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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9632608" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's a generous thing to say!If there is something prepared - GM's notes, a module, etc - then there is an artefact (a document or collection of documents/papers) that exists.There is also, perhaps, a plan that exists (as an abstract object). That might depend on the nature of the prep.But there is no shared fiction until play actually takes place. And I don't think a bit of shared fiction is less "objective" because it is settled on now rather than is the result of a plan that was made then.To me, the relevance of prep is really about why, and what for? Apocalypse World is very clear about this: prep is done between sessions, so that there is time to think it through and write it up; and the purpose of prep is to give the GM interesting things to say (soft moves and hard moves) - I had a back-and-forth upthread about this with [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER]. (See post 1740, and the posts that precede that via quoting.)In Prince Valiant - the system in which I ran "The Blue Cloak", a fairly simple mystery that I posted about upthread - preparation is generally about coming up with a scene or situation. Because the default PC in Prince Valiant is a knight errant, all a situation needs is a hook for that errantry: and that's what a good Prince Valiant episode provides.In the case of the Cthulhu Dark session that I've spoken about in this thread, there wasn't any prep: the players established their PCs' raisons d'etre, and I used those as a starting point to then frame scenes/situations. And for making moves, I didn't need any prep because I drew on the elements that were in the scenes and situations plus tropes and genre (eg the lycanthrope stuff). In this respect, I think a one-shot is different from a game like AW that is meant to be played, and to unfold, over multiple sessions.</blockquote>

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