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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4256008" data-attributes="member: 5143">Nope...They are just really into their own storylines.  I knew one DM who had no group of players at all.  He just had what he thought was a great idea for a fantasy world.  He'd spend some of his nights detailing out one country or another in a campaign book.  After he was done with the world, he started writing an adventure that took place in that world.  He knew some of the details(although not detailed) of what would happen to the players when they got to 20th level.  And this was before he even knew who his players would be.  And he knew he was starting them at first.He eventually asked nearly every person he knew who liked D&D if they'd have time to play in his campaign.  I was asked and declined due to lack of time.  However, he eventually found a group of players.  Some would leave and he'd just ask more people he knew until he filled the spots in the middle of the campaign.I know another DM who really liked the idea of running a World of Warcraft RPG game.  He started writing an adventure encounter by encounter in almost the exact same format WOTC or LG uses for their adventures.  He double checked the stats of every monster and NPC he wrote up and listed them in full stat block format, complete with boxed text(to be fair, I played in the first group he ran his adventures with and his boxed text only said "This is placeholder text" until after we played them and he filled them in afterwords).  Our first group fell apart after a short while and he found an entirely new group of players and asked them to play through it.  I know he now has 11 "chapters" of his adventure written up and his players are only up to the 5th.  He has months worth of stuff written up just in case he falls behind.I'm nowhere near that organized or want to spend that much time on my games.  But I feel I'm doing a disservice to my players if I just plan things on the fly.  So I normally run prewritten adventures that I get from dungeon magazine, online, or purchased.The couple of times I've actually made up my own adventure, I at least have an outline of the whole adventure "chapter" in my head.  For instance, I started one game where the PCs were hired by a noble to kill an orc tribe who had been stealing cattle from a village in his region.  I knew in advance that the Lord had paid the Orcs to attack the village and had put out the help wanted sign in order to lure adventurers to their deaths.  It was part of an elaborate plot to become King(he was eliminating anyone who might be able to stop his plans).  I also knew that the PCs would end up defeating the Orcs and therefore stumble onto clues that the Lord might be involved.I figured this would lead into future adventures where the PCs would slowly learn more details about the plot until they confronted him directly.  And find out that the real power behind it was his adviser, a powerful archmage disguised as a lowly noble.And I had at least that much planned out before the first session even started.  I knew who was playing in the game, but not what characters they'd be bringing.  I assumed the details would change as things in the campaign developed, but the theme of the campaign was going to be "Stop the Lord from destabilizing the entire country and staging a coup to take control" and I knew it would take until the PCs were around 15th or 16th level before it would be completed.There are a number of people who play that way as well.  I found it was more common back in the 1st and 2nd Ed days.  However, even my 1st Ed DM used to spend his days in his University classes writing up encounters and boxed text for our D&D games.</blockquote>

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