How do you prep your sessions and campaigns? Everytime I ran a game I drove myself mad trying to prepare for every scenario, or underprepped and had no idea what to do with the plot when shit went off the rails. What are some retardproofed ways of prepping a session?

Grab a premade adventure.
Run it, and take note of whether you need to add any notes.
You now have a rough guage of how much you need to prepare plus some experience running an adventure outside of your own head.

>>95863765 (OP)
I always keep some interior maps and statted enemy sheets of stuff around the party's level so I can throw together combat encounters if I have to, but aside from that I don't really do any prep other than a vague idea of what plot hooks/dungeons are in an area. Everything else is improvised because no amount of planning survives player characters.

>>95863765 (OP)
I'm in the process of making scenarios with no game currently planned.
>But what if the players do something you didn't expect!
Welcome to the hobby. Planning sessions for the specific party members is gay and unrealistic. If you have to make something up on the fly, toss in a combat encounter.

I generally ask my players the session before what they want to do on the next session.

Then I prepare on what they told me and I add more stuff in case I need it but whithout exagerating.

If they really do something that I totally couldn't expect I generally improvise or make something on the spot (this takes time and practise to learn but don't worry, everyone has to start somewhere am I right?).

Remember to always clarify at the start of the session what they wanted to do, so that they remember and don't change their mind during play.

Sorry for my bad English as it isn't my first language, hope you understand what I wrote.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/39885/roleplaying-games/smart-prep

In short:
>Prep stuff you know you have a hard time improvising
>Don't prep contingencies
>Prep what will be useful no matter what the players do: faction goals, character timelines, etc.
Other advice ITT is also good. You got it anon!

>>95863765 (OP)
The GM's job isn't to tell a story. The GM's job is to arbitrate the rules and the setting.
It is the players' job to tell the story. They are the force driving the narrative.
>The GM's job isn't to tell a story. The GM's job is to arbitrate the rules and the setting.
>It is the players' job to tell the story. They are the force driving the narrative.

Read the lines above, out loud, one thousand times.

>>95863765 (OP)
Create characters and factions that have goals and plans, and situations and clues that point the players toward those characters, factions, goals and plans. It's not a matter of planning for every single eventuality, it's about having a cast that you understand well enough to react to whatever they PCs do
Google "don't prep plots," it'll give you an Alexandria article on the subject that explains it better than I can. Trying to plan out every eventuality is generally bad prep, and leads a gm to want to railroad.

>Make intricate prep with tons of fleshed out NPCs, multiple plots and relevant maps
>Players don't give a fuck and just follow whatever happens first

>Write a few vague bullet points
>Players suddenly care about intricacy, ask for detailed outlines of the maps, annoyed about the simplicity of the plots.

Playoids will never ever be happy, so just prep what you want.

>>95863792
This is good advice.
>>95864004
This is incredibly stupid, bad advice that is flatly wrong.

>>95863765 (OP)
Drink tea, either stop wanking or furiously bust many nuts depending on theme, go on long hikes.

>>95863765 (OP)
I set up scenes. The players are at an Inn and XYZ barges in to reveal that Thing needs doing! What's the inn like? Who is there? What do the people there have to say about it? From there, the person said to go to the location to find out about the thing. What's the place? What is there? Who is there? What can the players do there? From there they go to a dungeon. Start with the boss or goal. Make a handful of thematically relevant rooms that lead up to the boss or goal. Look at the rules and find some things that your players might do that aren't just combat, and put in those challenges. Also include some combat. Come up with 5 other descriptions of places or conversations that might be relevant to the adventure. If your players start drawing outside the lines, use them. Wing everything else.

>>95864043
This is mostly true. Remember that you can always just repurpose anything you make. Made the old mill that the players skipped? Great: it's now the old farm house, fuck it. Prepared the conversation for the royal sage that the players never bothered speaking to? Great: it's now relayed by the old hag living in a shack in the woods, fuck it.

