Be honest, DMs: how much do you ad lib?

[Garmorn]

As my players will tell you.... the more prepared I am...the worse the game is....

I will sometimes come to the table with nothing more then a vague plot point.....

I love ad-libbing..... it is a wonderful DM style, when one is confortable with it...

Most of my sessions i come to the table with a good idea of where we need to be at the end of the session.....

how we get there.....that is another story.....

If you give the PCs enough random plot points......sometimes they will flesh some of them out for you......if done efectively, it can exciting for a DM....just to see where it ends up....

Until 3.x this was true for me also. Since 3.x having a nice selection of monsters and NPC's already worked up and ready to use makes the game go a lot faster and adds to my options of what to throw at the party.

 

[francisca]

80% of my game is adlibbed, or thereabouts. I usually have 1 planned encounter per session to move the backplot along. The rest come from my random encounter tables that I build. These tables, while random, are filled with encounters that fit the context of the date/time/location the PCs are in at any current time. I do have a roster of NPCs with general personality traits to throw at them. Often, the hooks come from one of these NPCs.

This system works because I don't have a rigid timeline to follow in the campaign. I do have lists of "Macro" things that will happen: wars, natural disasters, incurrsions of new races, etc... However, they are all flexible in terms of timeframe and severity. Much of the roleplay comes from the PCs doing somethng random and unexpected. As a matter of fact, I count on it. All of this of course depends on the PCs actually doing something besides sitting in a tavern and listening for rumors. They've figured out that they need to go to the mountain, so to speak. My players are rewarded for striking out in different directions.

 

[Crothian]

/IU adlib every session. It's impossible for me to tatally plan out a night, plus if I could it would be more like writing a book then playing an RPG. THe Players make choices and sometimes I'm less then prepared for them. No biggey.

 

[Count Arioch the 28t]

I ad-lib any and all social encounters, because I have no idea what my players will do. I might make some notes to determine the NPC's interesting characteristics, but for the most part, I let it all hang out, and go with the flow. I try to put myself in the NPC's shoes, and think about what I would do in the situation.

Also, unless I feel the being has a very good reasons to attack the PCs, monsters rarely attack the PCs right off, unless threatened first. MAkes for some interesting encounters. (Like the Otyugh the players befriended a while back. HEy, the otyugh had plenty to eat, and it was bored. The players started talking to it, so it replied. Even helped them out in a couple fights after that.)

 

[Li Shenron]

When I started DMing a few years ago, I had the idea that I should have been prepared for everything. My very first adventure took me a few weeks to write it, but just the first evening for the main plot ideas and the rest were details after details. When we played it, many of the things I had cared for went unnoticed because the players were good enough to avoid many dangerous encounters, and much of the subplots branches simply didn't happen, while at the same time of course the players followed routes I haven't thought about before.

From my second adventure on, I planned less and improvised more

 

[Psion]

How much do you ad lib? And have you ever had the balls to ad lib an entire adventure?

Oh, definitely. I think in the last 4 months, I have ad libbed more games than not.

I find one major thing helps when ad libbing. It was perhaps best put by the title of an old Dragon article:
If you are going to wing it, at least make a flight plan.

Which is to say, at least get an idea of what you want to do. If you have no direction, you are left floundering.

Even my more planned games tend to let the PCs to their own devices. I plan certain events and look for opportunities to introduce them.

 

[Gregor]

I usually never ad lib. However, I have found that it is frustrating, as a new DM, that sometimes my players will do things that I havent planned for or arent picking up on clues. I guess my problem is that I am a narrative DM and I like flowery flavour text that I write myself. Sometimes players wont want to go into a dungeon I planned or a certain area that I spent lots of time detailing, but I have learned that this is pretty standard for d&d so I am also learning to be more adaptable to their decisions.

What its all about is making sure that the players have fun and that they come back for more. Thus, I am trying to "chill out" with the prep work and totally letting my players go buck wild in our new campaign. We're starting a Midnight campaign tomorrow and truth be told, other than working out some notes for the key encounters and a few NPCs, I am letting the players pick and choose their way. Im a little nervous about being so unprepared, but maybe this will bring new life to our gaming group?

Perhaps tomorrow I can repost in this thread and say: "how much do I adlib? 100%, my players love it!"

Here is to hoping it goes well!

Cheers,

 

[francisca]

I find one major thing helps when ad libbing. It was perhaps best put by the title of an old Dragon article:
If you are going to wing it, at least make a flight plan.

Which is to say, at least get an idea of what you want to do. If you have no direction, you are left floundering.

I'll second that advice. It's about the best way to ad-lib in my opinion.

 

[cybergaston]

To some extent, ad libbing is required if you have intelligent players that do unexpected things.

Or dumb players who do do the unexpectedly dumbest things...

 

[the Jester]

I'd say I ad-lib a lot, but a lot less so when I'm running a converted module (such as right now. ) I've run games for months with no advance prep, but not so much in 3e. I find it requires a bit more work to have everything reach the level of internal consistency that I want in my campaign.