Quote from: Gib;559288The second sentence in the post you quoted answers your question.

Well, that's what i mean about agreeing to disagree. If i zigged instead of zagged and later found out the Temple of the, Desert Nomads had originally started out as the Shrine of the Wemics, but I had _fun_ I don't see the issue. If i had fun and then later found out that it wasn't what i had originally thought, I'm not going to look back and say wrll, I guess i didn't have fun after all.

Obviously others have problems with it and i understand that. What concerns me is when people say "this is the right/wrong way to do things". What they're really saying is that "in my experience this was right/wrong" but they fail to make that distinction.  Unfortunately many look at this as promoting a "one true way" style of play.

Again, if you're having fun, have fun.  The encounter should always be secondary to the character.

Pete

I never said right or wrong or even railroad, though. Respectfully, that's all you baby.

I've done all that stuff you mention and I find doing it the other way feels better to me- and ime leads to less player dissatisfaction. However, there are no absolutes, everyone mixes the two approaches it is merely a matter of degree.

This thread is being incredibly helpful. I'll break down my response in two posts so as to avoid wall-of-texting.

Quote from: flyingmice;559236I was just writing about this on my blog. I have a horrible time writing commercial adventures because my own prep is so minimalist, and because I regard even the hint of the breath of a railroad with loathing. I typically run adventures with less than an index card of scribbled notes.

I suppose this is the entry you speak of? Very interesting. "Situationalist", eh? Just what we need, another piece of jargon. I really, really liked this blogpost, though, and I obviously identify.

I think I've been "brain damaged" into reacting poorly to any sort of structure. I put an end to a fairly successful Day After Ragnarok campaign because I was tired of the mission-based approach; I felt like PCs were doing only what I gave them to do. There was no surprise for me, no unforeseen factors, no wild turns. Sessions were predictable and I was kind of bored (even though the players loved it, or claimed to love it). Factor in my burnout with SW as a system and, after contemplating a system change, I decided to pull the plug.

However, I'm not averse to grabbing PCs by the collar and shaking them a bit to get things started (the session I report in the OP is a big ol' PC trap), or get them out of a standstill (e.g. investigative dead-ends). But as the basis of a whole campaign, it got old kind of quick for me.

Quote from: Benoist;559241I don't think we understand each other. I'm not saying that your way of doing things is bad or that you ought to feel ashamed of it.

Quite the contrary, actually.

Part of why I started this thread is a bit of a worry that I was slipping into "making shit up to keep the players entertained", and therefore risking to alienate my players. I'm glad and even a bit relieved that you (and other posters) seem to think that this is not the case.

Obligatory theRPGsite macho disclaimer. This has less to do with a need for self-affirmation, and more to do with my goal as a GM: namely, immersion by way of emulation. I never gave much thought to game theory (and I still avoid game theory threads like the plague) but this is an idea that's quite prevalent in this forum and one I've been growing fond of, for some time now. I've also been taught that rational and pondered self-criticism is the right road to improve oneself.

Quote from: Benoist;559241No, I don't think so. The only difference between short and long term campaigns is the scale of the game world and the relative need for consistency in order to maintain its verisimilitude.

What you need to make that same way you are running games now work at a game table running a long term campaign is good memory skills and/or organizational skills (taking notes and remembering what you said five sessions ago and not contradicting yourself on the reality of the game world every now and again). If you got one or both covered, you could be good as gold, depending on your particular threshold/GMing style.

I have a decent memory, but I suppose long-running campaigns might call for written notes (my last regular campaign was a mission-based deal which facilitated things somewhat, and I worked from memory entirely).

Quote from: jibbajibba;559243That little voice in your head is telling you to reskin the pirates as bandits and run the encounter anyway. THIS YOU CAN NOT DO.

I understand and tend to agree that, on principle, indiscriminate recycling and reskinning of things will challenge players' immersion in the long run. But if you have an honest chance of meeting bandits on the forest, just as you have a honest chance of chancing upon a pirate vessel by river, how is that breaking emulation?

Besides, if the players chose to take the forest because the elves could assist them, their choice still counts: the elves might know paths the bandits don't (averting or reducing the chance of the encounter happening); the bandits might be scared shitless of the elves and let the PCs pass on that account; the bandit leader, a would-be warlord, might be openly at war with the Elf-King since elven rangers struck down her paramour, and marks the PCs as foes the moment they cozy up with the elves. Hell, if these three ideas hit me while the PCs are deciding things, I'll even roll 1d3 and decide which is which.

