How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Game Prep

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One of the things that eternally plagues game masters is the subject of game prep. How do we find that balance between having more material than we will ever need, and having a session come to a stop because there wasn't enough prep done? This is something, I think that most game masters deal with regardless of how long of a time they have been sitting in the game master's chair. Really, as long as a game entertains everyone at the table, you've done the right amount of prep. However, the question will always remain.

I've been gaming since 1979, and by about 1980 or so I started GMing more or less full time. In the "old days" the answer to "How much do I prep?" was answered by the very robust publishing schedule of most role-playing game publisher. For example, I played a lot of the Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game from TSR in college, and the years afterwards. I didn't read as many Marvel comics as I did (do!) read DC comics, so I was always at a disadvantage with the Marvel universe because of that. Because of the fact that TSR published so much material for the game between adventures and roster books, they managed to fill in a lot of the blanks for me with their official material. Many of the TSR published settings for AD&D around that same period gave you a lot of material to work with, regardless of whether you played in the Forgotten Realms or Al-Quadim or the Planescape settings, you had a lot of your prepwork done for you.

Publishers like White Wolf took this tact as well, sometimes giving you more material than you might ever even need as a GM.

Unfortunately, while we are in a different sort of golden age of riches as gamers, the day of the overabundance of pre-made material is in the past. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it sometimes requires adaptation from those of us who have been gaming for a longer time. I like a low prep approach to gaming as a GM, since I'm not 11 years old anymore, I don't have the time to spend on game prep that I once did (nor do I really have the desire, either). Sometimes my preferences for low prep games interferes with my running of older games at times, the techniques that work for newer games don't always work in older games.

This is why I was attracted to a system like Fate from Evil Hat Productions. I've played and run Fate games since Spirit of the Century debuted years ago, and the approach of the game has been becoming my default approach for a few years now. The first rule of game mastering is that no idea that you have (regardless of the amount of prep that you put into a game session) will survive its encounter with the players. They will zig when the story zags. But the nice thing about the system is that when this happens all that you need to do is come up with a couple of aspects, a skill or two (approaches if you use Fate Accelerated like I do) and roll with it. Games like the many, many variants of the Basic Roleplaying Game or the open content of Mongoose Publishing's fantasy RPG Legend (or their version of the Runequest rules from which Legend was derived) make that easy too. Come up with a couple of skills on the fly, give them percentages and worry about filling in the spaces later.

With our ongoing Marvel Super-Heroes game I find myself taking NPCs and working them into something close enough to work with. Our campaign is loosely based in the Marvel Universe, which works mostly because the players don't have a super detailed level of knowledge about the world, so that gives me plenty of wiggle room. Besides, the longer the campaign goes on, the less it has to do with the Marvel Universe proper anyway.

So, how do you balance these things out when you want to be a low prep sort of GM? There's a few guidelines that come from how I run a game:

• Know your system. This is probably the most important one. You hear a lot of people talk about "internalizing" a game system. What this means, for me, is that you have developed a high degree of system mastery in your chosen game system. One of the reasons that I like to use the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG is because I have run it long enough that I know the system really well, and can run it without having to flip through books trying to find something. I'll have a few pages of notes, NPCs written out if the game is complex enough to need them in advance, and then everything else during our sessions have me make situational rulings. I will use the game's universal table to resolve things, and come up with similar resolution ideas on the fly. But to do this, you have to know the system.
• Know your genre. This is almost as important as knowing the system that you're running. I've read comics for longer than I've played role-playing games. I have enough comic plots nearly memorized to be able to repurpose them for campaigns for years. If I don't, I can read a trade collection before a session and use the ideas in our game. Most GMs have read enough fantasy novels, or seen enough fantasy movies, to be able to do the same things. The trick is to find the things that the players don't know, so they won't think that you're just repurposing someone else's story.
• Be able to be flexible about things. One of the basic skills of a GM is that you need to be able to learn how to spin things out on the fly. If you can't be flexible as a GM, if you can't make things up on the spot as a reaction to what the players are doing, you are going to have a hard time being a low prep GM.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a good starting point. Not everyone is going to want to be a low prep GM, but there will be those times when it will be needed and you might want to know what to do.

I have a friend who is always amazed when I run an evening's game with just some notes in my gaming Moleskine and a copy of the Fate Accelerated rules. Sometimes I'll have a brief idea of what I want to use for the setting, and other times I'll see what bits and pieces the players give up, that excites them.

