Playing D&D without study or preparation.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Another thought is, not everything has to be explainable. If things get boring and you are following step four from above, and it is completely random, I would expect to hear pharses like "where did that come from?!" "How did a chain golem get in the other room?" and "A what?!" Who says you have to explain everything? Considering that the world has ass loads of magic, things really dont have to make sense.

I think you are doing this the wrong way. Instead of saying: "Why does everything have to make sense?", just listen to the speculation of their players - and take notes.

With a little practice, you can get the players to practically write the adventures themselves!

Player: "Ha! I told you that villain X was really Y!"

GM: "Uhm, yes. You figured that one out really well. Here, have some XP!"

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Realism. If the world implied by D&D were more like the real world and the [comparatively] realistic worlds of most adventure fiction, GMs would be able to rely on their general knowledge and common sense more, and would have less need to learn the peculiarities of the D&D world.

You know, I think demanding "realism" for D&D is completely missing the point.

If you want more realism in your game, simply play another RPG. I recommend GURPS, BTW. D&D is for those campaigns in which you don't want to be constrained by realism...

 

[Deadguy]

I think you are doing this the wrong way. Instead of saying: "Why does everything have to make sense?", just listen to the speculation of their players - and take notes.

With a little practice, you can get the players to practically write the adventures themselves!

Player: "Ha! I told you that villain X was really Y!"

GM: "Uhm, yes. You figured that one out really well. Here, have some XP!"

Yup! Player speculation is an absolute godsend! So long as you don't adopt everyhting they say, and provided that they will speak freely in front of you (some won't!), then you've probably got a major story arc coming out of every session!

 

[s/LaSH]

Some thoughts:

First, familiarity can't be beat. You need to study the rules to know whay they can do; this is why I keep the PHB by my PC so I can read while it's loading whatever it's loading. More importantly, familiarity with established settings can be very useful; it does, however, require a little more prep time to convert the Belgariad into d20 even if your players can recite half the Rivan Codex and need no introduction to the world. Is it worth it? I don't know; I run a homebrew setting. (Actually, because it's medieval Europe, I still have that familiarity advantage as well as the single biggest collection of sourcebooks for any campaign setting ever.)

Second, flexibility is an illusion. If the PCs know what the DM has prepared, they know too much. Prepare what you want to use and nothing more; the PCs will encounter what you want them to. Why roll dice to find wandering monsters? Take a little time and design a half dozen wandering packs, and throw them at the party in sequence. You can roll them independantly, but you don't have to roll them during a game session. (Again, this requires prep but smooths game time.)

Similarly: Design adventures that can be plugged into any circumstance. Some of them can be obvious side-tracks. However, side-tracks aren't accidents; they're planned carefully. I did this in my campaign; the PCs still think it was a teleport malfunction that landed them in this dungeon full of traps and intricate history, wheras I actually set up a whole system of magical defences with the side effect of plunging them into the Tomb Of Dread. (My name; it's unofficial but describes it pretty well.)

I prepped the dungeon ahead of time and was amazed when the PCs took two sessions to get to it; they travelled to Budapest, educated a dryad, teleported a wagon down the Danube, ran from a dragon, fought gnolls, made a diplomatic faux pas with an elvish Duke and dealt with orcish merchants before reaching the dungeon in a desert somewhere. I had to do all that on the fly - a side track from the side track. Point is, the PCs went exactly where I wanted them to go no matter what they did. THEY don't know what's around every corner; YOU do, the DM. So don't plan every corner; plan one corner, and make it location-nonspecific so the PCs find it around the first corner they investigate. If all goes according to plan, they won't ever go back to find those other corners.

Third, creation is its own reward. I can think of little that's more fun than sitting down and writing/planning/drawing something cool, all on my lonesome. Although maybe that's just me. I've done fifty pages of races for another homebrew campaign so far, and I haven't even considered inviting people to play in it... they're MY toys! Mine! Precious!

