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Which are you, The plan everything out GM, or the Ad lib?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9771214" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>A typical adventure will have 40,000 to 75,000 words worth of notes. </p><p></p><p>And with that I would bet I ad lib 40% of the content of the adventure. And it's not because I don't use my notes. It's because you can't plan for everything.</p><p></p><p>But without those notes, I don't think it would be possible for me to GM.</p><p></p><p>I don't understand people who say that they can "ad llb" this role. I know a lot of people online say that they can,, but I've never met them in real life. Everyone who has ever told me in real life they could ad lib, when I played with them it turned out that they couldn't. I've been at like three tables as a player, where I ended up being invited to be the full time DM. Every good game I was ever a part of involved a ton of prep. Yes, those guys doing a ton of prep also winged a lot of stuff, but they had frameworks and plans to fall back on and adapt. </p><p></p><p>Very few people in the real world can ad lib anything - movies, novels, speeches are generally not extemporaneous. </p><p></p><p>My rule is to try to be the GM I would want as a player, so I prep a lot.</p><p></p><p>The trouble with high prep is you have to prep a lot. It's work. It's easy to get burned out every two or three years and need a break.</p><p></p><p>The troubles with low prep:</p><p></p><p>a) It's impossible to be unbiased or fair when you are continually reacting to the meta.</p><p>b) It's very difficult to have Mystery Boxes with anything surprising in them if you don't plan ahead. If you don't know you needed clues until after you need them, it's hard to put them there. You'd have to work really hard to avoid Bad Robot style DMing, and as any writer knows Bad Robot is a big part of why the golden age of media collapsed. </p><p>c) It's very difficult to have anything large and coherent. Most of the time, you aren't ad libbing a castle sized dungeon (unless you've spent a lot of prep time studying castles and have several floor plans basically memorized). Good luck ad libbing something like Castle Ravenloft as original content. Most ad libbers I've met have no locations. You are on a stage and they change the drapes but there is rarely a lot to interact with or explore.</p><p>d) You are heavily reliant on your first instincts. You rarely have a chance to think about things and come up with better plans.</p><p>e) You are often heavily reliant on the players for content and ideas. But then you are kind of abandoning your fundamental duty to be a secret keeper if you don't make up some secrets. The last thing I want to do is set down at a table to play as a player and be hashing out what is actually going on in the setting like a collaborator on a script revision team, trying to come up with a script for an episode with a deadline.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9771214, member: 4937"] A typical adventure will have 40,000 to 75,000 words worth of notes. And with that I would bet I ad lib 40% of the content of the adventure. And it's not because I don't use my notes. It's because you can't plan for everything. But without those notes, I don't think it would be possible for me to GM. I don't understand people who say that they can "ad llb" this role. I know a lot of people online say that they can,, but I've never met them in real life. Everyone who has ever told me in real life they could ad lib, when I played with them it turned out that they couldn't. I've been at like three tables as a player, where I ended up being invited to be the full time DM. Every good game I was ever a part of involved a ton of prep. Yes, those guys doing a ton of prep also winged a lot of stuff, but they had frameworks and plans to fall back on and adapt. Very few people in the real world can ad lib anything - movies, novels, speeches are generally not extemporaneous. My rule is to try to be the GM I would want as a player, so I prep a lot. The trouble with high prep is you have to prep a lot. It's work. It's easy to get burned out every two or three years and need a break. The troubles with low prep: a) It's impossible to be unbiased or fair when you are continually reacting to the meta. b) It's very difficult to have Mystery Boxes with anything surprising in them if you don't plan ahead. If you don't know you needed clues until after you need them, it's hard to put them there. You'd have to work really hard to avoid Bad Robot style DMing, and as any writer knows Bad Robot is a big part of why the golden age of media collapsed. c) It's very difficult to have anything large and coherent. Most of the time, you aren't ad libbing a castle sized dungeon (unless you've spent a lot of prep time studying castles and have several floor plans basically memorized). Good luck ad libbing something like Castle Ravenloft as original content. Most ad libbers I've met have no locations. You are on a stage and they change the drapes but there is rarely a lot to interact with or explore. d) You are heavily reliant on your first instincts. You rarely have a chance to think about things and come up with better plans. e) You are often heavily reliant on the players for content and ideas. But then you are kind of abandoning your fundamental duty to be a secret keeper if you don't make up some secrets. The last thing I want to do is set down at a table to play as a player and be hashing out what is actually going on in the setting like a collaborator on a script revision team, trying to come up with a script for an episode with a deadline. [/QUOTE]
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