Which are you, The plan everything out GM, or the Ad lib?

[zarionofarabel]

Have you ever played a game like Scotland Yard? This is a board game in which the players cooperate against a secret keeper who plays the villainous Mr. X who is trying to escape the players chasing him. The game plays out on a stylized map of London with cabs, buses, and trains that each character can take to travel from one point to the next each turn. Each player has a certain amount of resources and Mr. X disappears stealthily as the players chase him, turning up only at predefined moments, while trying to stay a step or two ahead of his pursuers. It's great game. And it has well, lots of prep.

Nope, sorry, don't know that one.

Imagine trying to run a similar game as the secret keeper without prep. You have no map. Each turn you are drawing new connections on the map. The players have no idea where each connection is going to go. They can't plan ahead. You have to decide at each step what connections exist for both Mr. X and the players to take. You also have to decide when Mr. X will appear. Who would possibly think that your ad hoc game provided more agency for the players than the prepared one? Who would possibly imagine that game balanced? Why would anyone think the outcome of the chase was decided by anything but your fiat?

Anyone who understands how mechanics in a TTRPG can be used to decide the outcome of things...

In an RPG, the situations in a prepped game is even more constrained. In "Scotland Yard" one of the things that balances Mr. X with those chasing him is Mr. X has unlimited in game resources - that is he always has the train ticket or bus face he needs. But in any reasonably RPG scenario the escaping criminal has only limited resources - minions, transportation, hit points, spell slots, bullets, whatever. For example, in a prepared game, you could write, "Four blocks from the antiquities store, Mr. X has stashed a small motorcycle, which he intends to use as a getaway vehicle on the crowded streets." If you are improvising, you have to decide when Mr. X can find his motorcycle, or you might not think of the possibility of a motorcycle until you are some ways into the chase. Depending on the game system the writers might even encourage to invent a motorcycle on the spot in response to a die roll by the players or to heighten the dramatic tension. And yes, that creates a certain sort of game that could be fun, but you can't claim that the Schrodinger's Motorcycle that isn't anywhere until you place it gives more agency to the players to stop Mr. X than a game where the motorcycle exists in a certain place.

Well, unless you tell the players beforehand about the bike, it effectively doesn't exist, because they have no idea it exists unless you tell them! If you tell them about the bike, whether you created it beforehand, or improvised it a moment before, then, and only then, does the bike actually exist.

Or imagine something more immediate. The PC's spot the villain on his motorcycle and give chase. Imagine the difference between having prepared the city street with its traffic and the events and improvising them on the fly. This turns out to be exactly like the scenario of trying to play the game 'Scotland Yard' without prep, just with a different sort of map. What obstacles you place in the way of each character are now up to you to decide at each moment. Whether the semi crosses and when and whether the fruit seller comes out in front of the players with his cart and so forth is all something you have to think about on the fly. It's strikes me as impossible to improvise this with the same level of detail as you would if you had prepped.

I'm sorry that your imagination is limited that way.

I can think of a certain Dungeon magazine adventure where the PC's are chasing a criminal through the docks and there is a chase that occurs by jumping from the deck of one boat to the next. I think it would be impossible to improvise that scene on the fly and be as fair or as interesting or give the players as much agency as if you put the map down on the table and said, "You are here and here is Mr. X how do you want to get to him?" Especially when if you didn't have prep you'd be improvising at each step where the complications would occur, like which boats have hidden obstacles and what those obstacles are and so forth. The idea that I have this prep limits the players ability to make meaningful choices more than a situation where I have nothing prepared just doesn't work once you remove it from the realm of nebulous theory crafting and actually start talking about real situations that come up.

Uh...okay...

You said you resolve a chase using the applicable game rules and randomizers. That tells me you don't really run chases. You've never had the PC's galloping behind a carriage being attacked by wights down a twisting mountain road, trying to intervene before the carriage doors are ripped off, or the roof is bashed through, or once the driver is killed the carriage careens off a cliff or out into the stony woods and the baron and baroness are killed. Because if you ran those sorts of scenes frequently, you'd know that a) most games don't really have a lot of good rules for them and b) a lot of the outcome depends less on the rules than on the map. Imagine how much you have to decide at that point that constitutes the map of the scene. All the different characters, hit points and hardness of the carriage, the map of the mountain road, the monsters, etc. More prep in that scene doesn't give the players less agency. What it does is take away some of your own agency. You have to commit to something.

