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elliott20
2007-02-01, 10:26 AM
I once read an article that talks about a GMing philosophy where the GM, beyond the basic frame of the adventure, makes everything else up on the fly, and then I read another article that doesn't just have the GM writeup extensive adventure details, but also have the GM write up possible plot turns to give the illusion of freedom of choice to the players.

The philosophy essentially differs in how much preperation they believe that a GM should make.

Take, for example, the case of a single NPC.

One GM would simply throw together a face, an attitude, and one distinguishing feature and make everything else up as he goes along while another GM might go as far as to stat up the NPC so that if the players decide to do something special with the guy, he'll be prepared.

So, what do you think is the right amount of preperation?

Deus Mortus
2007-02-01, 10:43 AM
Well from what I know from modding computer games, normally I create a vast amount of written knowledge on all the NPC's, plots, quests, etc.

But recently I've been busy on making NPC's more flexible like in Oblivion where I used an NPC creation tool, so that NPC's change with actions from the PC, sometimes to reflect the changes he brought in the world and sometimes to help the path he is following, for example if the OC would play an evil character, some towns would become poorer and he might find secret cults sprewing up worshipping dark gods or things like that. A good char would however find richdom divided more equally and more and more people going to the good temples.


Offcourse these are very crude example's, but I think that a mix between the two is the way to go.

Kyrsis
2007-02-01, 10:51 AM
As far as NPC's, most of mine have a decent amount of background to them, because I have fun creating characters. Well, I should specify major NPC's. Minor ones aren't as detailed for me.
For campaign preperation, I write an outline with a few different branches depending on where the characters can go so I can be ready for anything, along with references for monster/spells and what have you. I've learned a long time ago, however, that no matter how much you prepare, the players will always find a surprise for you so I've also mastered my ability to 'wing it'.

Thomas
2007-02-01, 10:53 AM
I create as many NPCs, encounters, locations, etc. as possible, then turn the PCs loose and let them go where they want, meet who they want, and so on.

I also believe that creating more than is strictly necessary is silly, so the NPCs usually consist of (in D&D) a stat block and a one-paragraph description, or (in RQ) 3-4 adjectives and one line describing their position in society (if necessary, I use mostly identical generic stat blocks, or one of many pre-written "random encounter" stat blocks).

Some of my more memorable campaigns were run totally off-the-cuff (one Cyberpunk and one or two RuneQuest, at least), with no prep what-so-ever. I don't dare try that again, though.

pestilenceawaits
2007-02-01, 10:57 AM
I usually try to anticipate the players actions and prepare NPCs ahead of time but they always throw me a few curve balls. By wanting more information about the random street wanderer. (guy with the burlap sack). I stat out all major NPCs unless there is no way they will ever be fighting them, or with them. I try to avoid setting any adventure details in stone I write up broad outlines and then the easiest path to complete major objectives to complete the adventure but usually I let them wander around to find the clues that lead them to the next objective. Sometimes they have ideas that work better than what I had anticipated so I go with that. I try not to have any railroading or Deus ex machina type games but occasionally they get themselves in so deep that it isn't fun for anyone and they need a rescue. so to be clear I write a ton on the background of the world and the major people in it but not as much on how exactly things need to be done.

clericwithnogod
2007-02-01, 12:09 PM
I try to write the plot essesntial stuff as well as anything that I come up with that I think is particularly interesting. For non-esssentials, I usually cut bits and pieces from published mods or other resources that I particularly like. So, when I'm DMing, I have a folder for "blacksmiths and smithys," "taverns and barmaids" and other stuff that I can pluck from to throw into a folder for "The Quest for Whatever." Then when it comes up, I'm ready with something I liked well enough to pick out in the first place. It keeps me from having to make up everything on the fly, which I've never seen anyone do well on a consistent basis. It also keeps things consistent, because you just have to note where you placed him. Beats dealing with, "I thought you said he was tall/ugly/handsome/female/whatever last time?" or anything else that your players remembered and you didn't bother to because you knew the NPC wasn't important.

I play more than I DM, so I try to avoid scripting too much as a DM. But, as both a DM and player, I prefer to have things somewhat linear for the first session or two or three to build a solid foundation of a plot and/or reason for the group to be together. If it's completely just go where you want and I'll make up an encounter for it, there's no real benefit to having a DM to me... Ideally, I like a DM created major event with sideplots (some of which are character instigated) that develops into some major events instigated by the players with the DM still creating interesting major events to which the players respond.

