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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8694745" data-attributes="member: 2629">I'm going to play the veteran card and say I've seen 40 years of gaming in a huge variety of situations.  It is my broad experience that reinforces my perspective.  Further, I've said it is more than possible to have a good session with the improvised style ... your can was accurate ... but overall you'll get a superior product more regularly through craft and preparation rather than relying upon the tactics of the OP as your primary methodology. Think about what I said.  Think about how you interpreted it.  Really give it a try.  Then ask why your statement absolutely missed the point. Reducing what I described to "which monsters are in which rooms" ... I'm talking about what makes a story make sense which is a lot more than 'bugbears here, orcs there'. Again, my 40 years of experience with a broad range of DMs playing with a broad range of players in a broad range of circumstances differs with your opinion.    I can't recall ever seeing a table where a DM prepared an adventure for their player group with attention to detail and conducted the game skillfully (both from a rules and storytelling perspective) where the game was not highly successful.  There can be down moments (usually when they have to adapt to something unexpected), but the degree of success (as measured by the enjoyment of the players) is very high in these circumstances.  The games - and the campaigns overall - work.  I have seen a lot of games where an overconfident DM sat down at a table, 'winged it' while relying upon their charm and rules knowledge, and left their players either bored, frustrated, confused or dismissive.  Not every session of a 'winged' game fails, but the approach results in failed sessions too often, and no DM that comes unprepared escapes the fruits of their lack of labor.  These are the tables at Cons where the players leave mid-session.  These are the games at home where players don't know it is their turn because they're not paying attention.  These are the games where the players start to have their PCs do stupid things to entertain themselves because they're bored.  These are the games where you see players sharing sideways glances with each other as the DM describes something.  These are the campaigns that peter out at level 5 to 9 with people looking for something new because there is nothing holding their interest.  Clearly, you don't want to hear this from me.  That is cool.  Think about all the other people in your life, and across the globe, that have said essentially the same dang thing:  Put in the work.  Be prepared.  You get out what you put in.  By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail.  H.  Thorough preparation makes its own luck.  Not that hole.  Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.  Preparation precedes power.  OK, maybe that hole, but only because you came prepared.  The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic, or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.  The importance of preparation gets repeated over and over ... and not because some people find it to be true sometimes, but because it is, essentially, universally true that in the long term you get a better result through preparation and planning than through winging it.Not all preparation is going to look the same.  There are many different ways to prepare.  There are too many variables to prepare for them all.  However, the DMs that have learned how to prepare efficiently and stylistically are the ones that people remember.  I promise.</blockquote>

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