Well, just because you personally don't like a particular ruleset doesn't invalidate the ability to use it to decide the outcome of a situation. As for the stats of things and NPCs and stuff, either the game already has those, in which case I use them, or I create something on the fly at the beginning of the chase.

The biggest myth you are pushing is that nothing set in stone means unlimited opportunities. If nothing is set in stone there are zero meaningful choices. You are in cloud cookoo land. Anything can happen. Only after things start happening does the player have some meaningful choices, but even then it's like trying to play Scotland Yard without a board or with a board that changes according to the secret keeper's fiat.

Well, unless things that require the players to make choices are actually happening, how would they even know they need to make a choice. You seem to be under the impression that players can somehow have knowledge about what you have prepped without you telling them about it, which is simply not true. Until information is provided to the players that frame potential decision points, the players have no clue. Only when the decision point has been framed, and the players are informed of the need for them to make a decision, can a meaningful choice be made. Whether or not the decision point has been prepped beforehand, or improvised a moment before, is effectively irrelevant.

Besides which, to be frank, no improv GM I've ever encountered is actually creative enough to do any of this.

Well, just because you haven't met them doesn't mean they don't exist. I've met them, and I have a fair amount of anecdotal reasons to believe I am one.

Improvisation almost invariably ends up involving no map and no real travel.

Well, my games take place in some sort of setting. I admit that I am lazy and usually use published settings or the setting attached to a particular game. Either way, they come with a map of sorts. At the least, some sort of "setting" will be decided during session zero based on the premise of the campaign. The details of the setting can be improvised on the fly, as until the moment a player asks about details of a certain aspect of the setting, they don't matter. Like I said before, until the players actually interact with something, it effectively doesn't exist, whether or not it's written down in the GM's notes. Once the aspect of the setting is interacted with, then, and only then, does it become an existent thing.

The style is less sand box with a map to explore than it is a Shakespearian stage the players are on where the drapes and props come and go when the scene shifts. You can go anywhere but everywhere is basically the same, just new characters come onto or exit the stage. Exit stage left, arrive stage right. And to the extent that anything is dense, it's probably someone else's prep that they are bringing into the situation to make up for the lack of their own.

Or, until the details of something are needed, they don't matter. Like I said before, for me anyway, improvising new content is super easy. I don't need to sit around contemplating things to add detail to the narrative, I just decide something and run with it. Everywhere is, in one way, exactly the same, in that it effectively doesn't have any detail, until the players decide they want detail, or they choose to interact with it. Once those details become required, said detail is added to the setting by improvising said detail on the spot. Once added, the details become an existent thing, and are manipulated as needed afterwards.

Don't worry, I've met a lot of prepper GMs that have trouble understanding the idea that things only begin to exist within the narrative once the players are actually aware of them. You can have a huge castle with an intricate map fully detailed in your notes, but unless the players are told about the castle, it may as well not exist. I will admit though, that you are correct about the aspect of someone elses prep making my job as an ad lib GM way way easier, because I do use settings, maps, stat blocks, and other similar things in my games. Honestly, I could improvise all that stuff if I needed too, but why bother when I have a plethora of things available already.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am definitely a planner. I start by reading a published adventure carefully, then typically in the days or weeks before the game night I find myself thinking a lot about everything between the established elements of the adventure, kind of filling up the space, adding things of my own, or anticipating what the players might do. I don't usually write this stuff down, and I don't obsess over it, it is simply my mind wandering around the adventure in the days before playing. Then, whatever happens at the table happens, and if I use 1% of what I thought, I don't cry over the unused 99%.

 

[Voadam]

While I normally run modules in my fairly heavily prepped mashup campaign setting, I have done a complete improv game once years ago and it went well.

