I am the kind of DM that obsessively prepares. Like a lot.
I have pages of document notes going into a session: what's the initial situation? Who are all the "players" in the situation? What are their goals/tactics/limits? What is the list of everything the PCs will need to know? Do I have at least 3 ways of getting information to them?
What luck have people had with preparing exactly nothing? I mean, falling back completely on on-the-spot improvisation?
When I'm preparing obsessively, it does not take me long to come up with those details - essentially ask myself, then answer immediately. It's possible to do this on demand.
It would take a lot of practice with on-the-spot improvisation to become comfortable with this ... but what has your experience with this been?
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Some of my most successful, memorable, and long-lasting campaigns over the years have been the ones for which the before-hand preparation is limited to "Hey guys, want to play some D&D tonight?" and then diving directly into creating characters (and me coming up with where to start things off during the same time, while the whole group work together to fit characters and a story idea together).
It does, like any other skill, take practice to really get into the swing of things - but in my experience, it's entirely worth it. Part of the reason my players keep coming back to my table instead of spending their time at other tables is because I'm always able to get a campaign up and running no matter how short the notice that a new campaign is in order might be.
On-the-spot improvisation can be extremely liberating and incredibly fun. I tend to prefer to have a t least a vague idea of the kind of adventure or campaign I'd like to play, and a little quirk of the setting we're gonna play into, but aside from that, improvising on the spot is refreshing, exciting and the good kind of challenging.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I usually plan out the first session or two of a campaign, and then improvise the rest. Once a campaign gets rolling making up things as you go gets easy. Plus, it also helps if you have imaginative players.
I think I've got enough experience under my belt to know what kind of information is useful to have, now - but I have to remember that I don't need to have all of it developed up front.
For example; For major NPCs, I can see having the following as useful: Physical Appearance, Behavioral Tick, Vocal Mannerisms, Cultural Background ( useful in my setting ), Vocal Tic, Role in the current situation, Motivation, Goal, Tactics/Plans, Limits to Actions ( personal & situational ).
That's a lot of work to do up front - and not all of may be needed.
I think having the skeleton of that is useful to keep in mind - hell, maybe even an "NPC Worksheet" on tap for the NPC - but leaving most of it blank until it is needed:
Hmm ... what will Vysoká The Unjust do next? Hmmm ... ( jotting down notes furiously as the players discuss what to do next ) ... he's motivated by personal power, he's allies with the Duke of D'nai, he's aware of the Order's betrayal of the Dukeso ... he'll attempt to extort influences from the Order for his silence - playing both sides against the middle - but he'll be very careful not to get caught ( so he'll act through funded intermediaries and the Black Star thieves guild contacts only ), and if push comes to shove, he'll side with the Duke as that's a better bet for long term gain .... he'll act as a friendly neutral, even offering minor support to the party ... but his motive is to find out their next move, and see how he can - subtly and cleverly - use that information to gain influence with the Duke, the Order, or even the Black Star guild ...
If the PCs had decided to kill Vysoká up front, none of that would have been needed - apart from physical appearance, and maybe vocal and behavioral tics - all of which could even have been created/inspired by some random table rolls or a software applet.
NPCs sort of becomeSchrödinger's cat; the details don't exist until the players look.
That might be the sweet spot - figure out what information/template might be needed for each "thing" - but also force myself to only sketch out the bare minimum for each entity, until needed in game.
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I'm always looking for ways to prepare less while still delivering a quality experience for my players. I have gone from writing pages full of paragraphs to making bullet point outlines of key concepts. I'm on the path, but I think I can do better.
After doing this for almost 30 years, I've found my place of comfort comes from a middle ground between prep and improv. With this I can keep the obsession of prepping for any given possibility out of the writing because, like you, I can come up with this stuff on the fly. It gives me enough information to make sure there is continuity and I also have reminders when I suffer from CRS. It also helps make the players feel like their actions have a whole lot more impact since I'm working with the here and now rather than, "Hold on I got that info in my notebook...I know I wrote that down...just a sec".
