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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 316658" data-attributes="member: 158">Are these players older, experienced, jaded players? If not, don't be so afraid to have each and every detail mapped out. If you have new players, even "dungeon crawls" are fresh and exciting, even with a minimum of plot. The problem you need to overcome is that even with a group of jaded old-timer players, not every detail has to be mapped out to perfection. THE ULTIMATE METAGAMING STATEMENT: Every player realizes intrinsically that every person has time constraints on their planning. No one can spend their lives mapping out the perfect campaign world, where every cause has an effect. We call these people who do this authors, and authors typically get paid to flesh out every little detail.Even the greatest DM's typically cannot tell you the diet of every creature on their worlds. Frankly, for having fun and telling stories, it ain't necessary. When in doubt, take a small world section, start small, plan out some general details that could fit in anywhere, and plan out two or three general encounters and NPC or monster stats. But the ONE OVERRIDING detail is this: When you make up something on the fly (and you will), write it down. Self-consistency is the most important aspect of a believeable world. If you didn't know who the caretaker of the shrine of Lathander was until five minutes ago, jot down the details you just gave him, and if the players go back to him, be sure he has those details again. That's probably the most important job you have is self-consistancy. Half of my detail work between weekly games is formally rewriting those jotted notes of mine that occurred last week.Another hint: If you created the tower of windy death, but the players want to go to the dungeon of freaky chaos, the tower of windy death can become the tower of spirits later - or with a little tweaking, can become the dungeon of freaky chaos itself! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Planning loosely if you want to run an open-ended game can be very useful, and don't be afraid to "re-use" locations that the players have never seen before.Gotta go, but keep these things in mind, and good gaming!</blockquote>

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