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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9039022" data-attributes="member: 6785785">There's some of that in there for sure. The work didn't really feel like work... until it was wasted. Until the game I had put so much preparation into wasn't going to happen because two players weren't really on board with what I was setting up. Once that happened, it was hard not to look at it as work and time wasted. It'd have been very easy for me to blame the players. And I think many folks here likely would do so. But that's the easy way out. I looked at the situation and considered it a long time. It was the first time I ever had a game fall apart like that. I wanted to at least learn a lesson from it. Spending a lot of time considering it, and discussing some of it with some of the players at times, was eye-opening. The situation also made me look at what value the preparation brings to the game. And I had to face the difficult truth that a big part of the prep was my personal enjoyment. And although it matters that the GM has fun, it also matters if the players have fun. A lot of the prep wasn't always stuff the players would ever know, or pick up on. In a lot of ways, I was treating them as an audience, but they were an audience who didn't always get all the information. The nature of the game required that I keep things from them... and then that limits their ability to enjoy or appreciate the elements I'd created. To boil it down, they weren't getting nearly as much enjoyment from the prep as I was. So I decided to prepare with that in mind. My goal was to focus on more gameable prep... stuff that would be equally enjoyable/applicable to the players. And I wound up finding this equally if not more enjoyable. I liked having less control over things, and learning through play. I liked letting the players have more control over how things went. I think I'd always liked this kind of thing when it happened in play, but I assumed it was a kind of rarity that had to happen "naturally". I didn't realize that you could focus on this kind of play specifically. If I look back at my earliest games, I'd never describe them as bad or not fun or anything like that. I loved the vast majority of gaming that I've done over the years. And I've made lifelong friends because of gaming, so I'd not change that for anything. But my tastes and preferences have shifted.</blockquote>

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