I had agreed to run a game for the kid of a pair of my friends who were hosting us for Thanksgiving. The kid was the same age as my son (who had played D&D with me a bunch for years, though never regularly) and the kids was a friend of my son's. The kid had never played D&D before and had wanted to try it out for a while and the parents knew I played D&D with my son. I brought my 5e PH, and some dice. I walked him through quick PC creation and the two decided to make halflings after a quick description of races and classes. One was a fighter and one was a rogue.

Since they were both halflings we riffed on that and we started in a dungeon, where they had both just activated a chaos magic blade trap that cut them in half and they realized they were now new halflings where before they were one person exploring the dungeon. They quickly joked about which one was the top versus bottom half, and which one thought with their brain versus their gut. Being new people they could not quite remember why they were there but they thought they were looking for something. A bunch of exploration, maybe a fight/escape from something from the PH monster appendix (is there an ooze there?), and the kids were having a great time. Lots of description from both me describing stuff and them describing what they did, lots of immersion. The parents were enjoying it as well watching and the kid's father started to jump in with improvving things they were discovering too as they explored and crazy magical effects. Eventually ended with them finding a wall map (carved into stone maybe?) with an x marks the spot that they thought looked like a treasure map. They decided that was what they had been looking for. When they touched it they instantly got transported to the island where they had touched and we ended there.

Everybody had a great time and I felt good about it.

I would not be really comfortable running a wholly improv campaign for a big group though I would be more open to it now and definitely up for individual sessions that go off module script.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

My default is very much to worldbuild and prepare a ton of stuff. But I'm working very hard to be more ad lib. Whenever I inject an healthy dose of improvisation and keep the prep to tools, lists and tables the quality of my games improve.

I never prepare plots, or stories, or arcs; I think that's not where RPGs shine. I prepare opportunities, interesting situations, encounters and like toolbox I take them out at the appropriate moment.

I've been rereading my copy of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master recently trying to get myself to get even leaner in my prep.

 

[el-remmen]

I feel like answering this question thoroughly would take longer to write than my prep notes and tend to write several pages of prep notes (though how I approach it means I don't necessarily write it all at once).

 

[Celebrim]

Nope, sorry, don't know that one.

That's too bad. It's a pretty good game and it's often overlooked in the board gaming community because it came out after the American golden age that gave us Risk, Life, Sorry, Clue, etc. but before the European Renaissance. But I was hoping if you hadn't you could imagine the situation.

Anyone who understands how mechanics in a TTRPG can be used to decide the outcome of things...

It's this statement more than anything else you've said that convinced me this is a pointless conversation. Because mechanics are really only a part of what goes into deciding the outcome of a TTRPG and in the context of this conversation to point to mechanics is bizarre to me.

Well, unless you tell the players beforehand about the bike, it effectively doesn't exist, because they have no idea it exists unless you tell them! If you tell them about the bike, whether you created it beforehand, or improvised it a moment before, then, and only then, does the bike actually exist.

That's just not true. That might be the way your game goes, but that's not true in the general case. Which door leads into the Tomb of Horrors is something that exists before the players find it. And which chest contains the magic ring in that dungeon is something that exists before a player finds it. We know that, because everyone that has played module (perhaps hundreds of thousands of people at this point) knows the answer and it's the same answer. And if it isn't the same answer, then you didn't play "Tomb of Horrors" but something that riffed off it. The fiction was reified before any player interacted with it. And this is really important, because if fiction is only ever reified when the player interacts with it, then everything is a Schrodinger's Dungeon and only the GM has any agency. If I'm deciding only after the player makes a proposition what is true in the fiction, then every choice the player makes is pointless and can be negated completely. They might as well ask you what you want them to do.

I'm sorry that your imagination is limited that way.

Whatever. I am not troubled by the fact that my imagination is limited. But if you can't imagine how different the two situations are, maybe I'm not the only one.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

The reason I prep and strongly prefer games run by people who prep is that when you invent something at the table, you have very limited amount of time to come up with that invention, and so that invention is necessarily shallow. You simply don't have the time to come up with all the ideas, links and flavor that you would have if you prepped. You come up with one of the first things that enters your mind.

