Quote from: rgrove0172;912849Its a peculiar dynamic for a gaming group but its the only one I have had for some time.

I imagine that's a product of having to game in Big Spring. Unless you are willing to spend an hour and a half total to get to Midland and back, which would open up some options. I admit, I'd likely not be very willing to do that myself. I'm very lucky to have had a fairly stable gaming group for several years now consisting only of friends from church. We had one member move from here in San Angelo to North Dakota, but we now simply Skype him in. I do love technology. I also admit it can be a challenging group at times as well.

Some have different expectations, or perhaps it's more precise to say that they find different things more fun in a game. One expects combat, at least a few times per session. Another really likes political intrigue and intense social role-play. Striking a balance is difficult, but rewarding. And I think that is really the best practical answer to your original query. Play what and how you and your group prefer. No one else's opinion of your game really means a darn thing.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912412hopefully it will draw interest and discussion but less ire than my first one.

What was your first thread?

Link us to the delicious ire!

Quote from: rgrove0172;912412One guy says he runs entire campaigns from 3 sentences on a posty note. Another guy spends weeks and generates gigabytes of data before he holds his first session - and still feels unprepared!  Where do you stand and why?

I give the players 1 page (usually double sided, 14 point font, 1.5 spacing).

That's all I can trust them to read.

On my side of the screen, I will do weeks of work - but that's really fun for me.

I do lots of one shot events. For a 4 hour game, I often do 40 hours of prep from the adventure to the pre-gen PCs. But that's because convention one shots have to have a beginning, middle and end in the 4 hour time slot so I tighten things far more than I ever would for a home campaign where we always have next week to continue.

But for home campaigns, I know that 40 hours pre-prep for the campaign plus 4 hours prep for a 6-8 hour session is pretty normal for me IF I have the luxury of time.

As for "spontaneous" vs. "planned", its not fully accurate for me because when I do stuff "spontaneously" on the table I am calling upon 35+ years of GMing experience and gigabytes worth of dozens of campaigns for dozens of RPGs.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912412This took me a couple of months to prepare before our first session and I would guess I spend 6-8 hours of prep time now between each 2-3 hour session to keep up and plan ahead. It may sound like work but I truly love this part of GMing. Creating a world then watching it come alive during play is a truly rewarding experience.

It's not work if its fun and the players' appreciate it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912412How do you approach your games?

From behind, so I can get x4 backstab damage.

Quote from: CRKrueger;912783However, the idea that the river doesn't matter, because the Evil Castle is the point of "this Quest" means the players are playing in your story, you've made the decision as to what's dramatically important for the players, and you're steering them towards that goal because for them to be distracted means to lose the opportunity of following along your cool story.

That's the danger of high prep.

I disagree that this is a danger of high prep. It's a danger of wanting a cool story, which can occur with little or no prep as easily as with high prep. I've seen GMs get fixated instantaneously on a cool story idea that they just improvised.

Where I think you have a point is that some people, who might be less wedded to using their cool story preparation, may still be taken in by the sunk cost fallacy. But it is a fallacy. You already spent the prep time. Whether you use it or not is no longer relevant after you've spent the time. You can't get that time back no matter what you do. (Now if you find yourself doing a lot of prep and seldom using it, and you don't enjoy the process of prep itself, then you might decide to do less prep in the future. But that still won't recover time already spent on prep.)

I do a whole lot of prep. But I'm not trying to tell or create a cool story. I'm trying to find out what happens next. Case in point: a couple years ago I did a bunch of preparation (10+ hours) for what I thought was going to be an exciting prison break in an old medieval castle where the upper floors of castle dunjon formed the prison. I found an actual castle, looked up floor plans, photos, and the terrain on Google earth then figured out the guards and guard captain, the watches, interior maps, etc. When it came time to play out the jail break, one of the players asked, "Where do they perform the execution?"

"Why do you ask," I said.

"Because if they do the executions in town, then we could skip breaking them out of prison by freeing the prisoner during transport."

I hadn't thought of that. Based on my knowledge of custom in the period, executions were held in a public place, so the transport idea was valid. It totally ignored the majority of my prep, but the players had a better plan than what I had imagined, so they did that. Maybe one day they will return to Lyon. And if they do maybe they will need to break in or out of the prison for some reason. But I really doubt that will occur. And I don't care.

