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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1025094" data-attributes="member: 2205">What exactly do you need to write?  To run an RPG session, I need the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">some statted NPCs -- I use Jamis Buck's generators to do most of the legwork for me, then I go tweak it, export it to word, fit half a dozen on a single sheet and print it off.  This will last for several sessions at worst.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">maybe some maps -- I can pull these from all kinds of sources I already own, or download from WotC, or pull them from from non-RPG sources, even.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">some personalities, plot hooks and some ideas of how things might play out depending on what the PC's choose to do.  This amounts to a two or three pages of hand-scrawled notes, which also tend to last for several sessions before I need to update them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a list of names for impromptu characters -- I have several name generators, and lists of names already on hand; <a href="http://www.kabalarians.com" target="_blank">http://www.kabalarians.com</a> is one of my favorite sources.</li> </ul>I dunno, maybe I have a more "fast and loose" style than most DMs, but to me, more preparation than that is typically wasted anyway.  Maybe I'm just bad at predicting what my PCs will do, but I'm so strongly averse to anything that resembles leading them through the adventure that I typically only have a few points mapped out mentally and let the PCs stumble onto them in their own way.I agree with Ed that being familiar with modules (or whatever we're calling them these days) is important from a standpoint of getting your ideas and how to actually conduct a session.  However, a lot of modules actually aren't even very good at this; the Witchfire Trilogy, for instance, which I think was fascinating and very well written, also tends to play in a very scripted and linear fashion.  I played the first one in a group once, and whenever we had ideas that didn't work with the "script" of the module, they just wouldn't work due to DM fiat.  True, that may have been the DM as much as the module, but even reading them I can see that you have to have players that are willing to take the plot you present to them, rather than players who do things their own way.  That's not my style at all, and it takes much more preparation time to boot.</blockquote>

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