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<blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 9287988" data-attributes="member: 6906155">Yeah, I would call that a scenario, or story outline. It has nothing like enough detail or certitude to qualify as a plot.It's clear that JA uses a story outline, so that cannot be what he means by &quot;not prepping plot&quot;. It may be that like me, he never writes it down. Writing things down can be a dangerous business. Once written, they become a lot less flexible.So, to explain what I think JA does mean by &quot;not prepping plot&quot;, lets look at an example where the rule is broken. From Rime of the Frostmaiden, Chapter 3, page 172:The cut scene plays, and the players arrive just to late to prevent the dragon flying off to attack the Ten Towns, no matter what they do. They arrive at the location and Plot happens.So, how would you write that as a situation instead? I would do it something like this:Personally, I think that's better...I understand where you are coming from with that! However, this is another example of JA taking credit for something he didn't invent. Hexcrawls have worked like that since the very early days of D&amp;D, I was doing it in 1982 (and it wasn't new then). JA is really a very old-school DM!Frankly, a sandbox takes a lot of prep. No getting round that if you want the players to have plenty of interesting things to do. The only real shortcut is to drop in prewritten content (use sources). Directing the players with a strong narrative might look like a shortcut, but IMO you still need to have lots of sidequests, B plots*, and stuff going on to make the world feel alive.*I'm assigning a slightly different meaning to the word &quot;plots&quot; in this context. Language is a slippery thing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Paul Farquhar, post: 9287988, member: 6906155"] Yeah, I would call that a scenario, or story outline. It has nothing like enough detail or certitude to qualify as a plot. It's clear that JA uses a story outline, so that cannot be what he means by "not prepping plot". It may be that like me, he never writes it down. Writing things down can be a dangerous business. Once written, they become a lot less flexible. So, to explain what I think JA does mean by "not prepping plot", lets look at an example where the rule is broken. From Rime of the Frostmaiden, Chapter 3, page 172: The cut scene plays, and the players arrive just to late to prevent the dragon flying off to attack the Ten Towns, no matter what they do. They arrive at the location and Plot happens. So, how would you write that as a situation instead? I would do it something like this: Personally, I think that's better... I understand where you are coming from with that! However, this is another example of JA taking credit for something he didn't invent. Hexcrawls have worked like that since the very early days of D&D, I was doing it in 1982 (and it wasn't new then). JA is really a very old-school DM! Frankly, a sandbox takes a lot of prep. No getting round that if you want the players to have plenty of interesting things to do. The only real shortcut is to drop in prewritten content (use sources). Directing the players with a strong narrative might look like a shortcut, but IMO you still need to have lots of sidequests, B plots*, and stuff going on to make the world feel alive. *I'm assigning a slightly different meaning to the word "plots" in this context. Language is a slippery thing. [/QUOTE]

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