>>95864054
I'd say >>95864004 is like halfway there. The GM's job is to tell a story as much as it is the players jobs. They are equating "telling a story" with "having a premade plot they want to railroad the players through," which, yeah, that would be bad. Part of the problem with discussions like this is small, pedantic nomenclature different. I'd say it should be more like
>The GM's job is to create and play an interesting, reactive world
>The players job is to play characters who have reasons to interact with the world the GM in running.

>>95864096
>Remember that you can always just repurpose anything you make.
I'm currently in a game where this is basically the entire premise, just the GM dropping old campaign ideas and bosses and stuff into a blender and stuffing them into a premade adventure that he's homebrewing the fuck out of.

It's completely schizophrenic but it's also been a lot of fun watching shit from CoC, Fallout, Paranoia, Nechronica, WoD, and Pathfinder all kind of blunder into each other and get confused

>>95864004
Now for more specific advice.
>How do you prep your sessions and campaigns?

1. Prepare a "dungeon". A dungeon is any location hostile to the players. It might be a tomb, an enemy city, an aristocrat's party, a mental ward, a deadly arctic ocean, a mountainside teeming with goblins, etc. This is where your session takes place. Something the players want should be placed here.

2. Prepare random-encounter tables and enemy stat blocks. Your random encounters should be divided between non-hostile encounters, environmental encounters, hostile encounters, and deadly hostile encounters that the party may run away from. When the party enters a new "room" or a new "scene", roll 1d6, and on a result of 1, have them encounter something random.
In a practical sense, this means picking a few enemies and NPCs and having their stat blocks close at hand.

3. Prepare NPCs. Create a few NPCs and give each of them:
>something they want
>something they hate - a rival, enemy, or just "orcs"
>some brief characterization (an actor they resemble, distinctive clothes they wear, etc)
Your game must contain human elements, a "heart". This easily comes from the personalities and desires of the people in the setting.

4. Events. "Arbitrating the setting" means turning its gears and making the world come to life.
>There are frantic and frenzied election campaigns going on after the players killed the mayor; one of them petitions the party for endorsement
>After 1-2 hours of play, the aristocrat's party gets attacked by hostage-taking terrorists that the party made enemies with in an earlier session
>When the party returns to the quest-giver, they have been murdered by the cultists that the party spared in an earlier session

I'm usually running more mystery focused games but I feel like it's still useful to think about it this way: What is the information I need the players have, and how can I get them that information in character in way that makes sense. Then you just sort of pepper clues that lead to other clues and scenes, and if they're going a way you didn't expect, that's okay because you can improv a scene or situation where the information they need will be.

>>95863765 (OP)
Create a set of dynamic characters and events. Rather than plan for each thing the party might do to Baron Redhorn define clearly within your head or in notes what the character of the Baron is. Just like how in a good show you just know "that character would never do that!" Without being the writer enough accumulated information means you'll simply know what happens in each situation as they happen.
The same hold even truer for environmental effects as once you've got the shape of the area, biome, and notable features whatever happens you know enough about the lay of the land to 'improse'. Like in fox forest you keep the fox stat block near youveith the fox behavior notes if they're sentient foxes or explosive or something and that's all you need for any eventuality.

>>95864128
now for my VERY specific process:

>creating original dungeons, NPCs, monsters, etc
For themes and influences, I pick two principles from the Cultist Simulator franchise and combine them. Combining 2+ different themes makes your content come to life.

Consider:
>the ship is crewed by pirates (tried-and-true, but boring to write)
vs
>the ship is crewed by pretentious artist pirates (new and weird; ideas will flow more easily)

>>95864258
>creating dungeons
I start in Whimsical, a flowchart editor, to block out the "rooms" and "corridors" of my session's setting. Flowchart editors are amazing because they let you change and delete huge tracts of your map without requiring you to fuss over architecture.

>>95864285
then, if I feel like I need to, I'll use my flowchart as a blueprint for making a real map in Dungeon Scrawl.

The system I run, Worlds Without Number, provides roll tables for filling each room with traps or monsters or treasure. I use those sometimes.

>>95863765 (OP)

>>95864115
>fun watching shit from CoC, Fallout, Paranoia, Nechronica, WoD, and Pathfinder all kind of blunder into each other and get confused
That might be a little further than I'd go. Or it's the perfect Rifts campaign. Hard to tell.