One might then wonder, why I do a lot of prep if sometimes it never gets used. Well I like doing prep. World creation is fun. Research is interesting. I enjoy having a detailed world. I do prep mostly for my own enjoyment and secondarily because I need some prep to run a world in motion. I can run with little or no prep, I just choose not to.

QuoteI've come to the personal decision that it's more fun to see what path the characters take than it is to see if they succeed at finishing the path I place them on.  

I agree.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912849Oh and as to why I chose to run a game in that era and that beginning location ... the lead player (My wife) read a few of Anne Rice's books and then accompanied me on vacation in the crescent city. Together with a years worth of related reading and TV specials on hauntings in the south she became enamored with the idea and encouraged me to run a period/gothic/horror/romance type of game. (Yeah, you should have seen my face) Ive wanted her to try a game for years and this was the first time she was interested. I had been without local players for more than a year (Group broke up after two key members passed away) and seized the chance to at least be gaming again, even if it was a little outside my GM box. We found another player in a family member and have been going strong for several months now.

And then the other player decided to skip New Orleans and head to Charleston? How disappointed was your wife?

Quote from: Bren;912875I disagree that this is a danger of high prep. It's a danger of wanting a cool story, which can occur with little or no prep as easily as with high prep. I've seen GMs get fixated instantaneously on a cool story idea that they just improvised.

Point taken, I just mean that as a GM is designing things, they also are possibly imagining or gaming out what might occur.  Knowing your players, it's sometimes easy to think of what *might* happen.  The more prep you do, the more of these *mights* pop into your head, and some of them might be so cool you become invested in them.  

So the more prep you do, the more possible outcomes you randomly think of.
The more possible outcomes you randomly think of, the greater a chance you may see some as preferable.
Seeing some as preferable leads to the temptation to use the Invisible Hand to steer things that way.

If you don't do any prep, you won't have that problem.

But you are correct, the problem is not the prep, the problem is becoming invested in any particular possible cool outcome.  It's just that the more prep you do, the more possible outcomes get gamed out in your mind.  At least in mine.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912767falling in love with the miller's daughter and deciding to abandon the trip to the fortress in favor of staying with her.

I realize you were using a funny example but that in itself is one of the reasons a more scripted adventure approach is sometimes preferred. Players sometimes are distracted by unintentional details dropped by the GM and can completely run off course. Personally I would be pretty disappointed if the big cool quest to save the castle fell apart because the Cleric fell in love with the buxom miller's daughter. That was not the game we came to play. Im not saying there isn't a place for a completely sandbox, go where you want, kind of game -  only that everyone would have to be aware and approve. It would definitely be a deviation from the norm in my group.

Yes and no.  I mean, yes, it was an obviously extreme example included in part for humor value, but it's also something that I honestly would be perfectly happy to see play out in an actual game.  "The players are free to ignore the castle and marry the miller's daughter" is the game I came to play, and I do my best to ensure that everyone else at the table is aware and approving of this.

I figured it would deviate from your group's norms, which is why it appeared in a paragraph about "I think this is the difference between how you run RPGs and how I run them".

Quote from: rgrove0172;912767I've been trying to get through to him ever since his first thread of RPGnet.

And I appreciate your input but you, and a few others, cant seem to help describing your style of GMing from a perceived superiority, which it clearly is not.

I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but that's not my intention.  The only thing that I mean to present as superior is the practice of dealing with your players honestly and eschewing illusionism.  High- vs. low-prep, freeform sandboxes vs. preplanned big cool quests, detailed vs. vague maps, all of that is matters of taste, so run your game however you want and, if your group enjoys it, I have no argument with that, just be honest with them about how you're running it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912767People (I've seen this from both players and GMs) may feel that it makes the game world feel more "real" when new elements are added by an impartial, objective source instead of a person sitting at the table making it up based on their momentary whim.

And other people, myself included, feel it makes the game feel more "real" when new elements are placed by a dedicated and imaginative author/creator with a mind towards the entirety of the setting and an imagined, if not yet published, knowledge of what is there.  I would prefer he have the time to think things through, compare notes, do a little research and create the world before I wander into it but if given the choice, personally Ill take his educated whim over a die roll that throws a village in front of me, when there could have just as easily been a ruin, a fort, a city or a cave.

