin to spot greater layers of detail. There, the happy sandwich of mutual recognition out of the way.

But that's not the important part, which is this: it should be understood by the very nature of this being a mere forum that this is not "objective" or let alone "scientific." It's not peer reviewed like even an humanities journal, and it's all about imagination land, so there's really zero grounds for accusations of bias. It's all bias, it's all opinion. And insisting upon this obvious fact -- in favor of an objectivity that cannot contribute fruitfully beyond static facts like MSRPs -- adds nothing to these discussion.

Just like the uselessness of 'The Balance,' 'The Objectivity' is an equally useless canard plaguing our community conversations for way too long now. It adds nothing and improves nothing. And yes, I just expressed an opinion as non-cited fact. We're all just going to have to learn to be critical readers, and critical thinkers, and COPE with that.

You may return to your regularly scheduled topic.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736965So where specifically do you spend the bulk of your prep time? What areas of the game do you think benefit most from good preparation? If say you had a 20 session game to plan out and you had 10 hours to prep it how would you spend that time (numbers picked deliberately due to ease of expression as % :D )?

Depends on the group.
If we are talking about the pool of players I would tap for a D&D game it would be:
Making the creatures
Detailing the map
Layering the 'world in motion'

However there's no way I could do that in 10 hours.
That's a minimum of 40 creatures I need to write up.. Even at a mere 5.5 minutes per creature that's 3.5 hours alone.
Minimum of 20 cities*, with at least 5 detailed npcs and 5 semi-detailed npcs.  Just the npcs will take me 6.5 hours.

I hit the 10 hour prep without detailing the cities, adding in any 'world in motion' items to the setting, drawing any maps, etc.

Or

I use an existing campaign and plop the PCs down in a part they never went to much if at all.  Then my prep is minimal.  Consisting of do I reset the 'world in motion' or just continue with where it is.

Quote from: Sommerjon;736980Depends on the group.
If we are talking about the pool of players I would tap for a D&D game it would be:
Making the creatures
Detailing the map
Layering the 'world in motion'

However there's no way I could do that in 10 hours.
That's a minimum of 40 creatures I need to write up.. Even at a mere 5.5 minutes per creature that's 3.5 hours alone.
Minimum of 20 cities*, with at least 5 detailed npcs and 5 semi-detailed npcs.  Just the npcs will take me 6.5 hours.

I hit the 10 hour prep without detailing the cities, adding in any 'world in motion' items to the setting, drawing any maps, etc.

Or

I use an existing campaign and plop the PCs down in a part they never went to much if at all.  Then my prep is minimal.  Consisting of do I reset the 'world in motion' or just continue with where it is.

That is interesting.

Re creatures why are you writing them up? What are you doing there that adds value to them in play?

I can see that having a picture of a creature is useful. I don't play 3e or 4e so I don't have to pick from a menu of powers for my creatures. In my own games if I was playing D&D (2e is my zone, 1e is where I learnt the game) I would just say .. these creatures have 5hd, AC 3, 2 attacks 1d6+1/1d6+1, they suprise on a 1-3 (+1 sup in 2e parlance) they can leap upto 12 feet and will use this to attack on the first round.  I woudl just make that up on the spur of the moment. Similarly I might have 12 orcs and make 1 the captain and try to bring the rest to life (this is just an extension of my NPC point above).
I rarely play obscure monsters I either use the classic stuff or make it up on the fly about 25% classic (orcs, gnolls, goblins, dragons, giants, trolls , undead etc), 75% just thought of it flying jellyfish like monsters that use psionic attacks to level drain, or Silver skinned humanoids that can shape change at will.

What are you doing when you prep your monsters are you copying out stat blocks or are you doing stuff like generating random treasure and making sure that the monster uses anything relevant, assigning random personality traits? What sort of activity is happening here.

Maps - well I rarely bother. For a con game where I need to have some prep I will typically nick a chunk of a medieval city, edit it and print it out to give to each player. For most games meh.  There was a time when I did really fancy maps then I realised that only I was goign to be able to use them. Once I even had a Map of the Evil Mastermind's complex up on the wall in a james Bond game just so I could show my beautiful map to the players :). I have a degree in geography and I used to teach geography in high school so I love a map as much, if not more than the next guy but I just don't find them very relevant in play. When I play I typically map out he space for the PCs as I go on the table. Currently I am using big A1 sheets of paper that all my stuff was packed in when we moved from the UK. That sits on the table I sketch out the room, geography, city whatever on the paper. I know geography pretty well so I can sketch you a realistic U shaped valley with terminal morraine, hanging valleys etc in about a minute.
I can see why a map is key to some sorts of games. If the party are based in a singel locale, or indeed if they travel back to a locale you want the geography to be consistent. Most of the time I find I need to be very consistent and detailed at the lowest level but the city is really made up of sectors and landmarks and I will sketch that out as they arrive at the city . River here, docks, poor quarter, markets, watch woters etc etc logic of he culture will inform the city structure so it kind of draws itself.
If I draw a dungeon I make it up as I go. I start by superimposing a base structure on the blank sheet. Temple complex NE, dungeon cells, SE, natureal caverns centre and Nother , below N caverns ancient city of the Vali (deserted) etc . Then as the pCs move into those areas I extrapolate them outand draw in rooms and stuff.
I don't do dungeons very often.
Now an exception to this is my Goblin Gauntlet games which are prepped and mapped. Different sort of game. The idea is for me to build a realistic goblin warren using technology and skill available to goblins but designed to kill all the players as quickly as possible. The players aim is to get as deep as they can before they are killed. I could ad lib these, to be honest my process is identical when I prep something in advance or if I do it on the fly. But part of it is a competition between DM and Players so writing it all down in advance seems to be the best way to keep it all above board.

NPCs , well I just make them up. Like I said uppost I used Jyhad cards in my epic Vampire game and I would be tempted to use magic cards for a D&D game. Not for inspirationa s much as for the really cool artwork.

Quote from: Adric;736762Here's an interesting question: Do you use different levels of prep for your online games than you do you in person games? How about the difference between play by post and more 'live' games like roll20, Google hangouts, or IRC?

Another thing I'm interested in is how many of you use online resources like obsidian portal and the like to not only store information but organize games?

While I have not personally. A friend of mine runs online RPG sessions and seems for them the prep time is a little longer for online as they have to prep maps at the very least for the online system they use.

I've sat in on and observed a Neverwinter game in progress and I have no clue how that was pulled off. The village and NPCs had to have been prepped before hand. The wilderness encounter I saw though not sure.

Quote from: Omega;737010While I have not personally. A friend of mine runs online RPG sessions and seems for them the prep time is a little longer for online as they have to prep maps at the very least for the online system they use.

I've sat in on and observed a Neverwinter game in progress and I have no clue how that was pulled off. The village and NPCs had to have been prepped before hand. The wilderness encounter I saw though not sure.

I tried running nwn games back in the day but was never able to pull it off. I would prep for hours and hours and hours and when i played i realised that the game would be better with an npc encounter here or whatever. I just hated the fact i was unable to improv.
The prep wasn't great either because i was looking to give as much flexibility as when i played. A city home to 10,000 people each building detailed with inhabitants patrols etecetc.  It just got to unmanageable i need about 12 developers to work on it for a year. That the flexibility i get from improv:-)

Jibbajibba, I envy your improvisation skills.  Speaking for myself, I can improvise adequate world details when needed, but they're almost never as interesting or well-thought-out or intriguing as stuff I've prepared; and, also, remembering all of the details I invent and making sure they're consistent between sessions can become troublesome.  In particular, the stranger and more fantastic the setting, the more difficult it is to think of good descriptions on the fly (conversely: the more generic/mundane the setting, the easier it is to improvise for me).

In reference to your market example, for instance: say I'm describing a market in Sigil, or the Star Wars universe, or Sharn.  I could describe the market based on my real world experiences or cobble together something on the fly based on my knowledge of the settings in question, but, speaking personally, if I spend a few minutes before the game thinking about the different races and creatures that might be in the market, some unusual items the might sell, perhaps some possible minor encounters in the market (swindlers, pickpockets, street performers), maybe consulting a few sourcebooks along the way, the gaming experience is going to be far richer.

Quote from: jibbajibbaSo where specifically do you spend the bulk of your prep time? What areas of the game do you think benefit most from good preparation? If say you had a 20 session game to plan out and you had 10 hours to prep it how would you spend that time (numbers picked deliberately due to ease of expression as %)?

As with Sommerjon I'd say it depends on the game in question.

For a city-based urban game I'd spend a lot of time (probably 5 hours, 50%) mapping and detailing individual districts, streets, and landmarks, and then make sure there are a few encounters planned so that the city doesn't feel like a stage set (1 hour, 10%), as well as some major NPCs (2 hours, 20%) and then sketch out a plot - or at least a few adventure seeds - using the remaining time (2 hours, 20%).

For a dungeon-based game I'd spend most of my time (80%, 8 hours) mapping and detailing the dungeon, using the prep time specifically to ensure that the layout is thoughtful and intricate, with interesting features like chutes and secret doors, unusual rooms, puzzles, monster patrol routes, strange new creatures, old creatures with a twist, etc.  I'd use the remaining 2 hours to deal with things like rival adventuring parties, nearby villages, and the local wilderness.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736988That is interesting.

Re creatures why are you writing them up? What are you doing there that adds value to them in play?

What are you doing when you prep your monsters are you copying out stat blocks or are you doing stuff like generating random treasure and making sure that the monster uses anything relevant, assigning random personality traits? What sort of activity is happening here.

I've found that D&D players are the worst metagamers out there. Of course noone here does that or plays with people who do  
I combat that by making my own creatures. Plus I have grown tired of 90% of the creatures in D&D.
However, yes I make the stat blocks, generate their items, define their combat philosophies, typical personality traits, etc.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736988Maps - well I rarely bother.

Maps to me is the big 'sandbox' map.  I have the master map that has more than geography and towns on it.  It also lists the 'world in motion' things
I also make maps for the players of the areas they grew up in
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;736988I don't do dungeons very often.

Same here.
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;736988NPCs , well I just make them up. Like I said uppost I used Jyhad cards in my epic Vampire game and I would be tempted to use magic cards for a D&D game. Not for inspirationa s much as for the really cool artwork.

I have too many NPCs to keep track of.


Opaopajr:  "If one spends lengthy amounts of campaign time you begin to spot greater layers of detail."
Steerpike:  "remembering all of the details I invent and making sure they're consistent between settings can become troublesome."

These are the other reasons.  I get my mental orgasms from the layers of detail that the players start to unravel.

Quote from: Sommerjon;737058I've found that D&D players are the worst metagamers out there. Of course noone here does that or plays with people who do  
I combat that by making my own creatures. Plus I have grown tired of 90% of the creatures in D&D.
However, yes I make the stat blocks, generate their items, define their combat philosophies, typical personality traits, etc.

How big is the stat block for a D&D monster on average? How many minutes would it take you to stat one up?

Quote from: Sommerjon;737058Maps to me is the big 'sandbox' map.  I have the master map that has more than geography and towns on it.  It also lists the 'world in motion' things
I also make maps for the players of the areas they grew up in

Maps are great! I'll start the game with a blank piece of paper and make the maps as we play. Noting down details as they are mentioned. As events change the world, the map gets revised and updated.

Quote from: Sommerjon;737058I have too many NPCs to keep track of.

I take notes as I play. NPCs start as a name, and maybe 2 or 3 words to describe them. as new traits come to light, I'll jot them down.

Quote from: Sommerjon;737058Opaopajr:  "If one spends lengthy amounts of campaign time you begin to spot greater layers of detail."
Steerpike:  "remembering all of the details I invent and making sure they're consistent between settings can become troublesome."

These are the other reasons.  I get my mental orgasms from the layers of detail that the players start to unravel.

I enjoy unraveling and discovering the layers and making connections with my players. I've found that things often resolve into sensible cohesiveness with surprising regularity. New details are organically layered on top of existing ones, creating an emergent world through play.

My style of play does demand more input from players beyond "I hit it with my sword", but that is more to do with my preference in playing, and not as much to do with improvisation.

Quote from: Adric;737128How big is the stat block for a D&D monster on average? How many minutes would it take you to stat one up?


 
Maps are great! I'll start the game with a blank piece of paper and make the maps as we play. Noting down details as they are mentioned. As events change the world, the map gets revised and updated.



I take notes as I play. NPCs start as a name, and maybe 2 or 3 words to describe them. as new traits come to light, I'll jot them down.



I enjoy unraveling and discovering the layers and making connections with my players. I've found that things often resolve into sensible cohesiveness with surprising regularity. New details are organically layered on top of existing ones, creating an emergent world through play.

My style of play does demand more input from players beyond "I hit it with my sword", but that is more to do with my preference in playing, and not as much to do with improvisation.

Agree with most of that.
with NPCs, well how may people do you know on a first name basis maybe 400something like that. When I was teaching I taught about 13 classes of 30 kids so about 400 extra people on top of all the people you actually know.  For each kid I needed to remember their name, their rough GPA, their hobbies, their family situation etc etc . .... Now if you can do that, and it's in no way exceptional, then tracking 30 NPCs that you actually thought up and created yourself so you have had genuine input into is relatively easy.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737039I tried running nwn games back in the day but was never able to pull it off. I would prep for hours and hours and hours and when i played i realised that the game would be better with an npc encounter here or whatever. I just hated the fact i was unable to improv.
The prep wasn't great either because i was looking to give as much flexibility as when i played. A city home to 10,000 people each building detailed with inhabitants patrols etecetc.  It just got to unmanageable i need about 12 developers to work on it for a year. That the flexibility i get from improv:-)

I ran into the same problem just looking at the system. Id want a more robust town. But much like populating a MUD. That takes alot of effort that may never see any use.

If I did try it I think I'd break things up into sectors and only on a need to be there basis.

Good thread.

When I was a kid I would spend immense amount of time doing prep. My inexperience was one factor, another was the influence of published modules -- I thought that was the way it worked.

With more experience, I am much more comfortable with improv. I do a lot of on-the-fly stuff. I particularly enjoy the emergent details that evolve only due the course of play. However, I do find that I run a  much better game if I have some notes to fall back on, even if I don't use them. They give me space to think. Prerolled treasure, monster stats, NPC notes, prekeyed encounters, maps, name lists ... all help here. There's no useless prep, but some prep is more useful than others. Unused prep can always be recast, and reworked later. My feeling is that if it's not in the game yet, it probably doesn't exist. I'm not married to it.

A related challenge is the record keeping and making sure the gameworld remains consistent. My in joke is that my prep tends to happenafter the session. I always strive to do something more with my session notes after the game. Build on that, add details, layers.

My group plays every two weeks, giving me much time to ruminate on things. The day before, or the morning of, the session, I'll write some things down if I haven't already. This could be 15 minutes, it could be two hours or longer, depending on what is going on in my life. My guideline is 1 hour of prep to 4 hours of play (one session). And I will prep the most immediately useful interesting things.

20 hours prep for a 10 session game? Totally doable. I'd come up with a  small home base, a rather linear and probably generic first adventure -- but fun anyway-- and then based on what happens, have an idea about where the next 9 could go. In game, I'll riff and throw out ideas, see what gets bitten. By session 4-5 things should have their own momentum, and I'd likely know the a probable end of this short arc. But no master plan for me. Shit happens, we're rolling dice, players make choices, inspiration strikes at the table.

