How hard do you plan?

[shadow_archmagi]

Inspired by Astral's "I am going to cry" thread.

Apparently he spends all night working on plots, dialogue, NPCs, and fancy tokens. I see that and think:

This is why *I* never prepare anything ahead of time.

I am one of those lucky DMs who, (possibly (but not likely) through my own skill and brilliance) has a group that proceeds through plots at a slower rate than preparing said plots takes. Naturally, then, over time, my lead on them increases. (It probably also helps that I get to know their characters and playstyles better and better as time goes on, so I can predict them better and so design the plot better.)

[arguskos]

HAH! I don't bother really preparing the details anymore, since my group isn't really one for playing with the damn plan. Luckily, I'm decent at improvisation and I do plan important bits, so it all works out. :smallamused:

[Zadus]

I plan for a good 2 hours for a campaign and every other session maybe gets another 2 hours.

I find my players move a bit slower than I plan. I also build my dungeons with several methods for completion and that takes a bit longer. Also I try to end my games directly after they've made crucial plot altering decisions.

Finally I hardly ever use a computer while planning. I'm actually in computer science, but I find D&D to be a good chance to leave my computer behind. I generally have a plot outline in bullet points and the rest of my stuff goes down in my sketchbook. I can't really draw, so my sketchbook has lots of blank pages.

Really I find you don't have to plan so much if you're good at improvising and are ready to change the games focus at a moments notice. Players can be brutally irregular, as long as you're prepared for everything to go out the window that sounds perfectly planned to me.

[Jack_Simth]

What is this... plun? ... of which you speak?

[Raum]

I plan NPC goals but seldom actions. Actions are variable depending on if / how the PCs interfere. I avoid planning solutions or PC actions. Those are left to the player.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Oh God, I am so so lazy.

I write NOTHING flavor-wise ahead of time. I make a map on graph paper (so crude that only I could understand it) of each area I plan for a fight to take place, and I write up basic stat blocks for NPCs likely to get into battle. If NPCs can cast spells or buff (and I rarely use monsters with spells) I write a short reminder of what each spell does, & range/duration on a sticky note and append it to the stats.

Everything description-wise, while I get images in my head beforehand, is written on the spot (I DM on AIM chat). I'm not gonna lie, I think I'm a pretty good writer, so it usually just flows out of me pretty naturally. Sometimes I do scan drawings for my players beforehand but not often. Plot-wise, I keep things extremely skeletal--I have an archvillain, and I know what he'll be doing whenever the PCs don't interfere with him, and otherwise I try to stay loose and reactive. Whichever path the PCs take at a fork in the road, my ability to write on the spot is a huge help.

[Glimbur]

I stat monsters and NPC's, throw together some areas and personalities for notables, and let the adventure ensue. Generally I have an idea what I expect them to do... they have yet to actually do as predicted.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I've actually had a GM say the last line from this comic (http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0041.html) before. Of course, it was a game played where at least 2 players were drunk and/or high each session(and not always the same players, either), so it was understandable. Great game, though.

[arguskos]

I've actually had a GM say the last line from this comic (http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0041.html) before. Of course, it was a game played where at least 2 players were drunk and/or high each session(and not always the same players, either), so it was understandable. Great game, though.
Hell, I'VE said that to my players before! :smallamused:

[AstralFire]

I know I'm capable of improv-ing as a GM, I used to run games entirely by the seat of my pants. But after a while... I dunno, I treat GMing as showmanship. I am a host, and they are my guests at a mystery theatre dinner. The game is about them, but it requires me to be at my very best. And I just noticed that when I planned, NPC dialogue moved faster, we had less dead space, and it generally lead to more "oh my god, that was AWESOME!" moments.

This is also why I wish I could play more often than I GM, because it's fun, but extremely draining on me.

[holywhippet]

The problem is that the DM can only know what they would do in a given a situation. Unless they severly limit player options somehow they can't be sure what they might try.

I had one campaign where the DM had meant for a local baron to ride away from a goblin fort safely (he'd been negotiating with them). We adopted a "let no XP escape" policy and took out his horse with a sleep spell. We managed to beat him into submission despite him being at least twice our level.

[AstralFire]

The problem is that the DM can only know what they would do in a given a situation. Unless they severly limit player options somehow they can't be sure what they might try.

I had one campaign where the DM had meant for a local baron to ride away from a goblin fort safely (he'd been negotiating with them). We adopted a "let no XP escape" policy and took out his horse with a sleep spell. We managed to beat him into submission despite him being at least twice our level.

I typically try to make sure that every situation where the PCs have a choice, I have thought of at least five different outcomes. This is very time consuming because it gets multiplicative, but it means that I know my scenario very well; while the PCs choose an option I came up with about 80% of the time, when they don't, I don't have to scramble to think about what happens next.

