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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 7933222" data-attributes="member: 7016699">I guess it doesn't even feel like a plot to me, if all I have is maybe the instigating event and some backstory, but that's probably a holdover from my various attempts to write fiction.I'm trying to read you in a positive light, but it sometimes feels as though there is some failure of communication (two-way failure, to be clear) happening. I understand how the kind of GMing you're talking about works--I've done it, using the Our City stuff from Dresden Files to make a campaign setting. It took like two sessions (about eight hours at the table) to get it together, and we didn't so much finish as just decide we had enough and stop. And I did more than half the work, with three others at the table, and I had to figure out how to fit it together. It really felt like more front-loaded work than I think it was supposed to.So, to give an idea of what my prep is like, I'm going to expand on the cabal from my campaign, because I've actually run it (this past Saturday, in fact).The party ended up at the city because they'd heard there was some sort of unpredictable thing nearby spitting Fire Elementals into the world, and a member of the party had a Ring of Fire Elemental Command he wanted to get fully powered-up.I thought about it, and I decided maybe there should be more to it than that, so I decided that the portal to the Plane of Fire was overlaid onto a portal to Stygia (one of the Nine Hells). And that the portal to Fire was intended as protection, with something like a kamikaze mode if intruded on severely, so the party might accidentally set off the portal to Stygia in the process of turning off the portal to the Plane of Fire.The party fought their way to the portal/s, closed them both without incident, and found some stuff the cabal had stashed there as something like a bug-out cache.So I had to figure out who was in the cabal, and why. That wasn't too hard. The consequences of the party dealing with the cabal were also pretty straightforward, as well.That was two sessions worth of material (broke after party closed the portals), and what story there was mostly emerged in play. I just took what seemed like the next logical step, repeatedly. All of this was stuff that the party was interpolating itself into, so much of my DMing at the table was asking myself repeatedly "What does this change?"I understand how the kind of GMing you're talking about works--I've done it, using the Our City stuff from Dresden Files to make a campaign setting. It took like two sessions (about eight hours at the table) to get it together, and we didn't so much finish as just decide we had enough and stop. And I did more than half the work, with three others at the table, and I had to figure out how to fit it together. It really felt like more front-loaded work than I think it was supposed to. I GMed that campaign closer to what I think you're talking about, by letting the players tell me what's going on. That's how I ended up in a Fate game with a wedding reception that had the Aspect on it "All God's chillun got guns." Frankly, I found running that way more mental load, more work, than preparing all the stuff myself.This isn't really all that different from how I start campaigns in D&D. Take the characters, put them in the same time and place, throw [stuff] at the fan.Heh. I find maps easy to do on the fly. Markers and a battlemat. If the party is still in roughly the same environment, turn the battlemat around, maybe add a couple things.Funny thing is, my players have managed to surprise me. Something tossed in as a side event became important. They made friends and allies, and have been in contact with some important beings (though they may not know how important yet). All emergent from play, though clearly different from the play at your table.In my experience, the suggestions that have come up don't reduce prep so much as change it. Even if you don't have an idea of where things are going to go next, if you get a bunch of naive input (to use your term) you're still going to have to work to fit it together into something. It might be easy, if your players are all more or less on the same page; if your players are in different books, it might be a challenge.Actually, it's pretty obvious, at least to me. Remember, I've tried it that way. It requires a different approach not just from the GM, but from the players, and the GM can only control one part of that.I think there might have been some hope, lo these many pages ago, that there might be suggestions for how to prep more efficiently, within more or less the same paradigm. I have a sneaking suspicion that hope has been thoroughly extinguished. It might be possible to prep more efficiently without changing the kind of prep you do, but yes, it almost certainly involves changing something (and that something might not be something you want to change).</blockquote>

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