I improv way too much.  I basically use it as a crutch for my lack of prep skills.

I suppose it's fortunate that I'm really good at it and the players always seem to think the stuff I make up on the fly was prepared in advance.

I'm trying to run a sandbox campaign by the book right now (Griffin Mountain) and am finding my improv tendencies are getting in the way of me actually using the source material.

The other issue I have with improv as the referee is that I don't enjoy it as much as impartially refereeing the exploration of a dangerous locale.  It's hard to be impartial and play to see what happens when you're making things up as you go.

traveling this week, or i'd be more involved.....it's a good thread, and useful.  

My prep has changed over time, like anything you do a lot of, you get better and more proficient.   i actually take my game notes and work them into the game wiki, so that the locales and adventures maintain consistency and grow properly and dynamically.
plotting and writing abut the relationships between power centers is also critical for understanding how different places work.  

I'm not a slave to it,  I riff off it. And creating a real world in motion feel requires, after a while, the feeling of depth, not just surface detail.  I spend a lot time on that game wiki,

Quote from: NathanIW;737166It's hard to be impartial and play to see what happens when you're making things up as you go.

I used to have real issue with this and always favoured PCs that did stuff that fitted character and genre over stuff that might be totally reasonable but felt dull.  Basically allowing my bias to dictate the outcome.

I developed a specific technique to deal with it which I call the Lady or the Tiger (based on the short story of the same name). Basically whenever you add a door to the game (or a fork or a choice of any type) before you commit to it you need to decide what is behind the door the lady or the tiger. You can't do this when the PCs open the door you have to do it before you commit to including the door in the game.

If you stick to this rule then bias can't influence you nearly as easily.

You also need to commit to "Leaving Stuff Behind". I mentioned this on another thread on improv about 4 years ago but if you decide that the route out of town down the river  is guarded by river pirates and you come up with a great idea for a female pirate captain you know will really gel with the PCs and lead to some great adventure hooks and the party decide to take the path overland through the forest you can't reuse that idea and make her a bandit leader. That is illusionism. The pirates now live on the virtual river in the game world you can't move them or reuse them and if the party never go back to the river they will never encounter them. Sure the pirates may become part of the world in motion and get involved in other stuff which may one day lead to an encounter but you can't change them, reskin them or put them deliberately in the party's path.

So sticking to "The Lady and the Tiger" and "Leaving Stuff Behind" helps me ensure that my improv world is as unbiased as a world I prepared a month ago and wrote out in great detail with maps and stat blocks and everything.

Quote from: Omega;737161I ran into the same problem just looking at the system. Id want a more robust town. But much like populating a MUD. That takes alot of effort that may never see any use.

If I did try it I think I'd break things up into sectors and only on a need to be there basis.

I used sectors but got too big :)
Poor quarter, wealthy quarter, guards zone, palace, docks ewtc etrc ... teh thing became ridiculous (also I have an issue with teh outside of building being smaller than the inside :)

Quote from: jibbajibba;737177I used to have real issue with this and always favoured PCs that did stuff that fitted character and genre over stuff that might be totally reasonable but felt dull.  Basically allowing my bias to dictate the outcome.

I developed a specific technique to deal with it which I call the Lady or the Tiger (based on the short story of the same name). Basically whenever you add a door to the game (or a fork or a choice of any type) before you commit to it you need to decide what is behind the door the lady or the tiger. You can't do this when the PCs open the door you have to do it before you commit to including the door in the game.

If you stick to this rule then bias can't influence you nearly as easily.

You also need to commit to "Leaving Stuff Behind". I mentioned this on another thread on improv about 4 years ago but if you decide that the route out of town down the river  is guarded by river pirates and you come up with a great idea for a female pirate captain you know will really gel with the PCs and lead to some great adventure hooks and the party decide to take the path overland through the forest you can't reuse that idea and make her a bandit leader. That is illusionism. The pirates now live on the virtual river in the game world you can't move them or reuse them and if the party never go back to the river they will never encounter them. Sure the pirates may become part of the world in motion and get involved in other stuff which may one day lead to an encounter but you can't change them, reskin them or put them deliberately in the party's path.

So sticking to "The Lady and the Tiger" and "Leaving Stuff Behind" helps me ensure that my improv world is as unbiased as a world I prepared a month ago and wrote out in great detail with maps and stat blocks and everything.

This is an interesting outlook. What defines bias? Arbitrariness? changing prep players have not been exposed to?

When I GM, I treat any ideas I've had that the players have not been exposed to as mutable, changeable, or not truly part of the world. If the players haven't been directly exposed to the idea, but it has influenced their experience in some tangential way, then there is a cause for those slight influences, but until the players come into direct contact with the source, i keep myself open to other concepts that might make more sense or are more entertaining.

Before speaking something at the table and making it real, I have a personal checklist I try to run through.

-Does it make sense and follow logically, in relation to everything that has been said before? (this includes assumptions about the natural laws of the imaginary world, the history of the world and the characters, the current situation, etc.)
-Does it make the characters' lives more interesting or dangerous?
-Does it  advance the situation?
-Does it follow the rules of the game?

If the answer is yes to all of those criteria, then I say it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737177So sticking to "The Lady and the Tiger" and "Leaving Stuff Behind" helps me ensure that my improv world is as unbiased as a world I prepared a month ago and wrote out in great detail with maps and stat blocks and everything.

This is some seriously good advice.  I'm going to implement it right now.

But in the last session, I didn't.  So here's the situation I need to fix:

Spoiler

The characters are searching for an immortal druid who is sort of the spiritual leader of their people.  They are from a town that has largely become heretics in the eyes of those who practice the old ways and the leader of that town desires the death of this druid and the syphoning of his power to foreign gods.

This druid is a horrible asshole.  He sacrifices other humans.  He sees anyone who lives in a village or a town as a soft nature-rejector who should be cast into the wilderness and die as prey.  He meddles in the affairs of the people, killing local tribe leaders and putting his people in charge.

The players learned that he's horrible and that people want him dead and have decided that they're still going to find him, but then warn him about the plot to kill him.  They asked around and I said he was busy installing and training new leadership among a northern tribe and could likely be found at their nomadic gathering place/trading outpost.

So what's there?  A lady or a tiger?  i didn't decide at all when I gave the lead.  It literally could be a tiger as prehistoric style saber tooth tigers are his totem animal and exist in the area.  Does he put them through his trials of going to some wilderness location and back without the aid of foreign technology (their people are neolithic)?  The characters range in their adherence to the old ways to varying degrees.  How would he react to their mixed company?  Demand the more traditional PCs sacrifice the heretics to the spirits?

Quote from: Adric;737201This is an interesting outlook. What defines bias? Arbitrariness? changing prep players have not been exposed to?

When I GM, I treat any ideas I've had that the players have not been exposed to as mutable, changeable, or not truly part of the world. If the players haven't been directly exposed to the idea, but it has influenced their experience in some tangential way, then there is a cause for those slight influences, but until the players come into direct contact with the source, i keep myself open to other concepts that might make more sense or are more entertaining.

Before speaking something at the table and making it real, I have a personal checklist I try to run through.

-Does it make sense and follow logically, in relation to everything that has been said before? (this includes assumptions about the natural laws of the imaginary world, the history of the world and the characters, the current situation, etc.)
-Does it make the characters' lives more interesting or dangerous?
-Does it  advance the situation?
-Does it follow the rules of the game?

If the answer is yes to all of those criteria, then I say it.

I used to do exactly this but I found that in one game I ran the PCs ran into something that was a bit set fightscene I had planned and I realised that whatever they did they were always comign to that fight and that that was wrong becuase it meant their actions were irrelevant.
I also found that certain players (remember by play base for years was a group of guys I started playing with aged 10) knew which of my buttons to press. By doing things that they knew appealed to me, and to the genre and their character, they were gaming me a little so they got an easier ride. A typical action woudl be to explain their reasoning very clearly to the other players and make it so very reasonable that this door had the tiger and this the lady, this aludes to what I mentioned up post where you lift part of the PC suggested explanation of a thing to explain it.

Anyway in one game I realised I was doing it and I stepped back and I decided not to and stuck with it that way ever since and its been better I think.

Quote from: NathanIW;737202This is some seriously good advice.  I'm going to implement it right now.

But in the last session, I didn't.  So here's the situation I need to fix:

Spoiler

The characters are searching for an immortal druid who is sort of the spiritual leader of their people.  They are from a town that has largely become heretics in the eyes of those who practice the old ways and the leader of that town desires the death of this druid and the syphoning of his power to foreign gods.

This druid is a horrible asshole.  He sacrifices other humans.  He sees anyone who lives in a village or a town as a soft nature-rejector who should be cast into the wilderness and die as prey.  He meddles in the affairs of the people, killing local tribe leaders and putting his people in charge.

The players learned that he's horrible and that people want him dead and have decided that they're still going to find him, but then warn him about the plot to kill him.  They asked around and I said he was busy installing and training new leadership among a northern tribe and could likely be found at their nomadic gathering place/trading outpost.

So what's there?  A lady or a tiger?  i didn't decide at all when I gave the lead.  It literally could be a tiger as prehistoric style saber tooth tigers are his totem animal and exist in the area.  Does he put them through his trials of going to some wilderness location and back without the aid of foreign technology (their people are neolithic)?  The characters range in their adherence to the old ways to varying degrees.  How would he react to their mixed company?  Demand the more traditional PCs sacrifice the heretics to the spirits?

Spoiler

Okay so the important part I guess is to be true to the NPC. the following are things I think I would bear in mnd
i) who controls the informationt hey gained re location sounds like its genuine to me
ii) will he be aware of their coming - depends on what information he has. I suspect he woudl know befor ethey get there seems likely).
iii)Is the druid aware of the plan to kill him? Does he care? Does he treat it seriously, is he afraid of death, would his death be a blow to his religion or part of the great circle?
iv) if you decide he will know they are coming but not what news they bring then his reaction to them will be what he knows of them. I assume he doesn't just kill folk off the cuff so he might grant them an audience to speak with him. He might not instead forcing them to do some trial to get his attention.
v) if he does listen to them he still might not care and seems unlikely to treat them as allies more likely to treat them with disdain due to their impure ways.

Anyway :) none of that is very helpful. Only you can know the answer cos only you know the setting and the NPCs well enough.

Quote from: Opaopajr;736977...it should be understood by the very nature of this being a mere forum that this is not "objective" or let alone "scientific." It's not peer reviewed like even an humanities journal, and it's all about imagination land, so there's really zero grounds for accusations of bias. It's all bias, it's all opinion. And insisting upon this obvious fact -- in favor of an objectivity that cannot contribute fruitfully beyond static facts like MSRPs -- adds nothing to these discussion.
...

Mere forum or not, when people write things that others are to read, I generally take what they wrote to mean what they wrote.*  If you say "in my opinion" I take it that way, if you say "X is Y" I take it that way as well, if you put a smiley on it I again take it that way.  It's not my place to ass-u-me* people are saying something different from what they write, even if it appears obvious.  Now, if it appears obvious, I probably won't comment on it, but I won't ass-u-me I've got it right either.

In this specific case, there is a difference between stating that (generic) YOU specifically can't improv a high quality game with no prep and saying no one else can.  GMing is an art (I think this is a fact, but people are welcome to tell me "that's just, like, your opinion, man."), and I think it's ridiculous to tell another artist they are doing it wrong if their art is being accepted by their audience the way they want it to be.  When someone tells another they can't do their art successfully, when they are in fact doing their art successfully, bringing up the fact that it's aesthetics adds to the conversation for me.



*I don't entirely agree that assuming is "ass-u-me" but it often can be and when I'm speaking/writing in a group of mostly strangers (like forums on the internet), I try to check most of my assumptions at the door.

Quote from: NathanIW;737166...
It's hard to be impartial and play to see what happens when you're making things up as you go.

I am utterly impartial as I make shit up (or steal it) seconds before the players run into it.  Once I've made it up (and usually written it down at that point), it's the way it is.  I very rarely change things once I have made up my mind.  If there are three doors, I may only have the vaguest of ideas what is behind each OR I may know exactly what is behind all three because six sessions ago I made something up that logically requires it.  Now I do try to keep as many things open as I can (so I can go with a better idea I or the players might think up later) but I'm not ignoring logic or cause and effect.  As well, I may have an encounter in mind, but not know WHERE exactly that encounter is going to be until the right place shows up (or the players want the info and I have to decide at that point).  Not because I'm moving that encounter, but because I haven't the foggiest idea where it is yet myself.  And it's not that they will get that encounter either, it might get tossed out.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737177...

So sticking to "The Lady and the Tiger" and "Leaving Stuff Behind" helps me ensure that my improv world is as unbiased as a world I prepared a month ago and wrote out in great detail with maps and stat blocks and everything.

I am utterly unconcerned with bias or illusionism.  My unconcern doesn't usually matter because in my case there won't be any river pirates or a specific location until I see the right place for them, the need for their existence, and a PC has some reason to know about them.  Though, like I essentially said in a previous post, once a PC knows the river pirates are at point X on river Y, they are locked in (unless of course it was bad information) and if they show up at point Z, not on a river, there WILL be a logical reason for it and it won't be because I want the players to encounter them, it will be because once they popped into existence they had their own agendas that happen to cross paths with the PCs.  This may end up not too far from where you are, but it's not over any concern about bias or illusionism (and really I'd never even HEARD of these kinds of concerns until I started paying more attention here).  I really could care less if my worlds are internally consistent, but I am VERY interested in it being externally consistent, if that makes sense.

Quote from: Adric;737201This is an interesting outlook. What defines bias? Arbitrariness? changing prep players have not been exposed to?

When I GM, I treat any ideas I've had that the players have not been exposed to as mutable, changeable, or not truly part of the world. If the players haven't been directly exposed to the idea, but it has influenced their experience in some tangential way, then there is a cause for those slight influences, but until the players come into direct contact with the source, i keep myself open to other concepts that might make more sense or are more entertaining.

Before speaking something at the table and making it real, I have a personal checklist I try to run through.

-Does it make sense and follow logically, in relation to everything that has been said before? (this includes assumptions about the natural laws of the imaginary world, the history of the world and the characters, the current situation, etc.)
-Does it make the characters' lives more interesting or dangerous?
-Does it  advance the situation?
-Does it follow the rules of the game?

If the answer is yes to all of those criteria, then I say it.

Or I could replace my last post with what Adric said :-)

Quote from: jibbajibba;737208...becuase it meant their actions were irrelevant.

Does this matter if they are unaware of it?

Quote from: jibbajibba;737208I also found that certain players (remember by play base for years was a group of guys I started playing with aged 10) knew which of my buttons to press. By doing things that they knew appealed to me, and to the genre and their character, they were gaming me a little so they got an easier ride. ...

Now this does concern me and I've run into it a couple times in longer term groups and to be honest, I've done it myself as a player a few times, of course, I would say it was only for the good of the game when I did it.  :)
 
If I suspect this is going on as a GM I tend to start drawing cards or rolling dice to throw some randomness into my decisions of what is next (though I do that from time to time, even when I don't suspect players trying to push my buttons,  if I have more than one good idea).

