Quote from: AsenRG;922536I'm totally serious and not even discussing your point. At least, not yet.

OK. :confused:

I too am totally serious. For what that is worth.

QuoteNow,would you define "input while improvising", because I'm honestly not sure what you mean here?

You want me to define input?

Input would be the players saying stuff aloud in respect to something that might need improvisation...guesses, speculation, hopes, fears about what is behind door #1, who is behind the mystery, what might be around the bend in the river...stuff like that. Sometimes they will suggest something that fits. That you wouldn't have thought of yourself.

Quote from: AsenRG;922536I'm totally serious and not even discussing your point. At least, not yet.
Now,would you define "input while improvising", because I'm honestly not sure what you mean here?

If I've prepared everything before the session started, then that is completely without player input.  I may not even know which players exist at that point.  If you make your decisions 30 seconds in advance, live at the table, then you could be influenced by a player action or statement 33 seconds earlier, meaning that they have input into the decision-making process.  Even if you consciously try to disallow what they said to affect you, they still said it, you still heard it, and only after that, are you making decisions a few minutes ahead of time.  It's kind of impossible to say that if they hadn't said anything, or you hadn't heard anything that your decision or creation would have been 100 percent the same.  Observer effect and all that.

At least I think that's what Bren is saying.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922543At least I think that's what Bren is saying.

That's what I'm saying.

Quote from: Bren;922540OK. :confused:

I too am totally serious. For what that is worth.

You want me to define input?

Input would be the players saying stuff aloud in respect to something that might need improvisation...guesses, speculation, hopes, fears about what is behind door #1, who is behind the mystery, what might be around the bend in the river...stuff like that. Sometimes they will suggest something that fits. That you wouldn't have thought of yourself.

Yes, what is input* is obvious but I was looking for something of an example. Because that was too vague, sorry.

*Aside from designating your girlfriend in CP2020 slang;).

Quote from: CRKrueger;922543If I've prepared everything before the session started, then that is completely without player input.  I may not even know which players exist at that point.  If you make your decisions 30 seconds in advance, live at the table, then you could be influenced by a player action or statement 33 seconds earlier, meaning that they have input into the decision-making process.  Even if you consciously try to disallow what they said to affect you, they still said it, you still heard it, and only after that, are you making decisions a few minutes ahead of time.  It's kind of impossible to say that if they hadn't said anything, or you hadn't heard anything that your decision or creation would have been 100 percent the same.  Observer effect and all that.

At least I think that's what Bren is saying.

Quote from: Bren;922546That's what I'm saying.

Since you confirm, I'm going to reply to what CRK said, if you don't mind? That was closer to what I was looking for from you when saying "define: input".

OK. The speculations might influence me, sure.
But then, do you** have the whole campaign prepared before the first session? (And if you do, how the hell did you avoid railroading?)
If you don't, obviously you do some preparation between sessions. How much of what players said at the table did you incorporate between sessions?
Odds are, more than I did while improvising at the table. Because I don't use players ideas as a matter of principle - see my opinion of illusionist GMs*** - and since it was said at the table, I remember who said it.
(Can I prove I don't do that? Well, it's a stupid question - of course I can't prove a negative. I can prove that I have a policy as stated above. I can remember more than one case when the players had a better idea how something would be defended - but I stuck to what I came up with. Because the NPCs don't get to be that smart unless I already came up with this).

Between sessions, however, you're more likely to forget whose ideas it was, so you're more likely to incorporate it:).
Of course, the same applies to me! But my point is, small amounts of involuntary uses of players' ideas are something I have to live with no matter how much the GM has prepared.
Even assuming you were right, that would mean I raise an already small amount with an equally small amount. Again, that's within my level of tolerance and doesn't trigger quotes from the aforementioned book;).

**Virtual "you" meaning "the Referee with lots of pre-prepared material".
***Contained in "the multi-language dictionary of Bulgarian, Russian, French, Spanish, English and Mandarin cursewords", 5th abridged edition, Cambridge:D.

So about the above very convoluted post which I think I followed.

I think you should use the players ideas to an extent.  

The players around the table have as good an understanding of the real world as the DM.  But no player ever has as good an understanding of the game world as the DM.  Unless the DM listens to the players and thinks 'yeah the world could work like that, they seem to think it does, let's go with it.'  

 NPC's should still have variable levels of stupidity.  And the world should still surprise but as a denser bandwidth for communication I think it could help.

Question for you zero prep guys?  

Do you do dungeons?  
How do you do dungeons?

I need to understand a lybrenth  before I can run my players through it.  Who lives there, what they eat, the extent of their territory (roughly). Alliances and enemies. Treasure. Traps, how they avoid the traps.  What the original purpose of the complex was.  (What happens to those people).  Some times I need to know which way the doors open.

I can't do that from "3 scribbled lines"

And I worry it won't make sense if it's procedurally generated.  

So how do you zero prep a dungeon.

Quote from: AsenRG;922628But then, do you** have the whole campaign prepared before the first session?

QuoteHow much of what players said at the table did you incorporate between sessions?
Odds are, more than I did while improvising at the table.

QuoteBetween sessions, however, you're more likely to forget whose ideas it was, so you're more likely to incorporate it:).
Of course, the same applies to me!

You seem to have the mistaken impression that I am engaged in a contest of who can use the least player input. I'm not. I merely restated what to me seems one instantiation of an obvious truism that people's thoughts, ideas, and inspirations are influenced by input from outside their own head. For some reason, you seem at pains to disagree with something that I think is obviously true, practically unavoidable, and for which there is no a priori reason to even try to avoid.

