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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3455350" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't think you are following me.  The DM in question had a totally different style than mine, leaning toward almost pure extemporaneous.  The 1000 NPC's in his folder where the ones we'd RPed with enough over the course of the campaign that the NPC had needed a name.  The 1000 NPC's grew organically, and his fastidious book keeping was his way of dealing with freeform gaming while still maintaining continuity, plot lines, etc.I can tell that there is simply not going to be any consensus with this on you.  In my experience, any good preplanned scenario requires some significant wasted effort because otherwise you run the risk of railroading.  You figure that at least part of the map will never be visted, some side quests will never be attempted, some NPC's will never really connect with the players or even be met, and so forth.  But, it is I think important to understand the whole if you are to understand the peices.In earlier editions of D&D, the mechanical issues of a character could be dispensed with in a single parenthetical note and still be a reasonably complete note.  You are correct to assert that you can still have the single parenthetical note and cover just about anything likely to come up, but you can't be nearly as complete.  And in GURPS for example, I became disatisfied with the system for precisely this reason - NPC design to any standard was too time consuming.On that I agree.I've had experiences with DMs that do this that have led something of a bad taste in my mouth, because when you leave something blank the temptation is to conform the thing to fit the circumstance, and in particular, to conform it to make a particular challenge.  The temptation is there for the DM to metagame, and in my experience even good DMs that lean to heavily on extemporaneous creation tend to do this even unknowingly.  For example, the DC of opening a lock inflates to conform to how much emphasis a character has placed in being good at opening locks, leaving him with no net advantage over having not been good at opening locks.  Or NPC's mysteriously acquire levels and defences appropriate to facing or defending himself from a particular PC, or whatever.  I'm not saying that a good DM can't govern himself, I'm just saying that based on my experiences as a player, I'd rather have a DM that leaned more my direction that didn't - and my guiding rule as a DM is to be the sort of DM I'd want as a player.  And, in my experience, I do a better job over preparing than under preparing.  YMMV depending on your particular strengths as a DM.</blockquote>

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