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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9774587" data-attributes="member: 75787">The reason I prep and strongly prefer games run by people who prep is that when you invent something at the table, you have very limited amount of time to come up with that invention, and so that invention is necessarily shallow. You simply don't have the time to come up with all the ideas, links and flavor that you would have if you prepped. You come up with one of the first things that enters your mind.As an example, next Monday I'll run a section of The Grail Quest as part of The Great Pendragon Campaign. I'll need to test whether characters are truly chivalric, pagan or christian (each having 6 different but overlapping sets of characteristics associated with them). I have 4 players and each has different types of knight, so to come up with a good test on the fly, I'd have to remember each knight's 'types' and the skills needed to be tested, compare that to already tested skills and come up with a scenario to test that. And then I'd repeat that several times for the evening. Very little chance anyone would be successful doing that without planning.In play, I might want to confront someone with a vengeful figure from their past. Although there are probably 100+ I could choose from, there's no way I will be able to on the fly pick the best. My brain will grab a few, probably the more recent ones or ones I liked voicing, and I'll choose from those. So I give ourselves a sub-optimal experience because I was unwilling to do the planning ahead.One of the insidious features of not-planning is not that things crash and burn. With a good GM, it'll be fine. It's that it could have been so much better -- I decide to test Humility, but I didn't realize that I'd done that three sessions go and have not yet tested lustful. Still everyone had fun, just the pagan knight got slightly shafted. Or I chose Hya the Keen as the opposition in the scene, and everyone had fun because they all like Hya -- but the child that the gay knight had with the White Dwarf Giantess (when flirting checks go wrong...)  would have been way more appropriate and a great callback.And the really dangerous part is that it's hard for the GM to tell! They are immersed in the game, they had three options, chose one and everyone had fun. Their brain is fully engaged, they're having fun and they feel like they are doing their best work. They don't see the missed opportunities, the way their instincts lead them into predictable paths, the way the tyranny of urgency is making them miss opportunities.Like [USER=4937]@Celebrim[/USER], I have played with many GMs, good, bad and mediocre. I've played in games run by Sandy Peterson, Ken Hite, Robin Laws, Jason Durrell, John Wick, Sarah Richardson, Steve Jackson and many others. I've also played in many Living campaigns.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The absolute best experiences have been by excellent GMs who prepare.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good experiences have been with excellent GMs who do not prepare, or average GMs who prepare well</li> </ul>Not having time to prep or hating to do so is an excellent reason for running low-prep. But the result is not going to be as good as if you had prepped. It's the same as a rock-star athlete playing against a team they have not prepped for. She'll be good, she'll be entertaining -- but if she had prepped, she would have been even better.Athletes prep to make them play better.Writers prep to make their plays better.GM's prep to make roleplay better.We're not special, people. Roleplaying is not the unique field of creativity where preparation doesn't help (or even, as some people surprisingly state -- makes it worse). It follows the same rules as other fields.If you're in doubt, go find one of those few successful professional GMs. Ask them if they zero-prep their games. I'm pretty sure you already know the answer.</blockquote>

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