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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6767457" data-attributes="member: 6701872">It's the not actually caring about continuing the campaign, rather than the improvisational approach that causes such results.I use the technique for all of my campaigns these days (the last 10 years or so), even the ones that I do prep work or pre-planning for, choosing to prep and plan no more than a skeletal outline and list of scenarios that "could be cool if this came up."The technique itself is simple: do the thing that any DM is likely to do in the event of their players going "off book" as the game plays naturally - fill in what seems like it would be cool at that time, because you are probably right anyways (so long as you and your players don't have incompatible views of what kind of things are cool). Also, I use what the players say to inform my choices of what to add to the play, like when they say "I bet it is a bunch of kobolds that are causing the trouble in the mines that we heard about," and their tone of voice is hopeful or excited, I go with them ending up being right, while if they sound agitated at the idea I go with something else.The real trick is to make notes of what happens in the course of the improvised game so that whatever gets established remains consistent when revisited later in the campaign.The entire reason I started using this approach is because, as you said, no matter how much planning you do, the players will find their way to something you haven't planned, and I thought "Well... what if I just skip the planning and see what happens?" and it resulted in my players' favorite campaign of all campaigns that I had run for them up to that point (they liked it so much they've requested multiple sequels since).</blockquote>

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