EDIT:  This post is from the perspective of someone who is trying to develop refereeing skills and refereeing games rather than game mastering in a 90s style.

Brander,  I actually think impartiality is impossible to the point of irrelevancy (or is that irrelevant to the point of impossibility?) when there's no actual situation to adjudicate until it is created as part of the adjudication.

I used to be part of a non-comedic improv troupe and when we did performances, everyone was on the same page.  The other troupe members, the audience, etc.,.  But in RPG play where you are making stuff up but the other people at the table are responding to the situation as if you are not, then you're in a situation where the primacy of your own input is paramount and everyone else's input is limited.  They can't even respond to the situation because there isn't one, just someone fronting that there is one.

They think they're playing an RPG while you are doing a spontaneous situation and plot creation exercise.  They're reacting to the situation as if there actually is one, but there isn't.  There's just whim, techniques like dice rolling in an attempt to mitigate whim, and a well developed skill at making the results of whim seem consistent to those ignorant of what's really going on.

I used to be a huge proponent of the idea that anything not established in play does not yet exist.  Now I see that approach as a snow job.  It's like asking a judge to be fair and impartial when they have the power to modify the evidence on the fly.  There's a pretense of non-adversarial fairness, but in the end, what you want in the moment is what has the most weight, not what makes sense or is fair given the situation (as there is no situation, anything not yet established doesn't exist).  

This thread is basically revisiting a common argument during the 90s.  When people started become overly concerned with "story" and "plot" and the like.  When people abandoned the idea of exploring a situation that is fairly adjudicated by a referee in favour of having a GM who tells his story and owns the plot.

So where am I going to focus my very well developed improv skills?

Description.  Of a situation that is already set and will be fairly adjudicated and not made up on the fly in a way that I'm sure I can justify as being "for the good of the game."

And during prep.  I really do think not doing the creative act in the moment of play has a massive impact on it being run impartially.  The situation won't be changed except by what the other participants actually do with their characters.

It's been great rediscovering what the original role of referee born out of wargaming is really all about.  And it's not about being the only person at the table who knows we're actually an improv troupe.  A referee runs a scenario.  If there's no situation, there's no scenario and no opportunity to be a referee.  Just a story guardian called a GM who's playing a story creation game while everyone else at the table thinks they are playing an RPG.

I hope the contrast between a 70s style referee and a 90s style game master is a bit clearer now.

I have no real problem with people running things in a 90s style story-guardian GM mode, but it's not what I'm interested in and I don't think it can actually involve the same referee role that I am interested in.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737210Anyway :) none of that is very helpful. Only you can know the answer cos only you know the setting and the NPCs well enough.

I also needed to realize that I can't solve a problem on the same level it was created.  I created an element of the situation on the fly rather than preparing it in advance and now the players are making decisions based on a situation that I haven't fleshed out yet.  If I wait until the moment a detail is needed to make it up, I'll just be denying them a situation to actually engage with and explore.

I'm going to go back to the source material.  The druid cannot be found in the wilds by anyone without his mastery of shape change, astral travel, and wilderness survival.  The source material specifically spells out that he finds people, they don't find him.  So if they want to meet with him, they'll have to get his attention.  And he just finished sacrificing a group of tribal elders and replacing them with his cultists.  That's who they'll discover at this gathering place if they go there.

I'm going to do some proper prep for this gathering place.

When talkng about doors, players deciding which way to go is irrelevant unless they have some information about what x could be and what y could be.

Two identical doors are totally arbitrary, but if the description of the doors hints at what they might find then the players can make a meaningful, informed decision. This is true whether you wrote the doors and their consequent rooms a month ago, or came up with them 2 seconds ago.

Quote from: Brander;737216Mere forum or not, when people write things that others are to read, I generally take what they wrote to mean what they wrote.*  If you say "in my opinion" I take it that way, if you say "X is Y" I take it that way as well, if you put a smiley on it I again take it that way.  It's not my place to ass-u-me* people are saying something different from what they write, even if it appears obvious.  Now, if it appears obvious, I probably won't comment on it, but I won't ass-u-me I've got it right either.

In this specific case, there is a difference between stating that (generic) YOU specifically can't improv a high quality game with no prep and saying no one else can.  GMing is an art (I think this is a fact, but people are welcome to tell me "that's just, like, your opinion, man."), and I think it's ridiculous to tell another artist they are doing it wrong if their art is being accepted by their audience the way they want it to be.  When someone tells another they can't do their art successfully, when they are in fact doing their art successfully, bringing up the fact that it's aesthetics adds to the conversation for me.



*I don't entirely agree that assuming is "ass-u-me" but it often can be and when I'm speaking/writing in a group of mostly strangers (like forums on the internet), I try to check most of my assumptions at the door.

But all this "IMHO" and "I feel" stuff, that's just conversational padding, which inevitably shapes conversation in other ways. Outside of a therapy room people don't talk like that. Normally there is context in everything from body language to social demographics to determine these things, and this forum is no different.

As we become expected to have these clarifiers spoon fed to us, the more disjointed and restrained speech will be. We go from conversational, even animated and heated, to formal and nearly apologetic. This sucks the passion right out of the room -- and a fan forum is nothing without passion. (See exhibit A: "The Banning Place.")

So, YES! This IS a discussion about aesthetics! And yes, outside of knowing artist intent, the audience is welcome to criticize according to their POV with just as much authority. And hammering that out requires divulging what our POVs are and how the subject meets or fails them. This, though loud and passionate, angry even, is not a bad thing. We need to know as humans how to argue, as it helps us learn release or restraint for when it really matters.

Pointing out that this is about aesthetics does not add to the conversation -- unless one happens to find it hard to read the social context. Granted writing is a challenging medium at the best of times, and we have created hotkeys (like smilies) to rapidly emote context. But it'd be the death of language's vitality to flag every nuance ahead of time with crude stage lights and sirens.

Like at a comedy show, those who have trouble keeping up are just going to have to ask around for help from those who got it. To do otherwise we might as well start speaking and writing like Mass Effect's Elcor race. "(Ironic Sarcasm): And wouldn't that be fun!"

PS: I'm not picking on you per se, but this is a pet peeve that's been brewing over the years. Why TheRPGSite is refreshing is because of its liberated animus, which is closer to in-person fan talk than most other fora. Similarly the "Quest for Balance" irritates because its single-minded player altruism ends up discarding so much of the RPG game elements in favor of laboratory room regularity. It is a well-intentioned smothering effect.

Quote from: Adric;737235When talkng about doors, players deciding which way to go is irrelevant unless they have some information about what x could be and what y could be.

Two identical doors are totally arbitrary, but if the description of the doors hints at what they might find then the players can make a meaningful, informed decision. This is true whether you wrote the doors and their consequent rooms a month ago, or came up with them 2 seconds ago.

Totally and this is why I use the Lady or the Tiger because I know answers to questions as soon as the door hits the game world.
The key for me is not changing the outcome of player decisions to make the game more fun/intersting/challenging/awesome etc

Quote from: Adric;737235When talkng about doors, players deciding which way to go is irrelevant unless they have some information about what x could be and what y could be.

Two identical doors are totally arbitrary, but if the description of the doors hints at what they might find then the players can make a meaningful, informed decision. This is true whether you wrote the doors and their consequent rooms a month ago, or came up with them 2 seconds ago.

They aren't arbitrary in the context of the larger environment.  One door might be closer to the exit.  Another might end up outside of the area of a magical effect.  There are all sorts of ways in which the contents of the rooms might end up being important in play given the larger scope of their location.  These things are often nearly impossible to predict, but can occasionally matter in game.

It's also interesting that you mention "meaningful informed decision."  Let's take the scenario of two identical doors with different contents a bit further.

1) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X as indicated on the GM's map and notes.  The GM describes the room.

2) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room Y, despite X being indicated on the GM's map/notes.  The GM describes the room.

3) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X or Y based on a die roll.  The GM describes the room.

4) A player opens door A and the contents of the room are made up on the spot.  The GM describes the room.

Some questions:

In which of these situations is it even possible for the player's choice to be meaningful?  

In which of these situations are the player exploring an environment?  In which of these situations is the environment created in response to the player's exploration?

If a given player was interested in play that's about exploring an environment, which approach do you think they'd prefer the GM use?  Which do you think they'd be least appreciative of?  Which would the GM want a given player not to know is in use?  Would a GM ever hide which technique they are using?  Why might they do that?

Quote from: NathanIW;737228I used to be a huge proponent of the idea that anything not established in play does not yet exist.  Now I see that approach as a snow job.  It's like asking a judge to be fair and impartial when they have the power to modify the evidence on the fly.  There's a pretense of non-adversarial fairness, but in the end, what you want in the moment is what has the most weight, not what makes sense or is fair given the situation (as there is no situation, anything not yet established doesn't exist). .

Improvisation in RPGs work best when you have a bag of stuff to draw on. A set of elements used to creation locales, NPCs, items, creatures, etc. The key to being fair while improvising as a referee is to be consistent about the application of your bag of stuff. That you are extrapolating in a fair manner the new content.

The final arbiter that when it is not clear among some clear possibilities is to roll the dice to decide. In

In my experience sitting down with a blank map and improvising a session is an extreme situation.

What typical is that you have some high level overview, a map with little prepared content, combined with a good knowledge of your chosen setting or genre. It is from this "bag of stuff" that the improvisation develops. In the hands of a skilled referee the players will notice little difference. As the referee is doing what he normally does with prep but on the fly.

The value of trying to run a session with just some rulebooks and blank paper if you can handle that a extreme situation and create a fun game then handling the typical mix of prep and improvisation in a campaign becomes that much more comfortable.

But it is not something I recommend as a normal way to play as consistency very easily falls apart, to many spur of the moment decision on setting content have a habit of spinning off undesired consequences that would have been avoided by having  spending some prep time before the game.

Like most things in the management of tabletop campaigns it is one technique among many. Neither better or worse, only advantages and consequences.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737191I used sectors but got too big :)
Poor quarter, wealthy quarter, guards zone, palace, docks ewtc etrc ... teh thing became ridiculous (also I have an issue with teh outside of building being smaller than the inside :)

Magic!

Least in Unlimited Adventures when converting a module or doing my own I could keep the scale consistent inside and out.

Quote from: estar;737273Improvisation in RPGs work best when you have a bag of stuff to draw on. A set of elements used to creation locales, NPCs, items, creatures, etc. The key to being fair while improvising as a referee is to be consistent about the application of your bag of stuff. That you are extrapolating in a fair manner the new content.

The final arbiter that when it is not clear among some clear possibilities is to roll the dice to decide. In

In my experience sitting down with a blank map and improvising a session is an extreme situation.

What typical is that you have some high level overview, a map with little prepared content, combined with a good knowledge of your chosen setting or genre. It is from this "bag of stuff" that the improvisation develops. In the hands of a skilled referee the players will notice little difference. As the referee is doing what he normally does with prep but on the fly.

The value of trying to run a session with just some rulebooks and blank paper if you can handle that a extreme situation and create a fun game then handling the typical mix of prep and improvisation in a campaign becomes that much more comfortable.

But it is not something I recommend as a normal way to play as consistency very easily falls apart, to many spur of the moment decision on setting content have a habit of spinning off undesired consequences that would have been avoided by having  spending some prep time before the game.

Like most things in the management of tabletop campaigns it is one technique among many. Neither better or worse, only advantages and consequences.

That isn't improv that is more prep than I have done since about 1995 :D

I ran an improv game once called Mud. We had been playing magic for about 18 months and the couple of guys in the group who weren't into it pushed to get back to RPGs so I kicked off a quick game just improv run for a couple of sessions then see what folks wanted to do. Called Mud cos I had watched the seven samurai the day before.
The game ran for weekly for 2 years and stopped when one of the players emigrated to Canada. They travelled the multiverse as agents of Herne champions of Chaos, The Harper, the Archer, the Smith and the Shadow, with an extended guest appearance from Lord Fantastic and a cameo from Josadec Horseslayer (great against horses crap in a kitchen against 4 blokes with crossbows....)  They found carvings of themselves in a temple complex on anther plane . Escaping from faerie was a great arc but got to say getting involved in the thieve's war in Flanesse was the best part in fact they returned there when we were winding the game down rather than laying a path for the wild hunt to follow and i rifted of that setting for years and still do actually.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268It's also interesting that you mention "meaningful informed decision."  Let's take the scenario of two identical doors with different contents a bit further.

1) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X as indicated on the GM's map and notes.  The GM describes the room.

2) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room Y, despite X being indicated on the GM's map/notes.  The GM describes the room.

3) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X or Y based on a die roll.  The GM describes the room.

4) A player opens door A and the contents of the room are made up on the spot.  The GM describes the room.

Some questions:

In which of these situations is it even possible for the player's choice to be meaningful?  

In which of these situations are the player exploring an environment?  In which of these situations is the environment created in response to the player's exploration?

If a given player was interested in play that's about exploring an environment, which approach do you think they'd prefer the GM use?  Which do you think they'd be least appreciative of?  Which would the GM want a given player not to know is in use?  Would a GM ever hide which technique they are using?  Why might they do that?

Problem is, in the Lady/Tiger puzzle its not a puzzle and the choice is irrelevant from the overhead perspective. But the result will be relevant.

Simmilar to an argument from over on BGG where someone was arguing that the players choices of which corridor to follow in a fork was irrelevant. This missed the point that going east might net you more treasure, or more battles, or get you closer to the goal less banged up by bypassing some battles.

Short of a totally random gen dungeon with no end goal, choices matter to the players for their outcome.

If the players are unaware that anything behind the scenes was changed. Then their choice "to them" still mattered. But if there were clues that said A was behind A and B was behind B and instead they find B behind A because the DM swapped rooms, then their choice stops having real meaning.

If the DM swaps rooms and I never know then what do I care? I dont. But if the monster footprints lead to door B and I choose A and theres the monster with no reason how it should be there. Then that is potentially irksome. Though in a fantasy setting I might just suspect magic in effect to fool adventurers into doing exactly what we did.

I expect the DM to keep his/her mouth shut and not break the illusion. I dont care if you twerk the results. Im here to enjoy myself.

As a DM I have never swapped rooms after a choice. I HAVE though flipped rooms in modules if I suspect the players have been peeking. Used to have one who did.

As with all else in RPing. Yep, varies wildly from player to player and group to group.

Improv can be great, or it can be a disaster.
It is a tool a DM may or may not have to call upon.
As said. I would never ask our current GM to improv past NPCs. His brain just does not click to that style.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268They aren't arbitrary in the context of the larger environment.  One door might be closer to the exit.  Another might end up outside of the area of a magical effect.  There are all sorts of ways in which the contents of the rooms might end up being important in play given the larger scope of their location.  These things are often nearly impossible to predict, but can occasionally matter in game.

It's also interesting that you mention "meaningful informed decision."  Let's take the scenario of two identical doors with different contents a bit further.

1) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X as indicated on the GM's map and notes.  The GM describes the room.

2) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room Y, despite X being indicated on the GM's map/notes.  The GM describes the room.

3) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X or Y based on a die roll.  The GM describes the room.

4) A player opens door A and the contents of the room are made up on the spot.  The GM describes the room.

Some questions:

In which of these situations is it even possible for the player's choice to be meaningful?  

In which of these situations are the player exploring an environment?  In which of these situations is the environment created in response to the player's exploration?

If a given player was interested in play that's about exploring an environment, which approach do you think they'd prefer the GM use?  Which do you think they'd be least appreciative of?  Which would the GM want a given player not to know is in use?  Would a GM ever hide which technique they are using?  Why might they do that?

If the door has little description, or the description is "It's a door, it looks like all the other doors you have encountered" then the player has no information to base their decision on. A choice in a vacuum is not much of a choice. It's certainly not an interesting one! If the location of the door indicates what might be behind it, then that is information upon which the play can inform their decision. In all of your examples, I don't know if the GM has hinted at where the door leads with descriptions or not.

If, however, the GM gives hints through what the player sees, hears, or otherwise senses before opening the door, then the player can make a meaningful decision on how to proceed. This method means the GM needs to decide what could be behind the door before it's opened, whether that's in prep before the session, or when they add the door to the game. It also means the consequent room should adhere to the clues given.

However the GM decides the consequences, the player's choice only matters if it feels like it matters. Information on possible consequences is what makes choices matter.

Prep that doesn't provide that information is unhelpful prep. Improv that doesn't provide that information is unhelpful improv.

QuoteIn which of these situations is it even possible for the player's choice to be meaningful?

If X and Y give similar clues before the door is opened, all of them. If X and Y would have given different clues, 3 and 4 could be problematic.

QuoteIn which of these situations are the player exploring an environment?

All of them. Exploration and creation are not mutually exclusive.

QuoteIn which of these situations is the environment created in response to the player's exploration?

I would say 4.

QuoteIf a given player was interested in play that's about exploring an environment, which approach do you think they'd prefer the GM use?

One in which the GM is able to make the environment feel interesting and consistent. Lots of descriptive detail and interesting landmarks.

QuoteWhich do you think they'd be least appreciative of?

One in which the environment feels bland and uninteresting. One where every location feels the same as the last, or the descriptions don't make sense.

QuoteWhich would the GM want a given player not to know is in use?

This feels like the same question as below. The GM and the players should be on the same page as to how each plays to avoid frustration or disappointment.

QuoteWould a GM ever hide which technique they are using?

The GM should be honest in how they create and portray the world. It's no shame or sin to say "I play with lots of prep, this has been pre-written for you to discover" or "I play fast and loose, improv style. If you need more detail on something I say before you make a decision, just ask." or even "I don't have this area prepped, you can either go somewhere else I have prepped, or I'll be making it up as we go, and that's not my strong point."

QuoteWhy might they do that?

Player expectations may not match their desire? They're afraid of their player's reactions? GMs, talk honestly with your players!

Quote from: NathanIW;737228EDIT:  This post is from the perspective of someone who is trying to develop refereeing skills and refereeing games rather than game mastering in a 90s style.
...

I have no real problem with people running things in a 90s style story-guardian GM mode, but it's not what I'm interested in and I don't think it can actually involve the same referee role that I am interested in.

I appreciate your comments, but I think you might have missed the part where I note that once something is set in place, it remains set in place.  Regardless of whether or not it was created seconds ago, an hour ago, or a month ago, doesn't change anything in how it's treated after creation.  I think there is a lot being made of the timing of creation somehow making something one thing or the other, when I see nothing at all different.  The only real difference is that I seldom end up creating anything that doesn't get used and that I can take advantage of the extra mind power at the table (with or without their knowledge).  And I utterly reject that I am somehow engaging in deception or putting on a snow job (even though I do appreciate the compliments :) ).

You mention refereeing in a style close to that of wargaming but I started with this kind of thing with wargaming. We would make up our armies separately (with no limits on either side), then show up and work out a scenario that made sense of what showed up.  Once the scenario was set up, it was every bit the same as if we had done it the other way around (scenario, then army building).

I see my job as the GM to create an engaging experience for my players, and I attach no value in how exactly this gets done as long as it gets done well more often than not.  Sometimes this will be a bog standard dungeon crawl with players who will only speak in 3rd person, though more often it will include a mix of players in a more "theatrical" exchange.  Beg, borrow, cheat, or steal if needed, but I only really care* about opinions on what passes over my GMing screen to the players, not what goes on behind it.  

Also, much of what I learned I learned in the 80s not in the 90s so while I get what you are saying, it has as little to do with 90s style "story-guardianship" as it does with basket weaving.


*I only really care about my player's opinions, but I'm still willing to share, compare, contrast, critique and otherwise discuss how I do it.  I'm not saying I don't appreciate the discussion, but I am finding comparisons of "deception" (snow job in this case) somewhat tiresome, even though I see no malice.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268...
1) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X as indicated on the GM's map and notes.  The GM describes the room.

2) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room Y, despite X being indicated on the GM's map/notes.  The GM describes the room.

3) A player opens door A and the room beyond is room X or Y based on a die roll.  The GM describes the room.

4) A player opens door A and the contents of the room are made up on the spot.  The GM describes the room.

Some questions:

Quote from: NathanIW;737268In which of these situations is it even possible for the player's choice to be meaningful?  

Irrelevant as long as the player feels it was meaningful.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268In which of these situations are the player exploring an environment?  

All of them.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268In which of these situations is the environment created in response to the player's exploration?

All of them.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268If a given player was interested in play that's about exploring an environment, which approach do you think they'd prefer the GM use?

It's none of their business what happens on my side of the GM screen and I will smack their hands with a ruler if I catch them looking*

Quote from: NathanIW;737268Which do you think they'd be least appreciative of?  

I really don't care as long as they seem to be having fun.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268Which would the GM want a given player not to know is in use?  

I'll tell if asked.  This has never happened outside of GM discussions (like this one) and I've never seen a negative reaction outside of online forums.

Quote from: NathanIW;737268Would a GM ever hide which technique they are using?  Why might they do that?

Hide, no, but share without being asked, all of them.  Why? Because all they want is an engaging experience.



*Not really, hitting them with one of my boffers** is more likely.

**when I can, I fight larp with full power hits and shield bashes, so it's quite padded and shouldn't leave bruises.***

***Ok, I have yet to hit a player with a boffer or ruler for this because at no point outside of online forums has anyone ever seemed to care.  I do nonetheless enjoy and appreciate the discussion.

Interesting that we have moved from an improv vs prep discussion to one more focused on how to improv.

I think players do care if they think you are making shit up as you go. Definitely true for players you don't have a lot of history with.

Now like I say I have run games at cons when a bunch of strangers sit down and I say okay what genre do you want to play? what core mechanic? what stats do we want to use?
Then I tell them how to generate PCs then we start playing.
Now here they surely must be aware that I am making up shit as I go because well I just made up the rules so surely I must also be making up the scenario and yet.... I still get the odd comment. However, The Lady and The Tiger and Leaving Things Behind let me create a world that I know is unbiased and where player agency is a genuine thing. If I know this to be true then I am far more able to present this as such to the players and usually its a favourable outcome.

I do agree that it totally doesn't matter if I make this  castle up a month ago or I made it up 2 seconds ago. I still made it up with all the inbuild issues that may or may not have.
However, I do think it matters that the Lord of the castle is a worshipper of Lord Bast and will try to kill the PCs in their sleep or if the Lord of the Castle is a servant of St Anges and will bless the PCs and cure their wounds. And I think I need to decide that before I decide to drop the castle into the game world and not do it once the PCs are wounded and need healing or when they are stuck trying to follow the path back to Lord Bast's secret tomb.

Quote from: Brander;737368I appreciate your comments, but I think you might have missed the part where I note that once something is set in place, it remains set in place.  Regardless of whether or not it was created seconds ago, an hour ago, or a month ago, doesn't change anything in how it's treated after creation.  I think there is a lot being made of the timing of creation somehow making something one thing or the other, when I see nothing at all different.

I agree. The business of leaving facts in place once established means that exploration is the same, when the only difference is whether the fact was established at the instant needed or an arbitrary period of time beforehand.

However, different circumstances or means of creation can bring in different inputs.

If in both cases I'm just pulling from the same deck of cards or rolling on the same table or what have you, with no significant call for variable interpretation, then there is no difference.

If in both cases I'm exercising judgement and inventive imagination, then doing so during play can (consciously or not) introduce a different bias than doing so beforehand.

If I'm using a more thoughtful method in preparation than in improvisation, or vice versa, then the difference in methods may shape things differently. This does not necessarily mean that improvisation is more biased by my expectations of player behavior! I might improvise more randomly.

Preparation in advance -- thereby having a view of the whole -- can allow me more carefully to harmonize the parts.

Quote from: jibbajibba;736965Generally to the heavy prep GMs.

So where specifically do you spend the bulk of your prep time? What areas of the game do you think benefit most from good preparation? If say you had a 20 session game to plan out and you had 10 hours to prep it how would you spend that time (numbers picked deliberately due to ease of expression as % :D )?

I'm a prep-heavy GM, most of the time.

Here's what I spend time on:

1) Creating tactical maps, especially if there's likely to be a battle. I can sketch a map on the fly, of course (or google one up), but having a clear attractive map, IME helps everyone engage directly with what's going on, and for games with a lot of dynamic action (e.g. super heroes), having a map really makes tactical choices come to life.

2) Creating materials for the players to look at. In some games, this is just a sheet telling them general facts their characters would know about the world, but in a few games I've run recently, the player-artifacts were critical and meant to be useful and entertaining, as well as evocative of the setting (Insurance Claims forms)

Same with PC maps -- I want something that's both utilitarian and attractive, even if the map isn't tactical.

In my post-apocalypse game, I created some (ultra-simple) 3d-drawings of the robots they were fighting. I don't know exactly what the return on that investment was, but everyone seemed to enjoy them.

3) Stocking dungeons. In the last dungeon crawl game I ran, I randomized both the dungeon layouts and the incidents of monsters and treasure, but I spent a lot of time coming up with amusing traps, interesting scenarios, etc.

4) Generally fleshing out situations and conflicts the characters are getting engaged in. I recently ran a game where the PC's were teenaged ghost chasers working over one summer for a massive insurance company, investigating paranormal claims.

I gave them, at the start, a file of about 8 or 9 1-page claims believed to have a paranormal aspects to them (ghosts did it!).

Creating the summaries took a bit of time, but creating interesting ghost stories that meddling kids could meaningfully interact with required some thought. I came up with a list of about 30-40 "adventure seeds," many from classic ghost stories and then discarded about half and fleshed about about half of the remainder.

The result was a short list of scenarios that I felt were both interesting to play and didn't require a personal background with the ghost. It also let me develop the mystery aspect of the game -- something that required a certain degree of precision and consistency and would have been hard to do well if I was inventing things on the fly.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;737415I'm a prep-heavy GM, most of the time.

Here's what I spend time on:

1) Creating tactical maps, especially if there's likely to be a battle. I can sketch a map on the fly, of course (or google one up), but having a clear attractive map, IME helps everyone engage directly with what's going on, and for games with a lot of dynamic action (e.g. super heroes), having a map really makes tactical choices come to life.

2) Creating materials for the players to look at. In some games, this is just a sheet telling them general facts their characters would know about the world, but in a few games I've run recently, the player-artifacts were critical and meant to be useful and entertaining, as well as evocative of the setting (Insurance Claims forms)

Same with PC maps -- I want something that's both utilitarian and attractive, even if the map isn't tactical.

In my post-apocalypse game, I created some (ultra-simple) 3d-drawings of the robots they were fighting. I don't know exactly what the return on that investment was, but everyone seemed to enjoy them.

3) Stocking dungeons. In the last dungeon crawl game I ran, I randomized both the dungeon layouts and the incidents of monsters and treasure, but I spent a lot of time coming up with amusing traps, interesting scenarios, etc.

4) Generally fleshing out situations and conflicts the characters are getting engaged in. I recently ran a game where the PC's were teenaged ghost chasers working over one summer for a massive insurance company, investigating paranormal claims.

I gave them, at the start, a file of about 8 or 9 1-page claims believed to have a paranormal aspects to them (ghosts did it!).

Creating the summaries took a bit of time, but creating interesting ghost stories that meddling kids could meaningfully interact with required some thought. I came up with a list of about 30-40 "adventure seeds," many from classic ghost stories and then discarded about half and fleshed about about half of the remainder.

The result was a short list of scenarios that I felt were both interesting to play and didn't require a personal background with the ghost. It also let me develop the mystery aspect of the game -- something that required a certain degree of precision and consistency and would have been hard to do well if I was inventing things on the fly.

Cheers,
-E.

Good clear examples E. Thanks

Whilst I haven't done much I count as Prep for scenarios I do sometimes have to write down rules. . So I produced a starship combat system and expalined what props we would need. My players well one of them with more cash than sense and no job build all the star ships parts based on my designs and I wrote up a set of ships for different starships and started to write out the rules. In the end I changed the rules last week when we playtested, because I had some much better ideas as we were laying out the game. I took some photos I might post them someplace on a thread. I actually think that the way we did it using galvanised steel sheets covered in felt as the base, magnets with extendable pointers, lego blocks for vector and speed, worked exceptionally well and I don't know anyone that makes a proper 3d space combat game that is nearly as 'clever' so maybe we should kickstart it :)
So I agree stuff is fun trouble is time to produce stuff can be consuming and the effort v benefit is tricky. I once make an astrolabe as a prop it was make from hardboard cut and painted to look like bronze. All the rings rotated and it was 3 feet across. I used it for 1 scene but it cost about 20 quid to make and took me about 40 hours all to demonstrate the Forthcoming Conjunction .... :) not really worth it

I really like your insurance form idea. I do newspapers as part of Murder Mystery Prep and have thought about porting that across as a start of the adventure thing, but stuff like diaries, a bundle of letters, these are great but take sooooo loong to so well I end up preferring to describe then so no need to prep.

I have covered stuff like maps and dungeon stocking etc already so no need to dwell on that.

Could someone define what constitutes as bias in this context? And perhaps why it's bad?

Quote from: Adric;737418Could someone define what constitutes as bias in this context? And perhaps why it's bad?

From my perspective its modifying my generation of ad libbed content based on what is happening in the fiction and its bad because it robs the players of agency.

So by way of an example.
The PCs get in fight with a bunch of orges.
When I envisaged the next section of the dungeon it was filled with more ogres.
Now I remove ogres and instead give the PCs somewhere to rest or even access to magical healing.

this is baised in favour of the PCs

Or

The players just mowed through the mafia gang I put in the foyer of the hotel. I wanted them weaker when they met the big bad or even to have bene captured so I insert another couple of rooms and increase the number of Mafia guys so I can get to the same end point.

this is baised agaisnt the PCs and is basically a railroad

Or

I have a really neat idea of a complex trap involving the party moving sand and warter between two large jars into order to open a door. the party don't open that door and instead head elsewhere but becuase I like the idea I just move it and drop the trap room behind the next door they open.

this is biased in favour of the GM running a scene they like. Again basically a railroad robbing players of agency.

Quote from: Adric;737418Could someone define what constitutes as bias in this context? And perhaps why it's bad?