Ahem.

So yeah, prep is important... but so is general knowledge and preparing only what you need.

 

[jester47]

I think you are doing this the wrong way. Instead of saying: "Why does everything have to make sense?", just listen to the speculation of their players - and take notes.

With a little practice, you can get the players to practically write the adventures themselves!

Player: "Ha! I told you that villain X was really Y!"

GM: "Uhm, yes. You figured that one out really well. Here, have some XP!"

That is actually my point although somewhat sublimated. I find that I can take a half assed idea and turn it into gold (I'm told its called the editors touch) and so a player going "Ha! The Pickle merchant really was a zhentarim spy!" gives me the idea that he is only half right. The pickel merchant told the Zhentarim what they needed to know because they have his wife's soul in a gem and an operative is looking out through her eyes... But yes, there are many times when I am not winging it that players come up with a far better plot than the module or myself have divised. Now that I am going to be winging it, I think I will start using thier imaginations.

Aaron.

 

[Psion]

My question is this: Can D&D be played without preparing before hand?

I think an experienced GM can run with little prep, yes (I did last week when we found out that the players did not want to go on to the next part of the major plotline without one of the missing players.) But I do think that preparation usually aids in making the session more enjoyable, sometimes greatly. The benefit of forethought is not to be underestimated.

 

[Henry]

Another point to make: The question has been raised, "how to make it friendlier out of the box?" I would like to add that, while making it friendlier is a worthwhile goal, past a certain point, experience MUST become a requisite.

Similar to learning how to drive a car, the world's simplest car cannot be driven well by first-time beginners. Similarly, Golf is a relatively simple game; but the first time anyone gets out onto a golf course and hits the little ball with the graphite stick, barring natural talent, they are going to stink at it, and HORRIBLY.

In the case of driving an automobile, someone first takes lessons, learns the road rules, learns the basics of wipers, emergency lights, brakes, steering, etc. - and then they finally go out and DO it. Regardless of the steps, actually driving is the ONLY way to attain the skill.

Similarly, you can know everything there is to know about the history of golf, and still be unable to drive a ball more than 30 yards in the right direction.

As in D&D, as in all hobbies and sports, there is no skill like DOING. The more you do, the easier it gets - for prep time, for play, for everything.

 

[Rifter]

I would say it depends on the person

I can GM D&D on the fly, since I am familiar with the setting (FR) and the rules. With games I am not familiar with, I need to study. I mainly run modules, but my players don't tend to notice when I fly by the seat of my pants.

 

[qstor]

I've been DMing more RPGA modules than my home game latly so I prepare by reading the module. Last session for my home game of the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar I did on the fly and the players had a good time. I sent them after the trolls in the carverns of the claw and had an NPC I made show up before that to sell a map to a new player.

Mike

 

[jester47]

Re: Re: Playing D&D without study or preparation.

I think an experienced GM can run with little prep, yes (I did last week when we found out that the players did not want to go on to the next part of the major plotline without one of the missing players.) But I do think that preparation usually aids in making the session more enjoyable, sometimes greatly. The benefit of forethought is not to be underestimated.

I think the reason I am asking is simply because I found myself preparing a lot and not getting much out of it. I think it had to do with several things:

1. My group was too big. This had lots of repercussions when it came to prep.

My group is now smaller.

2. I was being too much of a perfectionist. I was going into detail that really was not needed.

So now I come up with just enough detail to make the players think that it is really detailed.

3. I was trying to second guess everything that the players might try to do.

3a. If I was not doing that then I was creating "closed" encounters. That is encounters where the results change the events, but the characters have little control over what happens encounter to encounter.

Now it is "lets see what the players do..."

In other words I was over working myself.

Now I have the general hooks and situations mapped out in the form of an adventure one pager, and I plan on following the advice for NPC preperation from "Dungeoncraft" in Dragon 301. That should make things much easier.

Aaron.