Recently, on Free RPG Day, I ran a three hour session of Fate Accelerated for eight people (only about half of whom I actually knew). The idea was that the whole game would be generated on the spot, and play would roll out of what the players and I created. Fate's game creation rules are helpful for this, because they quantify a way to make up a setting at the table. I started with some prompts for the game. I wrote up a set of basic genre cues on index cards which said things like "A Space Ship Adventure…but…" The players filled in the "but…" with "all the characters are robots." We were off. For the next few minutes we outlined the details of the setting: everything took place on a sentient AI-driven biomechanical space ship, except the ship's AI was getting senile and things were slowly starting to malfunction. While the players made up their characters I put together a few other details: the ship was on a ten year exploratory tour, beaming back information to a central command that would be used later for voyages with ships that were occupied with people. The ship itself was built with planned obsolescence in mind, and the "falling apart" was planned from the beginning. Within about half an hour we were ready to go, and we played for another two and a half hours, until we got to a stopping point. The game was still left open-ended, so that if we had all so desired we could have spun it into an ongoing game.

This shows the basic concepts of low prep play in action. If this is something that you want to give a try, you now know where to start. The genre of the game, the system that you use all figure into how you do this. Now you know.
What sort of prep do you do as a GM?

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]I read your point earlier that more prep time should naturally equate to greater success in GM-ing.

Well, only to the extent that you would expect more preparation to naturally lead to greater success as an actor or a director.

I think my point would be more comparable to the idea you can't expect to master the craft of being an actor or a director without putting significant effort into doing so. Sure, there are people out there who are naturally talented at acting and seem to get into character effortlessly, but don't assume first that it is as effortless as they make it seem and secondly don't assume that you are so talented you don't need to work at your craft.

With that in mind, I think it's obvious why I would assume a broad definition of preparation is important, because what it takes to master your craft - and in particular to create that particular construct/gameplay/play experience - can vary widely both on the talents of the GM and the sort of construct they are trying to make.

Where you would misunderstand me completely is to understand that I'm saying you have to draw six dungeon levels or some other specific traditional preparation task, or that merely drawing six dungeon levels would make you a better GM (although, honestly, it would be a useful exercise even if you never planned to run a mega-dungeon).

I will say though that the best GMs I've met correlate strongly with the most motivated GMs with the highest time investments in their craft and their game, while the worst ones were the ones that thought they could just 'wing it' and show up with out having put any 'sweat' into the game.

I think there is a place for a game you really can wing with little or no preparation, but the sort of "construct" that creates would necessarily be narrow - there would be some experiences it just really couldn't create.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]

Your posts are interesting. My experience with theatre is pretty minimal, so I can't comment on your characterisation of a director's role and duties.

When it comes to GMing, I think what's very important is a sense of story/drama - as in, what would be fun/interesting/exciting here, now? - and some sort of ability to modulate this in response to player signals.

I think that second bit is perhaps more important than the first. In my experience, even fairly mediocre GMing can produce a reasonably enjoyable RPGing session if the GM leaves room for the players to do their stuff in relation to the (mediocre) content and situations the GM is providing. What (in my experience) tends to go wrong with mediocre GMing is when the GM tries to assert control, bumps into contradictory preferences from the players, and keeps going.

No amount of prep is going to save that game.

 

[Manbearcat]

What (in my experience) tends to go wrong with mediocre GMing is when the GM tries to assert control, bumps into contradictory preferences from the players, and keeps going.

No amount of prep is going to save that game.

And this is precisely what my sense of an overabundance of prep does:

1) It engenders a tendency for a GM to want to assert control (to assure the introduction of prepped material that they've invested so much into).

2) When said GM bumps into contradictory preferences from the players (both implicit during play - action declarations or verbal declarative - and explicit through PC build signals), the GM expresses their own agency to override player preference (thereby continuing the introduction of/focus on the prepped material).


Now it doesn't have to happen, but that is the tendency I've always seen (both in gaming and in all other facets of life).

 

[Manbearcat]

To the end of avoiding the directly above (and to address the premise of the thread):

GMs need to learn how to prep less...but with greater versatility/applicability and utility. Doing this entails:

1) Intimately understanding and being able to convey to others what this particular game is trying to do.

2) Intimately understanding how its mechanics facilitate your efforts in pulling off what it is trying to do.

3) Intimately understanding your players' interests and creating expressly toward engaging with/challenging those interests.

4) Being willing to be wrong and humbly pivot accordingly.

5) Conversing with honesty, openness, and integrity (thereby gaining and providing essential information for your prep and play).

6) Learning your personal cognitive and creative cues and leveraging them in creating abridged aids (developing functional cognitive shorthand).

 

[innerdude]

And this is precisely what my sense of an overabundance of prep does:

1) It engenders a tendency for a GM to want to assert control (to assure the introduction of prepped material that they've invested so much into).

