Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 07, 2023, 07:16:11 PM
There is nothing wrong with pages of notes as long as those notes are not some kind of script.

Yes, indeed. It's very much about what you prep, and how you use it. Creating eg motivated NPCs, setting maps, encounter tables etc is all Good Prep. Creating a script to be adhered to is Bad Prep. I think these days I'd say that even reading a scripted adventure is Bad Prep, unless maybe you're looking at how to gut it for parts.

With my Heavy Gear military game, I have been doing some 'mission prep' where eg I create some possible mission encounters. But they're very much a bare skeleton to hang the actual game on.

I'm a big believer in preparing for adventures; I usually spend about as much time preparing for a session as I do running it.  There's a couple of reasons for this.

If I get the DM version of writers block I'd rather have it in my office by myself than in front of my group.  That way it doesn't hold up the game, I can recover from it without slowing things down, and I don't do something dumb just to keep things moving.

It's a lot easier to keep things consistent and logical if I can go over them a couple of times before anyone else seems them.  This is particularly important for clues and puzzles.

I like my games to feel more real, where things make sense,  than dreamlike, where anything can happen at my whim.  I can do that for my players when I improvise, but I lose the sense of reality myself when improvising, which makes running the game less fun for me.

I make better, more detailed, more consistent, more fun games when I prepare material.  Even when thing inevitably go off the rails, I can still use much of what I've written.

Having an idea of the likely plot helps focus my time on the places in the adventure I should develop.

All that said, the players need to be able to do what they want to do for the game to be fun, and every DM has to be able to improvise to accommodate this.  Having a plot planned out is enormously helpful for preparation, but I can recall only one time in my entire life when the players actually followed my expected plot.

Quote from: S'mon on July 08, 2023, 10:57:10 AM
I've just started a Heavy Gear RPG campaign (d20 conversion), using the newly digitised re-releases. The world/setting is great, but the constant urgings not to do anything that might disrupt The Story (ie the Metaplot) are very silly/annoying/wearying. Yes I damn will disrupt your story, oh mighty games designers! 

OOOH!  I am very curious: what is the premise of the sandbox? What sort of characters? Where are they all starting off?

As you might be able to tell from my user name, I used to be very much into Heavy Gear. Nowadays, less so. Largely because the metaplot did end up limiting me more than I would have liked. There's lots of wiggle room, but I got increasingly annoyed every time the metaplot made itself felt. And my players got salty about it too.

But I do miss me some perfectly-sized, gasoline powered gears rolling around on wheels, carrying gear-sized autocannon/shotgun over-under combo guns. 

Quote from: Exploderwizard on July 07, 2023, 07:16:11 PM
There is nothing wrong with pages of notes as long as those notes are not some kind of script. Having multiple tables and pages of npc and monster statistics at the ready isn't a bad thing so long as they are not organized in a linear order. I like to have more material prepared than I think will be needed in a session because I don't know which parts the players will choose to engage with in a given session.

This. I like having lots of stuff written up, explaining the factions and different NPCs to interested readers: me, the GM. Once the notes are written up, I can use random encounter generators, as well world generators (for sci-fi games) to figure out what the adventure for the next session. But I don't prep big plots anymore for games, or campaigns. The campaign is whatever the players do. If they pick up one hook and run along that thread and deal with that issue/faction until the bitter end, then that's an overarching plot.

Or you can have episodic adventures of the week where the setting pops up here and there, based on the GM's notes. Or something in between.

But prep is important!

I think that one thing that Pundit is not mentioning: he has done all the prep for his Silk Road campaign! It's called "Sword and Caravan."

Quote from: Heavy Josh on July 08, 2023, 04:29:04 PM
I think that one thing that Pundit is not mentioning: he has done all the prep for his Silk Road campaign! It's called "Sword and Caravan."

That deserves reiterating.