In all honesty, it's only bad in so far as it either potentially negatively impacts play or makes the act of play one of deception.  And it would be good if it positively impacted play and people signed up for the deception.

Bias only makes sense as a negative in the context of a very particular approach to play.  One where a dangerous environment (traditionally a dungeon or wilderness locale but some times a dangerous situation in a social setting or city) is explored by the players using their characters as their point of view.

In this type of play one participant acts as a referee to adjucate the described actions.  The other participants describe what they do and the referee adjudicates the situation.

Bias becomes a problem in such a situation because it represents a departure from the agreed upon mode of play.  It makes the referee a liar.  Instead of taking the situation, taking the described actions of the players and using the system to produce results to see what happens, the referee is instead using their own desires to enforce what happens.

In terms of deception, it makes the situation itself non existent until it is engaged with.  It's like asking someone to solve a murder but who actually did the killing is determined only by looking for the killer.

There are very popular modes of play where none of this is an issue.  Where the GM is literally in charge of the story or plot or whatever.  I am not talking about those types of games.  Only about those games where a referee adjudicates the described actions of players as they explore a dangerous environment.

Improv skills are still very, very useful in that type of game, but instead of improvizing the core characteristics of the environment (the contents of a room, for example) you use improv to describe well and to respond flexibly to what the characters do.  Not by changing the environment or situation, but by improvising the results of actions, the reactions of characters and interpreting the results of the system you are using.

Quote from: Brander;737368You mention refereeing in a style close to that of wargaming but I started with this kind of thing with wargaming. We would make up our armies separately (with no limits on either side), then show up and work out a scenario that made sense of what showed up.  Once the scenario was set up, it was every bit the same as if we had done it the other way around (scenario, then army building).

And this is an excellent point of contrast to what I am talking about.  I'm talking about the branch of wargaming where a referee runs an event.  I'm talking about the branch of wargaming out of which RPGs were born.

For example, here's example of play text from Modern Warfare In Miniature by Michael Korns, 1966:

Quote from: MWIM, 1966Player: I’m picking up my sub-machine gun and my grenades and running over to the ditch beside the bridge. I want to keep looking for the Americans in the houses while I’m running.

Judge: There he is again! He just stuck his head around the corner of that white building about 30 meters in front of you. Here, he’s looking around again.

Player: Am I in the ditch now?

Judge: Yes, you’ve been here about 2 seconds now.

Player: All right, then I'm firing my Schmeisser at him in a long burst.

Judge: THERE IS A SUB-MACHINE GUN FIRING ON THE BOARD.

Judge: Your schmeisser is kicking chunks out of the edge of the building all around him... It is hard to say whether you hit him or whether he pulled his head back.

Judge: An M-1 HAS FIRED ON THE BOARD.

Judge: That rifle round hit you in the side. It knocked you a little farther into the ditch; you’re bleeding from the mouth too.

Judge: You can see who did it now. The American is on your left about 12 meters away running at you with his bayonet.

Player: Can I still move?

Judge: Yes, but you are almost unconscious.

Player: I’m turning around and firing the rest of my schmeisser’s clip into him.

Judge: THERE IS A SCHMEISSER FIRING ON THE BOARD.

Judge: He’s coming up fast. Your bullets are jerking around in an arc towards him as you turn. Seven meters, four meters, one meter. I’m afraid you’re dead.

As you can see, the ground work for RPG play was laid 8 years before the publication of D&D.  I don't think Korns new what he had in his book and I'm glad Arneson, Wesley and Gygax took their independently invented first examples of rpg-wargame hybrids where a player describes the actions of one character in a dangerous situation and ran with it :cheerleader:

I'm talking about this tradition of play.  Where a judge adjudicates the described actions of a character in a dangerous situation.

Hmm, we may have different ideas of what constitutes as player agency.

However the GM is making decisions, player agency is completely determined from the player's perspective.

I define player agency as the ability for players to make meaningful decisions based on information provided.

For this to work, the GM needs to portray a world or situation that is:

Internally consistent to everything that has been established.

Provides clues or details as to the consequences of a decision.

Reactions and consequences that follow through on the established details, clues and information.

However the GM comes to those decisions, or whatever reason the GM has for making them, if all the above conditions are met, then the players have not been robbed of agency.

Quote from: Adric;737426Hmm, we may have different ideas of what constitutes as player agency.

However the GM is making decisions, player agency is completely determined from the player's perspective.

I define player agency as the ability for players to make meaningful decisions based on information provided.

For this to work, the GM needs to portray a world or situation that is:

Internally consistent to everything that has been established.

Provides clues or details as to the consequences of a decision.

Reactions and consequences that follow through on the established details, clues and information.

However the GM comes to those decisions, or whatever reason the GM has for making them, if all the above conditions are met, then the players have not been robbed of agency.

For me its just about do their choices make a difference

I don't trust myself enough to "improv" the 'world in motion'.

It's great some here have mastered separating themselves from this concern.

I try to accomplish this by prepping much of the 'world in motion' well beforehand as I can.  Then I study it to try to erase as much of me from the 'world in motion' as I can.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737417Good clear examples E. Thanks

Whilst I haven't done much I count as Prep for scenarios I do sometimes have to write down rules. . So I produced a starship combat system and expalined what props we would need. My players well one of them with more cash than sense and no job build all the star ships parts based on my designs and I wrote up a set of ships for different starships and started to write out the rules. In the end I changed the rules last week when we playtested, because I had some much better ideas as we were laying out the game. I took some photos I might post them someplace on a thread. I actually think that the way we did it using galvanised steel sheets covered in felt as the base, magnets with extendable pointers, lego blocks for vector and speed, worked exceptionally well and I don't know anyone that makes a proper 3d space combat game that is nearly as 'clever' so maybe we should kickstart it :)
So I agree stuff is fun trouble is time to produce stuff can be consuming and the effort v benefit is tricky. I once make an astrolabe as a prop it was make from hardboard cut and painted to look like bronze. All the rings rotated and it was 3 feet across. I used it for 1 scene but it cost about 20 quid to make and took me about 40 hours all to demonstrate the Forthcoming Conjunction .... :) not really worth it

I really like your insurance form idea. I do newspapers as part of Murder Mystery Prep and have thought about porting that across as a start of the adventure thing, but stuff like diaries, a bundle of letters, these are great but take sooooo loong to so well I end up preferring to describe then so no need to prep.

I have covered stuff like maps and dungeon stocking etc already so no need to dwell on that.

I think there is a payoff in preparing material, and I think it works over a lot of dimensions

1) Creating props (like your spaceship and your astrolabe) engages the player's imaginations and interactions in ways verbal descriptions don't. It brings a different kind of energy to play.

2) Props like maps and write-ups save time during play. The insurance reports were a good way to list NPC names and roles and provide a bunch of setting information that would have been dead-air exposition in play. Same with a write-up on the world

3) I think that revision is a key element to delivering quality for most people. My second and third drafts of pretty much anything are usually much better than my first draft. They're also usually shorter and more concise.

RPG sessions don't allow for revision of what happens in play... but taking some time to think about the situation and NPCs and revising that two or three times makes -- for me -- a much more enjoyable play experience. I  can tell a big difference between a situation I've considered, re-considered, and noodled over and one I've just spitballed and thrown out there.

Obviously prep takes time, and effort and it's not for everyone -- and I don't always enjoy it -- but I find there is a noticeable payoff for me in the game, itself.

Cheers,
-E.

While I'm not actually quoting, please consider this a QFT on what Adric said.

Now on to my comments:

Quote from: jibbajibba;737435For me its just about do their choices make a difference

Of course their choices make a difference, even if I know things are going to happen A, B, C, D, Etc*, they are still choosing what characters to play, abilities to use, gear to carry, personalities to play, how they react to things, tactics to use at each point and plenty of other stuff I'm not mentioning.  At most you are moving an arbitrary line across a continuum of how much the player's decisions matter.  I've played games where I  got to build the gods of our species as well as the species and I've played games where I was lucky to decide if I was using a mace or axe, but both were my choice and had meaningful consequences.

If the players make a really cool choice (that I might not have thought of) or come up with a really cool idea, I don't have to throw out anything I've already got prepped, I can just go with that and the players get to experience a really cool result and the odds are they really don't care as long as they get to interact with cool stuff in the game.  As I see it the only difference is I didn't have to throw anything out OR not go with a cool idea because I had something else prepared.



*I almost NEVER do this, it's an example, not advice.  Ditto with my previous 3 doors one.  I'm not going to put in 3 identical doors unless something previous makes 3 identical doors a logical (and preferably cool) choice.  The players will know something that makes their choices meaningful, even if the exact details are still fuzzy (and if they are 10 sessions in, I and they might already know exactly what is behind each door).

Quote from: NathanIW;737421...
I'm talking about this tradition of play.  Where a judge adjudicates the described actions of a character in a dangerous situation.

What you are essentially describing goes back to at least Kriegsspiel (from 1812):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame)

" Reiswitz' system also included the methods to simulate fog of war and communication difficulties, and a position of what he called a 'confidant', an impartial third party calculating and assessing the moves, analogous to the modern gamemaster."

Quote from: Brander;737519While I'm not actually quoting, please consider this a QFT on what Adric said.

Now on to my comments:



Of course their choices make a difference, even if I know things are going to happen A, B, C, D, Etc*, they are still choosing what characters to play, abilities to use, gear to carry, personalities to play, how they react to things, tactics to use at each point and plenty of other stuff I'm not mentioning.  At most you are moving an arbitrary line across a continuum of how much the player's decisions matter.  I've played games where I  got to build the gods of our species as well as the species and I've played games where I was lucky to decide if I was using a mace or axe, but both were my choice and had meaningful consequences.

If the players make a really cool choice (that I might not have thought of) or come up with a really cool idea, I don't have to throw out anything I've already got prepped, I can just go with that and the players get to experience a really cool result and the odds are they really don't care as long as they get to interact with cool stuff in the game.  As I see it the only difference is I didn't have to throw anything out OR not go with a cool idea because I had something else prepared.



*I almost NEVER do this, it's an example, not advice.  Ditto with my previous 3 doors one.  I'm not going to put in 3 identical doors unless something previous makes 3 identical doors a logical (and preferably cool) choice.  The players will know something that makes their choices meaningful, even if the exact details are still fuzzy (and if they are 10 sessions in, I and they might already know exactly what is behind each door).

Fine.

For me I found my improv games were turning into railroads becuase I wasn't making the clear mental split to provide genuine options to the PCs.

Now railroads are not always terrible despite the Sandbox is god schtick common of some fora.  I definitely think the next game I run for my current players will have a more pronounced plot arc as they have spent a year wandering freely round space with no limits besides the cost of travel.
But railroads were a thing I wanted to avoid if I could.  

So I have come up with a methodology that allows me the freedom to improvise whilst still maintaining a sandbox style environment. It works for me YEMV of course :)

Quote from: Brander;737530What you are essentially describing goes back to at least Kriegsspiel (from 1812):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame)

" Reiswitz' system also included the methods to simulate fog of war and communication difficulties, and a position of what he called a 'confidant', an impartial third party calculating and assessing the moves, analogous to the modern gamemaster."

Absolutely.

I do appreciate all sorts of approaches to gaming.  I just currently really like this one.  I also think that a lot of players that show up to an RPG session actually expect it to be like this and don't think they've been invited to a secret improv night where only one person knows that.  

I think a lot of players would actually be disappointed if they found out just how improvised some games are and they actually want the straight up kriegsspiel adjudication approach.

You could try asking your players what they'd think if you had a murder mystery coming up in the game and who actually committed the crime wasn't set yet and the direction of play would determine who actually killed the victim.*  Then ask them if they'd want every fact you describe about the game world to be like that.

*I've actually ran that type of murder mystery without telling them in advance and it worked so, so well.  It ended up being the most believable and engaging who-dunnit in an RPG session ever.  When I told the players after the session that this is how I did it, well, you can guess their reaction.  I had just shit on their accomplishment.  They wanted an actual situation to explore and an actual mystery to solve.

So a private message from Sommerjon about this thread got me thinking about why exactly I held my previous position about nothing existing if it hasn't been established in play and why I had gone to pretty much 100% improv GMing.  I was totally flabbergasted at the idea that anything exists if it has not yet been established in play.  I'd say things like "How could anything exist that hasn't been established in play?"  And I ardently defended the idea that how the player's perspective can't get at this issue made how the GM does things irrelevant in play.

What was the cause of this thinking and approach?  Too much GMing and not enough playing.  When I started playing again and realized that the guy running it actually did have a situation he was running and an actually defined environment I was exploring, I had an "aha" moment about just what I was denying my players.

Quote from: NathanIW;737621So a private message from Sommerjon about this thread got me thinking about why exactly I held my previous position about nothing existing if it hasn't been established in play and why I had gone to pretty much 100% improv GMing.  I was totally flabbergasted at the idea that anything exists if it has not yet been established in play.  I'd say things like "How could anything exist that hasn't been established in play?"  And I ardently defended the idea that how the player's perspective can't get at this issue made how the GM does things irrelevant in play.

What was the cause of this thinking and approach?  Too much GMing and not enough playing.  When I started playing again and realized that the guy running it actually did have a situation he was running and an actually defined environment I was exploring, I had an "aha" moment about just what I was denying my players.

So I find my methodology allows me to improv but still to provide the PCs with a thing to solve or an environment to explore.   It helps that as the GM you can always think much futher ahead than the players.

In my stront game recently the PCs look on a murder investigation. They saw the bounty - solve these murders and bring this guy in for 50K. So once they decided to investigate and to look for the background etc I decided how the murders were committeed and what evidence would be left behind. By the time they had arrived to investigate the first crime scene I had decided who committed the crime and why and where they came from. By the time they decided to get their precog to find out about the next crime the whole background was done in my head and I could lay it all out like it had been planned for weeks.
The whole investigation took 2 sessions ending with a fight where they raided the guys house. They didn't look into the psychological background of why he started killing people, it was all related to his own experience of being a soldier who was genetically altered to fight in a certain war and who lost his wife to another guy when he came back. Now that was colour and they could have gotten to it but being strontium dogs they just staked his place out and went in blazing. Great combat, mental genetic super soldier versus 3 hard as nails strontium dogs armed to the teeth. They won because they had absolute surprise. Again they were surprised that he was so unprepared but logically he never expected anyone to catch him especially not for a crime he literally had not yet committed.  He still scared the crap out of them though :D

Quote from: jibbajibba;737629So I find my methodology allows me to improv but still to provide the PCs with a thing to solve or an environment to explore.   It helps that as the GM you can always think much futher ahead than the players.

Oh, it's definitely not all or nothing.  My previous practice of nearly 100% improv and my current desire for next to no improv has put me in the position of doing it partially in actual play.  Like no-improv play and full-improv play, partial-improv play has a level of skill needed as well.  I think you've very clearly presented some great techniques for the approach in this thread.

QuoteBy the time they decided to get their precog to find out about the next crime the whole background was done in my head and I could lay it all out like it had been planned for weeks.

