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Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 6088619" data-attributes="member: 29746">Planning can only go so far- don't plan scenes like a movie, plan possibilities (like, say, "if the PCs don't fix the fire-swamp problem by March, then Count Rogan wins in the court and the war with Gelder will start."). And plan NPC character traits, so that you have an appropriate response ready when the PCs ask questions you didn't plan for. Don't plan it like a script, in other words- but know what the NPC "knows" (even if the NPC has incomplete or inaccurate information- for example, if the NPC has been lied to by others, but believes it to be true, then the lie is what he'll tell the PCs if they press him for info because he doesn't know any better). The more detail you can add to this, the better, but always remember: the details cannot depend on interaction with PCs. All interactions with PCs must be unscripted in advance or you get into that railroading problem.This is a difficult thing for most people to wrap their heads around until they actually GM for a while, but trust me, it can work (and work very well) once you get used to it.As for squeezing everything into a session, the best way is... don't. Be prepared to go a little bit over time, or end a little early. Your boss battle is an excellent example- it's a Bad Idea to end a session in the middle of a combat, because when people come back the next time around they have to get back into the mindset- remember where everything was, what they were doing, what the tactics were, how those tactics had changed from their original plans (if any) because enemy actions screwed them up, etc. I, and most of my players who went on to GM their own games, will actually continue a combat beyond the official ending time if it means we can actually finish said combat before the session break. By the same token, if it's close to the end of the session (like, say, within a half-hour) and it looks like a combat is about to start, then end the session early so you don't start the combat until the next time.And one of the most helpful things you can do is have some sort of recording of the session. If your game is online, then be sure your chat program or whatever you're using is logging everything; complete logs are a godsend to any GM. If you're doing it the old-fashioned way, at an actual tabletop, then bring a little recorder (most smartphones have apps you could use for this purpose in fact). That won't record the actual die rolls or visual data, but all the voices will be caught. And at session's end you can record important visual stuff like PC positions for that combat that's about to start, on spare graph paper or some other handy tool, as part of your cleanup before leaving. The reason you want records is because you can refer to them later. Remind yourself of the things you told them not just last week, but also last month and last year; remember also that seemingly-innocuous comments by PCs will often tell you where the players are expecting the story to go, so you can play off those expectations and thus build a more rich and engaging story. What's even more fun is when you can pull a little detail from months or years ago out of your GM's hat and surprise the players with it later, making that seemingly-insignificant detail suddenly vital to the success of the mission. This builds world detail, verisimilitude (look that up in a dictionary if you haven't seen it before; it's a good word for any GM to know), and makes the whole game come to more life in the players' collective vision.</blockquote>

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