On the fly or planned out?

[ironmani]

Just wondering how you guys run your adventures? Do you carefully plan ever little, tiny detail? Or do you have an idea of where you want the campaign/adveture to go, making up the stuff as you go?

 

[Ravellion]

Up to level 5 or 6, I usually even adlib my Dungeons. After that, I start paying a bit more attention to the design of everything.

Rav

 

[Morrus]

Almost completely on the fly. I often have no idea what I'm going to be doing even as the session starts. I often listen to player conversations and steal the ideas I like!

 

[Hellefire]

Depends on the players and my mood. I like to read anything I can that gives me adventure ideas, then incorporate little bits of this and that into the sessions. Of course, I think it's better to have a loose outline at best because players screw up the best-laid plans, or at least try to. On the other hand, it's handy to have a loose outline too. Someties I feel like sitting down for a month and planning details just because I find that fun sometimes. Other times, I invite people over and make a theme of whatever the first player says, though I don't tell them that.

Aaron Blair
Foren Star

 

[francisca]

90% on the fly. I have a very loose macro plot rolling along, but I generally have no set place/time to drop in plot points. I loathe the idea of D&D adventures being a series of "scenes" strung together with a linear plot. The first time I read that kind of treatment of a D&D module back in the 80's, complete with chapters, scences, and flow charts, I literally walked over to the trash and dropped it in.

 

[solkan_uk]

I generally get a start, an end and some bits I wan't to incorporate and ad lib the stuff between.
It's part laziness, part liking to be able to adjust to the time, and part reacting the players.

 

[pogre]

I said both, but more times than not I have heavily planned the session out completely. However, I endeavor not to restrict my players' choices for their characters - so if they choose to run off in a direction I have not planned I just go with the flow.

 

[Wombat]

I come up with notes as guidelines -- major monster stats, maybe a trap or two, important NPCs. Most of the time these notes get used.

Then again there was the infamous One Sentence Adventure, but let's not go into that again

Yesterday I ran a totally on-the-fly session, as two of our players had to be out and we had been technically mid-adventure, so we used our backup characters (everyone has at least 2 characters in this campaign) on a minor mission.

Worked out fine

 

[MonsterMash]

I always find that if I do a lot of planning the players do something I didn't prepare for, mainly I prepare a rough plot and set of likely options, but mainly make sure I've got encounters and NPCs stats available that I can use to allow their actions without too much need for me to try and do things mid-game.

 

[Buttercup]

I prefer to have several rough plot hooks available, each with fully statted monsters & NPCs, maps and treasure. If the players don't use them, fine. I can always recycle the parts. I know who lives where, what their issues are and how they'll react to the party. This is freeform enough that I can be prepared for the players to do just about anything. However, it takes lots of time to prepare for this kind of game.


Sometimes I get the wacky idea that running a published adventure will save me time. But my players have never...NEVER...followed the path set forth in a published adventure. So I end up doing it all myself anyway, but on the fly. Unsatisfying for all involved, since I just don't DM all that well by the seat of my pants.

The one exception is some of the Necromancer modules. They're really more like mini campaign settings than actual linear adventures, so they're akin to the sort of thing I'd put together myself.