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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nopantsyet" data-source="post: 1569230" data-attributes="member: 3109">My preparation is driven by the "moments."  I rough out maps and NPCs and I create plot arcs, but it's the significant encounters that I really focus on.  I often use site- and time-based elements as parts of the adventures, but they are never the primary focus, as in something like Temple of Elemental Evil.My campaign recently had a very significant session that illustrates how I work.  To set it up, the party knew there was a cult operating in the city, and they had reason to believe there was going to be a particularly nasty (i.e. destroying the city) ritual on a Midsummer's night.  Midsummer's also happens to be when city elections (renaissance republic) take place.  This was an especially significant election night because a new doge would be elected; the party suspected the favored candidate to be involved in leading this cult.  The party wanted to disrupt both.One of the PCs is a teenage courier.  He was previously tapped by the "League of Runners," the city's couriers' guild, to take their entrance exam.  That exam being to act as an official runner in the elections.  The elections are a complicated series of rallies, caucuses, delegation votes and ratification votes, so this is a challenging task.  Most of the day is spent running, quickly sharing information at assigned locations the running to the next.  This was the metronome of the session.  The session began the morning of that day.  The party was split into three groups: the runner, one PC on the catering staff for the suspect candidate's presumptive victory party, and the rest intent on disrupting the cult's ritual outside the city.  The morning moved pretty slow, but as the day progressed, more and more was happening in shorter periods of time.  It was very frantic by the end (as was my intention), and I was switching between the groups at a fast pace, giving them little time to think out their actions in some cases.The runner did his part to disrupt the election, but his sphere of influence was limited, and the code of conduct of the runners gave him need for subtlety.  The caterer managed to confront the candidate, who quickly decided the caterer knew too much and needed to be dispatched.  The party learned the cult had launched an exodus, and arrived at the ritual site to find two men.  One completed a spell as they arrived, sending a burst of magical energy from his person and across the landscape around them then disappearing from site.There were certain events that were fixed.  The runner could never possibly affect the outcome of an election in a city of almost 200,000.  Somebody had plans of their own to take out the crooked politician who, under clearly-magical circumstances, fell dead as he was preparing to stick the caterer with a particularly nasty-looking blade.  But both threads provided great roleplaying opportunities, and created a very exciting backdrop as the other party members moved against the cult.I had a number of important moments planned, and those most events were triggered by character action, though a few were time-based.  (But space contrains me from going into the part about the eclipse and the comet and the strange red light in the sky...)  But what I've found is that it's the "payoff moments" that really make the game.  When all three plot threads simultaneously climaxed, there was not only a tremendous amount of excitement, but also the convergances revealed some frightening information that the PCs were able to realize in a cinematic fashion as a result of constraining certain events.  That information has led the campaign in a completely different direction than the players anticipated, and increased the scope of the plots enough to increase the sense of danger and emergency.  I think the predeteremined events and the site- and time-driven elements enhanced the whole experience specifically because they were not the primary focus.</blockquote>

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