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Most of my experience is with RPGs that privilege the GM as the primary author of the setting. With that said, I like it when a game includes a lot of player creation too. I like this as both a player and as a GM. If we come into town and the GM doesn't have an inn pre-created, let a player...

I'm in the 4e boat. I started gaming with AD&D and BECMI in the early '80s. Played until around 2005 using various editions of D&D and other games (mostly GURPS and Call of Cthulhu). Then started a new career and a family and moved to a new state all at the same time. Gaming fell away for a...

Ahh... totally missed the dates. I wish necromantic threads could be visually marked as such somehow.

As others have said, I think the problem in the OP is best handled outside of the game. Just checking in with everyone to see what sort of game they want to play. As a GM, I often check in with my players if their PCs seem to be pulling at new plot threads or want to head "off the map"...

This depends on what sorts of stories your group is interested in. The Lord of the Rings, after all, was a story about some insignificant hobbits who managed to save the world. That sort of story might not flow from the default assumptions of D&D, but it's certainly possible to manage in a...

Prepping NPCs is often useful, but I also like to leave room for impromptu creations. Some of the most memorable NPCs in my campaigns have been off-the-cuff. In a recent game, for example, one of the PCs wanted to find a jeweler in a frontier town. It seemed unlikely, but I let him make a roll...

In the '90s—when I had a lot more time on my hand for gaming—I created a relational database along the lines of what @ExploderWizard mentioned above (12 years ago). It took a while to build the thing, but then it was very helpful. I used it over the course of a 10+ year campaign. It was...

I'm curious to flip this around a bit and think of my experiences as a player. I don't typically care much if a GM prepares ahead of time or not. I care, of course, if the game is a fun experience that was worth my time. With some GMs, that seems to require prep: if they don't have time to...

I'm curious about @pemerton's question too. I have always liked the phrase "living world" to describe my ideal for what an imaginary world should "feel" like. As my discretionary time has dwindled with the increasing responsibilities of career and family, however, I find myself doing far less...

I'm curious about whether players can engage in observation like this in Blades? What would happen? I'm very fuzzy on these non-traditional games, but here's what I imagine based on following some of these conversations. The player can't just fish for information with no outcome in mind. So...

Your maps have become part of the bedtime ritual for my four-year-old son. We read a book together, turn out the lights, and then "look at a map" on my phone. He has been super curious about all of the symbols and everything. (He's actually learned most of his two-digit numbers from your maps!)...

I've been playing GURPS for decades, most recently in its incarnation as the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. I've got a number of DFRPG games going in parallel with different players. Recently picked up and played through the Labyrinth RPG with my family. We had a great time with that. Did a session of...

I'm curious if you imagine the water-filled areas of the dungeon to be entirely submerged (like you must be able to breathe underwater) or just waterlogged (waist-deep or similar with air above). Obviously, we can do what we want with it, but I'm interested in what you had in mind.

In a typical high fantasy game, I expect high-level (or high-point) play to involve a different scale than low-level play. The protagonists are capable of sweeping feats of martial and magical prowess. The villains are powerful: demon lords, divine or semi-divine beings, or perhaps a legendary...

In my early days of AD&D, I recall that my friends and I would cross out any unique creatures in the Monster Manual once we had defeated them. We'd work our way through the archdevils and demon lords. Then we got Deities and Demigods and continued the tradition. More recently, I don't usually...

Last night I ran a GURPS game and had a situation where my notes ended up being less useful than I had hoped. The group had just begun exploring the ancient vaults of a long-dead dragon. It's a relatively traditional dungeon crawl. I focused my "notes" on preparation for a few combat encounters...

For the River God, I like the idea of something polluting or diverting one of the river forks upstream. Perhaps the river god is weaker in its tiny tributaries. In a classic D&D sort of vein, there could be nasty humanoids mining or diverting water to support their Isengardish factories. Classic...

Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is in the top spot for me. I’ve run it under every edition of D&D since 1e and a couple of times in GURPS. I also got a lot of mileage out of the Desert of Desolation and the Cult of the Reptile God. Also ran a GURPS version of the former.