Quote from: Soylent Green;559245There all sort of consideration here.

Loved your post! I am obviously inclined to agree with every single word of it.

Quote from: Soylent Green;559245

• The ideas you come up with on the fly as GM might be okay but they can sometimes lack that extra polish and depth found in properly prepped material.


• Improvised games aren't ideal for the sort of game in which resource management and attrition are important factors.

I singled these out because they're also crucial reasons why I've started this thread. I have the nagging feeling that I'm missing out on something. It's been years since I've actually sat down and drawn a map, and peopled it with landmarks and living things, and statted up NPCs (instead of grabbing some stock NPC or monster, and/or writing down stats as they were needed -- like a quantum probability waveform collapsing into an observable value).

Like you've said, this limits my ability to enjoy games like Traveller or TSR-era D&D in which resource management is a big part of the draw. This thread made me identify the need to develop some rudimentary record-keeping, both for "fluff" (events and characters) and "crunch" (PC resources), the better to coalesce my knack for ad-libbing into smooth and continuous world-emulation.

And I'll still find me the time some day to build a real, honest-to-God sandbox with my own bare hands.

Quote from: 1989;55929180+ hours. What do you do?

I'm a doctor. It's usually under 80 (70-75 is more like it), but I do get to work 80+ on rougher weeks.

Quote from: The Butcher;559358I understand and tend to agree that, on principle, indiscriminate recycling and reskinning of things will challenge players' immersion in the long run. But if you have an honest chance of meeting bandits on the forest, just as you have a honest chance of chancing upon a pirate vessel by river, how is that breaking emulation?

Besides, if the players chose to take the forest because the elves could assist them, their choice still counts: the elves might know paths the bandits don't (averting or reducing the chance of the encounter happening); the bandits might be scared shitless of the elves and let the PCs pass on that account; the bandit leader, a would-be warlord, might be openly at war with the Elf-King since elven rangers struck down her paramour, and marks the PCs as foes the moment they cozy up with the elves. Hell, if these three ideas hit me while the PCs are deciding things, I'll even roll 1d3 and decide which is which.

Um.... its becuase they are pirates and they live on boats obviously. Once  make them up they are real you can;t just go round changing real stuff like that it will confuse folks.

And the elves , who by the way speak with shakespearean dialogue, have obviously cleared the forest of bandits. But when the party approach they may be take n for such and if their harm the trees of the forest then woe becomes them.

On a more pragmatic approach , no actually it really is because the pirates live on the river in boats ....

The world needs to be consistent if you move things to stimulate good play or to ease up on a party who have taken on more than they can chew the world looses its independence.

When we were talking about a world in motion a couple of years ago I noted that I didn't believe you can actually create a world in motion, you can simulate one for x degrees away from the characters but you can't run a real one without a couple of years of programming and a beefy server farm.
So you simulate it as best you can. I won't actually play out who won the Battle of Griffin Peak if the players choose not to go there I will decide who wins based on the strength of the sides, etc but also what is better for the game, but that is a number of degrees away the closer I get to the PCs the more defined and less maleable the world becomes. It behaves like , well a world and is set before they influence it except I set it the second before they influence it off the top of my head where as a planned DM sets in a week earlier and writes it all down.

If you think of an adventure as a series of branching forks a DM that likes to plan will have all the forks mapped out in advance and after 10 decisions they have had to plan 1024 things. Well I plan out the path they took and the other path they could have taken at each decision point so I have 20 things planned. I think that if you only planned 10 then you might find as I used to in my formative years of ad libing that they were going to get the same 10 no matter what they did because sub-consciously I have chained the events together. Well that is a railroad and no mistake.
The risk of that happening is why I have a strict rule about always create 2 or more discrete choices and keep them quite separate, and of course pirates live on boats.

Quote from: jibbajibba;559378Um.... its becuase they are pirates and they live on boats obviously. Once  make them up they are real you can;t just go round changing real stuff like that it will confuse folks.

And the elves , who by the way speak with shakespearean dialogue, have obviously cleared the forest of bandits. But when the party approach they may be take n for such and if their harm the trees of the forest then woe becomes them.

On a more pragmatic approach , no actually it really is because the pirates live on the river in boats ....