>>95864285
I use draw.io but same for adventures.

>>95864106
If you're claiming that something as oblivious and dumb as "The GM's job isn't to tell a story" should be recited as a mantra, then pedantry is absolutely warranted. That's a terrible, shit-awful claim that has no bearing on reality. The fuck do you think GMs do the work of GMing for? It's because we have fun directing a story as it plays out. That's flatly what the job of GMing is.

>>95863765 (OP)
Prep for the two, maybe three most likely scenarios. If the players take none of them, tough shit, but you can always reuse that idea later if it comes up, and the more stuff you have in the back pocket the less you need to come up with completely new ideas for every new session.
Also, remember it's the players' job to join your table in good faith and take plot hooks when presented to them. It's not your job to account for every lol so random xD thing they might do to derail your game. You can and should say no to any bullshit you don't want to deal with.

>>95864258
GOAT! for playing such a GOAT game! Super good advice

>>95864407
I was agreeing with you on that point. It's everyone's job at the table to tell a story.

Either >>95863765 (OP) (but this assumes the module in question is playable, and this is not guaranteed) or the good old core concept by reduction.
You know, those tasks they gave you back in late elementary, where you had to write skeleton of something, consisting of set of points, and then merely expand on them.
So in this case: prep 3-5 scenes for today's game, write them down and unironically think really hard about them playing out and how you can interconnect them, but don't actually plan details, just make sure you understand how they connect.
Example
Let's say it's a CoC game and the basic premise is that the party is running a hotel in New England seaside
1) A single tourist arrives - a secretive young student - and he will be found dead soon after
2) A nosey journo arrives some time after, since dead body in a dead-beat town
3) Blatantly obvious cult representative also shows up, claiming to be fiance, either to the hotel (if body was disposed) or funeral (if it was reported to the police), asking for a book he was carrying
4) Night-time showing of a ghoul, tearing apart the garden next to the hotel
You now have 4 elements you want to include during today's game. You fluff them up on your own (adding characters, preparing sheets for them and the likes), you know what you want to happen to day and thus what pace of running you want and you more or less know the schedule.
What your players will do is up to them, but you know what you want to happen and how it connects all together. What are motivations of your NPCs? That's up to you, but it can also react to the players actions in a fluid way.

Trying to make it all detailed plan is a surest way to either end up with a railroad or, worse, stumbling when something outside of your narrowminded plan happens

>>95863765 (OP)
Either >>95863792 (but this assumes the module in question is playable, and this is not guaranteed) or the good old core concept by reduction.
You know, those tasks they gave you back in late elementary, where you had to write skeleton of something, consisting of set of points, and then merely expand on them.
So in this case: prep 3-5 scenes for today's game, write them down and unironically think really hard about them playing out and how you can interconnect them, but don't actually plan details, just make sure you understand how they connect.
Example
Let's say it's a CoC game and the basic premise is that the party is running a hotel in New England seaside
1) A single tourist arrives - a secretive young student - and he will be found dead soon after
2) A nosey journo arrives some time after, since dead body in a dead-beat town
3) Blatantly obvious cult representative also shows up, claiming to be fiance, either to the hotel (if body was disposed) or funeral (if it was reported to the police), asking for a book he was carrying
4) Night-time showing of a ghoul, tearing apart the garden next to the hotel
You now have 4 elements you want to include during today's game. You fluff them up on your own (adding characters, preparing sheets for them and the likes), you know what you want to happen to day and thus what pace of running you want and you more or less know the schedule.
What your players will do is up to them, but you know what you want to happen and how it connects all together. What are motivations of your NPCs? That's up to you, but it can also react to the players actions in a fluid way.

Trying to make it all detailed plan is a surest way to either end up with a railroad or, worse, stumbling when something outside of your narrowminded plan happens

>>95863765 (OP)
read this
>https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots

>>95865960
Buy an ad.

>>95866006
anon, I don't think that guy is guerilla marketing wordpress articles from 2009

>>95866076
>anon, I don't think that guy is guerilla marketing wordpress articles from 2009
Maybe not, but I sure as shit am not clicking someone's link to a blog to find out when it was published.