Yep, some people definitely do have the opposite preference to mine.  I was just adding that to talysman's list of reasons for why people might prefer random generation over pure GM improvisation.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912792But back to topic, I still have a hard time imagining running an entire session, including the creating of the setting, without some prep.
...
We are talking about a historical place here, not some fantasy locale... Some research would be necessary, maps pulled up, locations detailed, NPCs, plot hooks and so on. Probably a couple weeks or a month of work before we were able to continue. I consider that necessary, especially in a historical game.. but you may differ.

You're trying to compare two completely different things here.  Attempting to present a historically-accurate version of a real place is the antithesis of "running an entire session, including the creating of the setting, without some prep."  If you're using an existing setting, then you aren't creating the setting on the fly.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912792Just how would you improv Charleston S.C 1876 if you don't live there already or aren't a history major?

I wouldn't.    If I'm going to run a truly zero-prep game, then I'm going to be creating a new setting on the fly, or perhaps extending an existing (real or fictional) setting that I already know very well.  I'm not going to try to present a historically-accurate version of a real place because, as you've said, that's basically impossible to do without some degree of prep/research.

Plus historical settings really aren't my thing in the first place, unless I'm running Ars Magica.  I tend to prefer running my own homebrew settings.

Prior to moving my previous group had a habit of showing up on weekends for console gaming and me getting asked out of the blue to run an RPG with absolutely zero prep. Sometimes Id say no as I was just drawing a blank or not in the mood. Other times it would be 8 hour sessions of winging it. Since they kept asking me to do that... I must be doing something right.

At one convention, the last CF East, I got asked to emergency GM a Dragon Storm session as the GM was in the hospital. No notes, no prep, nada.
What I did was to ask each player to describe themselves and highlight a bit of their history or past exploits. Two human Dragons, Brother-sister team that was fairly standard but they had secured a rare cure for the Tox. A dwarven Gargoyle on the lam from her family who wanted to marry her off. One standard elven Unicorn who was a shaman. One ebony elf Pegasus who was a disposesed noble with a magic sword taken off a necro. And one clutzy elven Werewolf. That gave me a few points of interest to play off of for a four hour session that ended up running six as the table wasnt required and the players wanted to keep going.

Just so I can be sure Im understood.,..

I have a real respect for improve gaming and have run a few myself. I ran a completely off-the-cuff Zombie Apocalypse game (Fantasy Flight's End of the World) and made it a point to not plan anything. Of course that genre is almost made for that sort of thing as we used our own current town/state as the setting and my career gave me a some insight as to how such an event might unfold. Still, it was absolute improv and I used a ton of random rolls to help flesh out the detail and action.

I think there is a place for such gaming, but I also believe there is a place where - at least for me - it just doesn't belong. Some games I take seriously, some I do not. Where those I take seriously are concerned I just cant imagine being that 'loosey goosey". A one shot or short campaign in a completely custom setting or a very familiar one? Sure.. no problem. A planned epic campaign in a huge, in depth and detailed fantasy world... errr no.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912992I think there is a place for such gaming, but I also believe there is a place where - at least for me - it just doesn't belong. Some games I take seriously, some I do not. Where those I take seriously are concerned I just cant imagine being that 'loosey goosey". A one shot or short campaign in a completely custom setting or a very familiar one? Sure.. no problem.

A planned epic campaign in a huge, in depth and detailed fantasy world... errr no.

1: Note the factor here. "For you." But for a rare few "of us" it is absurdly easy. And "for others" it is effectively impossible. "Everyone else" falls somewhere in between. Or even "those outside" the range. Like GMs who only play published settings and published modules.

2: Been there. DMed that too. The current Spelljammer campaign has been effectively EIGHT YEARS of loosey goosey winging it. 4-5 hour long sessions once a week. The whole campaign settings grown from little more than a sentence of an idea into a sprawling epic.

Quote from: nDervish;912923Yes and no.  I mean, yes, it was an obviously extreme example included in part for humor value, but it's also something that I honestly would be perfectly happy to see play out in an actual game.  "The players are free to ignore the castle and marry the miller's daughter" is the game I came to play, and I do my best to ensure that everyone else at the table is aware and approving of this.

