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

[Cowpie Zombie]

I'm a fanatical reader of Knights of the Dinner Table and last night I was reading some of my old issues and laughed my head off at this story in which B.A. (the DM of the group, for those of you who don't know KODT) confessed to his players that because he was so overworked he had completely ad libbed their last session, making up stuff and rolling on random encounters. The irony, of course, was that this was (according to the players) their best session ever.

My question for you DMs out there is this: How much do you ad lib? And have you ever had the balls to ad lib an entire adventure? I have to admit--I'm itching to try, just to see if I can get away with it...

 

[Harlock]

How much I ad lib is directly related to how much my players totally screw up my plotline.

I have ad libbed entire sessions and I have gotten positive feedback from them.

Sometimes I have ad libbed when my muse struck while not in the writing of an adventure, but during an adventure itself. Really, it all just depends.

 

[dreaded_beast]

I'm still new to DMing, having only ran 5 sessions so far.

I haven't really "planned" my encounters and what not out. What I do is create an area, make some small/written notes about what happens when my player goes there and take it from there.

There is an overall story, she is trying to learn about her past and explore the area she is currently living in. I just ask her where she wants to go and what she wants to do and based on my notes, take it from there.

It's been working OK so far. Every so often an idea pops into my head during the session, and I drop in an "encounter" and run it on the fly.

 

[Caspiar]

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....

 

[zenld]

some of my best adventures have been completely "off-the-cuff". also, some of my worst. if you know your campaign world and are passingly familiar with the rules, you can usually pull it off in such a way as your players will never know the difference. and if they do notice something, just tell them it was a bad day or you didn't have time to prep all of the stats for the monsters so you have to look them up. or don't tell them anything. it's just another one of the mysteries of being the GM. (and if they buy that one, let me know.)

i enjoy my both my planned and unplanned sessions. best of luck to you in both types.

zen

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I ad lib the games a lot. I find it very exhausting. I am often very tired after a session of "winging it." However, the games usually go very well. I prefer to have plans for a game because a well planned game is easier for me to run, but many times I don't have the time to plan.

 

[Shemeska]

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

I had a major, plot important NPC get taken out of the plot for around 6 months in game, and a few months out of game because of a perfectly valid but ingenious idea that my players devised and that I hadn't considered when I designed her or the encounter as how it might go down. I wasn't going to deny them their victory because of my pride or anything, and so I ended up ad libbing around 40-50% of the remainder of that session.

It seriously put a screwball into some of the background plot elements, and so I simply adjusted them to the absence of this particular fiend. 10 months in game later that NPC is back and things have progressed in her absence, but I adjust, that's what DM's do.

As much as I might appreciate having everything planned for, I can't. I do however admit that I prep each session generally in obsessive detail, my players can back me up here. *grin*

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

I think that if I knew my campaign world very well--i.e. I made it myself--I'd wing it a lot more in my sessions. I've had some okay sessions where I was primarily winging it, but, I've also had some GOD AWFUL sessions full of flying by the seat of my pants. I think I like having a pretty decent balance of prepping and winging. I want some rough idea of where things are going, and I really need to think about treasure, rewards, encounters, and NPCs ahead of time.

 

[Zoatebix]

Maybe about 50-50. By necessity, adventures lately have been relatively open-ended. I have a few events with set times, a few that could happen at any time, a few detailed locations, a few generic environments, and a few NPCs and organizations with goals, agendas, and potential interactions. The PCs know the big picture of what they want to do and pick up most of the fun details and smaller goals as they discover them or as their sought out by others. If they come up with a perfectly viable way to do something that I didn't think of: more power to them, I'll make it up as I go.

Sometimes I'll adlib myself into three plot twists too many, and confusion ensues for a bit while player and GM alike puzzle out what's going down. That's not too bad in the grand scheme of things, is it? We're all still learning, right?
-z

 

[Turanil]

I improvise everything but NPCs stats...

The truth is: I improvise everything, except for NPCs and monsters stats. I have absolutely no time for doing adventures in advance, so I took on the habit, and now being lazy and seeing it works, I never bother myself to prepare something.

Well, sometimes I think about the next adventure (usually when on the way to the place where we play), and try to remember the good idea I got. Also, for a particularly important adventure I once made a quick sketch of a temple. On the other hand, I write down all NPCs, and prepares their tactics in advance.

When I come to the game session I have several Dungeon magazine and sheets of paper with me. Then, when I don't have any interesting idea on the spot, I pause; behind my screen I pretend to re-read my scenario, often opening a magazine in front of them, so I can get time to invent something. Of course magical items are also improvised, and I write them down thereafter.

There is something great with this improvisation method: every adventure has a duration of one gaming session only, and players appreciate that. Then, as nothing is prepared I can easily follow players' suggestions. That is: players think there is a plot to uncover and make various hypothesis and deductions. I pick the ones that please me the best and build the plot on the spot based on what they said. I can tell you: players are extremely happy to see how clever they are!! :-D

If you want to see the result of this improvisation, our gaming sessions are recounted on my campaign website (see "adventures" section):
http://www.dcrouzet.net/d20highlands/
You will see I pretend to use Dungeon magazines adventures. But it is not the case, even if sometimes I take some inspiration from some of their plot ideas. I wrote this down so players would not know the truth!!

Otherwise, I once asked on the FanCC mailing list if others did also improvise, and I was horrified to learn that almost all of them did!! There was even a DM who also improvise the monsters stats and abilities on the spot!

DOM