>>95866174
>>95865960
what tourist summer bullshit is this about not clicking blogs? are you afraid to interact with information on tg of all places?
Also how much of a newfag are you that you dont even recognize one of the most well known rpg articles about dming

>>95866241
>tourist!
>summer!
Blah blah. Engage in a fucking conversation and say "and here's a source." Not "drop a link to a blog and peace out," you fuckwit.

>>95866241
>one of the most well known rpg articles about dming
And lol no: I don't know or care which blogs you read.

>>95866174
If you don't know that article from the link, you're a newfag.

>>95866327
>You're not part of the cool kids club if you don't know my favorite blog!
lol

>>95866174
>someone provides a useful link to address OP's question
>random fucking nobody: "i'M nOt ClCkInG tHaT"
thanks for playing anon. next time just don't post

>>95866432
Next time post a comment instead of a link and we'll be engaging productivily instead of you trying to recycle dull insults.

Get Chat GPT to make a bunch of different random encounter tables and then wing it yeah boi

>>95863765 (OP)
Write "NPCs" "Sets" (as in locations, movie sets) "Encounters" and "Widgets" on the tops of four pieces of paper.
Throw down a bunch of cool shit I'd like to see or from stuff I saw on TV or that players have mentioned they're into.
Use em like the prop box at improv night.
Unused stuff goes in a folder, gets reread periodically for recycling.

>>95863765 (OP)

What game?

>>95863765 (OP)
I just improvise 99% of the game.

Both the highs and the lows are extreme. It's great.

>>95866605
Valid but drawing maps is fun.

>>95866443
>>95866332
>>95866266
first of all if you dont know the article you really are a newfag. Being proud of your ignorance shows how much of a retard you are. secondly, this is not a discussion. op asked a question and a useful resource was posted. if he doesnt wanna read that i dont give a fuck.
why bother typing 1000 words when one can post a link to the same effect?
because a retard like yourself has allergy to using secondary sites and demands spoonfeeding?
now fuck off back to plebbit or wherever you crawled from

>>95866794
>yet another "you're not cool if you don't like this wordpress blog" rant
lol

>>95866816
>yet another ironic post trying to disguise how fucking retarded you are because you have no arguments or anything to say for yourself

Easy.
Chill, relax. Think of a few setpieces here and there you may or may not run.
Then when the session starts you wing everything. Sorted.

>>95864004
I created a by design railroaded adventure that nudged the players into actively spiting me and refusing to do what I was telling them to do both in and out of character and they absolutely loved it.

But I've also know this group for 5+ years now and we're all veterans who were looking for a group unafraid of darker themes and genuine roleplay and interesting ideas. We all take turns DM'ing, even. Anyways needless to say they absolutely loved what I did. The point isn't to freeform or railroad, in my opinion. The point is to give the players a living, breathing world to run through and modify by their actions. A world where nothing happens unless the PCs actively interact is MMO themepark nonsense and just as bad as a super fixed A to B railroaded plot.

>>95866860
All youve done is ranted a "no true scottsman" at me while sperging about summer and plebbit and newfags and tourists. Whatcha want, a fuckin sonnet? Its an image board with conversation. Have one, dont, whatever. Stop whining that i give zero fucks and am not gonna read some fuckin blog you like.

>>95866901
you dont wanna read a blog? fine. you are the one that started with the "funny" replies. no one forced you to reply.
>buy an ad lol. now spoonfeed me cause i got too much brainrot to read more than 10 sentences in a row.
>i just want a conversation btw.
fucking ingrate

>>95867015
Wow what a clever strawman. How ever will i escape such a careful web of words you've weaved?

>>95866174
>Doesn't know about one of the core /tg/-adjacent blogs from when /tg/ was in its heyday
Some newfriend, should maybe try it before you knock it.

>>95867064
Wordpress blogs? Nah I'm good but hey, wanna check out my livejournal?

>>95863765 (OP)
AD&D 1E DMG is required reading even if you dont play it.

>>95863765 (OP)
>How to prep for a campaign

You need to get your players from A to B, however, you don't want to "railroad them".