The world needs to be consistent if you move things to stimulate good play or to ease up on a party who have taken on more than they can chew the world looses its independence.

I get it, jibba. But if the stats for pirates and bandits are mostly the same, and you're changing everything other than the stats (the context of the encounter, the trappings of the antagonists, etc.), is it really smoke and mirrors, or just expediency? To me it looks like persuading oneself that "once you've imagined it, it's there!" is the actual "illusionism" at work here. Recycling ideas is not necessarily the same as forcing characters down a given path.

Quote from: Gib;559294I never said right or wrong or even railroad, though. Respectfully, that's all you baby.

I've done all that stuff you mention and I find doing it the other way feels better to me- and ime leads to less player dissatisfaction. However, there are no absolutes, everyone mixes the two approaches it is merely a matter of degree.

Yeah man, didn't mean to sound like I was singling you out. I was more talking about the mindset.

Pete

Quote from: The Butcher;559151I'm just wondering whether "no plan survives contact" segues logically into "screw plans, let's wing this bitch from end to end".

No, as much as I'd love to shout that while wearing my viking hat, I do prep for at least familiarity with the set pieces (locales & NPCs) and do take notes during and after when I'm running a campaign. I may do well with improv, but I do even better when I'm familiar with the pieces (or improv parameters). So, give me a rough district layout of a town and notable faction relationships. From there I stat my own notable locales or NPCs and can then wing the rest.

Sorta like when improv says something like, "You're all in a mid-20th century American high school in the Midwest and it's the week of the homecoming game. GO!" Immediately you got notable locales, NPCs, relationships/factions, etc. Far easier than, "You're in a medieval fantasy town next to the road. GO!" One has far more fleshed out tropes and motivation imbedded.

Granted it also has more of those things imbedded in assumptions, but y'know... It's the difference between defined v. vague parameters. Adding all the specific details may or may not help if the parameters are still too vague. I just like to work defining things from outside in v. inside out.

About the pirates or reskinned as bandits issue:

For me the -pirates or +elves sound like they are a fixed encounter. There should still be an encounter table for both river and road locations. And on those encounter table locations you may have additional pirates or bandits (or helpful travelers of sorts). But to swap the fixed encounter -- just cuz -- sort of defeats the purpose of making those fixed encounter be location specific in the first place.

And when you defeat the purpose of your own design, you're likely doing something wrong -- or at least wasting someone's time. I mean, why make two encounters and make them location specific? You're doing more work and then defeating yourself, because you are voiding any meaningful choice you were anticipating from your players.

This is where randomness and tables and prepped facets of the world help you. They first save you time from having to make such a decision above; fixed encounters can still occur, but random encounters still retain setting flavor and potential excitement. Second, being prepped saves you time during improv -- you already know the likely pieces available in a given area. Third, anything not interacted with usually ends up... interacting with something else!

Thus "world in motion" arises. This is great because just as writers talk about characters writing themselves, so do prepped pieces interact in a fleshed out setting in an RPG. They start to have personalities creating new stuff for PCs to choose to deal with. This in turn saves you time (and brain power) by generating more things to do than your players can ever hope to finish all in one circuit.

So I do prep setting, in both locate and NPC. But I keep my hooks very basic. The problem I have with so many modules is that each hook builds upon each other and they're often time sensitive to connect them all to get the "right chain of events." That's just crazy train talk to me.

Quote from: The Butcher;559398I get it, jibba. But if the stats for pirates and bandits are mostly the same, and you're changing everything other than the stats (the context of the encounter, the trappings of the antagonists, etc.), is it really smoke and mirrors, or just expediency? To me it looks like persuading oneself that "once you've imagined it, it's there!" is the actual "illusionism" at work here. Recycling ideas is not necessarily the same as forcing characters down a given path.

Stats? I haven't stated the pirates and have no intention of so doing until the first canon ball was fired.

Stats? what do you take me for some sort of rules lawyer

The point is there are no bandits.

Quote from: Opaopajr;559556About the pirates or reskinned as bandits issue:

For me the -pirates or +elves sound like they are a fixed encounter. There should still be an encounter table for both river and road locations. And on those encounter table locations you may have additional pirates or bandits (or helpful travelers of sorts). But to swap the fixed encounter -- just cuz -- sort of defeats the purpose of making those fixed encounter be location specific in the first place.