As an example, next Monday I'll run a section of The Grail Quest as part of The Great Pendragon Campaign. I'll need to test whether characters are truly chivalric, pagan or christian (each having 6 different but overlapping sets of characteristics associated with them). I have 4 players and each has different types of knight, so to come up with a good test on the fly, I'd have to remember each knight's 'types' and the skills needed to be tested, compare that to already tested skills and come up with a scenario to test that. And then I'd repeat that several times for the evening. Very little chance anyone would be successful doing that without planning.

In play, I might want to confront someone with a vengeful figure from their past. Although there are probably 100+ I could choose from, there's no way I will be able to on the fly pick the best. My brain will grab a few, probably the more recent ones or ones I liked voicing, and I'll choose from those. So I give ourselves a sub-optimal experience because I was unwilling to do the planning ahead.

One of the insidious features of not-planning is not that things crash and burn. With a good GM, it'll be fine. It's that it could have been so much better -- I decide to test Humility, but I didn't realize that I'd done that three sessions go and have not yet tested lustful. Still everyone had fun, just the pagan knight got slightly shafted. Or I chose Hya the Keen as the opposition in the scene, and everyone had fun because they all like Hya -- but the child that the gay knight had with the White Dwarf Giantess (when flirting checks go wrong...) would have been way more appropriate and a great callback.

And the really dangerous part is that it's hard for the GM to tell! They are immersed in the game, they had three options, chose one and everyone had fun. Their brain is fully engaged, they're having fun and they feel like they are doing their best work. They don't see the missed opportunities, the way their instincts lead them into predictable paths, the way the tyranny of urgency is making them miss opportunities.

Like @Celebrim, I have played with many GMs, good, bad and mediocre. I've played in games run by Sandy Peterson, Ken Hite, Robin Laws, Jason Durrell, John Wick, Sarah Richardson, Steve Jackson and many others. I've also played in many Living campaigns.

• The absolute best experiences have been by excellent GMs who prepare.
• Good experiences have been with excellent GMs who do not prepare, or average GMs who prepare well

Not having time to prep or hating to do so is an excellent reason for running low-prep. But the result is not going to be as good as if you had prepped. It's the same as a rock-star athlete playing against a team they have not prepped for. She'll be good, she'll be entertaining -- but if she had prepped, she would have been even better.

Athletes prep to make them play better.
Writers prep to make their plays better.
GM's prep to make roleplay better.

We're not special, people. Roleplaying is not the unique field of creativity where preparation doesn't help (or even, as some people surprisingly state -- makes it worse). It follows the same rules as other fields.

If you're in doubt, go find one of those few successful professional GMs. Ask them if they zero-prep their games. I'm pretty sure you already know the answer.

 

[zarionofarabel]

That's too bad. It's a pretty good game and it's often overlooked in the board gaming community because it came out after the American golden age that gave us Risk, Life, Sorry, Clue, etc. but before the European Renaissance. But I was hoping if you hadn't you could imagine the situation.

So I looked it up on BGG and it reminds me of a game I played a couple of times where one player is Dracula and the others are Hunters trying to find him. It's called Fury Of Dracula, if you want to check it out. So, I do understand the idea you are going for, but I think that it only applies in specific situations. Sure, if the PCs are searching a city for a stealthy criminal, then having a map of the city could be beneficial. Of course, the existence of the map would also depend on other factors such as PCs being familiar with the city, or access to an actual physical map of the city. As for the location of the criminal, and how they move around the city, definitely doesn't need to be predetermined. In fact, the whole gist of the Dracula game (and the one you gave as an example) is the idea that the movement of the antagonist is NOT predetermined. As for the artificial restrictions on how Dracula/MrX can move about the map, is in the interests of making it gameable specifically as a board game. In a TTRPG such artificial restrictions need not apply as the terrain can conceivably be completely open. Looking at the map for Scotland Yard makes me wonder; why is MrX only able to move on roads? Why can't he sneak through an alley? Why can't he take some kind of shortcut between various locations? I think I understand what you are getting at with this game as an example of why you think prep is needed, but I don't think that level of artificial restriction is needed. Besides, if each intersection on the map would be considered a "decision point" then most of the time the players would be making meaningless decisions as they have no clue where MrX is until he appears for the first time (if it works similar to the Dracula game in that respect) which in the context of a TTRPG means a lot of wasted time for no payoff. Once MrX appears somewhere and the have an idea where to go, then they can make a meaningful choice. Honestly, I wouldn't run a Scotland Yard/Fury Of Dracula scenario as a chase, but instead as an investigation.