I find the best way to do this is to have around a half dozen or so plot hooks dangling about. These plot hooks each have their own thread leading to the same destination after one or two stops. There should be SEVERAL legitimate reasons your group will make it from point A to point B no matter how loose those connections might be.
>I have to plan a lot for this
I built up and arsenal of tools for this over time for different systems, but the most effective ones are cards.
A deck of NPC cards, Item cards, enemy cards, and location cards.
>Soldier, Candle stick, Werewolf, statue of a forgotten hero
A soldier has been tasked with killing a werewolf, however, he needs a silvered weapon. This particular werewolf is special in that regular silver or silver made from currency is not effective and the silver must come from an inherited source. His grandmother left him a silver candlestick years ago that he put on a shrine to local hero deep in the woods. His duties prevent him from leaving to retrieve it and asks for your aid in the matter.
>Old woman, Brooch, Goblin, Cave
A local den of goblins have been pilfering the locals of their items during the night. An elderly woman is offering a meager reward to whoever returns her old brooch she got as gift from her husband. A little digging has unearthed the goblins operating out of a cave a half days ride into the woods.

Do this a few more times HOWEVER, you will notice that WOODS keep popping up. That's where you want the players to go. It's up to you whether your main plot point drops before or after the side quest, but that keeps shit moving.
Having a decided the enemy, locale, and reason for a side quest is 90% of the planning.

>>95866894
>Breathing world

Yeah, that's another point people miss out on.
You got an overarching threat? The best thing to do is to have a number line. Just a line with a bunch of dots on it. Each dot represents a part of the overarching threat coming to fruition. Slap that line in a spot that is visible to the players and every session move the progress on the bar up by one representing the opposition moving one step closer to accomplishing their goals.

It's even better if you write down what every dot represents so that you not only keep track of it but can sprinkle the outcomes in the game world. It's VERY effective if you don't tell the players what the line graph is for until after they directly interact with an element of it, so now they got an "Oh Shit!" moment when they realize fucking off is biting them in the ass.

Take note here. The main threat should never destroy the world or erase existence and such. Absolutely nuking a kingdom, opening the gates to hell, and other shit is fine. It changed the world and gives you something bigger to fuck with, but just blowing everything up makes the game end outright.

>>95863765 (OP)
I don't really bother anymore. Twice I've made elaborate dungeons and stories and the players have found ways to completely avoid it. I've had them just turn around and ardently pursue some off hand statement I made that makes them go on ingame month long journeys, have plots that require a specific player that is normally steady suddenly join a fucking polycule and ghost the party supposedly because of possessive several boyfriends, jobs, and just straight up the old "let's try a different game and let someone else GM!" shtick that we never get back to.

So fuck it. I just make it up day of or even room by room. No one can even tell the difference.

>>95866512
What do you mean by "widgets"?

>>95866241
>>95866327
>>95866432
>>95867064
Troll feeding season I see!

>>95863765 (OP)
Session prep is separate from campaign prep. I aim to spend ~10 mins prep per expected hour of play.
>How do you prep your sessions and campaigns?
1 random encounter ready per expected hour of play. ~1-2 mins per encounter. Find creatures, create a map arrangement, write key notes for them. Lots of time is cut here as you can just port unused encounters from last week, taking effectively 0 seconds.

Review previous session notes. Mark ~3 key moments and expand them into session's potential plot hooks. Most typical key notes are "did X thing with NPC" as NPCs are easy through lines between sessions.

If I'm doing battlemaps, that takes up a lot of the remaining time. Beyond that, slap together some three line NPCs (Name + What they want + What they fear.) more or less NPCs depending on how populated an area the party is in / is expected to be.

Wrap up prep by overlaying the plans onto the trajectory of the campaign / the setting.

I do basically no campaign prep anymore as I have several campaigns that I've run several times already, ready to go. And little-to-no session prep needed if the party is going a direction I've already seen a party go.

>>95869427
Fuck off, retarded frogspammer.