I think the most important aspect is that when the players are actually exploring a given element, that it actually is exploration and not shadow play where the act of opening a door or asking a question creates the room beyond or causes a fact to be generated.  Obviously most of the improv heavy GMs that have participated in this thread are sufficiently skilled to obfuscate this from the players.  I still think it can't help but impact the results of play rather heavily compared to running a situation that has been defined sufficiently in advance.

I think the most enjoyable part of refereeing a game where the situation actually has facts of the matter is that I get to play to see what happens along with everyone else, whereas the times I ran in improv heavy mode, I was essentially making what happens for everyone else.  Or, in the worst form of play, potentially making what happens for myself.

Quote from: NathanIW;737630Obviously most of the improv heavy GMs that have participated in this thread are sufficiently skilled to obfuscate this from the players.  I still think it can't help but impact the results of play rather heavily compared to running a situation that has been defined sufficiently in advance.

I think the most enjoyable part of refereeing a game where the situation actually has facts of the matter is that I get to play to see what happens along with everyone else, whereas the times I ran in improv heavy mode, I was essentially making what happens for everyone else.  Or, in the worst form of play, potentially making what happens for myself.

I'm completely honest with my players about how I GM, and just make sure my decisions about the world are a logical extension of what has gone before. If I need more time to come up with something, I'll say so and call for a 5 minute break. Mostly though I just keep asking the players questions about what they want and what they do, and react accordingly.

I'm constantly surprised when I play improv GM, but I'm always asking questions like "(character name), what have you heard about X element?" And subtly getting them to add stuff to the world, and reacting to it.

Quote from: NathanIW;737630Oh, it's definitely not all or nothing.  My previous practice of nearly 100% improv and my current desire for next to no improv has put me in the position of doing it partially in actual play.  Like no-improv play and full-improv play, partial-improv play has a level of skill needed as well.  I think you've very clearly presented some great techniques for the approach in this thread.



I think the most important aspect is that when the players are actually exploring a given element, that it actually is exploration and not shadow play where the act of opening a door or asking a question creates the room beyond or causes a fact to be generated.  Obviously most of the improv heavy GMs that have participated in this thread are sufficiently skilled to obfuscate this from the players.

Totally Agree.

QuoteI still think it can't help but impact the results of play rather heavily compared to running a situation that has been defined sufficiently in advance.

I think the most enjoyable part of refereeing a game where the situation actually has facts of the matter is that I get to play to see what happens along with everyone else, whereas the times I ran in improv heavy mode, I was essentially making what happens for everyone else.  Or, in the worst form of play, potentially making what happens for myself.

Well I woudl obviously argue that I don't think it matters is those facts are made up 2 weeks ago or 2 seconds ago so long as they come from the same place and aren't influenced by what is going on in the world now.

I do get annoyed sometimes when my NPCs can't stick to the plan and start wandering off on their own and getting sidetracked but you can never really control those buggers.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737604Fine.

For me I found my improv games were turning into railroads becuase I wasn't making the clear mental split to provide genuine options to the PCs.

Now railroads are not always terrible despite the Sandbox is god schtick common of some fora.  I definitely think the next game I run for my current players will have a more pronounced plot arc as they have spent a year wandering freely round space with no limits besides the cost of travel.
But railroads were a thing I wanted to avoid if I could.  

So I have come up with a methodology that allows me the freedom to improvise whilst still maintaining a sandbox style environment. It works for me YEMV of course :)

Without actually checking, I hope I haven't suggested my way is somehow superior (only that it's not inferior).  I'm all for what works for each GM and group.  And no argument that even so-called "bad practices" can be right for a given group or situation.

Quote from: NathanIW;737612You could try asking your players what they'd think if you had a murder mystery coming up in the game and who actually committed the crime wasn't set yet and the direction of play would determine who actually killed the victim.*  Then ask them if they'd want every fact you describe about the game world to be like that.

Sorry, I see zero point in that exercise, except to possibly screen for people I don't want to game with.  I'd be shocked if even 1 in 20 of the people I've gamed with gave a shit and I'd be more shocked if 1 in 10 of them thought it was in any way bad.  I'd then be really shocked if it stopped any of them from actually gaming with me.  Some of my players do know how I do it and to date, I've never had a complaint about it.

Quote from: NathanIW;737612...When I told the players after the session that this is how I did it, well, you can guess their reaction.  ..

If it was negative you need to remember not to invite them back.  Seriously.  They had a wonderful experience, but because they saw behind the curtain it was all undone?  Frankly, that's just dumb to me.

Quote from: jibbajibbaIn my stront game recently the PCs look on a murder investigation. They saw the bounty - solve these murders and bring this guy in for 50K. So once they decided to investigate and to look for the background etc I decided how the murders were committeed and what evidence would be left behind. By the time they had arrived to investigate the first crime scene I had decided who committed the crime and why and where they came from. By the time they decided to get their precog to find out about the next crime the whole background was done in my head and I could lay it all out like it had been planned for weeks.

This is totally cool - if the improvisation can be as deft, precise, complex, coherent, and richly described as a prepared scenario.  If a GM can improvise so flawlessly that the players literally can't tell the difference between an improvised and prepared scenario, of course improvisation is fine!  But most people simply cannot prepare scenarios of as rich and deep detailed on the fly as they can with forethought and planning.

For me, with something like a complex murder mystery, I'd be very hesitant to improvise because of the multitude of moving parts - the importance of foreshadowing, the need for red herrings and a suitably complicated network of clues and motives, requiring multiple credible suspects, perhaps seemingly conflicting evidence, a timeline of the crime(s) in question.  Screw up something small in a murder mystery and it can leave plotholes or the whole thing can unravel like a spool of yarn.  Mystery is a fussy genre.   If you can do fussy and meticulous on the fly and produce something of the same quality as a prepared scenario, that is awesome - although I'd say you're one of the few.  Most of us mortals have to prepare :p

Quote from: NathanIW;737621...I had an "aha" moment about just what I was denying my players.

Wait, you are saying that making up the ending for your players was somehow denying them something.  What, do they think that the answer you might have made up before the game was somehow less fictional?  You added value to the game by taking account of their ideas, not took anything away.  They wanted a mystery, you gave them one.  End of story.

Quote from: NathanIW;737630...

I think the most enjoyable part of refereeing a game where the situation actually has facts of the matter is that I get to play to see what happens along with everyone else, whereas the times I ran in improv heavy mode, I was essentially making what happens for everyone else.  Or, in the worst form of play, potentially making what happens for myself.

I think the most enjoyable part of refereeing a game where the situation is in flux is that I get to play to see what happens along with everyone else, whereas the times when I ran in heavy prep mode, the players were much more passive participants.  Or, in the worst form of play, completely railroaded.

Quote from: Adric;737636...
I'm constantly surprised when I play improv GM, but I'm always asking questions like "(character name), what have you heard about X element?" And subtly getting them to add stuff to the world, and reacting to it.

I love it when I get pro-active PCs who are not just waiting for a hook from me, but actively out there rooting out new ideas.

Quote from: Brander;737740I love it when I get pro-active PCs who are not just waiting for a hook from me, but actively out there rooting out new ideas.

This is the most satisfying style of play for me, when everyone is actively listening to everyone else and contributing, and the game feels like a living thing. I'm not showing them my world or scenario, we're discovering one together that none of us could come up with alone.

As a player, I enjoy both a prepped GM, and an full-improv GM, though the latter is often much rarer. In a prepped game, I enjoy discovering another person's vision, though it feels like a more passive experience, but it also requires less energy. In an improv game, I feel more engaged in creating that vision, but it is a more active experience, requiring more attention.

Really, the only Roleplaying experiences I don't enjoy is drawn-out combats where I have to wait 10 minutes before I get to take an action that feels limited to taking the "optimum damaging action", which lasts for 30 seconds. Then I usually go back to doodling players' characters until I get to act for another 30 seconds.

That has nothing to do with prep VS improv though.

When I do prep for a session, it is maps mostly. Map out the rooms of a locale so I can describe them propperly from the players perspective. Usually with notes on whats where or minor furniture quirks that might be relevant.

*If 2 Orcs make it into room #3 then they can flip the large table and use as cover.

I do like to plot out patrol routes if the place is organized.

I usually then also prep at least the leaders stats and any non-generic NPCs and monsters.

*Leader is a fighter level XYZ and using items ABC.
*The happy little trained rust monster. Follows PCs trying to eat their stuff.
*The surly guard outside the stables. Knows a secret if PCs can get on good side.

And then try to consider contingencies if/when the players do something unforeseen.

*Players recruited orcs in room #3 with their show of prowess and fast talking. Might speak for group in room #8 if fighting is avoided and are treated well. Otherwise improv reactions based on treatment.

And so on.

On rare occasion I'll work up something really elaborate that ends up looking like a module.

Quote from: Steerpike;737731This is totally cool - if the improvisation can be as deft, precise, complex, coherent, and richly described as a prepared scenario.  If a GM can improvise so flawlessly that the players literally can't tell the difference between an improvised and prepared scenario, of course improvisation is fine!  But most people simply cannot prepare scenarios of as rich and deep detailed on the fly as they can with forethought and planning.

For me, with something like a complex murder mystery, I'd be very hesitant to improvise because of the multitude of moving parts - the importance of foreshadowing, the need for red herrings and a suitably complicated network of clues and motives, requiring multiple credible suspects, perhaps seemingly conflicting evidence, a timeline of the crime(s) in question.  Screw up something small in a murder mystery and it can leave plotholes or the whole thing can unravel like a spool of yarn.  Mystery is a fussy genre.   If you can do fussy and meticulous on the fly and produce something of the same quality as a prepared scenario, that is awesome - although I'd say you're one of the few.  Most of us mortals have to prepare :p

Becuase of the murder mystery business I can sadly probably write one in my sleep... shit there was one where I went out on an all night bender lost my house keys had to sleep in my car and then still was at the hotel by 8:30am with a 1500 word solution I had written that morning so I have done it in my sleep :)

You don't need too may red herrings but sub-plots are great and just bear in mind means, motive and opportunity and generate a very tight timeline, you can totally do this in your head. So long as there are 6 people with a motive and the opportunity the players will provide their own red herrings.
My favourites of course are when the players have an "of course moment" and once they discover the solution they realise how obvious it was. I also love when they are insisting it can't be that easy. In one the murderer was a mad priest who didn't think women should be allowed to join universities (Edwardian setting) he was entirely mysoginistic all weekend, and his walking stick was found at the crime scene as the murder weapon covered in blood and when cross examined he said they (the victims, a man and woman who were having an affair) deserved to die as it was God's will. And still no one suspected him of hte crime ......

If in doubt just nick the plot of an episode of Murder She Wrote and change the charcters and setting. No one ever watches a whole episode so you're probably safe :)

Quote from: Brander;737726If it was negative you need to remember not to invite them back.  Seriously.  They had a wonderful experience, but because they saw behind the curtain it was all undone?  Frankly, that's just dumb to me.

Then you just don't get human nature.  People don't like being shown the meaninglessness of their choices.  Or that a situation they thought they were engaging with was something else entirely.  People don't like being subject to bait and switch tactics.

It's cool that you've found people that are okay with being treated like that.  You've talked yourself into thinking that you are protecting player input when you're actually nullifying it.

I am going to guess though, that you pretty much exclusively GM and rarely, if ever play.

Quote from: NathanIW;737840Then you just don't get human nature.  People don't like being shown the meaninglessness of their choices.  Or that a situation they thought they were engaging with was something else entirely.  People don't like being subject to bait and switch tactics.

It's cool that you've found people that are okay with being treated like that.  You've talked yourself into thinking that you are protecting player input when you're actually nullifying it.

I am going to guess though, that you pretty much exclusively GM and rarely, if ever play.

I'm not sure how deciding on consequences and influences of a situation during play makes those consequences less meaningful than ones written beforehand.

If a player is aware of the potential consequences of their actions before they act, and make an informed decision based on that awareness, their decision is meaningful. It's about applying logical cause and effect to the situation described.

There's no bait and switch at play, unless the GM lies about what is actually at stake and what the consequences may be, but that has nothing to do with prep VS improv. That's about misleading the players about what is going on in the current situation.

I'm not sure what part of the GM creating the situation as they describe it is more dishonest than the GM describing a situation the created beforehand. The GM is still describing the situation as it appears to the players. and how it appears to the players is how it is in the game world.

Quote from: Adric;737842I'm not sure how deciding on consequences and influences of a situation during play makes those consequences less meaningful than ones written beforehand.

If a player is aware of the potential consequences of their actions before they act, and make an informed decision based on that awareness, their decision is meaningful. It's about applying logical cause and effect to the situation described.

There's no bait and switch at play, unless the GM lies about what is actually at stake and what the consequences may be, but that has nothing to do with prep VS improv. That's about misleading the players about what is going on in the current situation.

I'm not sure what part of the GM creating the situation as they describe it is more dishonest than the GM describing a situation the created beforehand. The GM is still describing the situation as it appears to the players. and how it appears to the players is how it is in the game world.

I tend to side with Nathan on this.
Whilst logically ther eis no difference people just don't like finding out that there was no "solution" to discover. Its similar to their reaction to Strondingers cat :D

I have often had guests accusing me of altering the plot in response to their input once they find out I am the author as well as one of the actors. "Don't tell him that or he will change the answer so you are wrong," is a common thing I hear on Saturday night after a few glasses of red.
I would never think of doing that of course. For me once a thing is set, so once the murder is defines its a real thing involitile. I will occassionally alter small aspects adding explaination as to why things that have appeared by mistake are as they are. When I forget to leave any clothes for a naked victim for example or when I in error leave a pen that writes in black ink next to a note written in blue ink. These things I retcon but back into the existing plot. A rewrite like changing the murderer will only occur in a CRITICAL situation liek he guy had a car accident for example then I retcon but usually can do so leaving no joins.

Must say my actors are not always that happy with me. Say saturday I have handed out the act 2 sheets including the complex timeline for the day, the actors only get this 30 mins before we go live and so they have to memorise it pretty quick, this is deliberate to generate the reality of memory which is more falible than we recall (hoho). But then with 10 mins to go I say "oh Kate can you do me a favour I need a scene between maincourse and dessert can you sing an Aria, you are playing an opera singer", or  "Jen I need you to have a big argument with Steve but I need you to have it in Russian. No one here can speak Russian apart from that Ukrainian waitress so just make it sound like Russian. And steve I want you to hit her when she finished yelling at you. I'll let the two of you sort out the details.... " yeah they hate that, wimps :)

Quote from: jibbajibbaYou don't need too may red herrings but sub-plots are great and just bear in mind means, motive and opportunity and generate a very tight timeline, you can totally do this in your head. So long as there are 6 people with a motive and the opportunity the players will provide their own red herrings.

I'm sure you can totally do this in your head, but I can guarantee that I will run a murder mystery better with more preparation - I'm sure I could piece something together on the fly but I'm equally sure it wouldn't be of as high quality as it would if I prepared it at least partially ahead of time.

You mentioned the murder mystery business - do you write for a murder mystery show?  Because if so that would (1) explain a lot and (2) be really awesome!!

Quote from: jibbajibba;737850I tend to side with Nathan on this.
Whilst logically ther eis no difference people just don't like finding out that there was no "solution" to discover. Its similar to their reaction to Strondingers cat :D

I don't see it as there wasn't a solution, but that the GM and the players solved the mystery together through play.