Step 1:
Begin your adventure with the broad strokes of the world, who are the major players and their goals, what are the important locations, are there key geographic (mountains/monuments) spots, etc. Once the players are involved, do some more broad strokes based on what back story they give, do the stories tie in to the plot(s), do the stories lend to a new location, do the stories lend to another major player. With those broad strokes laid down it's time to move to step 2.
Step 2:
I write down the key points I'd like for the players to experience. 3-5 bullet point notes, prep done. We play and then I move to step 3.
Step 3:
I take notes at the end of the session of any important details. I move the plots and stories along that aren't active. Then I go back to step 2.
Normally what I do for preparation is just draw out the maps and then improvise the rest. It generally works and can lead to some hilarious situations.
Currently playing in: Quest for the Shunned City, Coliseum of Conquest, DragonDenn's Dragonlords, Shipwrecked on Fugue, Tomb of Annihilation, Razor's Lost Mine of Phandelver, The Lost Kenku & One Grung Above
Currently DMing: Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Coliseum of Conquest—The Arena (Sometimes)
Currently playing in: Quest for the Shunned City, Coliseum of Conquest, DragonDenn's Dragonlords, Shipwrecked on Fugue, Tomb of Annihilation, Razor's Lost Mine of Phandelver, The Lost Kenku & One Grung Above
Currently DMing: Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Coliseum of Conquest—The Arena (Sometimes)
The vital bit of prep for changing to this style is telling the players in advance. Warn them that you may make mistakes. Let them know that metagaming is no longer going to work the same way; they are however free to go the way they want, not the way they think YOU want. Tell them you are expecting creativity more than puzzle-solving. (By which I mean, the puzzles they solve may not have been pre-solved by the DM.)
In my last session, I knew that right at the start the PCs were about to open the double doors onto a summoning, the climax of the adventure. (Keep on the Shadowfell, adjusted for 5th edition - take out half the fights, convert all the not-quite-goblins into goblins, the usual stuff...) I was tempted to build an epic temple with Terra-clips (we have them, never been used yet) and fight it out in 3 dimensions of gridded heaven. This could have been the encounter we live for. I'd had a couple of weeks' notice after all.
But no. Genius here decided to flip expectations. The door opens onto a dozen or so dejected cultists, the summoning already a failure and their leader sucked into Hell. In short, they were fed up and happy to surrender. I had visions of the PCs escorting them to the nearest city, where more adventures awaited. It was going to be great. The players were going to remember this for a long time, free-form sandboxing was finally here....Greatest. DM. EVER!
Except they slaughtered the cultists in short order and I was left wondering "What next?" One of the PCs wanted to jump through the portal, but the look of horror on my face luckily dissuaded him. (Or maybe not so luckily.)
I guess my point is that unless you tell them the 'gaming' rails have been torn up, they may still take the routes they think they ought to, never realising how much space you are willing to give them.
Ah well, live and learn....
I blame Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) - he made it sound so easy. :(
I think The_Plundered_Tombstouches on a very real point, and a real failing ( in my opinion ) of traditional D&D: our players expect that there is a right way through the maze of the adventure.
I think it's also an issue with DMs - we build a plot ( not a railroad, just the expected series of events that would occur if the players did nothing ) - and we have a picture in our heads as to how our players are likely to skew that; so we write to that.
I think you're right - the players need to understand that there is no spoon rail.
I've been wondering recently why "plot hooks" are even a thing. My player-characters are developed enough that they have their own goals and list of things they want to do - they don't need a "mysterious stranger" to walk up to them in a tavern.
If I'm good enough at coming up with details about Actors ( individual NPCs, organizations, etc. ) in the world on the fly, recording those details for future consistency, and plotting out what are the reasonable reactions of those actors to current events, then the game plot writes itself.
But it's in the hands of the players. Sometimes the plot that writes it'self is dumb ( slaughtering all the cultists ).