I don't recommend it for everyone. Dialogue is the part I have to prepare least for this because I am extremely good at impromptu written dialogue; stuff I prepare there tends to be exposition which I work on cutting down to be interesting and not voluminous, so as not to lose attention. If I was no good at improving dialogue, this entire thing would go to waste.

[derfenrirwolv]

"let no XP escape" policy

You do realize that you only need to DEFEAT something to get xp off of it?

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0021.html


In addition to plotting out what i'd LIKE the bad guys to do , i also like to know enough about them to know how they WOULD react to any given situation. What their goals are, what their resources are, and what their motivations are at the least.

[ashmanonar]

HAH! I don't bother really preparing the details anymore, since my group isn't really one for playing with the damn plan. Luckily, I'm decent at improvisation and I do plan important bits, so it all works out. :smallamused:

The same.

I tried planning out something in advance.

Several times, actually.

The players went in a completely different direction, and forced me to improvise anyways.

[Vortling]

I make maps, build monster stats, and think about npc motivations. The maps and stats are reusable and the npc motivations dictate how they react to whatever the players do. So far I haven't needed to plan much for the campaigns I run. Just the way I like it :smallbiggrin:

[Morandir Nailo]

I make maps, build monster stats, and think about npc motivations. The maps and stats are reusable and the npc motivations dictate how they react to whatever the players do. So far I haven't needed to plan much for the campaigns I run. Just the way I like it :smallbiggrin:

This. I run a sandbox-style OD&D game, and most of my "prep" is world-building: making maps, creating strange monsters (the Random Esoteric Creature Generator is one of the best RPG supplements I've ever seen), and coming up with interesting locales, items and NPCs. Prepping for a particular session usually involves reviewing my notes from last time as a refresher to what happened, and taking a glance through the module if I happen to be using one. It's never more than half an hour, if that.

Mor

[oxinabox]

hmm i sepnd a month writing out a campaign.
while i was looking for players.

Second sesion.
While i was waiting for some player to turn up (they didn't)
I was letting the players explore the tavern/town where they were waiting.
with in ten minutes they wern't even o nthe same plane as my plot.

I'ld planned a portal in for use when they got to higher lvls.
I didn't count on there high arcana (4e) to allow them to identify it.
or there high theivery to allow them to stell the key.

Since then i've been running of the seat of my pants.
last sesion i vaguely had the idea that if they wanted to get money then the Tygate trade guild (yes i whole sale stole that) would offer them work as a shareholder

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The only planning I do is a general map of the world (not drawing anything out, just "Here's the north, here's the ocean," etc.) and statting out NPCs...which usually happens since I have all my notes on my laptop, so my thought process while doing homework tends to be "Okay, compilation error, why the heck is that happening, I don't--ooh, ooh, ooh, Alt-Tab encounter with dread necromancer with three feral zombie yak folk type-type-type-type-type-type-type-type, excellent--Alt-Tab, okay, so...yeah, compilation error...." :smallbiggrin:

The lesson really hit home that planning too far ahead is a bad idea when a single offhand, joking sentence sent my players scrambling to build a giant, flying, sentient turtle fortress made of stone and adamantine and outfitted with defenestrating sphere cannons. Since then, any time a player mentions he's "derailed the DM's plot" I just shake my head and chuckle.

[TheCountAlucard]

I used to do rather a lot of planning for my sessions. Unfortunately, doing so made it a bit railroad-y. As of late, I've been doing a tad less preparation, and as a result, I've gotten a little better at improvising and dealing with when the PCs do something really unexpected.

[Arbitrarity]

I make some factions, some goals, some NPC's, and the general area that the PC's are in, as well as having a decent idea of what the world looks like (just in case).

Then, I let everything crash into each other. For some reason, I don't like scripted dialogue/description, though I should probably use it a bit more, as I often end up with forgetful description/generic dialogue. In PbP or IM play, I would probably use both quite a bit more, just feels awkward looking for a prewritten speech.

I do tend to plan combat encounters, if I expect they'll occur. Terrain is sometimes mapped, creatures picked out, and general tactics are chosen.

[oxinabox]

thing that takes ages is statting out NPC's.
it was holidays so i stated out some npc's. lvl 10, with multiclassing
Which i knew were to die.
So 5 hours prep for 1:30 murdur.
Really unique encounter.

Givinng monster's class lvls also makes for great encounters.
but takes ages

[Gralamin]

I have tons of plans, and fairly good improvisional ability. I never have a problem if the PCs ignore some of the Plan, that just means I can reuse it somewhere else :smallwink:

[Kol Korran]

i don't think that preparing ahead of time means you limit player's option. on the contrary- preparing well enough means that when they go and do something unexpected, you have enough of an "adventure infrastructure" to be able to react in a believable and consistent manner.

i plan quite a bit. most of the planning is done before the campaign and before every adventure arch, but adjustments are made before each session. i find it helps me, as my improvisational skills are mediocre or less. my players have enjoyed so far. i try to plan Flexible situations, challanges and NPCs.

i feel it's a small responsebility being a DM, giving my players a versatile and believable world to interact with, so i plan accordingly. some people can wing it better, i can't. planning works for me...