Murder Mystery improv play definitely needs more careful thought to it than your average "Let's see where this goes" play, I'd definitely need to take detailed notes for clues and evidence as the game goes so I can see where it's pointing. I'd probably also want to play a system that specifically enables mystery investigation specifically.

Edit: It's exactly like Schrodinger's cat. You know the possible outcomes before the box is open, but the dice rolls will determine which of them is true.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737850I have often had guests accusing me of altering the plot in response to their input once they find out I am the author as well as one of the actors. "Don't tell him that or he will change the answer so you are wrong," is a common thing I hear on Saturday night after a few glasses of red.
I would never think of doing that of course. For me once a thing is set, so once the murder is defines its a real thing involitile. I will occassionally alter small aspects adding explaination as to why things that have appeared by mistake are as they are. When I forget to leave any clothes for a naked victim for example or when I in error leave a pen that writes in black ink next to a note written in blue ink. These things I retcon but back into the existing plot. A rewrite like changing the murderer will only occur in a CRITICAL situation liek he guy had a car accident for example then I retcon but usually can do so leaving no joins.

Must say my actors are not always that happy with me. Say saturday I have handed out the act 2 sheets including the complex timeline for the day, the actors only get this 30 mins before we go live and so they have to memorise it pretty quick, this is deliberate to generate the reality of memory which is more falible than we recall (hoho). But then with 10 mins to go I say "oh Kate can you do me a favour I need a scene between maincourse and dessert can you sing an Aria, you are playing an opera singer", or  "Jen I need you to have a big argument with Steve but I need you to have it in Russian. No one here can speak Russian apart from that Ukrainian waitress so just make it sound like Russian. And steve I want you to hit her when she finished yelling at you. I'll let the two of you sort out the details.... " yeah they hate that, wimps :)

If this is your job, it sound super cool. Is it hosting a murder mystery night?

Quote from: jibbajibba;737850I tend to side with Nathan on this.
Whilst logically ther eis no difference people just don't like finding out that there was no "solution" to discover. Its similar to their reaction to Strondingers cat :D

My forceful overstating of the case is also only really appropriate in response to the claim that there's something wrong with players who feel that way.

Quote from: Adric;737860I don't see it as there wasn't a solution, but that the GM and the players solved the mystery together through play.

Murder Mystery improv play definitely needs more careful thought to it than your average "Let's see where this goes" play, I'd definitely need to take detailed notes for clues and evidence as the game goes so I can see where it's pointing. I'd probably also want to play a system that specifically enables mystery investigation specifically.

Edit: It's exactly like Schrodinger's cat. You know the possible outcomes before the box is open, but the dice rolls will determine which of them is true.

If this is your job, it sound super cool. Is it hosting a murder mystery night?

But because its like Schrodingers cat people don't like it. A guy wants to solve your puzzle he doesn't want you to change the solution to your puzzle to his proffered solution because then he doesn't feel like he has solved anything. Its a common enough reaction. Like your girlfriend faking her orgasm, sure it doesn't really affect your enjoyment, and if she isn't bothered... but you still feel cheated somehow :D

the MM business was a sideline I ran in the UK for the last 15 years or so. My actual job is sadly far more mundane and now takes place largely in Singapore.

Quote from: Adric;737842I'm not sure how deciding on consequences and influences of a situation during play makes those consequences less meaningful than ones written beforehand.

The consequences are not written beforehand in the type of play I currently advocate for.  The details of the situation are pre-defined, but definitely not the consequences.  However, if I only generate the facts of the matter in response to player's actions, controlling the consequences becomes child's play.

QuoteIt's about applying logical cause and effect to the situation described.

Can there be logical cause and effect when there are no facts of the matter?  Pretty much the only thing there can be is a single individual who sits as a gate keeper before people's proposed actions having not just the role of adjudicating the system given the situation, but the ability to define the situation itself in response to their proposed actions.  This is in contrast with a referee who takes all the virtual facts of the matter into consideration, along with their described actions and the rules and produces a fair result.

QuoteThere's no bait and switch at play, unless the GM lies about what is actually at stake and what the consequences may be, but that has nothing to do with prep VS improv. That's about misleading the players about what is going on in the current situation.

The bait and switch is presenting the players with a situation and then when they engage with it, it turns out there was no situation.  They're presented with a dangerous environment, a challenging or dramatic situation, or whatever, and they make decisions based on that but what they are actually dealing with is a completely undefined non-situation.  That's the bait and switch.

QuoteI'm not sure what part of the GM creating the situation as they describe it is more dishonest than the GM describing a situation the created beforehand.

The dishonesty is the lie that there is a virtual situation to engage with at all.

Also, please bear in mind that what I'm talking about here is an improv heavy approach along with the position that there are no virtual facts of the matter until they are established in play.  There are many hybrid approaches that don't rely on the GM either changing or not-defining the actual situation that would not be deception.  An example would be jibbajibba's approach where a situation might be created through improvisation, but the virtual facts of the matter are actually set before the players engage with it.  He also doesn't seem to approach the situation with a revisionist mindset except when correcting problems.  The "created from the quantum soup by the act of observation" method goes much, much further.

Quote from: NathanIW;737867The consequences are not written beforehand in the type of play I currently advocate for.  The details of the situation are pre-defined, but definitely not the consequences.  However, if I only generate the facts of the matter in response to player's actions, controlling the consequences becomes child's play.

The possible consequences come from looking at what has been said (or written) before and figuring out what the logical outcomes of an action interacting with the established situation. This is simply a part of talking to your players to determine what's happening and what they are doing.

You aren't only creating facts in response to players' actions, you are creating facts every time you say something about the world. This is true whether you are creating these facts as you set a scene, or as you prepare for the game. These facts aren't always pleasant, in fact in order to have a dangerous, exciting game, you need to establish dangerous, exciting facts.

Quote from: NathanIW;737867Can there be logical cause and effect when there are no facts of the matter?  Pretty much the only thing there can be is a single individual who sits as a gate keeper before people's proposed actions having not just the role of adjudicating the system given the situation, but the ability to define the situation itself in response to their proposed actions.  This is in contrast with a referee who takes all the virtual facts of the matter into consideration, along with their described actions and the rules and produces a fair result.

The facts are everything that has been said about the game world by everyone at the table, and by the rules, and the current situation to date. Whether you are reading those facts off a page or establishing them on the spot, as soon as you speak them to the players, they become a factual part of the game.

How are the facts established by the referee in your model of play? do the players read them off a page?

Quote from: NathanIW;737867The bait and switch is presenting the players with a situation and then when they engage with it, it turns out there was no situation.  They're presented with a dangerous environment, a challenging or dramatic situation, or whatever, and they make decisions based on that but what they are actually dealing with is a completely undefined non-situation.  That's the bait and switch.

As soon as you present the situation, there is a situation. Speaking it in the game makes it a 'virtual fact'. When you speak you define the situation. Your descriptions tell the players why the environment is dangerous, your portrayal of NPCs makes a situation challenging or dramatic.

Quote from: NathanIW;737867The dishonesty is the lie that there is a virtual situation to engage with at all.

We may be disagreeing on the definition of situation. My definition is "What is happening to the fictional characters right now." That is influenced by everything that has been said before (the established facts), and what is being said right now (Usually player questions or actions, or gm descriptions of the world). This means that the GM is honest about the influences on an outcome or consequence both before and after the action/roll.

Quote from: NathanIW;737867Also, please bear in mind that what I'm talking about here is an improv heavy approach along with the position that there are no virtual facts of the matter until they are established in play.  There are many hybrid approaches that don't rely on the GM either changing or not-defining the actual situation that would not be deception.  An example would be jibbajibba's approach where a situation might be created through improvisation, but the virtual facts of the matter are actually set before the players engage with it.  He also doesn't seem to approach the situation with a revisionist mindset except when correcting problems.  The "created from the quantum soup by the act of observation" method goes much, much further.

You may be talking about conveyance, which is more about the ability to give the players adequate information on the current situation for them to make informed decisions.

In the example of the 2 doors;

Let's say in example 1, the GM says "At the end of the corridor there are two doors. What do you do?"

In example 2, the GM says "At the end of the corridor there are two doors. One is fashioned out of polished dark wood, with a simple iron handle. Underneath the crack at the bottom of the door, firelight flickers and you can hear voices murmuring softly. The second door is made of black stone, with no seams at the edges, and no handle of any kind. In the center of the door is a square metal plate that gleams oddly in your torchlight. What do you do?"

Whether you are a prep GM who has a few lines written about each door and the rooms behind them, or an improv GM who came up with the descriptions when the players got to the end of the corridor, example 1 gives the players very little information to make a decision upon, and example 2 suggests what might be behind each door.

I'm not saying prep is useless or wrong. If preparing for your game means you and your players have more fun, then no other justification is needed.

I don't see one method as 'real' GMing and one as 'fake' GMing though. Both create valid and fun experiences for players, though they require different skills to implement.

Quote from: Adric;737875In the example of the 2 doors;

Let's say in example 1, the GM says "At the end of the corridor there are two doors. What do you do?"

In example 2, the GM says "At the end of the corridor there are two doors. One is fashioned out of polished dark wood, with a simple iron handle. Underneath the crack at the bottom of the door, firelight flickers and you can hear voices murmuring softly. The second door is made of black stone, with no seams at the edges, and no handle of any kind. In the center of the door is a square metal plate that gleams oddly in your torchlight. What do you do?"

Whether you are a prep GM who has a few lines written about each door and the rooms behind them, or an improv GM who came up with the descriptions when the players got to the end of the corridor, example 1 gives the players very little information to make a decision upon, and example 2 suggests what might be behind each door.

I'm not saying prep is useless or wrong. If preparing for your game means you and your players have more fun, then no other justification is needed.

I don't see one method as 'real' GMing and one as 'fake' GMing though. Both create valid and fun experiences for players, though they require different skills to implement.

Exactly, Improv or module, example 1 means that my choice is from an overhead perspective irrelevant. But. From the player perspective and character perspective it is very much relevant because there is likely something behind each door. I open A and theres a kobold with a dagger, I open B and theres 100 gp in a small chest on a shelf.

If I'm a first level mage and opened A. I likely just died. Have the fighter open the door. In which case the kobold rushes past and still stabs me to death.

Thus the choice has meaning because there is an outcome no matter.

In example 2 it is much the same except I have a theoretically more informed idea to base a choice from. But I still do not know what is really behind a door till I open it. And in a fantasy seting like AD&D for example. You learn very quickly sometimes that what you see may not be what is really there.

Tricks, Camouflage, Illusions, Same-same, etc.

Simmilar to walking past a secret door. If I never spot it then effectively there was never a door there at all as far as I know.

Quote from: NathanIW;737867Also, please bear in mind that what I'm talking about here is an improv heavy approach along with the position that there are no virtual facts of the matter until they are established in play.  There are many hybrid approaches that don't rely on the GM either changing or not-defining the actual situation that would not be deception.  An example would be jibbajibba's approach where a situation might be created through improvisation, but the virtual facts of the matter are actually set before the players engage with it.  He also doesn't seem to approach the situation with a revisionist mindset except when correcting problems.  The "created from the quantum soup by the act of observation" method goes much, much further.

Reminds me of a relatively recent game where one of the players decided he wanted to woo a widowed noble lady at a royal ball they were attending to get in some gold digging action.  Not having all the various attendees written out beforehand, I had him roll percentile to see if there was a widowed noble lady in attendance.  There was; I made up her story on the spot; player got to rollplay out what he was wanting to try.

This was absolutelt a schoedingers moment, dice controlled whether she was in attendance.  How is this a bait and switch?  Or a lie?

Quote from: Old One Eye;737887Reminds me of a relatively recent game where one of the players decided he wanted to woo a widowed noble lady at a royal ball they were attending to get in some gold digging action.  Not having all the various attendees written out beforehand, I had him roll percentile to see if there was a widowed noble lady in attendance.  There was; I made up her story on the spot; player got to rollplay out what he was wanting to try.

This was absolutelt a schoedingers moment, dice controlled whether she was in attendance.  How is this a bait and switch?  Or a lie?

Not to speak for anyone but some people consider a decision made after the fact to be overly influenced by what is going on at the moment.

Quote from: NathanIW;737840Then you just don't get human nature.  People don't like being shown the meaninglessness of their choices.  Or that a situation they thought they were engaging with was something else entirely.  People don't like being subject to bait and switch tactics.

I think you may have externalized your own hangup and not realized "people" don't think the same as you.  As well you seem to be forgetting it's a game people are playing for fun.  Sure people don't like to be tricked when it hurts them, but like a magicians trick, they love it when it's for fun.

Quote from: NathanIW;737840It's cool that you've found people that are okay with being treated like that.  You've talked yourself into thinking that you are protecting player input when you're actually nullifying it.

I'm sorry you lack the perspective to see that it's all in how you frame the situation.  There's no right or wrong here, the only person attaching real ethical weight to our leisure activity is you.  I've run games for 100s of players over the last 30+ years (a decade or so on the convention circuit can do this by itself).  This is only a "problem" to forum theorists.

That all said, how about we drop the junior psychology bullshit and attaching imagined ethical weight to a harmless leisure activity.

Quote from: NathanIW;737840I am going to guess though, that you pretty much exclusively GM and rarely, if ever play.

While I do GM more than I play, it' not entirely by preference.  If I want to game I often have to GM because, frankly, in 30+ years I get way more compliments than complaints and people seem to like the result.  I not only get asked to run, like I mentioned before, I've even been ambushed to run.  If this was just by some small group of people in one place, it would be one thing, but this has happened everywhere I go and I've been lots of places (not to mention my decade or so doing conventions, where I would get the some of the same players year after year).

Quote from: Adric;737860Murder Mystery improv play definitely needs more careful thought to it than your average "Let's see where this goes" play, I'd definitely need to take detailed notes for clues and evidence as the game goes so I can see where it's pointing. I'd probably also want to play a system that specifically enables mystery investigation specifically.

I agree that a murder mystery would perhaps require much more attention to detail so that any result remained logical and could be seen in hindsight after great scrutiny.

That said, while I MIGHT make up the murderer after the actual murder in a game, most of the time it's what's already gone on in the game that is going to determine it for me.  There seems to be some confusion between improv and changing history going on in this thread.  I improv like crazy, but I don't change the history of the game.  I in fact keep fairly detailed notes.

Quote from: NathanIW;737864My forceful overstating of the case is also only really appropriate in response to the claim that there's something wrong with players who feel that way.

If it's me you are referring to, I didn't actually say there was anything wrong with anyone.  I said I would find a certain behavior dumb, not that there was anything wrong with anyone.  I was more skeptical of your perceptions than actually thinking anyone was wrong or dumb.  I sincerely doubt most of them really gave a shit, even though you may have honestly thought otherwise.  I wasn't there, I can't be certain, but I am skeptical (you might feel the same about my claims).  As an analogy, lots of people like sausage and hot dogs, but they don't say sausage and hot dogs are bad just because they don't like to watch how they are made, even if one or more might comment on it.

