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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9845337" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Assuming equal skill on the parts of Laura and Liam, it can go either way… but I tend to lean toward Liam as being more likely to portray a consistent world. What I see when you describe tons of prep is tons of opportunity for inconsistency. What Laura’s doing is predetermining a whole slew of facts. And when it comes to an RPG, each of those facts represent a potential inconsistency if they’re gotten wrong in some way. To me… as someone who used to run very high prep games… what it’s doing is giving the GM material to lean on. Material that can potentially benefit from time to consider how it fits into the whole. This is not a bad thing… most GMs would benefit from this kind of structure. But the fact is that, in this case, more is not better. There are things that it may certainly help to know ahead of time… the name and general situation of the city in which play begins, what’s the population like, what are the surrounding areas like, and so on. None of it is absolutely necessary to start play, but it’s all reasonable stuff. And you can likewise swap out geographical facts for more social ones.But there comes a point where prep is just not enhancing play at the table. It is not helping a world seem consistent and is not benefitting the GM… likely, it could even be hampering her as she pauses to try and remember or look up some minor fact about the world that, for play purposes, will at this point only be color. Over the years, I’ve come to realize the important fact that play happens at the table. So whatever prep I may do needs to be in service to that. And the best ways to support that is by having a simple structure in place… the term scaffolding was used, and that’s a great metaphor for it. Something that helps me, but which I can build on during play, and which isn’t so complex as to hinder what I’m trying to do at the table. So you may doubt this take if you like. I understand why you do, and years ago I’d have agreed with you. What I would say is to GM a game that’s designed to be run with little to no prep. Not one that simply can be run that way, like D&D… but one that is meant to be run that way. Do that a few times, with maybe a couple of such games. You may wind up still thinking that prep’s the better way to go for you. But I don’t expect that you will still doubt people who may think otherwise.</blockquote>

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