I tried to run my last campaign the way the video recommends, and intend on running my next game that way. It's great if you can do it, but I'm not sure it's always practical. It pretty much requires a level of pre-written material comparable to Sword and Caravan or something like Hot Springs Island (which I'm getting ready to run). Double that if you're running the game on VTT and have to put together maps, tokens and all the rest. If you want to buy one of those products, or have time to write one (such as, say, if you were a professional RPG writer), then no problem. But for the average homebrewer, somebody who has a day job and maybe a family, but still wants to run a game in their own setting, I don't know if it's the best decision to delay your campaign by however many months it takes to write all the material necessary for that kind of automation, versus just starting the campaign and filling it in as you go along.

Quote from: Grognard GM on July 08, 2023, 08:16:35 AM
There was a guy who would occasionally GM for my group, and required several months of prep per adventure, and would lay out every possible course of PC action.

Of course I would do something unexpected 5 minutes in to the game...

So, were you deliberately trying to fuck with him and screw up the game for everyone at the table?

Quote from: Heavy Josh on July 08, 2023, 04:23:14 PM

Quote from: S'mon on July 08, 2023, 10:57:10 AM
I've just started a Heavy Gear RPG campaign (d20 conversion), using the newly digitised re-releases. The world/setting is great, but the constant urgings not to do anything that might disrupt The Story (ie the Metaplot) are very silly/annoying/wearying. Yes I damn will disrupt your story, oh mighty games designers! 

OOOH!  I am very curious: what is the premise of the sandbox? What sort of characters? Where are they all starting off?

As you might be able to tell from my user name, I used to be very much into Heavy Gear. Nowadays, less so. Largely because the metaplot did end up limiting me more than I would have liked. There's lots of wiggle room, but I got increasingly annoyed every time the metaplot made itself felt. And my players got salty about it too.

But I do miss me some perfectly-sized, gasoline powered gears rolling around on wheels, carrying gear-sized autocannon/shotgun over-under combo guns. 

I think the Roll20 page is public https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/details/15444088/heavy-gear-d20-slash-5e

It is the Terra Novan Year 1937, and the Interpolar War is raging.
The CNCS city of Ashington on the southern border of  the United Mercantile Federation is defended by her local heroes,  Colonel Felicity Parx and the 109th Heavy Gear Regiment, the 'Lionhearts'. The first weeks of the war have been quiet on this front, as the South elsewhere has mostly been on the defensive, with Northern forces driving into Southern territory.
But out in the Badlands of the Western Desert, a storm is approaching. Aboard the AST Land Cruiser 'Imperatrice' is Commander Henri Mikashi and his 2nd Légion Noire Regiment 'The Damned', with orders to secure Ashington and the vast mineral riches of the Southern Spur...

The PCs are members of a Gear Section assigned to a forward base in the northern badlands south of Ashington. Initially dealing with GREL & Rover raiders on the frontier, along with romance & relationships - at least for the one player who like me enjoys that sort of thing  - then it escalates as Southern Republic advance scout forces begin to enter the area, then again with the arrival of the Imperatrice and her regiment of Legion Noire commandos.

I always try to deviate from official timeline early on in a campaign to free my mind up, in this case the main deviation point is the AST/SRA attacking & taking the Badlands city of Khayr-ad-Din early in TN 1937, as part of a more aggressive Republican prosecution of the war than the official timeline indicates. I'll probably do a lot of random rolls for how things progress, and of course the PCs will influence events.

Quote from: S'mon on July 08, 2023, 05:57:26 PM
The PCs are members of a Gear Section assigned to a forward base in the northern badlands south of Ashington. Initially dealing with GREL & Rover raiders on the frontier, along with romance & relationships - at least for the one player who like me enjoys that sort of thing 

We've just did one solo session, yesterday, with Corporal 'Lion' Findlay training in the Gear proving ground near Ashington then enjoying his last night of freedom before deployment. Basically hitting on anything female in the bar (including 'Aimless' Watson, a fellow NPC Gear pilot), getting rejected a lot (even the stripper was too busy), then finally getting lucky with a drunken newly divorced doctor who it turns out had just been conscripted to the same unit as the PC.    The session ended with him waking her up, her puking in the toilet, her drunkenly driving them both back to the Gear Regimental HQ, luckily not running into any trucks on the highway, and the Orca taking them to Forward Base Lima. Then today we did a text chat session where Findlay was seducing Pvt Lusard, one of the base cooks (Findlay's player Muizz is incorrigible).  The first actual combat session should be next week.

