Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7722126" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, you can either view that as an overabundance of preparation, or you can view that as an under abundance of preparation.  I view it as the later.If you are viewing that as the later, the problem is that the DM prepared only for the one thing he wanted or expected the players to do.  Further, he had also not prepped any material that would allow him to improvise new solutions.   That's a woeful lack of preparation, not an overabundance of it.I would call out the games you call 'over prepping' as not prepping well or nearly enough!DMs wanting to control the story occurs in both low preparation and high preparation scenarios.  Your personal experience may be with one, but you can get DMs that want the game to be about them and them alone regardless of how much prep that they do.   IMO, low preparation all but guarantees the only story that happens is the one that depends entirely on the DMs whim.  While it is true that if you prepare nothing, nothing can happen that you don't want to happen, it's also true that nothing can happen that you don't want to happen.   I'll make that as provocative as a I can - only high prep GMs ever experience players making a choice, because only high prep GMs ever are in a situation where they know before the choice is what the results of the choice are going to be.   One of the problems I have with improvisation is, other than the fact that it takes a lot of skill to pull off well, is if you don't ever know what the results of a choice are going to be until it is presented (and made), you have no reason to believe that the PC's can ever contradict your preferences for play and its highly likely (in my experience) that you are engaged in illusionism regarding actual player choice.   As a player, this drives me to absolute distraction, because once I realize nothing is true, I also realize I have no meaningful choices - it didn't matter if I went east or west, left or right, or who I accused of the crime, or whether I missed a clue, or if I was careful, or if I used good tactics, or really anything.   The most powerful way to railroad is Schrodinger's Map - regardless of the direction you travel, you get to the destination - because the location of everything is flexible.   The temptation, conscious or unconscious, to improvise the tracks to take the player where you want them to go is too great when you haven't actually made the 'map' and established truth beforehand.To that end, I'd revise your manifesto, "GMs need to learn how to prep more...but with greater versatility/applicability and utility."Where I agree is before you start a game, you need to negotiate with your players what the game is trying to accomplish.  In my current campaign, I sent out a questionnaire, and all six players said they'd rather do an adventure path than play in a sandbox.   Indeed, one player said the best games were the ones that were on rails.   That's let me plan ahead far more than I have in previous games, but even then they frequently are off the rails and I have to improvise.   But for example, in the games first session, I had prepped six different responses to player actions knowing that I couldn't foresee which way they'd approach the scenario.   So even my improvisations were planned.The mark of a good sandbox DM is you prepare more material than you can or will use, and you have to be OK with that.The rest of your advice - your six bullet points - about how to achieve good preparation and be a GM that is actually engaging your players wants I fully agree with.</blockquote>

Verification