>>95869707
lmao

>>95869317
>Dude keeps samefagging his own posts so that it looks like someone agrees with him

>>95869427
That roughly matches how I prep when I don't prep. Twenty to thirty minutes before the game, I think of some shit to start the session and write a hasty intro. Then I pull out some monster stats and treasure I might use. Put together two or three NPCs, drop the players in, grab some battle maps and see what happens. I don't have it broken into discrete minutes and it's more like "scramble to have something on-hand if the players stop driving." But yeah, it definitely works.

>>95863765 (OP)
what rails?

>>95864054
No, it is wholly and unequivocally correct in all cases, forever.

>>95864106
No.

>>95869305
Widgets (my personal term) covers mechanical doohickeys (I know I'll need the cold weather survival rules soon: page refs and notes), loot with rules (anything more characterful than cash), questions I feel must be resolved soon (not technically a developed encounter or specific person, but I do want to know "Is <PC> getting more violent nowadays?" or "Would <PC> rather have their arcane dreams or their code of honour: put them against one another in some way"
Basically it's like the Misc page but it has some common things I basically always need that aren't People, Places, or Shit I Want The PCs To Deal With Somehow Possibly Violence

>>95864407
Neither oblivious nor dumb. It's correct.
If the DM is directing it, it's not a game.

>>95866241
Buy an ad.

>>95867064
There are no core blogs and nothing is tg adjacent. If it's not a traditional game, do not discuss it.

>>95868310
No.

>>95871352
You might fundamentally misunderstand what a GM is.

Clearly you do. It's not a storyteller.

>>95871380
>storyteller
That's literally the term used for GM in the second most popular RPG in the world.

>>95863765 (OP)

And it's called other things in other games. Since they can't simultaneously be true, then it must obviously be the case that the job of the GM isn't defined by the term you use to refer to it. Retard.

>>95871404
>Since they can't simultaneously be true,
Of course they can and are. GM, DM, Storyteller all describe the exact same thing.

Nope. Either you're a storyteller, or you're not. The phrase "dungeon master" and "storyteller" aren't the same thing, so they don't determine what the referee's job is.

>>95871415
You're factually, functionally wrong. Play a ttrpg then get back to us.

>>95871380
Genuine question: you assert a GM is not a storyteller, in that they should not predetermine events, outcomes, a "plot," etc.
What do you say to people who point out a GM is a storyteller in that they must present the events of the moment in an interesting and clear way? When the PCs enter a room, a good GM doesn't just list off dimensions and furniture in a monotone, they make the scene appear vividly in their players' imaginations.
Do you agree that the GM must be a storyteller in at least that sense? Would you insist on different terminology? Or do you reject the idea of imagination and wonder because you're a spiritually dead XP accumulating mollusc?

Nope, you're wrong. You play a game and then get back to me. My authority supersedes yours.

>>95871421
I don't believe that you have any idea of what a good GM does. Prove that your assertion is correct.

>>95871443
Can you imagine a session with a fully monotone, maximally terse GM speaking only to the immediate events in clipped game language being fun? Of course not.
Any activity which requires focus and attention for multiple hours is better with good presentation than without. More to the point, here's a quote from Gygax himself on the topic:
"There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things."

>>95871488
I'm not seeing any proof in your post. Are you incapable?

>>95871515
I'll happily try again if you can give me some indication of what proof you'd accept.
If counterfactuals and the word of the inventor of the hobby won't suffice, what would you like?

>>95871488
>>95871544
He's obviously just being mindlessly contrarion and has yet to say anything except "nuh uh." Why bother?

>>95871544
Do you know what the word "proof" means?
There's no such thing as "proof I'd accept". Either a proof is valid or it isn't. It's not a matter of opinion.

Guys, this is actually a halfway decent thread, stop feeding obvious trolls and get sidetracked on pedantry.

One prep thing that I'm going to attempt to put in my current game is sort of a villain clock or timeline, basically what the villains plans are if the PCs don't intervene. So, my villains are going to stage a bunch of fake terrorist attacks, I will plot out when those attacks are going to take place, and then figure out where to put clues that will point my players in the direction of those upcoming attacks so that they can have a chance of stopping them.

Even on a scenario level, having a timeline of what would happen without PC intervention is a useful tool to keep the session moving. Rough Night at The Three Feathers, a WHFRP scenario, has a really good example of this kind of planning.