And when you defeat the purpose of your own design, you're likely doing something wrong -- or at least wasting someone's time. I mean, why make two encounters and make them location specific? You're doing more work and then defeating yourself, because you are voiding any meaningful choice you were anticipating from your players.

This is where randomness and tables and prepped facets of the world help you. They first save you time from having to make such a decision above; fixed encounters can still occur, but random encounters still retain setting flavor and potential excitement. Second, being prepped saves you time during improv -- you already know the likely pieces available in a given area. Third, anything not interacted with usually ends up... interacting with something else!

Thus "world in motion" arises. This is great because just as writers talk about characters writing themselves, so do prepped pieces interact in a fleshed out setting in an RPG. They start to have personalities creating new stuff for PCs to choose to deal with. This in turn saves you time (and brain power) by generating more things to do than your players can ever hope to finish all in one circuit.

So I do prep setting, in both locate and NPC. But I keep my hooks very basic. The problem I have with so many modules is that each hook builds upon each other and they're often time sensitive to connect them all to get the "right chain of events." That's just crazy train talk to me.

You are right about the NPCs writing the plot and it is much easier that way cos I can relax and get a beer and let them get on with it. You are also right about your high school example its a perfect micro setting because you just know by default how it works out. That is not just good for you from a prep perspective its also good for the players because they just know how the world you are presenting fits together. so they fit in it.

I often riff of books. Take the current Game of Thrones revival. I can now set a game in a place like Westeros with some different NPCS and families and a map of Malaysia/Burma/Thailand with the numbers filled off and as soon as I say its like Game of Thrones they are fully engaged they know what to expect at all points.

Quote from: The Butcher;559358I'm a doctor. It's usually under 80 (70-75 is more like it), but I do get to work 80+ on rougher weeks.

Hard job, man.

But worth it.

Quote from: 1989;559656Hard job, man.

But worth it.

Thanks. I can't and won't complain, as long as I get to pay the bills, and manage to squeeze in time for family and entertainment (including the Wednesday night game). I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Errr...am I the only one who would have 2 entirely different encounters in the above-mentioned "road versus sea route"?

I might have pirates on the sea, but an old treant that watches travelers on the road. Both encounters have the possibility of combat (pirates, pretty much a given!), parley, and possibly alliances forged.

Quote from: Novastar;559779Errr...am I the only one who would have 2 entirely different encounters in the above-mentioned "road versus sea route"?

I might have pirates on the sea, but an old treant that watches travelers on the road. Both encounters have the possibility of combat (pirates, pretty much a given!), parley, and possibly alliances forged.

well when the party started talking about heading through teh old forest onteh kings road or hiring a boat, at that moment I decided that the river was home to a bunch of pirates I also decided that the forset was home to some elves.

So then when they were gabbing on like they do workign out which was riskier my mind ran away with the pirates and an image of a leather clad pirate wench with dark curls cascading out of a wide brimed hat came to me and I realised that she was obviously a bit french and oddly was carrying a pistol. Well that meant they much use black power whcih the PCs had yet to encounter.

Anyway then they decided that the forest was safer so i turned my attention to the Elves but will alwasy have a place in my heart for Black Bess or as she is oft times punningly names La Bess Noir.
Then when they were being kitted out for their journey they woudl need horses etc Slydor Pulse the owner of Slydor's trade and supplier was teling them that they were doing the rigth thing about avoiding the river, because of La Bess Noir, actually now I remember Slydor was one of those replellent unctuous men whose pate always seems moist and whose top lip quivers when you mention horse flesh, anyway whilst he was explinign the dangers of the river I had some time to work out what the eleves would be like and since I am a big shakespeare fan and can pretty much ablib pseudo shakespearan dialogue all day I thought that I might build the forest with quite a lot of Midsummers night dream to it, then it occured to me that I had made up a long running story about a fairy prince called Sweet Sweet Robin who was the most evila nd wicked of all the fairies for my daugther on a long car journey that has since turned into an ongoing theme so why not introduce sly old Sweet Sweet Robin into the forest. A little courtly fairy intrigue with a sprinkle of StarDust and some Books of Magic.
By that time they had bought the horses and the female ranger was just about to smash Slydor's face in so it was time to feed them some hideous stories about the forest when they mentioned it to the bar keep at the Feathers.....