It's this statement more than anything else you've said that convinced me this is a pointless conversation. Because mechanics are really only a part of what goes into deciding the outcome of a TTRPG and in the context of this conversation to point to mechanics is bizarre to me.

Well, what I meant was the fact that any sort of investigation or chase or conflict in a TTRPG can be resolved mechanically. Most of the chase/investigation mechanics I have encountered in TTRPGs are either extended conflict mechanics (multiple opposed rolls) or countdown mechanics (score X number of successful rolls before Y amount of time elapses). The particular details of the conflict/clock do not need to be decided ahead of time, they can be decided on the spot, and the resolution system will still work as intended. The example you give in the your later example has a bike that MrX is going to use to escape, so that would be the end result if the PCs lose the conflict. The bike doesn't need to be preplanned. It could simply be improvised into existence once the conflict is concluded as a loss for the PCs.

That's just not true. That might be the way your game goes, but that's not true in the general case. Which door leads into the Tomb of Horrors is something that exists before the players find it. And which chest contains the magic ring in that dungeon is something that exists before a player finds it. We know that, because everyone that has played module (perhaps hundreds of thousands of people at this point) knows the answer and it's the same answer. And if it isn't the same answer, then you didn't play "Tomb of Horrors" but something that riffed off it. The fiction was reified before any player interacted with it. And this is really important, because if fiction is only ever reified when the player interacts with it, then everything is a Schrodinger's Dungeon and only the GM has any agency. If I'm deciding only after the player makes a proposition what is true in the fiction, then every choice the player makes is pointless and can be negated completely. They might as well ask you what you want them to do.

Well, considering how many folks in this thread alone admit to ad libbing alot of their game content, I don't think you can qualify your particular view as a general aspect of gaming. As for "Tomb Of Horrors" not being "Tomb Of Horrors" because something about the adventure was changed, all I can say is...what?!? Now I haven't read a lot of published adventures as they are not something I use, but the few that I have read always preface the entire work by advising the GM to change whatever they need to change, whenever they want to change it, for whatever reason. AKA, make the adventure your own, instead of thinking that the contents of the adventure are sacrosanct, because it isn't. In a way, all things are Schrodinger's Dungeon, even if someone wrote it down on a piece of paper, until the players have knowledge of it. Nothing in your notes is "real" until it is introduced into the shared narrative, simply due to the fact that your players have no knowledge of it, so it effectively doesn't exist. It's just as not real as an idea I make up on the spot right before I add it to the shared narrative. As for deciding what it true in the fiction, the metric is simple, it must be a part of the shared narrative. If it is only something the GM knows, then it is not true. As an example, I will ask a simple question; if a player decides a fact about their PC, but doesn't tell you or any of the other players about it, is it real? Does this fact have any bearing or affect the decision making process of anyone else at the table? It may be "real" for the player that decided it, but all other participants it simply doesn't exist. As for ensuring that players can make meaningful choices, it's quite simple, present them with choices that have consequences in the fiction afterwards. Neither the choices, nor their consequences, will exist until after they become part of the shared narrative, so both can easily be ad libbed into existence as needed. As long as I make sure to not invalidate the consequences of choices after they become part of the shared narrative, then player agency is maintained, and choices remain meaningful.

Whatever. I am not troubled by the fact that my imagination is limited. But if you can't imagine how different the two situations are, maybe I'm not the only one.

