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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5605156" data-attributes="member: 92305">I'll be honest.  Most of the time, we have a great game.  Sometimes, though, things are just a little "off". The last two game sessions are good examples.  We played two weeks ago and yesterday.  The game two weeks ago was fantastic.  I'm the GM, and I was "hot".  I was playing the NPCs, each with their own character.  I'd break into accents.  Our roleplay was great (it was an entirely role play session.  No combat.  There were some skill checks, though.) And, the entire evening--about 8 hours, moved smoothly.  The entire time was interesting.  I didn't "lose" anybody.  Each of my three players were glued to the game. I considered it a huge success.   The very next game (yesterday's game) SHOULD have been an even more exciting time.  I had planned it that way. But, something was wrong.  The game was "OK".  We didn't have any arguements or anything.  But, for some reason, the game just wasn't as interesting. First off, I was as prepared as I should have been.  I had two weeks to get my ducks in line, and I had the spare time to do it.  I just "wasn't into" working on the game (sometimes I love doing it, but when I have to, it feels like a job.)  So, I put off my prep time until the last day before the game.  Then, I spent about 12 hours doing prepwork--blowing my entire day on it--when I didn't realy want to do it. I was up to 4:00 am working on the game, and I had to pick up a player at 9:30 am in order to get to the place where we were playing by 10:00 am. Needless to say, I was tired.  And, I never quite got the prep work done to the level I needed.  Sometimes prepwork can be completely quickly.  But, during our last (the fun one) game session, the player took an unexpected turn.  So, I had a new direction that I needed to flesh out. The player I picked up had his niece graduate from high school the day before, and the family party went on until late.  He didnt' get much sleep, either.  Plus, he had things he had to do for his work (the game was set for Sunday). We get to the game, and although I gave it an effort, it didn't start off with a bang the way I thought it would. I picked up the story the second the last game ended (sometimes, I'll skip some time--days, weeks, months...whatever is appropriate for the story).  I had this dream sequence that I thought was going to be pretty cool. Except...I didn't make it as cool as it should have been.  I just wasn't "on" that day.  I was "OK", but not "Great" the way I was the last session. The dream sequence was interesting, and the players liked it--they just weren't as glued to the events happening in the game as they were during the game session before. Then, I wasn't able to handle the ad-lib stuff (which, I admit, is not my strong suit--one of the reasons I put so much time into prep) as well as I did the previous session.  The PCs are in a village, so there's a ton of NPCs.  And, if the player wants his character to "go talk to the weaver", I've sometimes got to make the weaver up on the spot.  Some GM's are real good at that.  I'm not.  I can be at time, but I'm not consistent.  I need to work on that. All-in-all, we had an OK, mediocre game session.  The events that happend in this game session were, imo, more interesting than the ones in the last game session--I just think that the presentation was poor. I'm the GM.  That stuff is my responsibility.  If I'm having an "off" day, chances are the players will also have one.  If I'm on fire, it's a good bet that the players are glued to the table, interested in every word I say. I was just "off" that day. All I can do is make it better next time.  I've got two weeks....I need to get on that prep now.</blockquote>

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