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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4632339" data-attributes="member: 5143">I was simply responding to the fact that someone suggested it was a good idea to wrap up your session whenever someone goes off rail in order to come up with a new adventure so you didn't have to fly by the seat of your pants.  I was suggesting that my players would not appreciate ending the session every time they did something I didn't expect.  I agree with you on this one.Well, the one example is, let's say you spent a couple of hours drawing the Caves of the Unknown.  There are nearly 30 planned encounters in various rooms around the Caves.  Every 7-10 encounters you expect the PCs to gain a level, making them 3 or 4 levels higher when they leave the Caves than when they enter them.  Also, while in the Caves, you expect them to find a clue to the origin of the BBEG that will lead them to a different town than they originally set out to find(since the first town was actually a red herring designed to get them to enter the Caves).All the encounters you have designed for the Caves are crafted around the rooms they are in(monsters with push and pull powers with pits, fire resistant monsters in rooms with lava, kobolds in rooms filled with traps, etc).  If the players decide not to go into the Caves, then pretty much all of that needs to be thrown out.  You certainly might be able to reuse the Caves by having someone direct them to the Caves of the Slightly Less Unknown and continuing from there, but if they didn't want to enter one set of caves, you'll need to work hard to get them into another.  If they are intent on walking around the mountain in order to avoid going into the caves, there's really nothing you can do.  You need to write up another adventure.This is one of the reasons I don't like to plan out my game more than a session in advance.  I'm also pretty lazy and hate doing prep work.  I especially hate doing prep work because my players decided to go somewhere I didn't expect.  Which is why I run mostly purchased adventures, since they do the work for me. I agree.  I just like tightly crafted stories.  They are more interesting and more challenging.  Nothing bothers me more as a player than going into a battle that you can tell the DM just came up with on the fly.  A battle with some goblins on a flat plane with no terrain is no fun.  A battle with goblins who are hiding in trees with a leader than enhances the rest of their abilities, with an artillery hiding behind cover while the soldiers stand up front is much more fun.That sort of thing CAN be done on the fly, but it isn't easy to make it work with very little notice.I also like stories that make sense.  If the BBEG doesn't even know the town they are in exists and they decide not to head into the Caves like I expected, then simply nothing happens.  They spend their lives for the next couple of years doing nothing interesting in the town.  They don't have any adventures.  If they decide to head around the mountain instead of going in, they don't gain the clue or levels I expected them to, they never figure out the clue they need to defeat the BBEG and they fail.  I leave the choice in my player's hands, but there often is a choice that is "the best".</blockquote>

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