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<blockquote data-quote="Michael Silverbane" data-source="post: 8130843" data-attributes="member: 38016"><p>So, I do preps for my game by describing locations (a room, a building, a town, a county, a nation, and a world might get equal treatment or differing treatment depending on how inspiration strikes me) and peoples (again, Steve, the DeVillio Family, the Dwarfs of Illigrad, and the Mantid Species all get varying levels of detail depending on how much comes to me when the mood hits) and phenomena (bad weather, kidnappings, a bumper crop of air willow, a prophesied birth, etc.). Some of these preps have no relation to what my players are currently involved in and will never see the light of day. Some get called back to in later sessions or are callbacks from earlier sessions. Some are directly related to things that I know the players are interested in.</p><p></p><p>I like to have enough preps to offer players three new enumerated choices for any given lull in the action. Once the player characters have ensured that Steve has been dealt with, fir instance, I might feed them rumors about local lumber workers going missing in the silver forest, a number of troll sightings in the dank marsh, and a wizard's convention in the burg to the north. Players are free then to explore one of those new things, go back and revisit things that they learned about previously, pursue some personal agenda, or do some other thing that I hadn't considered.</p><p></p><p>Much of the time, I end up adding substance to those preps that I have already done, rather than making things up whole-cloth, and rarely I will find myself either presenting a fully-formed thing to the players, or coming up with something entirely new.</p><p></p><p>My thoughts are that if I am making a good faith attempt to make the players' choices meaningful, and if the players feel like their choices are meaningful, then I'm doing a pretty good job.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Michael Silverbane, post: 8130843, member: 38016"] So, I do preps for my game by describing locations (a room, a building, a town, a county, a nation, and a world might get equal treatment or differing treatment depending on how inspiration strikes me) and peoples (again, Steve, the DeVillio Family, the Dwarfs of Illigrad, and the Mantid Species all get varying levels of detail depending on how much comes to me when the mood hits) and phenomena (bad weather, kidnappings, a bumper crop of air willow, a prophesied birth, etc.). Some of these preps have no relation to what my players are currently involved in and will never see the light of day. Some get called back to in later sessions or are callbacks from earlier sessions. Some are directly related to things that I know the players are interested in. I like to have enough preps to offer players three new enumerated choices for any given lull in the action. Once the player characters have ensured that Steve has been dealt with, fir instance, I might feed them rumors about local lumber workers going missing in the silver forest, a number of troll sightings in the dank marsh, and a wizard's convention in the burg to the north. Players are free then to explore one of those new things, go back and revisit things that they learned about previously, pursue some personal agenda, or do some other thing that I hadn't considered. Much of the time, I end up adding substance to those preps that I have already done, rather than making things up whole-cloth, and rarely I will find myself either presenting a fully-formed thing to the players, or coming up with something entirely new. My thoughts are that if I am making a good faith attempt to make the players' choices meaningful, and if the players feel like their choices are meaningful, then I'm doing a pretty good job. [/QUOTE]
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