Well, it's a matter of how the situation plays out I guess. In the scenario you described I don't need to have the traffic, or route, or semi, or fruit seller prepared, as their existence wouldn't be needed until it is. If the scenario is a chase, then the game's mechanics would dictate the flow of the chase. If the chase is a clock style (the style I usually use for chases) then it would be the individual rolls, and the success or failure thereof, that would inform what fiction I would adlib. So, say the moment the chase is started, I inform the players they have 10 turns to knock the MrX off his bike, or he escapes. In order to catch up to MrX they need to get three successes, they then need one success to maneuver alongside MrX's bike, and a final success to knock MrX off his bike. A successful roll would be ad libbed as there being an opening in traffic allowing the PCs to close distance, a blocked intersection forcing MrX to change direction which allows the PCs to cut the curb and gain more ground. Failed rolls would be the semi suddenly popping out of a side street causing the PCs to have to brake to avoid hitting it, thus preventing them from closing distance; or the fruit seller stall being in the way preventing the PCs from being able to cut the curb to gain ground. The entire scenario, including the details of what I ad lib, is decided by the system rules and players dice rolls, no preplanning needed. I'll be honest, I can't imagine a way to "play out" a chase without engaging mechanics unless the result of the chase is totally decided by GM fiat. I mean, I guess you could preplan the "correct way" to succeed at the chase, but that is definitely something I don't like doing as I think preplanned solutions to problems the GM presents is railroading-adjacent game play. I simply present situations for players to deal with, the solutions they devise are entirely up to them as no problem I create has a "correct" solution.

As a side note, I recently acquired a bunch of secondhand TTRPG stuff, most of which was purchased more to help out the seller than personal interest. Thus I ended up with a with bunch of stuff I never would have normally. One of those products is a copy of Masks Of Nyarlathotep, the "greatest CoC sandbox adventure of all time" or so the interwebs informed me. So, I started reading it. I will admit that it is chock full of interesting things, and is well presented. However, it is very contingent on the players doing very specific things in order to work properly. There is a "sandbox" element to it in that the PCs are free to travel to the various "global locations" in whatever order they wish, but within those locations the events that transpire are very structured. If PCs fail to engage a great number of things in the predetermined "correct" way, the whole thing will fail. Simply put, if the players don't follow the path laid out for them, exactly the way it is planned out, the whole thing falls apart. There is very little opportunity for the players to have any real agency to affect the plot or manipulate events. By the time I finished the UK chapter I had already thought of a least a hundred ways the game could fail spectacularly unless I am willing to heavily railroad the players to force the narrative to conform to the prepared plotline. Something I refuse to do, so, oh well, no Masks campaign for me I guess.

So yeah, I don't think you will be able to change my mind about the idea that a prepared game is better than an ad lib game in any real way. To put it simply, most of your underlying assumptions about how games work are simply false. Writing stuff down doesn't make it any more meaningful or real than ad libbed stuff. Only things that are actually added to the shared narrative are real and meaningful. Having prepared locations or events don't make for more agency or meaningful choices any more than ad lib things do. If player choices have actual consequences, whether the choices made are based on prepared decision points, or ad libbed ones, the effect is the same, players have real agency and can make meaningful choices. The quality of a game, IMHO, has almost nothing to do with whether or not the GM prepares stuff beforehand or ad libs everything on the fly. The methods differ, but ultimately, the result, good or bad, is dependent on far more than whether or not the GM preps a bunch of stuff. If a GM ad libs a bunch of crap, the game will be bad. If the GM prepares a bunch of crap, the game will be bad. If the GM ad libs a bunch of awesome, the game will be good. If the GM prepares a bunch of awesome, the game will be good.

Simple. As. That.

Cheers mate!

 

[zarionofarabel]

[REDACTED]

Yeah, no. Hard disagree. Then again I don't personally think the few "professional" GMs I know of are all that amazing so...yeah.

 

[ART!]

I'm the "plan everything I can think of and then during the game realize the really important things I forgot to prep and then have a minor anxiety attack" GM.