Playing D&D without study or preparation.

[jester47]

I have been thinking about this fro a bit and it occurs to me that D&D is a game that is impossible to play without taking time outside of playing the game to essentially study. Players are a little bit more free of this, but they stil have to take time to level up thier character come up with backgrounds etc. DMs however are seriously required to take a large amount of time to prepare to run the game. This can run from reading a module to numerous other tasks that can be done. My question is this: Can D&D be played without preparing before hand?


Aaron.

 

[dave_o]

!

I always DM without prior preparation. I think of a few general directions in my head, but for the rest, I'm familiar enough with my worlds (since I design them) that I can run completely by the seat of my pants.

I've found it lets things be a lot more PC driven, and having a good poetic tongue and large vocabulary help a lot in describing scenes.

It's, all in all, good fun.

 

[Agamon]

I think it has to do with how much experience you have as a GM. 3E is a bit harder to run on the fly, but it is possible.

I often have ideas sorted out in my head and need no actual preperation for a game aside from printing out some stat blocks. Using the MM or figuring out what an important NPC should be able to do without a stat block isn't much fun.

When running a published adventure, it takes a bit more prep work. If I read an adventure that it think will fit in with the campaign, I'll decide what needs to be changed to fit it in, make some notes and get any changed stat blocks ready.

You also have to take into account that the players will often do things you couldn't have planned on. I find this the most rewarding part of DMing, as it makes me have to think on my feet. You just have to go with the flow in that case.

 

[Jeph]

If you're just going to do complete nonsense, 80' dragon in room with 10' hallway, hack-slash, no actual roleplaying, just kill the monster, (which can be fun every once in a while), then yeah, it's easy to do on the fly. I've tried doing a serius game on the fly before, and it SANK.

 

[drakhe]

Basicaly I think you should prepare. In my opinion there's only 2 kinds of DM's that can get away with not preparing. Either a DM with ages of expierience (who knows his world in en out wether it's published or self penned) or a Dm who's written his own world (but I think that's cheating: writing the world, developing it... is kind of preparing isn't it ;-) )

Usualy I try to figure out what the group should be able to cover in a session and then prepare arround that, making shure I at least have leads and hooks in all directions should they decide to go off on a tangent. I for one definatly need preparation. Last session I dared myself to run with only a scribling of ideas on a notepad page. Luckily for me, my players were mildly surprised and very happy with the proceedings as I told them beforehand I had only a slip of paper with prepared notes. Myself, I was not happy. It's not that I don't mind making things up, but I should not need to do that for major plot-events or NPC's. It's going to bite you in the back later in the campaign. I also found that having to make things up all of the time (even with the help of a bunch of computer tools like etools, the old chargen, pcgen and a little program I wrote myself to handle certain skill tests and initiative) is just taking too much time and is not fun because of the stop-go mode your in (stop while I make up this bunch of NPC's which is a gypsy camp, OK go...) I mean, even with the best and fastest NPC generators it takes a couple of seconds to generate and another bunch of seconds to go thru the statblock and make sense of the NPC. Even published modules should be prepared, having to read a page of the module to make sense of a scene is just taking too much time of of playing!

So, my advice in anycase is: prepare ! Know your NPC's and locations beforehand, work out handouts and maps beforehand and re-read whatever notes you have (either written yourself or from a published module) before you start playing!

On the other hand, there are those few DM's who can run without preparation. My FR DM is one such beast. He doesn't use a screen, I've hardly ever seen him bring notes to the table and all his NPC's (including stats) live in his mind. But than again, he's been running games in FR for close to 20 years now...
(guess running a RPG hobby shop helps the inspiration though)

 

[Bob Aberton]

If you're just going to do complete nonsense, 80' dragon in room with 10' hallway, hack-slash, no actual roleplaying, just kill the monster, (which can be fun every once in a while), then yeah, it's easy to do on the fly. I've tried doing a serius game on the fly before, and it SANK.

Oh, ye of little faith. Check out my story hour in the link. All of said campaign, which I flatter myself is a serious game, I do on the fly, with no preparation other than the occasional stat blocks, and even those I only need to prepare every other session at most.

In other words, I've tried doing a serious game on the fly, and it swam

Try it, its not that hard. Just remember what you made up, so that you maintain consistency.

 

[Grazzt]

In the last 20 years of playing, I've DMed many times on the fly and without preparation.

I've done both serious (in my 15+ yr ongoing campaign) and one-off games; both without prepping for them. Never had any major snags either. They've all gone smooth.

 

[Buttercup]

I suppose that I would be able to DM on the fly if I had a few more years of experience, but as it stands it would be impossible for me. For example, presently my players are passing through some plains which are dotted with a few settlements. They're on their way to a city which is on the other side of an immense forest. Even though I don't think they will visit every settlement on the plains, I know what they're named, I know how many people live there, and I know the names of a handful of important NPCs in each village. There are several possible adventures that the players could choose to do. I've also got some random encounter tables set up. If they cross the plains without visiting any of these interesting locations, I can always reuse them in the future. But this way, I'm ready if they decide to go haring off.

 

[Mercule]

I'd never run a module before 3E and I rarely prepped. None-the-less, I've received more than a few compliments on my games.

Honestly, my game took a bit of a hit when I started using modules. After four modules, I'm comfortable in saying that my games are now running great. Still, it's a different mindset.

I think the two styles are simply two different skills. Learning to run from a module or prepped adventure may be the easier of the two skills to learn, but either way you can have a great game if the GM has the appropriate skill.

As drakhe pointed out, most DMs who run on the fly have built their own world. I do. I also know Greyhawk well enough that I could run it without prep, but forget about FR. I think it is possible to run a carte blanche setting without prep, though. I can and I have. What it really amounts to, however, is the use of another skill on the fly: world-building.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

 

[Deadguy]

Reading through this, I realise that 'preparation' means different things to different people. In very broad brush terms, I would suggest that there are two types of preparation: World-building Prep and Adventure Prep. Of course they bleed into one another (since adventures generally take place somewhere in the 'world'), but they ca be handled independently.

It is clear that a fair number of people who do not prepare for a role-playing session nevertheless have prepared, in the sense of reading about or developing their world-setting. I count myself in this group - I spend far more time working out the details of towns and countries than I do thinking of specific events for the PCs to interact with. I know my setting well enough that whatever the PCs decide to do I can probablt generate something 'realistic' and interesting for them to do. I think that this accounts for the sizeable fraction of people who don't prepare who run their own homebrew worlds. They've already put the work in, so it's really a matter of tapping a pre-prepared stockpile of goodies!

Adventure-prepping is the specific work of determining who and what the PCs are dealing with. This is most essential when dealing with purchased modules, since you do need to familiarise yourself with the story and setting unless you want to spend lots of the session going 'ummm.... errrr.... just reading it up now... he's an Elf! And a woman...' Now, I do think that part of the difference in preparation for the adventure arises from experience. I know my players fairly well, I know the setting and I know the sorts of things they like to get up to. So I can get away with little prep. But change one of those factors and even after 20 years as a DM I can still get floored!

Whether or not you prep is partly a matter of experience, partly a matter of familiarity (with the PCs and with the rules). But it's also a stylistic choice. Some people simply find that they can't stand working from aen extensive adventure 'script' whilst others like the feeling of having sorted out the details in advance so that they don'y have to suddenly decide where the nearst inn is, or who in fact received the message puch from the Royal Groom...

I would encourage DMs and players to experiment a little with how they prep for the gaming session. Different models suit different people, and can make for better sessions!