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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 7722201" data-attributes="member: 2656">Know yourself and know your players. I've encountered numbers of referees who either have poor self-awareness so they don't know what they actually want, and don't want, from a game, or are unwilling to reveal or discuss what their game goals are. Ambiguity or uncertainty in your own goals as a referee often increases the amount of prep needed to cover more ground.The better you know your players the easier it is to prep for them, on average. Proactive players probably call for different proportions of prep to reactive players. Different groups will value different decisions types,and in a lower prep game it's important to ensure as much as possible that the decision points that do come up in the game are meaningful to both yourself and the players involved.The massive subjectivity of &quot;meaningful decision&quot; makes it difficult to write about definitively. In one game it would could be attempting to open the warded door in a dungeon despite the dire warnings and nearby corpses of the last people who attempted the same task. In another it could be about what personal sacrifices your PC is willing to make to accomplish a particular task. Some games avoid such weighty decision making deliberately and aim for a more lighthearted game, or a game of dark humour.It's generally a bad idea to not provide players with the choices they crave, or force decisions on players who don't want the hassle.I see this as relevant as when you are reducing game prep, it seems wise to improvise the ordinary mundane parts of the adventure, and prep is better focused on coming up with and integrating important decision points.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 7722201, member: 2656"] Know yourself and know your players. I've encountered numbers of referees who either have poor self-awareness so they don't know what they actually want, and don't want, from a game, or are unwilling to reveal or discuss what their game goals are. Ambiguity or uncertainty in your own goals as a referee often increases the amount of prep needed to cover more ground. The better you know your players the easier it is to prep for them, on average. Proactive players probably call for different proportions of prep to reactive players. Different groups will value different decisions types,and in a lower prep game it's important to ensure as much as possible that the decision points that do come up in the game are meaningful to both yourself and the players involved. The massive subjectivity of "meaningful decision" makes it difficult to write about definitively. In one game it would could be attempting to open the warded door in a dungeon despite the dire warnings and nearby corpses of the last people who attempted the same task. In another it could be about what personal sacrifices your PC is willing to make to accomplish a particular task. Some games avoid such weighty decision making deliberately and aim for a more lighthearted game, or a game of dark humour. It's generally a bad idea to not provide players with the choices they crave, or force decisions on players who don't want the hassle. I see this as relevant as when you are reducing game prep, it seems wise to improvise the ordinary mundane parts of the adventure, and prep is better focused on coming up with and integrating important decision points. [/QUOTE]

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