Kol.

[bosssmiley]

What is this... plun? ... of which you speak?

Heh, this.

One page dungeons, one line stat blocks, random tables, and a habit of looting every plot that crosses my path has seen me through thus far... :smallcool:

Having any Plan beyond the vaguest and most general limits your adaptability and gives the players a hostage to fortune.

[Narmoth]

I plan what would happen if the players didn't interfere. Then improvise how things change when players interfere

[Comet]

I usually first come up with a single cool scene, or a couple of them. They could be the beginning, the middle point or the climax or any combination.
Then I try to think for a reason for the cool scene(s) to exist. What led to that scene and what comes after. At this point I come up with the basics of the storyline.

After that, it's all about designing the characters the players will encounter. Enemies, friends, dramafodder. All the characters are designed with one goal in mind: how does this guy/gal advance the story? What can he/she do to encourage the players into the direction of those cool scenes I had in mind? How can this character create conflict?

After the characters are down it's time to build the final storyline. Very vague stuff, most of the details are always in my head. I'm lazy.
Finally, the maps and the stats for the NPCs. Perhaps the most boring part, I find, except for those cases where the area or a single monster/NPC is the cool part of the story I came up with first.

When all the above is done, I just stare at my lackluster notes for a while, go through the plans in my head and listen to some appropriate music. I go through the story in my head, see if there are any plotholes or padding scenes that lead nowhere. If I'm happy with the basics, I leave the story at that.

Most of the designing is done at the gaming table. I tend to improvise a lot. Usually I realise, mid-play, that an alternative solution to the story would be much cooler. With a little help from the players, we tend to end up with a gaming session that is nowhere near the one I had designed in my head/notes.
And that's usually for the best.

[AslanCross]

I plan obsessively. I would spend hours looking at an encounter and redoing it if I find it lacking. While I roll for random treasure I do it way beforehand and overrule the roll of the dice if they give me lame results. I'm even more obsessive now that I've begun to playtest encounters.

I don't plan to railroad my players and I don't force them to take any particular course of action. Somehow my players and I are able to read each other well enough that neither of us have felt like the flow of the game was being strangled by me thinking ahead. In fact, all of them seem to appreciate my preparation.

This doesn't necessarily mean I don't improvise. If the plans get in the way of the flow of the game (on rare occasions, they do), out the window they go.

Dialogue is almost entirely improvised, since I find RPing NPCs more natural when I think of their dialogue on the spot than when I read from a script---the only exception being evil speeches and Hannibal lectures.

[Coidzor]

So far I'm still in the, "what the heck should I have the start of this campaign/adventure be?" phase.

I've basically free-written the universe I'm working on in that I've more or less developed/had most of my ideas come out while writing about it in the first place. I think one or two things I came up with before I just jumped into it.

[Kaiyanwang]

My players are quite impredictable, in a middle way from an imaginative genius and a complete idiot.

So, the only thing that I plan is the super-villain, and even them, not completely (I leave unfilled spell slots, and so on). And a little bit a scheme of interation between factions in the setting.

The other things, everything I improvise at the moment. But I have a lot of fun improvising (and I know the game quite well) so..

[mistformsquirrl]

"Varies greatly" is my answer (isn't it always?) - as it really depends on the type of campaign and the type of players I'm working with.

Some players are happy to follow your railroad tracks - even if you aren't really trying to lay them. For them, a heavily scripted approach is my usual. That said it can be boring since often times you may as well be writing a novel.

Other times you have players who will almost invariably veer as far from your plot as they possibly can. For those, I like to paint very broad strokes in my notebook beforehand... but I leave a great deal of detail out to be filled in on the fly. Course that creates a different set of problems <x,x> so...

But yeah, it depends a lot on the group and the campaign's over all tone.

I will admit that sometimes I'm kinda lax in this area though <_ _> trying to improve. I have the unfortunate habit of getting caught up in "everything else" and forgetting to prepare sometimes ><; usually I can fake it well enough no one notices; but egads... when I fall flat I fall *FLAT*.

[Shademan]

i make SOME plans. never write them down though...
so i follow a line if ideas and improvise around them.

which SOUNDS much better than it actually is.

[Winterwind]

I usually spend about 10 minutes before each session, usually trying to figure out what should happen immediately next and where I want to end up roughly speaking (which is far from the same as where I will ultimately end up, of course), and improvise everything else. I find the freedom granted by not having a script to adhere to quite comfortable.