Quote from: AsenRG;922628Because I don't use players ideas as a matter of principle

Taken anywhere remotely approaching its logical conclusion leads to an absurd situation where the GM cannot use the most reasonable improvisational idea because a player said it first. That seems a tad bizarre to me and I can't see that a desire to do that has anything to do with avoiding railroading or illusionism.

Personally, if a player has an interesting idea that seems appropriate to a situation and it doesn't violate any pre-established setting information (including stuff I know and the players do not), then my typical approach would be to decide how likely that interesting idea is and roll to see if it is actually the case. For example, let's suppose a player speculates that Ulgar the innkeeper, whose description coincidentally matched that of another NPC named Kynn Blackwolf, is actually related to Kynn Blackwolf. Often that notion will be contrary to setting information that is known to me so I will just ignore it, though I might smile or nod mysteriously and say "Maybe he is."

On the other hand, if that idea sounds interesting and somewhat plausible then I might decide to use it. If it isn't at least somewhat plausible, I won't use it. If it isn't at least somewhat interesting then why bother using it? So assuming it meets those two criteria, my next step would typically entail my guestimating some probability that the idea is true. The probability is going to be my subjective estimate of likelihood based on all the factors I can think of in about 10 seconds or less. Then I roll the dice and see if Ulgar and Kynn are related. I might use some formal method like the Mythic Gamemaster Emulator or I might just roll 2d6 or percentile dice with low meaning no and high meaning yes. How low? How high? Well that's what the guesstimation is for.

Personally I find these things come up a lot as players speculate or ask questions like:

• Does this stable rent horses?
• Does this bar sell gin?
• Are there any mercenaries for hire in this town?

Deciding that rentable horses, saleable gin, and hirable mercenaries do not exist because a players mentioned them before I made a decision about their existence (or lack thereof), just seems weird to me. Now maybe that's not what you were suggesting, but it's what your comments seemed to be suggesting to me.

I tend to do very very little adventure prep, but this is balanced out by the fact that I do a ton of "setting prep" when I'm first establishing the campaign.  Clearly detail the world, and the adventures take care of themselves.

Quote from: RPGPundit;923035I tend to do very very little adventure prep, but this is balanced out by the fact that I do a ton of "setting prep" when I'm first establishing the campaign.  Clearly detail the world, and the adventures take care of themselves.

THIS!  A huge portion of my admittedly over extensive prep is setting. I flesh out areas my players probably have little to no chance of ever visiting. The actual adventure planning doesn't even compare.

A stockpile of one page dungeon maps

A list of NPCs I can drop in (sometimes just names, sometimes names and a trait)

Lots of notes on campaign progression, with an eye toward  what the players are doing.

 Sometimes I'll pop in the detail without any real idea exactly where it's going to go. For example:

 Player playing a fighter paid large amount of money, hiring an assassin to go after a major NPC with prominent holdings and power (though a second tier lord, all things considered). Considering who the fighter hired, and the amount he paid, not to mention the personality of the assassin (honor bound to fulfill a contract), I figured the assassination was going to succeed, eventually. But, as a plot twist,  i'm going to have the assassin show back up in their base town, toss the bag of coins back to the guy who hired him and say "I can't take your money. Someone else beat me to it. Here is what you paid me minus a few expenses."  In addition the assassin will appear disguised as one of the local lords guards ,  indicating he is on some other sort of mission. What that current mission as I have no idea yet.

I am not entirely sure who did the deed yet, but, as their major concern right now is trying to unseat the local Lord and take over the town, the death of the rival,  at the hands of someone unknown, deepens the intrigue. The dead NPCs holdings are now open, and having just recently married, and not producing an heir, The Lord in their base town now has his sights set on marrying the window which would give him claim to the dead Lords holdings, and clear his debt ( his major Achilles' heel).

The PCs major advantage in taking on the local board is that he is in debt and owed a great deal of that debt  to the assassinated Lord. Now, it looks on the surface like he might've orchestrated the assassination. But I have determined that he didn't. What I haven't decided is who is actually behind the deed.  I figure I'll get a few ideas based on what the players do in response.  Considering one of them is about to get thrown in jail for threatening the local Lord in his Keep, I doubt they'll be thinking too much about pursuing the whole assassination thing immediately. But if they do, I'll be developing that as we go (or rather we all will, depending on what everyone does).

 With all of that, I'm still not entirely sure which direction the campaign is going to go. We have several plot threads dangling at the moment.

Quote from: RPGPundit;923035I tend to do very very little adventure prep, but this is balanced out by the fact that I do a ton of "setting prep" when I'm first establishing the campaign.  Clearly detail the world, and the adventures take care of themselves.

 I'd say I do something very similar. It is mainly scenario prep. I'll also sketch out some independent dungeons that I can just throw in if needed.

I'm so lazy I usually just radically remodel some published dungeon.

Quote from: RPGPundit;924004I'm so lazy I usually just radically remodel some published dungeon.

How long does the remodel take?  In my experience renovations always take longer than you expect and go way over budget.

Do the remodels count as prep?

Quote from: Headless;924013How long does the remodel take?  In my experience renovations always take longer than you expect and go way over budget.

Do the remodels count as prep?

I consider it prep.  In the end, you're creating something new.  Whether that something new is something out of whole cloth (which again, really isn't whole cloth, it's inspired by everything you've ever seen) or simply changing the name of a bartender, giving him a son instead of a daughter and making him a closet satanist, you are creating your world, so yeah, it's prep I think.

Quote from: Headless;924013How long does the remodel take?  In my experience renovations always take longer than you expect and go way over budget.

It's such a pain in the ass.  Crooked dungeon contractors try to take you for every gold piece, the granite altar you wanted is back-ordered for six to eight weeks, and the damn Dungeon Zoning Board shows up with C&D orders because you don't have the right permits.