I had something similar happen with my party: they decided to get into a firefight with the local thieves guild, in a tavern, in the middle of town, in the same city square as the Guard Keep, in the middle of the day. So - I played it out "logically", played the combat out for X turns before the city guard piled into the bar, subdued everyone, threw them in jail. Next scenes - prison interviews, trial, imposed fines, etc. ....
Doing things "on the fly", I probably would do as much creative work as I do now ... just focused on the items I really do need, and only when I need them.
That's scary - because we all suffer from the occasional "brain fart" - You come face to face with the Master Wizard .... um ... Steve!
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I have had some of the most success in DMing by mostly improv. I would make the basic outline of bad guys and such, what they wanted to do, and the towns they would visit. After that it's mostly let them do what they want and maybe throw some random encounters on the way.
My longest campaign only ended when i tried to use a badly made, prewritten adventure. I hated it halfway through and the players hated me railroading them in the story.
I did originally started out all improv, wouldn't recommend that, made me learn players like finding out random npc names and other little details.
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I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. —Maya Angelou
I have recently started up a game with a group of people I met at Uni, and character creation was so fast (thanks D&D Beyond) that I was not prepared for them to build their characters in under 15 minutes, so I (unfortunately) had to improvise the starting scenario. It went surprising well (though on immediate reflection I thought of a much better way I could have gotten the party together), and I realised the other day that I'd basically continued the trend in subsequent sessions. With this group, I rarely do more than note where the last session ended off and what needs to happen at the start of the session.
I've decided that I'm doing only a little less than I should be doing as it means I have no plans for the players to ruin. NPCs are split between the ones the players decide to speak to, and the (very rare) ones I have initiate discussions with players. The fact that it's only a short little adventure probably means I'm much safer with this method that I would be in a longer, ongoing adventure.
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I think my session two nights ago completely cemented whether or not I'm going to go this route.
The players didn't go anywhere near where I thought they'd go, managing to reflexively kill off one of their major potential sources of information before they could speak to her ( oh no! The ships' captain heard me prying open the window to her cabin?! .... Eldritch Blast to the face!... *DM facepalm* ), rolling ludicrously high on ridiculously high DC far-fetched attempts to do things ( .... why yes ... 28 - that's your 3rd 25+ roll in a row! - would succeed ... you manage to follow the 3-hour old blood spatter trail through the streets.... in the rain .... ) ... ignoring obvious lines of inquiry ( ...we should check out the crime scene for clues ... oh look, something shiny .... ).
However - I had absolutely no problem rolling with any of it; I knew all the NPC individuals and factions in play, I knew what they wanted, what their tactics/limits/personalities were - so I just jotted down how the NPCs and factions would react to the chaos events the players' were setting in motion.
It also worked in the players' favor as they managed to beeline to the exact place that the mercenary team that the Bad Guys(tm) had hired was hiding out, talk their way out of a fight starting, and managed to blurt out the one piece of information which I had previously noted down could drive a wedge between the mercenaries and their employer ....
I don't think I could have survived that session if I had relied on the narrative going any particular way; as it was - while I was kind of dumbfounded and stunned at the player antics most of the night - I didn't have any issues keeping the ball rolling.
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My favorite moments are when I make something up during a campaign, and the players run with it. And then, they ask in wonder how I planned out something like this so far in advance, or how it all fit together so well. And then I just smile and nod. There is nothing wrong with taking the random ideas and theories that the players come up with in their discussions and then subtly turning it into reality.
They see or hear of the evil wizard casting a spell that has a dark aura around it. They surmise that it must mean that they are a necromancer of some sort. Well, that sounds cool so why not. In the end, all I needed was a wizard and the party helped to determine what form it took by making random guesses.
I agree that "riffing" of the players ( sort of RPG jazz ) is a good technique for spinning out the story - and again, it's not pre-planning on the DM's part.
