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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9455780" data-attributes="member: 7006">It's hard for me to evaluate a video such as this because I don't think it is really meant for someone like myself... who has many years (if not decades) of running games.  This information within the video is very surface level stuff-- just as surface level as the Mercer and Ginny Di videos he clipped... all of them giving baseline information for people who have no real knowledge going in of what they know about what they are doing.  So I do not by any means want to say the videographer is wrong (because he isn't)... but I do get a very strong feeling of "Yes, but..." in response after watching it.Something as simple as "You don't need to kill yourself doing game prep" is... true... but not very specific.  Because what constitutes "prep" as they are using it?  They mentioned DM monologues pre-written for NPCs-- sure, I can understand that and would agree that they aren't a requirement for anyone's game (but that some DMs are free to do so if they think it's useful to them).  But how many DMs actually do that?  Is this really more of a recommendation of a mostly white-room scenario of potential DM action?Or the question of whether creating and balancing encounters is "prep" and thus unnecessary?  How randomized or improvised are they talking?  Are random tables "prep" by their definition?  Do they think creating encounters beforehand and having them in your back pocket to be pulled out if necessary is a waste of time?  I mean, sure... anyone can try and create encounters off the top of their head any time the players just decide to go places... but the practicality at the table means a DM having to not only figure out types and numbers of monsters at the spur of the moment, but also needs to try and keep their fingers on all the separate pages of the Monster Manual in order to reference all the statblocks and not slow the game down.  Whereas a simple prep could just involve deciding on some pre-set encounters with monster statblocks copied/pasted into grouped sheets so all info was together in one place.  Which to be honest might even be less painful and less work for a DM having these encounter pages already in hand when a fight occurs thus making running the combat so much easier than trying to run it straight out of a monster book because they just ended up randomly selecting creatures that the players encountered.At the most foundational level, the video appears to me to be making a very specific point about two ends of a very large spectrum-- fully written stories by a controlling DM are bad, and completely open games with a "just show up and see what happens" DM is good.  Which is a valid take... but just how useful is it to put into practice?  Because there's so much middle ground between those two extremes that it's hard to take it as anything more than just a way of looking at things rather than actual practical advice you can actually put into use.</blockquote>

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