Quote from: Heavy Josh on July 08, 2023, 04:23:14 PM
OOOH!  I am very curious: what is the premise of the sandbox? What sort of characters? Where are they all starting off?

The PCs are all Gear pilots, I made a 10 level 5e-D&D based Gear Pilot class just for the game, and every player has to play one. Corporal Findlay (Muizz) is a hick from the Western Frontier Protectorate who had to skedaddle when the girl he was courting's Pappy took a dislike to him - and she had a lot of brothers. He pilots a Hunter. Trooper Thorkell (Bill) is a a battle scarred veteran of the War of the Alliance, he just likes to blow stuff up, pilots a Grizzly. I think he also wants to protect the daughter of his dead friend from the war, she (Trooper Amy 'Aimless' Watson) is a novice pilot in his unit - NPC, pilots a Cheetah. Senior Ranger Brent Carter (Rich) is a grizzled veteran NCO, also pilots a Grizzly.

Quote from: Heavy Josh on July 08, 2023, 04:29:04 PM
I think that one thing that Pundit is not mentioning: he has done all the prep for his Silk Road campaign! It's called "Sword and Caravan."

Yeah, I think that setting prep is invaluable and can itself back manyfold. If you're doing it right then you shouldn't need to do any prep between sessions; maybe 30 minutes to update your records on what happened last session.

Quote from: jeff37923 on July 08, 2023, 05:14:05 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on July 08, 2023, 08:16:35 AM
There was a guy who would occasionally GM for my group, and required several months of prep per adventure, and would lay out every possible course of PC action.

Of course I would do something unexpected 5 minutes in to the game...

So, were you deliberately trying to fuck with him and screw up the game for everyone at the table?

I can't speak for him of course but my players frequently do the same thing, and I'm quite sure they're not trying to cause problems.  Once you get out of the dungeon there are just so many options that it's impossible to consider them all.  I just try te prep for the most likely ones then roll with whatever actually happens.

I ran a 1-on-1 campaign in the late 80s and the game was awesome but my notes are pathetically lean. It took place on Harn so the setting did a lot of the heavy lifting. I believe planning ahead is has to be vague and flexible or it is likely to be worthless or force the DM to force things. Improv takes time and practice but should be the goal. In my humble opinion.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on July 08, 2023, 07:02:04 AM

GMs should prep as much material as makes them comfortable with GMing. But also, Don't Prep Plots.

\

Heh. I prep plots all the time. Every plot prepped however, belongs to an npc or group in the game world. The cult of Grubhabula has a plot to sacrifice enough innocent souls to awaken their dark god. The Duke's nephew is plotting to kill his uncle and take control of the duchy. The riverboat smugglers are plotting to kidnap the mayor's daughter for ransom. The players are free to discover, and interact with any or all of these things as they wish. There will be consequences in the game world whatever they decide to do. The PC's may come up with plots of their own regarding things they might wish to accomplish. I don't see a problem there.

Quote from: jeff37923 on July 08, 2023, 05:14:05 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on July 08, 2023, 08:16:35 AM
There was a guy who would occasionally GM for my group, and required several months of prep per adventure, and would lay out every possible course of PC action.

Of course I would do something unexpected 5 minutes in to the game...

So, were you deliberately trying to fuck with him and screw up the game for everyone at the table?

Show me on the doll where the player hurt you.

No, I simply did something unexpected, because I'm creative and the GM isn't. In this particular case I had to escape a building, then flee the scene. He'd planned for stuff like fighting my way out, using ducts, etc; but I rappelled down the building. Then he had plans for me escaping on foot, by public transport, stealing a car; but since I was wearing a nice suit I simply hailed a cab.

I didn't read his overly extensive notes, then purposefully plan how to upset them, I just did something he hadn't planned for, because inventive players will surprise a GM.