I think that the DM has to be pretty clear what's going in in the world, however, so-as to not introduce future story problems, or contradictions.
I also think that it's a technique that has to be used sporadically, so the players aren't always right - some of my best player reactions have been to discovering that what they thought was right turned out to be something totally different ( without, of course, introducing logical contradictions )
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I have managed to maintain almost zero prep utilizing existing module books- there are NPC & Location details, as well as a general overarching story line that occurs with or without player influence that crops up intermittently throughout a module.
Most of my work comes during the session, noting choices & later determining causal connections & reactions.
I go for broad brush strokes and take it from there. I wouldn't pre-plan a NPC as a source of information, I'd just have a situation and see what develops from it. I don't have a predetermined story, I have a background scenario in which the party moves through. I don't know what's going to happen either.
I use contemporary news items for inspiration, my young gnomes are all silicon valley types, my diminished gods are based on people like Hans Asperger or Gina Miller. So long as you have a reference point you should be able to keep things moving forward.
I go for broad brush strokes and take it from there. I wouldn't pre-plan a NPC as a source of information, I'd just have a situation and see what develops from it. I don't have a predetermined story, I have a background scenario in which the party moves through. I don't know what's going to happen either.
Yes - this is the structure I'm running with now. Last session I didn't insert any particular NPCs for the express purposes of being an information source, but I did note which NPCs would have useful information for the party in solving the mystery. However, had I noticed a conspicuous gap in the available information, I may have added such an NPC - or 3. The captain that the Rogue/Warlock killed in a panic just happened to be a really good source with what she knew.
I have managed to maintain almost zero prep utilizing existing module books- there are NPC & Location details, as well as a general overarching story line that occurs with or without player influence that crops up intermittently throughout a module.
Most of my work comes during the session, noting choices & later determining causal connections & reactions.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with using modules if it fits the style you want - and I know many do.
My problem is that the story-line of one module doesn't necessarily have much to do with another - so it's a lot of meta-work on the DMs part to logically string them together, and make decisions in past adventures have effects on the current one. Plus, they're a finite resource.
My view is that if I'm going to be busy building a meta-plot trying to shoehorn modules into a coherent integrated narrative - and that matters to me, other groups might not care as much - I might as well build the initial plot. Given the "build the NPCs & Factions that logically exist in this area, determine what plots and events are underway, and turn it on to see what happens" approach, it's not much more work to do that; possibly less.
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I like having background prep, but I find that you can't really plan for the day to day stuff because players always think of crazy stuff you've never considered.
I am the kind of DM that obsessively prepares. Like a lot.
I have pages of document notes going into a session: what's the initial situation? Who are all the "players" in the situation? What are their goals/tactics/limits? What is the list of everything the PCs will need to know? Do I have at least 3 ways of getting information to them?
What luck have people had with preparing exactly nothing? I mean, falling back completely on on-the-spot improvisation?
When I'm preparing obsessively, it does not take me long to come up with those details - essentially ask myself, then answer immediately. It's possible to do this on demand.
It would take a lot of practice with on-the-spot improvisation to become comfortable with this ... but what has your experience with this been?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Some of my most successful, memorable, and long-lasting campaigns over the years have been the ones for which the before-hand preparation is limited to "Hey guys, want to play some D&D tonight?" and then diving directly into creating characters (and me coming up with where to start things off during the same time, while the whole group work together to fit characters and a story idea together).
It does, like any other skill, take practice to really get into the swing of things - but in my experience, it's entirely worth it. Part of the reason my players keep coming back to my table instead of spending their time at other tables is because I'm always able to get a campaign up and running no matter how short the notice that a new campaign is in order might be.
I agree with AaronOfBarbaria
On-the-spot improvisation can be extremely liberating and incredibly fun.
I tend to prefer to have a t least a vague idea of the kind of adventure or campaign I'd like to play, and a little quirk of the setting we're gonna play into, but aside from that, improvising on the spot is refreshing, exciting and the good kind of challenging.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I usually plan out the first session or two of a campaign, and then improvise the rest. Once a campaign gets rolling making up things as you go gets easy. Plus, it also helps if you have imaginative players.