2) When said GM bumps into contradictory preferences from the players (both implicit during play - action declarations or verbal declarative - and explicit through PC build signals), the GM expresses their own agency to override player preference (thereby continuing the introduction of/focus on the prepped material).


Now it doesn't have to happen, but that is the tendency I've always seen (both in gaming and in all other facets of life).

Yep. Human nature tells us to "do what we know." Stick with the familiar. It's less risky, and it leaves us less vulnerable and less open to critique.

A GM who's not confident in their ability to respond to player cues is never really going to reach a level of GM-ing that will really engage the group. It's the difference between a purely "functional" GM and a GM who really brings to life and inspires the proceedings.

 

[Celebrim]

And this is precisely what my sense of an overabundance of prep does:

Well, you can either view that as an overabundance of preparation, or you can view that as an under abundance of preparation. I view it as the later.

If you are viewing that as the later, the problem is that the DM prepared only for the one thing he wanted or expected the players to do. Further, he had also not prepped any material that would allow him to improvise new solutions. That's a woeful lack of preparation, not an overabundance of it.

I would call out the games you call 'over prepping' as not prepping well or nearly enough!

DMs wanting to control the story occurs in both low preparation and high preparation scenarios. Your personal experience may be with one, but you can get DMs that want the game to be about them and them alone regardless of how much prep that they do.

IMO, low preparation all but guarantees the only story that happens is the one that depends entirely on the DMs whim. While it is true that if you prepare nothing, nothing can happen that you don't want to happen, it's also true that nothing can happen that you don't want to happen.

I'll make that as provocative as a I can - only high prep GMs ever experience players making a choice, because only high prep GMs ever are in a situation where they know before the choice is what the results of the choice are going to be. One of the problems I have with improvisation is, other than the fact that it takes a lot of skill to pull off well, is if you don't ever know what the results of a choice are going to be until it is presented (and made), you have no reason to believe that the PC's can ever contradict your preferences for play and its highly likely (in my experience) that you are engaged in illusionism regarding actual player choice. As a player, this drives me to absolute distraction, because once I realize nothing is true, I also realize I have no meaningful choices - it didn't matter if I went east or west, left or right, or who I accused of the crime, or whether I missed a clue, or if I was careful, or if I used good tactics, or really anything.

The most powerful way to railroad is Schrodinger's Map - regardless of the direction you travel, you get to the destination - because the location of everything is flexible. The temptation, conscious or unconscious, to improvise the tracks to take the player where you want them to go is too great when you haven't actually made the 'map' and established truth beforehand.

To that end, I'd revise your manifesto, "GMs need to learn how to prep more...but with greater versatility/applicability and utility."

Where I agree is before you start a game, you need to negotiate with your players what the game is trying to accomplish. In my current campaign, I sent out a questionnaire, and all six players said they'd rather do an adventure path than play in a sandbox. Indeed, one player said the best games were the ones that were on rails. That's let me plan ahead far more than I have in previous games, but even then they frequently are off the rails and I have to improvise. But for example, in the games first session, I had prepped six different responses to player actions knowing that I couldn't foresee which way they'd approach the scenario. So even my improvisations were planned.

The mark of a good sandbox DM is you prepare more material than you can or will use, and you have to be OK with that.

The rest of your advice - your six bullet points - about how to achieve good preparation and be a GM that is actually engaging your players wants I fully agree with.

 

[Aenghus]

Know yourself and know your players.

I've encountered numbers of referees who either have poor self-awareness so they don't know what they actually want, and don't want, from a game, or are unwilling to reveal or discuss what their game goals are. Ambiguity or uncertainty in your own goals as a referee often increases the amount of prep needed to cover more ground.

The better you know your players the easier it is to prep for them, on average. Proactive players probably call for different proportions of prep to reactive players. Different groups will value different decisions types,and in a lower prep game it's important to ensure as much as possible that the decision points that do come up in the game are meaningful to both yourself and the players involved.

The massive subjectivity of "meaningful decision" makes it difficult to write about definitively. In one game it would could be attempting to open the warded door in a dungeon despite the dire warnings and nearby corpses of the last people who attempted the same task. In another it could be about what personal sacrifices your PC is willing to make to accomplish a particular task. Some games avoid such weighty decision making deliberately and aim for a more lighthearted game, or a game of dark humour.

It's generally a bad idea to not provide players with the choices they crave, or force decisions on players who don't want the hassle.

I see this as relevant as when you are reducing game prep, it seems wise to improvise the ordinary mundane parts of the adventure, and prep is better focused on coming up with and integrating important decision points.