Writing out a timeline is sometimes nice:

Oneday 12:00 Wererats kidnap 6 children from palace courtyard, including the Duke's favorite niece.

Oneday 4:00 The characters are summoned after initial attempts to locate the children have failed or because the presence of the famous adventurers that blahblahblah has been discovered by the Duke's men.

Oneday 6:00 ...

Twoday 9:00 The wererats infect the children with lycanthropy and release them upon the town.

Writing out certain reactions for monsters is useful too:

These five wererats are lying in wait to ambush anyone following the wrerats trail from above. If they notice the characters first, one of the wererats (#x) will run back to warn the wererat leader and others in the lair. A DC xx listen check will allow the characters to hear the sound of something running away through the water. If the characters notice the wererats first, one of the wererats (#x) will try to run to warn the others on his first available action that it is safe to do so.

If wererat #x successfully escapes to warn the others, have the wererat leader roll a WILL check (DC 18) each 15 minutes of game time starting 15 minutes after the start of this encounter. On a success, the wererat leader sticks to his plan and the current timeline. On a failure, the wererat leader's nerve will break and he'll order the other wererats to cut (throats) and run. Or eat and run, depending on your preference. The wererats will kill or kill and eat the children and flee town into the wilderness.

This keeps the players going, and makes the "rest whenever you want" or "teleport away whenever you want" somewhat less useful. Hard to feel like a hero showing up at the Duke's hall with a few scraps of bloody pink dress saying, "Sorry, but the cleric needed a nap before we continued."

On the other hand, if events just don't work out despite the players' best effort, hunting down and killing the murderous wererats takes on a bit more meaning...even for the players who don't care about the dead children, simply because they need to erase the stigma of failure.

Narmoth
2007-02-01, 12:17 PM
(1) I first make a world, with som e maps, some NPC's tha the players will encounter often (the priest, the blacksmith, the thiefsguild, Bob th halfling hooker and so on)
(2) Then some quests, where the quest basicly are run like in diablo 1 or Planescape: you talk to someone, they ask you to do something, maybee promise a revard, and the group can go and do it.
(3) I then design the major encouters for the quest and some other NPc's I feel will add to the worlds flawor.

Now I'm ready to play, and will have to make up the rest on the spot.

henebry
2007-02-01, 12:28 PM
On the fly, all the way. Not ideal, but that's how it tends to work out.

Matthew
2007-02-01, 12:39 PM
As much as I have time to write, I write and as many maps as I have time to draw, I draw. I enjoy working on such things, so it is no great labour, but when it actually comes to running the game, everything is open to change (as long consistancy is maintained) and I am not afraid to make things up as the moment requires. I much prefer to have things prepared in advance, but it is generally not necessary, so long as I have a good grasp of the campaign world.

I usually ask the players at the end of the session what their intent is for the following session, so that I can prepare, but I don't always get time to do more than think about it. I also discuss general character aims and intentions with the players in order to relate them to the larger context of the campaign.

Piedmon_Sama
2007-02-01, 12:49 PM
I stat out all major NPCs, map dungeons, make rough battle-maps for any wilderness/urban encounters, and determine the CR/EL of every encounter beforehand (I only use random encounters for one-off games). But descriptions? I just wing those. Actually, since I'm an amateur sketch artist, I like to provide drawings of major NPCs to my players. But for descriptions of locales and the like, I pretty much just wing it. It's something I like to think I have a knack for (description) so I trust my own instincts.

Last_resort_33
2007-02-01, 02:38 PM
20% prep, 90% on the fly... Where did the other 10% go you ask... well half of my prep is always wasted on stuff that doesn't come up. As far as writing goes, I only stat up stuff that is definately going to be involved in combat...

I ALWAYS produce a world map for each new world though. True, I had good days and bad days, But I like to think that the good days wouldn't have been as good if I had prepared too much beforehand.

I map dungeons on the fly. I have a piece of paper with various random names for different races that I scribble vague descriptions of the character when they come up. eg Gnome ship cook, Moonsun inkeeper, accompanying cleric 1 etc. Encounters are usually either generated on the spot, or vaguely thought of before hand, but I wait unitl I open the MM to think about it too hard. I will have a vague feeling for a person or place as soon as the characters meet them/ go there, so I describe that on the spot too.

I have a knack for designing dungeons on the spot too.

I don't see much point in doing too much beforehand, If it's too early on, then you have to see how the characters develop before you can create hooks for them... they're not always how you would expect from their background, then later on, when they have more power, they have a wider possiblility of things that they can do, so you can't plan for that too much either.