Dungeonmastering since 1992!
Thanks guys :)
I think I've got enough experience under my belt to know what kind of information is useful to have, now - but I have to remember that I don't need to have all of it developed up front.
For example; For major NPCs, I can see having the following as useful: Physical Appearance, Behavioral Tick, Vocal Mannerisms, Cultural Background ( useful in my setting ), Vocal Tic, Role in the current situation, Motivation, Goal, Tactics/Plans, Limits to Actions ( personal & situational ).
That's a lot of work to do up front - and not all of may be needed.
I think having the skeleton of that is useful to keep in mind - hell, maybe even an "NPC Worksheet" on tap for the NPC - but leaving most of it blank until it is needed:
Hmm ... what will Vysoká The Unjust do next? Hmmm ... ( jotting down notes furiously as the players discuss what to do next ) ... he's motivated by personal power, he's allies with the Duke of D'nai, he's aware of the Order's betrayal of the Duke so ... he'll attempt to extort influences from the Order for his silence - playing both sides against the middle - but he'll be very careful not to get caught ( so he'll act through funded intermediaries and the Black Star thieves guild contacts only ), and if push comes to shove, he'll side with the Duke as that's a better bet for long term gain .... he'll act as a friendly neutral, even offering minor support to the party ... but his motive is to find out their next move, and see how he can - subtly and cleverly - use that information to gain influence with the Duke, the Order, or even the Black Star guild ...
If the PCs had decided to kill Vysoká up front, none of that would have been needed - apart from physical appearance, and maybe vocal and behavioral tics - all of which could even have been created/inspired by some random table rolls or a software applet.
NPCs sort of become Schrödinger's cat; the details don't exist until the players look.
That might be the sweet spot - figure out what information/template might be needed for each "thing" - but also force myself to only sketch out the bare minimum for each entity, until needed in game.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I'm always looking for ways to prepare less while still delivering a quality experience for my players. I have gone from writing pages full of paragraphs to making bullet point outlines of key concepts. I'm on the path, but I think I can do better.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
After doing this for almost 30 years, I've found my place of comfort comes from a middle ground between prep and improv. With this I can keep the obsession of prepping for any given possibility out of the writing because, like you, I can come up with this stuff on the fly. It gives me enough information to make sure there is continuity and I also have reminders when I suffer from CRS. It also helps make the players feel like their actions have a whole lot more impact since I'm working with the here and now rather than, "Hold on I got that info in my notebook...I know I wrote that down...just a sec".
Step 1:
Begin your adventure with the broad strokes of the world, who are the major players and their goals, what are the important locations, are there key geographic (mountains/monuments) spots, etc. Once the players are involved, do some more broad strokes based on what back story they give, do the stories tie in to the plot(s), do the stories lend to a new location, do the stories lend to another major player. With those broad strokes laid down it's time to move to step 2.
Step 2:
I write down the key points I'd like for the players to experience. 3-5 bullet point notes, prep done. We play and then I move to step 3.
Step 3:
I take notes at the end of the session of any important details. I move the plots and stories along that aren't active. Then I go back to step 2.
Normally what I do for preparation is just draw out the maps and then improvise the rest. It generally works and can lead to some hilarious situations.
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Class Guides: Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Bard General Guides: PvP
Currently playing in: Quest for the Shunned City, Coliseum of Conquest, DragonDenn's Dragonlords, Shipwrecked on Fugue, Tomb of Annihilation, Razor's Lost Mine of Phandelver, The Lost Kenku & One Grung Above
Currently DMing: Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Coliseum of Conquest—The Arena (Sometimes)
Slight correction: I do like to know what's coming next in the adventure, of course. I would recommend reading throw each dungeon before you enter it.
