Off The Cuff GMing

[Cor Azer]

I do a lot of winging it during the session, and my notes often consist of names to be used (in case I need a name on the fly), potential locations, maybe some monster stats, and some pre-rolled random dice rolls (I'll have a list of 20+ rolls, and tick them off starting from the top of the list in case I want to roll for something without tipping off the players that I'm "rolling").

Plot hooks and cool scenes are sometimes hashed out ahead of time, but rarely committed to paper.

 

[barsoomcore]

I'm not good enough with 3E to wing it yet. It will take some time to be able to come up with NPC stats on the fly.

Stats? Nah. Just roll the dice, consider the result, compare with the presumed "toughness" of the bad guy in question, and declare an outcome. Make up fun abilities ("And then he BREATHES FIRE ON YOUR FACE"). Worry about the rules later.

I've spent many a post-session hour wondering how the heck to justify what I just had my bad guy do. Some of my best plot points have come out of completely unexpected abilities NPCs suddenly needed to have. (If you're reading Barsoom Tales, just wait till you find out how tough Yuek Man Chong REALLY is -- there's a primary campaign plot that hinges on the fact that I wanted her to survive something)

When I feel like winging it, I'm pretty no-wires. Dice? Who needs dice?

I don't wing it so much in 3E because I actually want to LEARN the rules, I think. Which is weird, for me. But winging it is important, too.

You get more creative when you're coming up with stuff on the fly. Your instincts (which are probably more reliable than your brain, if you're anything like me) kick into gear and all sorts of stuff that you would have in more relaxed moments dismissed as too "out there" suddenly start coming out of your mouth. And then after that, your brain needs to process this stuff and set in some sort of order.

A campaign's never going to go the way you think it is. What would be the point in running it, if it did? BORING. So there's always some degree of "winginess". Embrace the wing. Trust your instincts. And resign yourself to scrambling like heck to justify the nonsense you come up with while you do.

That said, I do a lot of prep work these days. I find it very satisfying to have details at hand, to be prepared -- plus I just like doing the thinking about my campaign. It's a fun place to hang out. I regularly jot down notes on what people all over the world are up to, and it's like checking on old friends ("I wonder what Boyce is up to these days...").

 

[ivocaliban]

Without a doubt my best DMing moments come when I'm ill-prepared, yet heavily immersed in and excited by the storyline. I've had games where I make pages of notes and spend days writing down stats to have on hand for just the right moment...and when the time comes I'm far too concerned with my notes to really focus on the action at hand.

I was always a bit paranoid when the time came to do this sort of thing, but I found that it freed me from the constraints of black and white and left me with a great many colours to work with when painting a scene or deciding what was around the next corner. Every time I've done this, though, my players have made comments on how great the session was...and that never seems to happen when I spend a great deal of time on it.

The imagination is released from the bonds of the written word during these times. So far I've been lucky enough not to have had a bad experience with "Off the Cuff" DMing, so I'm likely to keep employing this style of play. It's for this reason that I find playing in well-established worlds more difficult than my own, but even that doesn't bother me as much as it once did. My Greyhawk is certainly not like the original. It's distinctly my own and might very well confuse anyone intimately familiar with the Flanaess's real history.

In the end though, I tend to take as many (or as few) notes while gaming as I do between sessions. Having an idea in the raw form I shape it far better in the thick of things than I can beforehand. This may stem from the fact that once I've written something down it's hard for me to not refer to it time and time again. If I have nothing to refer to...I simply fill in the blanks as I go. Usually, to everyone's mutual delight.

 

[der_kluge]

I'm not great at winging, but every DM has done it once or twice unexpectedly.

One thing that I've done before is something I call round-robin DM'ing. The idea is to start with someone (roll initiative to determine who starts), and that person starts DM'ing - completely off the cuff. And then after 30 minutes, they pass to the next person. And it just goes around the table that way.

It's a complete blast (there are a few more rules, if you want them, let me know). But, some of the best games I've ever played were from a session of round-robin DM'ing.

I'll be happy to do some at GenCon if I am able to make it this year, and it looks like I might be able to.

 

[Chris Durham]

I'm not much of an off-the-cuff DM myself and d20 doesn't seem to be easy. Some of my finest memories, though, involve random events such as watching ewok porn in the old West End Star Wars game, or going through a bedroom stuffed with compacted cars to reap platinum from the catalytic converters in an old-school Cthulhu game. If you can manage it, unscripted is the way to go.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Without a doubt my best DMing moments come when I'm ill-prepared, yet heavily immersed in and excited by the storyline.

In my own experience, I've found that planning to just wing a session rarely works well for me - if I'm not prepared, I usually end up wishing I'd postponed the session. The times when winging works tend to be the ones where everyone gets caught up in what's happening. Once that starts to happen, my notes will be mostly ignored as we all just see where things lead. Unfortunately, since I haven't found a way to reliably predict such moments, I'll have to stick to planning ad nauseum for now.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

It's a complete blast (there are a few more rules, if you want them, let me know).

Please do - I think this would be a great fallback for those times when I'm just not ready with a session, but the group wants to play.