Ravyn
2007-02-01, 03:22 PM
A lot of it depends on the NPC.

When my players walk up to a random NPC and start talking, I go the face, attitude, distinguishing characteristic route--the last time I did that was a flock of heavenly birds, and before that there was that koi-form river god that.

When I'm trying to run conspiracies, or when I've had a ton of free time and a ton of inspiration, or when the character's just been around for a while and therefore collecting details in the back of my mind, I know more about the character than my group's ever likely to figure out. (Every now and then I hint, though.) Stats... tend to be a bit fluid. There was one time I'd completely miscalculated how my BBEG was supposed to work mechanics-wise.... and one of the players chose that moment to tell me he's not interested in an "anticlimactic battle where the PCs reenact the death of Caesar on him", spurring a chorus of agreement. ....I love being given carte blanche to upgrade my antagonists, and it did make it a considerably more satisfying battle.

And sometimes, it's something in the middle. Like my last project, Lysha, Voice of Divinity, the god of prophecy. I'd gotten the original idea for it a month ago, not long after my group went on sabbatical; imagine, if you will, a vaguely humanlike figure, constantly changing, composed entirely of thick threads in all sorts of colors and incapable of giving a straight answer. So last Friday I introduced it. The plan was that it had a prophecy for one PC's familiar... and that was it. (Heck, I technically didn't even have the prophecy ready.) By the time it was over, I'd discovered how body language works when you're made of string and prone to shapeslipping, realized that Lysha and fortunes from fortune cookies can't coexist (the PC in question decided to feed it while she was trying to figure out what it was talking about), the players heartily approved of it, and Lysha had a new friend (conveniently and amusingly enough, the only one who could understand it was our resident silent combat monkey, and this may be what he needs to be drawn out of his shell. SCORE!). ...needless to say, my default setting is somewhere in the middle, since it seems to work better.

Setting-wise, I work in a preexisting setting. And then I tweak it. A lot. ....usually on the fly. Individual locations are as likely as not to be made up on the spur of the moment; two of my most gorgeous Manses were what happened when I basically combined What I Know About Geomancy with What This Place Is Supposed To Be at the last minute. (Including the BBEG's hangout. You know you're doing something right when the group is seriously reconsidering the plan that involves levelling the place on the way out.)

And every now and then I do have every little detail planned ahead of time. Particularly when I know something's going to happen. Dream sequences, rituals, carnival flavortext and the like are invariably prewritten. (...and then the sentences go over the text limits. Stupid AIM.)

Fax Celestis
2007-02-01, 03:31 PM
I create far too much information. The PCs will always do something unexpected, and it's the only way to be prepared.

Accolon
2007-02-01, 04:04 PM
I tend to write a lot. I hate having to look up rules and stuff during a session, so I write down descriptions to read to the party, and then complete stat blocks for the monsters, including tactics, descriptions of special attacks, traits, etc. I guess that goes back to the 1st Edition Modules that I learned how to DM with when I began playing some 26 years ago. I'm going to be 36, but sometimes my memory feels like its going on 66. I try to have adventures done far enough in advance so that I'm not scrambling from week to week, (work and life can tend to get in the way, though). Sometimes stuff I've written in October, my party won't get to until December, and having a lot of stuff written down saves me from trying to remember what skill does what, etc. I have no problem doing things on the fly in a pinch, or if the party goes off somewhere that I haven't detailed, (you can't detail everything), but would rather not. All of that said, I admire you DMs who have the ability to do it off the cuff all the time. Kudos.

Important NPCs in my game get the same care and backstory that the players give their characters and that I give the campaign. I usually have two NPCs that are, for lack of a better phrase, "the DM's characters."These characters I use actual character sheets for, and advance them as if they were regular characters, although the players never see these sheets. I think this gives the NPCs that are around the party and part of the party a more genunine feel. Important evil NPCs or adversaries of the party have their own separate stat block sheets, which I include in the campaign folder.

As a struggling writer and full time history teacher, I think I write a lot for the game as way to keep my writing skills "sharp." I tend to approach each campaign like a novel or a movie, so it only makes sense that I write a lot for my game.

Deathcow
2007-02-01, 04:09 PM
I'm lazy and I don't have much free time, so I wing it more often than not. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at improvising on the fly, so this works out for me. Sometimes I need to pause and think, to figure out what a certain NPC would say in the given circumstance, but for the most part it works out fairly well. I always map out dungeons, though, and stat out NPCs that the PCs will be fighting against/with. Noncombat NPCs, I generally don't stat out or anything.

elliott20
2007-02-01, 04:13 PM
Yeah, my gaming situation is quite similar to Deathcow's. I personally really don't have enough time to write up elaborate information and such. So I usually just have a general structure in mind, and the rest I try to wing.