Check out my Extended signature here
Class Guides: Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Bard General Guides: PvP
Currently playing in: Quest for the Shunned City, Coliseum of Conquest, DragonDenn's Dragonlords, Shipwrecked on Fugue, Tomb of Annihilation, Razor's Lost Mine of Phandelver, The Lost Kenku & One Grung Above
Currently DMing: Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, Coliseum of Conquest—The Arena (Sometimes)
The vital bit of prep for changing to this style is telling the players in advance. Warn them that you may make mistakes. Let them know that metagaming is no longer going to work the same way; they are however free to go the way they want, not the way they think YOU want. Tell them you are expecting creativity more than puzzle-solving. (By which I mean, the puzzles they solve may not have been pre-solved by the DM.)
In my last session, I knew that right at the start the PCs were about to open the double doors onto a summoning, the climax of the adventure. (Keep on the Shadowfell, adjusted for 5th edition - take out half the fights, convert all the not-quite-goblins into goblins, the usual stuff...)
I was tempted to build an epic temple with Terra-clips (we have them, never been used yet) and fight it out in 3 dimensions of gridded heaven. This could have been the encounter we live for. I'd had a couple of weeks' notice after all.
But no. Genius here decided to flip expectations. The door opens onto a dozen or so dejected cultists, the summoning already a failure and their leader sucked into Hell. In short, they were fed up and happy to surrender. I had visions of the PCs escorting them to the nearest city, where more adventures awaited. It was going to be great. The players were going to remember this for a long time, free-form sandboxing was finally here....Greatest. DM. EVER!
Except they slaughtered the cultists in short order and I was left wondering "What next?"
One of the PCs wanted to jump through the portal, but the look of horror on my face luckily dissuaded him. (Or maybe not so luckily.)
I guess my point is that unless you tell them the 'gaming' rails have been torn up, they may still take the routes they think they ought to, never realising how much space you are willing to give them.
Ah well, live and learn....
I blame Mike Shea (Sly Flourish) - he made it sound so easy. :(
Roleplaying since Runequest.
I think The_Plundered_Tombs touches on a very real point, and a real failing ( in my opinion ) of traditional D&D: our players expect that there is a right way through the maze of the adventure.
I think it's also an issue with DMs - we build a plot ( not a railroad, just the expected series of events that would occur if the players did nothing ) - and we have a picture in our heads as to how our players are likely to skew that; so we write to that.
I think you're right - the players need to understand that there is no
spoonrail.I've been wondering recently why "plot hooks" are even a thing. My player-characters are developed enough that they have their own goals and list of things they want to do - they don't need a "mysterious stranger" to walk up to them in a tavern.
If I'm good enough at coming up with details about Actors ( individual NPCs, organizations, etc. ) in the world on the fly, recording those details for future consistency, and plotting out what are the reasonable reactions of those actors to current events, then the game plot writes itself.
But it's in the hands of the players. Sometimes the plot that writes it'self is dumb ( slaughtering all the cultists ).
I had something similar happen with my party: they decided to get into a firefight with the local thieves guild, in a tavern, in the middle of town, in the same city square as the Guard Keep, in the middle of the day. So - I played it out "logically", played the combat out for X turns before the city guard piled into the bar, subdued everyone, threw them in jail. Next scenes - prison interviews, trial, imposed fines, etc. ....
Doing things "on the fly", I probably would do as much creative work as I do now ... just focused on the items I really do need, and only when I need them.
That's scary - because we all suffer from the occasional "brain fart" - You come face to face with the Master Wizard .... um ... Steve!
It just feels safer to have it all pre-plotted.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I have had some of the most success in DMing by mostly improv. I would make the basic outline of bad guys and such, what they wanted to do, and the towns they would visit. After that it's mostly let them do what they want and maybe throw some random encounters on the way.
My longest campaign only ended when i tried to use a badly made, prewritten adventure. I hated it halfway through and the players hated me railroading them in the story.