I usually spend some further 5-10 minutes when starting a new campaign, again to come up with some idea how to launch it and send the players on their way, and with some concept of what climax it shall be moving towards.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

People mentioning pre-written scripts reminded me: I try to predict where players will go plot-wise and then write up any important letters, prophecies, speeches, and other info-dump or complex things so I can print them out and give them to my players to hold onto for later reference. I try to cover as many bases as possible, to make it look like I knew what was going to happen.

For instance, last campaign the party was in a city searching for one of the bad guys (identity unknown) who was manipulating events behind the scenes and had been sending them mocking little letters for a while. They got hold of one piece of information and hypothesized wildly as to who it was, eventually tracking down some unimportant little noble to take out. They figured that I wouldn't have been able to prepare any info because this "important bad guy" had good defenses I wouldn't have expected them to penetrate; fortunately, I'd anticipated they'd kill at least one person there, so I'd prepared a note saying basically "Excellent try, but you've only killed one of my pawns, and one with many allies in the city at that. I would leave the scene quickly and avoid notice if I were you...but fortunately I am not you, and so have the luxury of having notified the guard beforehand that someone would try this. Looks like avoidance won't be possible. Good luck!"

Before the noble's body hit the ground, the note fluttered out of his pocket, and as soon as one the players finished reading the note, there were guardsmen knocking on the door. The group stared at me in awe and now they think I'm psychic. :smallbiggrin: Moral of the story: Improvisation leads to better stories than planning out the whole plot, but making the players think you've been planning out the whole plot is best of all.

[Rhiannon87]

I plan a lot. Way in advance, too-- my party is currently level 4, and I've been spending some of my free time working on a dungeon they'll visit when they're level 10 or so. (I don't have everything between level 4 and level 10 totally fleshed out yet, though.) My plans generally involve setting up encounters, stating NPCs, and outlining plot arcs. I try to plan out for most contingencies; my notes often say things like "X will happen. If the players do Y, Z will happen. If they do D, G will happen. If they somehow manage to do R, T, L, and O will all happen at the same time, possibly killing them all."

I don't write scripts, though. Sometimes I think I should; while I'm really, really good at playing individual PCs when they're my characters, jumping in and out of the various NPCs is tough. This is my first campaign, though, so I'm still learning.

[valadil]

Finally I hardly ever use a computer while planning. I'm actually in computer science, but I find D&D to be a good chance to leave my computer behind. I generally have a plot outline in bullet points and the rest of my stuff goes down in my sketchbook. I can't really draw, so my sketchbook has lots of blank pages.


Yup. I like having an analog hobby or two.

I do a lot of planning. Usually 1-2x the length of the game session (but this varies as I suck at estimating how long the game will last). When I was unemployed I found myself doing 20 hours a week of planning, but that was to fill the boredom.

I don't plan plot. Instead I plan ambitious NPCs. They make the world go round. I find this method makes improvising really easy when the players bust up a plot. Just have the NPC responsible for the plot react to it.

I also don't do maps. I like drawing and I spend all my time drawing if I allow myself to map anything. Instead I write a list of features to put in the dungeon. I do the layout of the dungeon on the fly and insert features as needed.

In my last game I started writing out more dialog and description. I really don't like doing this, but I suck at the descriptive text. I just don't bother with it in the heat of battle. So I force myself to write it out ahead of time and then read it to the players.

[Mr.Moron]

I plan a lot of stuff that just sort of floats around loosely in the background, just sort of small half-plans and rough outlines. Whenever the players start to approach one of these events, it expands and gains detail. If they just kind of wander around without approaching any of those items I wing it.

[Winterwind]

Something I've always wondered about - is the amount of planning correlated with the style of playing?

Not all, but many of the posters saying they plan a lot describe how they plan things I'd associate with a more 'dungeoncrawl-y' gamestyle - dungeon layouts, traps, monster stats - all things important for a game strongly focused on combat, overcoming challenges etc.

As mentioned before, I pretty much don't plan at all - but my usual playstyle is different, too: combats are rare, dungeons even much more so, and nobody cares whether some NPC has these or other scores, if s/he needs to make a check I can just estimate his stats on the fly, but what really matters is his or her interaction with the PCs. It's a very roleplaying-heavy, rules-light environment.

What do you all think? :smallwink:

[AstralFire]

Well, yeah. Thing is, even if I don't run many combats, I run a lot of conflicts - investigations, manhunts, on the run, war efforts. For those it's often helpful to have plans, especially investigations.

And when I do plan on combat, I try to make it very interesting and varied. Almost every prepared combat I've done is something out of a movie or a Zelda boss fight - high-speed aerial chase, giant monster with ton of mooks and attack phases, gish swordmaster with a huge reach and lots of cover to hide from him...