The thing is, I also encourage my players to insert minor details whenever they feel it is suited and I often times play off of that creativity. The key here is that you have to really trust the players to have the maturity to not abuse this sort of thing.

Of course, this is sort of an extreme form of the "wing it" philosophy. And I sometimes do get my bad days out of it.

Twisted.Fate
2007-02-01, 04:27 PM
I write a LOT, because I need it. I'm only running my first campaign, and I haven't quite gotten the "on the fly" thing down yet. I need to know exactly what my NPCs look like, what their names are, why they're doing what they're doing...or else I end up getting nervous and making the wise and benevolent king seem like a total jerk.

I need to have treasure hoards and random encounters considered beforehand. For hoards, I write them as I write my dungeon. I roll randomly and then edit what I get for sensibility (That way, the highly sophisticated rakshasa sorceror doesn't end up with an enchanted greatclub). The art generator from Draconomicon has been a wonderful help in adding flavor to my treasures. Arms and Equipment (I know it's 3.0, I know) has been amazing as well.

In terms of random encounters, I write up as many unique ideas as I can beforehand. Then, when I need a random encounter, I pull it out of my binder. This allows me to have, say...a raiding party of 4th-level goblins on advanced worgs available on the fly. It makes game much less stressful for me - no more making my players wait while I pore through books looking for "neat" monsters to run. I can just pull something appropriate to the area and throw it at them.

It also allows me to combine books for even cooler encounters. A hammerer from MMII + a clockwork mender swarm from MMIV + the critters' eccentric dwarf owner = much more memorable than a hammerer on its own.

So, in summary...I write volumes.

Red Sky Knight
2007-02-01, 04:59 PM
Hahaha! I am a recovering write-aholic, gone cold turkey! The last adventure I attempted to write took me over a year and was still not finished! My god, I don't even know why it takes me so long, but everything needs to be detailed, scripts written for NPCs, fully statted out and complex strategies, as well as rules summaries for situations I am not too familiar with. Then there's all the NPCs that the characters were likely to interact with in the city, which included all clerics the PCs might possibly wish to deal with, maps of their temples, all the merchants, their attitudes, their stats and what they have for sale. I did three whole pages on the style, mood and DMing techniques for the dungeon part!, then more on the history of the dungeon itself.

and then when I was nearing finished, I read through and felt unsatisfied with the work that i had spent so much time on, so i pored through books and brain stormed for ways to capture the unique feel i wanted for the adventure. I read through, and I am actually very impressed with what I have written, but I couldn't do it again, it took for too long to be practical, and so now I just play instead of DMing, atleast until I can feel more comfortable to only writing the notes that i need.

BCOVertigo
2007-02-01, 05:06 PM
I was recently giving advice to a person about to start as a DM, and I told her that planning an "encounter" is a mistake. The simple fact is that DMing is not like writing a book because you don't control the characters. If you prepare four sessions worth of material you'll only use 1-3 of it, due to the fact that players have minds of their own that just don't work the same as yours. Unless they are railroaded in the extreme they will find inventive ways of tackling obstacles and will throw the proverbial wrench into your machinations.

The best way(in my experience at least) to handle players is by creating a world of characters with motivations, not just stat blocks. If the goblins are attacking the city they must have a reason to be doing so, and once you think up that motivation you will be able to react to the players correctly no matter what they do. You'll know what to bargain for if they attempt diplomacy and you'll know what tactics should be used if they use violence. Not every creature can be given a personality, as that would waste your time, but everything can be given a motivation, and adding personality to the occasional npc will give the appearance that they all might have them if done well. (Like putting real people in front of a crowd of cardboard cutouts.)

Anyways, I'm not going to create elaborate backstories for all my NPC's, because frankly it's not worth it to make fully fleshed out cannon fodder. Answering 'why' is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of creating a world. Once you know the 'why', your setting can react like a living thing. So your players will begin to notice that if they ignore a plothook, the NPC's (who are trying to reach their goals) will do things regardless of PC interaction and the situation can change, unlike in a videogame where the plot freezes until you get to the next boss.

All that is to say that I usually draw maps and write short explanations for organizations and people who will be 'doing stuff' that concerns the players, and if necessary I then extrapolate a personality out of occupation and motivation. That makes it easy to wing it.