I did originally started out all improv, wouldn't recommend that, made me learn players like finding out random npc names and other little details.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. —Maya Angelou
I have recently started up a game with a group of people I met at Uni, and character creation was so fast (thanks D&D Beyond) that I was not prepared for them to build their characters in under 15 minutes, so I (unfortunately) had to improvise the starting scenario. It went surprising well (though on immediate reflection I thought of a much better way I could have gotten the party together), and I realised the other day that I'd basically continued the trend in subsequent sessions. With this group, I rarely do more than note where the last session ended off and what needs to happen at the start of the session.
I've decided that I'm doing only a little less than I should be doing as it means I have no plans for the players to ruin. NPCs are split between the ones the players decide to speak to, and the (very rare) ones I have initiate discussions with players. The fact that it's only a short little adventure probably means I'm much safer with this method that I would be in a longer, ongoing adventure.
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I think my session two nights ago completely cemented whether or not I'm going to go this route.
The players didn't go anywhere near where I thought they'd go, managing to reflexively kill off one of their major potential sources of information before they could speak to her ( oh no! The ships' captain heard me prying open the window to her cabin?! .... Eldritch Blast to the face!... *DM facepalm* ), rolling ludicrously high on ridiculously high DC far-fetched attempts to do things ( .... why yes ... 28 - that's your 3rd 25+ roll in a row! - would succeed ... you manage to follow the 3-hour old blood spatter trail through the streets.... in the rain .... ) ... ignoring obvious lines of inquiry ( ...we should check out the crime scene for clues ... oh look, something shiny .... ).
However - I had absolutely no problem rolling with any of it; I knew all the NPC individuals and factions in play, I knew what they wanted, what their tactics/limits/personalities were - so I just jotted down how the NPCs and factions would react to the
chaosevents the players' were setting in motion.It also worked in the players' favor as they managed to beeline to the exact place that the mercenary team that the Bad Guys(tm) had hired was hiding out, talk their way out of a fight starting, and managed to blurt out the one piece of information which I had previously noted down could drive a wedge between the mercenaries and their employer ....
I don't think I could have survived that session if I had relied on the narrative going any particular way; as it was - while I was kind of dumbfounded and stunned at the player antics most of the night - I didn't have any issues keeping the ball rolling.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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My favorite moments are when I make something up during a campaign, and the players run with it. And then, they ask in wonder how I planned out something like this so far in advance, or how it all fit together so well. And then I just smile and nod. There is nothing wrong with taking the random ideas and theories that the players come up with in their discussions and then subtly turning it into reality.
They see or hear of the evil wizard casting a spell that has a dark aura around it. They surmise that it must mean that they are a necromancer of some sort. Well, that sounds cool so why not. In the end, all I needed was a wizard and the party helped to determine what form it took by making random guesses.
I agree that "riffing" of the players ( sort of RPG jazz ) is a good technique for spinning out the story - and again, it's not pre-planning on the DM's part.
I think that the DM has to be pretty clear what's going in in the world, however, so-as to not introduce future story problems, or contradictions.
I also think that it's a technique that has to be used sporadically, so the players aren't always right - some of my best player reactions have been to discovering that what they thought was right turned out to be something totally different ( without, of course, introducing logical contradictions )
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I have managed to maintain almost zero prep utilizing existing module books- there are NPC & Location details, as well as a general overarching story line that occurs with or without player influence that crops up intermittently throughout a module.
Most of my work comes during the session, noting choices & later determining causal connections & reactions.
I go for broad brush strokes and take it from there. I wouldn't pre-plan a NPC as a source of information, I'd just have a situation and see what develops from it. I don't have a predetermined story, I have a background scenario in which the party moves through. I don't know what's going to happen either.
I use contemporary news items for inspiration, my young gnomes are all silicon valley types, my diminished gods are based on people like Hans Asperger or Gina Miller. So long as you have a reference point you should be able to keep things moving forward.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I like having background prep, but I find that you can't really plan for the day to day stuff because players always think of crazy stuff you've never considered.
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