I figured it would deviate from your group's norms, which is why it appeared in a paragraph about "I think this is the difference between how you run RPGs and how I run them".



I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but that's not my intention.  The only thing that I mean to present as superior is the practice of dealing with your players honestly and eschewing illusionism.  High- vs. low-prep, freeform sandboxes vs. preplanned big cool quests, detailed vs. vague maps, all of that is matters of taste, so run your game however you want and, if your group enjoys it, I have no argument with that, just be honest with them about how you're running it.



Yep, some people definitely do have the opposite preference to mine.  I was just adding that to talysman's list of reasons for why people might prefer random generation over pure GM improvisation.



You're trying to compare two completely different things here.  Attempting to present a historically-accurate version of a real place is the antithesis of "running an entire session, including the creating of the setting, without some prep."  If you're using an existing setting, then you aren't creating the setting on the fly.



I wouldn't.    If I'm going to run a truly zero-prep game, then I'm going to be creating a new setting on the fly, or perhaps extending an existing (real or fictional) setting that I already know very well.  I'm not going to try to present a historically-accurate version of a real place because, as you've said, that's basically impossible to do without some degree of prep/research.

Plus historical settings really aren't my thing in the first place, unless I'm running Ars Magica.  I tend to prefer running my own homebrew settings.

Laugh, so half the time you and are arguing about apples and oranges! I suppose I should have been specific about the nature of the particular campaign.

Quote from: rgrove0172;913107Laugh, so half the time you and are arguing about apples and oranges! I suppose I should have been specific about the nature of the particular campaign.

Might have helped. Even in the same post you were sometimes talking about a typical fantasy RPG with orcs and what not set in some invented world (whether the GMs invention or some published author's) and other times you were talking about a fairly strict and accurate historical setting like Charleston, South Carolina in a specific year in the 19th century.

Quote from: Bren;913129Might have helped. Even in the same post you were sometimes talking about a typical fantasy RPG with orcs and what not set in some invented world (whether the GMs invention or some published author's) and other times you were talking about a fairly strict and accurate historical setting like Charleston, South Carolina in a specific year in the 19th century.

Yes, I may treat them close to the same but I realized the big difference in how others might. Should have caught on earlier.

Quote from: rgrove0172;912412Now granted there are some specifics that have to be considered here. For example, I would have no problem running a completely original fantasy environment from scratch as we play, after all it doesn't exist until I make it. Or perhaps a modern genre where I am already familiar with the setting. (even then I would probably flesh out some details, but that's just me.) But running something like I am now - a 1876 period gothic horror campaign in New Orleans and I would defy anybody (other than perhaps an author who just happens to have written a book on the subject) to 'wing' it to any fair degree and maintain at least some historical accuracy.

Certainly my every group of players has their own preferences, but every group with which I have run in a historical period was happy with pastiche and did not care about absolute historical fidelity.  I can absolutely run a pastiche 1870s New Orleans off the top of my head, which is all I will ever need.

Quote from: Old One Eye;913832Certainly my every group of players has their own preferences, but every group with which I have run in a historical period was happy with pastiche and did not care about absolute historical fidelity.  I can absolutely run a pastiche 1870s New Orleans off the top of my head, which is all I will ever need.

If by pastiche you mean making up 90% fiction surrounding maybe 10% you are familiar with from a movie or two and an Anne Rice novel - sure, I get that. My group would pick up on the disparities pretty quick though. They aren't history majors but they are history buffs, otherwise they wouldn't care for historical games.

One thing I did last session that I've never done is plop a large sheet of drawing paper down, with a big square representing the big keep of base town, and a drawing of the river passing nearby, gave my players drawing implements and said, "put down what you think should be here." We included places previously mentioned, as well as some suggestions about what might have been built over the months since the town began to grow (which was when they arrived). There were a few places I asked them to put in, for purposes of metaplot and behind the scenes threads (a new temple, a dedicated garrison and drill field).  It was an interesting experience. They even conceived and designed the lord's heraldry, which I hadn't bothered to think about. We also rolled a couple of random buildings, and ended up with a second, much lower quality tavern, and a seedy brothel. It was a lot more fun than. I thought it would be, and it eliminated the work for me. The look of the place is interesting as well. They did some things I would not have considered.

I want pictures.