Just so no one has to look back, this could be the relevant quote:

Quote from: Brander;737726If it was negative you need to remember not to invite them back.  Seriously.  They had a wonderful experience, but because they saw behind the curtain it was all undone?  Frankly, that's just dumb to me.

Quote from: Adric;737875...

I'm not saying prep is useless or wrong. If preparing for your game means you and your players have more fun, then no other justification is needed.

I don't see one method as 'real' GMing and one as 'fake' GMing though. Both create valid and fun experiences for players, though they require different skills to implement.

QFT (even the "..." parts)

As seems to be the case, I think Adric is saying things better than I probably would.

Quote from: Bill;737894Not to speak for anyone but some people consider a decision made after the fact to be overly influenced by what is going on at the moment.

In my case, once it's gone into my notes, that's the way it pretty much is.  I would need a good, logical, reason to change it.  I'm only going to improv things that aren't yet determined by past events and details.  Sure I might improv something based on what's going on in the moment, but it's surprising to me how much of a game I find writes itself after a certain point.

Quote from: Old One Eye;737887Reminds me of a relatively recent game where one of the players decided he wanted to woo a widowed noble lady at a royal ball they were attending to get in some gold digging action.  Not having all the various attendees written out beforehand, I had him roll percentile to see if there was a widowed noble lady in attendance.  There was; I made up her story on the spot; player got to rollplay out what he was wanting to try.

This was absolutelt a schoedingers moment, dice controlled whether she was in attendance.  How is this a bait and switch?  Or a lie?

You had the player roll the dice.  They were in on it from the start.  Of course there's no deception or bait and switch when you're 100% transparent.

The only approach that I would describe as a bait and switch or deception is the one where the GM takes the position that anything not yet established in play is undefined and where the players are presented with a situation as if it actually has as-yet-unknown facts of the matter.

In order to have a bait and switch, you have to actually tell someone they're getting one thing and then actually give them another.

Quote from: Brander;737940In my case, once it's gone into my notes, that's the way it pretty much is.  I would need a good, logical, reason to change it.  I'm only going to improv things that aren't yet determined by past events and details.  Sure I might improv something based on what's going on in the moment, but it's surprising to me how much of a game I find writes itself after a certain point.

The approach where the default approach to things in the notes (and especially play) is that don't get changed without a real good reason is (the beginning of) a great way to go.

There was a pretty long period where I took a minimal prep and note free approach to running RPGs.  So I know what it's like to present people with a fact in play and watch them react to it like there really was part of a larger situation and then have it become my responsibility to continue to make it seem like it was so.  It also put me in the position of being the gatekeeper for other people's input where I told myself that if I changed a situation or modulated an as-yet-unknown detail, I was doing it for the good of the game or the good of their enjoyment.

Might I suggest jettisoning a little bit more of the "nothing that hasn't been established in play exists" approach by adding enough to your notes that if the player follow up on a fact established in play and end up engaging with a situation so that there's actually a "there" there?  You're already mitigating most of the downsides to your approach by having facts in notes and deferring to die rolls when you don't want to decide, so you already know that the fundamental idea of null-situation play needs fixing to make it work for you.

Quote from: NathanIW;738042The approach where the default approach to things in the notes (and especially play) is that don't get changed without a real good reason is (the beginning of) a great way to go.

There was a pretty long period where I took a minimal prep and note free approach to running RPGs.  So I know what it's like to present people with a fact in play and watch them react to it like there really was part of a larger situation and then have it become my responsibility to continue to make it seem like it was so.  It also put me in the position of being the gatekeeper for other people's input where I told myself that if I changed a situation or modulated an as-yet-unknown detail, I was doing it for the good of the game or the good of their enjoyment.

Might I suggest jettisoning a little bit more of the "nothing that hasn't been established in play exists" approach by adding enough to your notes that if the player follow up on a fact established in play and end up engaging with a situation so that there's actually a "there" there?  You're already mitigating most of the downsides to your approach by having facts in notes and deferring to die rolls when you don't want to decide, so you already know that the fundamental idea of null-situation play needs fixing to make it work for you.

Confused?  You appear to be saying that PCs should only be allowed to meaningfully interact with aspects of the milieu which the GM has prepared beforehand?  And that if the PCs decide to interact with something the GM has not prepared, such should not be given any meaningful depth at the table?

Quote from: NathanIW;738042The approach where the default approach to things in the notes (and especially play) is that don't get changed without a real good reason is (the beginning of) a great way to go.

There was a pretty long period where I took a minimal prep and note free approach to running RPGs.  So I know what it's like to present people with a fact in play and watch them react to it like there really was part of a larger situation and then have it become my responsibility to continue to make it seem like it was so.  It also put me in the position of being the gatekeeper for other people's input where I told myself that if I changed a situation or modulated an as-yet-unknown detail, I was doing it for the good of the game or the good of their enjoyment.

Might I suggest jettisoning a little bit more of the "nothing that hasn't been established in play exists" approach by adding enough to your notes that if the player follow up on a fact established in play and end up engaging with a situation so that there's actually a "there" there?  You're already mitigating most of the downsides to your approach by having facts in notes and deferring to die rolls when you don't want to decide, so you already know that the fundamental idea of null-situation play needs fixing to make it work for you.

Taking notes is a very useful part of play whether you prepare elements before play or not. It is a weird concept to me to say that the GM needs to have secret knowledge in order to portray a good, compelling game. You weren't making it seem like an important fact, you and your players were making it an important fact.

To me, being a good GM is about using good descriptions and a sense of timing to create vivid, compelling situations in my players' imaginations for their characters to interact with. Whatever is written on the page, that where the situation is, in your and their imaginations. If prep allows you to make that imaginary world feel more vivid and compelling for you and your players, then it is valuable. If you can improvise and create that same compelling vividness of imagination for your players, then that style of play is just as valuable and worthwhile.

Neither method is creating "fake" fun.

You seem to be describing this weir situation where after the game the GM and players are talking about how good the game was and how the GM wrote a great scenario, when suddenly, the GM knocks down their screen to reveal a blank page and shouts "PSYCH! I made it all up! It wasn't real!" And then points and laughs at a player until they flip the table and storm out.

I don't think any GM thinks or acts that way. In fact, I would suggest that improvisational play requires the GM to be more honest and transparent in most situations. It allows you to see what the players do, what they are interested in without the desire for them to specifically go in the direction you have prepared.

Quote from: NathanIW;737612You could try asking your players what they'd think if you had a murder mystery coming up in the game and who actually committed the crime wasn't set yet and the direction of play would determine who actually killed the victim.

That's NOT equivalent to common improvisation! Whodunnit is something that needs to be established before an actual investigation can take place. This does not necessarily mean established to the GM's certain knowledge, if it's encoded in evidence-generating algorithms (like Cluedo).

Quote from: Old One Eye;738059Confused?  You appear to be saying that PCs should only be allowed to meaningfully interact with aspects of the milieu which the GM has prepared beforehand?  And that if the PCs decide to interact with something the GM has not prepared, such should not be given any meaningful depth at the table?

Only to a degree.  This goes back to the root of the hobby in the wargaming tradition.  If I show up to a game and Alesia is being seiged by the Romans, is it really appropriate for me to declare my Gaul formations are going to leave the battlefield to go pursue some sort of other interest?

But that's only one side of the coin.

The early approach to RPGs included both prepared situations and environments and tools for generating content on the fly, all within the approach of the GM being a referee who adjudicates the situation into play.

Hybrid prep & improv approachs are where it is at, even if my advocacy for them comes in the form of advocating more strongly for the preparedness side of the equation.  I think it's preferable for a referee to know the situation before it is engaged with rather than only create it as a result of engagement.  That's where I think hybrid play tips too far towards leaving the core role of the RPG referee for the far off shores of a one man improv session where no one else there realizes what they signed up for.

Similarly if you over prep and can't be flexible about using situation creation tools on the fly, you can end up unable to deal with player choices.  But when you do engage in setting creation on the fly, that "on the fly" should still be in advance of their actual engagement by the players.  And once there are details established about the situation that are only known the referee, they shouldn't be disregarded without an incredibly good reason.  And taking the approach that they are automatically in the disregarded category until they make it into play would probably be the worst way to go, as it creates the null-situation play problem where you're basically lying to the players with the invitation to engage with a situation that isn't there.

The 5th ed. of Call of Cthulhu included an excellent discussion of "reasonable inference," a tool I personally find indispensable as a GM. My first attempt at writing up a scenario was terribly laborious, because I tried to specify every last little thing in each room of a dungeon, and a whole lot of what would happen if people did action x with item y.

The necessity of doing just that exhaustively is what limits the scope of computer-program games; and freedom from it is to my mind a key strength of human-moderated RPGs.

This past weekend, having been so busy with work that I didn't have time to prep anything, I improved an entire 8 hour adventure out of two lines I wrote 3 years ago.

It worked out fine.

Two weeks ago I ran a Hobby Shop Dungeon game for friends in Chilliwack. I didn't have anything prepped, so I improvised the whole premise that led to a rescue mission within Nester's Folly itself through a magic mirror accidentally opened in the city the PCs were in. Worked great.

Quote from: RPGPundit;741016This past weekend, having been so busy with work that I didn't have time to prep anything, I improved an entire 8 hour adventure out of two lines I wrote 3 years ago.

It worked out fine.

If you can do that, I raise my beer to you, sir.

I've tried it, and I don't have that skill.

Well, not quite... it depends on the situation.  If it's pretty light duty, like "Hey, we just arrived in this port town we've never been in before, let's see if we can hire a ship to sail to the Isles of Langerhans," well, I can pull an evening's worth of putzing around town and interacting with Various And Sundry Colorful Characters of the Town until they meet Yo Ho Salty Ship Captain #17b, yeah, I can do that.

If it's more in-depth, like "Let's start digging into the political structures of this town and see who has dirt on whom" I will tend to say "Okay, guys, I really need more time to prepare for that to make it fun."  I don't want to cock-block the players, but experience has taught me that I can only wing it so far before it starts to suck.

All that said, it doesn't take much to have "sufficient" background.  We can have a heck of a good time if my background for the town is as simple as "Two households, both alike in dignity".

Quote from: RPGPundit;741016This past weekend, having been so busy with work that I didn't have time to prep anything, I improved an entire 8 hour adventure out of two lines I wrote 3 years ago.

It worked out fine.

Welcome to the club. Except I didnt have the two lines of text part.

It was a fresh starting adventure so I didnt even have the luxury of "Previously on Karamekios..." So I asked the group if they wanted to start in a start town or on the road/wilderness since they were allready equipped and good to go.

They said Wilderness so I asked them what they were doing out there.
"Exploring." And since the group was 2 humans and 2 half orcs, Magic User, Thief, Ranger, Cleric. So I jot down "wilderness frontier trade town" for later reference and work out the local terrain for where they are and 2 hexes out from around them. designating one as containing the trade town they came from.

I use my Landmass system at the 20mi/hex scale to generate elevations. And just over some hills end up with a ravine/canyon that just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeesh! Does it go all the way through the planet? Definitly note this down in case the party wanders that way.

All that took about 5 min, and most of that was plotting out the landscape and jotting down notes.

The first few encounters on the wilderness table and how the party deals with it then determined general state of the region and from there it built on itself.

Which happened to be a band of goblins. Which the ranger promptly pincusioned before anyone even had a chance to talk. "I dont like goblins" grunted the half orc and so obviously things have not been going well with the local goblin tribes and I note that down too and base the goblins in the hills adjacent to the abyss as that was the only hilly terrain nearby and I usually base above ground goblins in the hills.

They encountered a dryad in trouble and after a rescue surprisingly the half-orc ranger was the one she reacted most favourably to and so I had the dryad mention goblins and an ogre in the area and the ranger jumped to the conclusion the goblins had sent the monsters. They had not. But the party and the dryad did not know that. The party could have just as easily locked on the ogre or the odd collars on the monsters, or why the dryad was waaaaay out here in the boonies. Nope. Goblins did it and off they go with a helpful pointer towards the hills and some backtracking rolls which also lead towards the hills for a ways. The Ranger missed a roll and lost the trail just before it would have veered off to where the real culprit was settled.

The half orc ranger, usually the quiet one of the group surprisingly took the lead at various points and provided various ideas for plot hook to toss out. The MU was fairly involved as well and input some wild theories about elvish magic since the collars and the magic ring reward the dryad offered were of elvish make. Parts of a puzzle. Except they were three separate puzzles. Which allowed me to build off little things to flesh out what was going on.

If I can get the group back together for another session Im curious to see what else develops.

Quote from: Old Geezer;741102If you can do that, I raise my beer to you, sir.

I've tried it, and I don't have that skill.

Well, not quite... it depends on the situation.  If it's pretty light duty, like "Hey, we just arrived in this port town we've never been in before, let's see if we can hire a ship to sail to the Isles of Langerhans," well, I can pull an evening's worth of putzing around town and interacting with Various And Sundry Colorful Characters of the Town until they meet Yo Ho Salty Ship Captain #17b, yeah, I can do that.

It was a superhero adventure for my Golden Age ICONS campaign.  It involved a mummy-cult, Ha-seth (who is an enemy of Hawkman's), trying to unleash a portal to the underworld to create an undead empire for himself in Egypt, while the PCs are there as bodyguards for FDR during the 1943 Cairo Conference.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;735797Once I get the campaign world devised, basically all the time. Planning ahead is pretty much useless, as the stuff I come up with on the fly is almost always better than anything I thought up beforehand.

Basically my experience as well. Sometimes aided by random tables, but mostly just whatever comes to mind. The tricky part about improvising for me is jotting everything down when I think of it as to remain consistent later, and so I don't rehash ideas too often.

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?

Regularly, I just have a framework like a broad outline and go. I does help that most my GMing is with Mage which is pretty off the cuff as a baseline. Especially Mage the Ascension.

Quote from: Mr. Kent;741924Basically my experience as well. Sometimes aided by random tables, but mostly just whatever comes to mind. The tricky part about improvising for me is jotting everything down when I think of it as to remain consistent later, and so I don't rehash ideas too often.

Right on the money, good sir!
I improv all the time. In a game, out of the game, when I give a lecture, at the convenience store.

Spontaneous adventures are the best! However, I do have those 'senior moments' and it gets trickier and trickier to remember what I cooked up previously.  This is why note keeping is vital. So while the ideas freeform, the events and personalities created get quickly noted down (often as a mind map) for later recollection.

A big part of improv is to encourage players to add to the world. The GM needs to 'let go' of the details and let the players fill in the setting to a large degree. In Rapture: The End Of Days, this is coded into the game mechanics. The GM sets the overall plot and location, but the players describe the detail and use that to affect the outcomes of situations. For example, the GM may place the heroes in a surgical theatre on a space station, but it is the players who state they are grabbing the tray of surgical knives that have been left out and using them to fight off the serial killer daemon cyborg! This adds huge color the game and, most importantly, lets the GM give the players the sort of story THEY want. So the plot becomes more collaborative.

This forum needs an audience eating popcorn smiley.

Quote from: Opaopajr;742075This forum needs an audience eating popcorn smiley.

:popcorn:

Quote from: Opaopajr;742075This forum needs an audience eating popcorn smiley.

I'm not sure it does, but as you can see, we do have it.