>>95871570
Ah, so you ARE trolling. That's disappointing.

>>95871581
Say what you like about PbtA games, but Fronts are a fucking great development in GM prep notes. Big fan.

>>95871581
>>95871594
I accept your concession.

>>95871599
Are clocks from PbtA as well? That's also a solid idea, even if only from an organizational standpoint.

>>95871631
Clocks are a great way of codifying things, but I don't know if something so simple has a single root. I was doing "you have three fails before the alarm is actually up" in the late nineties in my Matrix-inspired game. I make no claims to genius, either.

>>95863765 (OP)
Unless I’m running a premade adventure I only plan for the next few sessions, maybe an arc or two ahead for some small things but being able to adjust your campaign on the fly is KEY.

You don’t want to spend 100 hours working on the Temple of the Emerald Goddess just to have the party decide they aren’t interested and instead try to interfere in the Kobold Goblin Blood War CIA style and put their buddy Bog Mudwater on the throne.

>>95871741
>You don’t want to spend 100 hours working on the Temple of the Emerald Goddess just to have the party decide they aren’t interested
True but, on the other hand, I don't want to always have "monster of the week" sessions either. I like to plan a few overarching meta narratives in the world. These gods are angry. People think there's an ancient drow city in the underdark. What ever happened to that race that disappeared, et cetera. You don't have to "plan" it. But you can drop lore into sessions that players might decide they're interested in picking up and running with. And once they bite on something, you can start working a lot further ahead than one or two sessions. You don't gotta force it, and I'm not saying have every last detail of the dungeon ten levels down the road mapped. But you can work towards a narrative without figuring out every last detail of the next twelve sessions.

>>95871699
I meant campaign level clocks as opposed to intra scenario clocks, but yeah, I suppose the notion was probably around for a long time in various forms before being codified.

I approach the game with the mindset that it's basically a petri dish for organically growing war stories. The fun comes from presenting the players with a scenario and just seeing what happens. If the DM happens to understand storytelling, he can certainly use that to his advantage, but story structure should never be a higher priority than player choice.

James Cameron said "You make the movie twice. Once during filming, and once during editing". You play the game to see what happens, and if you're really lucky, "what happens" might result in a story worth retelling.

DM isn't a storyteller.

>>95872533
DM and Storyteller are literally interchangeable titles within ttrpgs, between 2 of the 5 most popular ttrpgs of all time.

No.

>>95863765 (OP)
By spending roughly half my life working on it and never getting anyone to run it so I just keep writing more story and making more npcs

>>95872559
White wolf and who is the other?
>>95863765 (OP)
In short, don't railroad.
What systems and what was your pitch for the campaign?
>>95871421
Storytelling is recitation. A recitation of events is not a game. It may seem to be trivial word play to you but it's actually a significant differentiator.

>>95873814
D&D. DMs in D&D are interchangeable with Storytellers in World of Darkness. I wasn't saying one game used both. I was saying that the two terms are synonymous between them.

>>95873814
>Storytelling is recitation.
If and only if we accept your definition. Since we're talking about it in the context of GMing a ttrpg, clearly your definition is insufficient.

Nope, there's only one definition, and it's the definition given above. You're wrong and you lose.

>>95872559
>>95874021
>>95874070
Jesus fucking Christ either stop feeding the retard troll and post prep advice, or let the fucking thread die, you absolute morons.

>>95874070
>we accept your definition
It's not my definition it's the definition
>in the context of GMing a ttrpg
In context White Wolf chose that term because they think GMing is just reciting a story and pretending the 'players' at your table had any input into the amature novel you wrote before anyone sat down at the table.

>>95863765 (OP)
>What are some retardproofed ways of prepping a session?
This is a good resource. https://www.roleplayingtips.com/running-games/i-only-have-30-minutes-to-prepare-for-a-game-what-do-you-do/ (Fuck not being able to post PDFs)

>>95863792
This is based and correct, you just need to make sure that the module itself isn't busted.
As you get experienced you'll gain a sense for tweaking these sorts of things and making them playable - modern WOTC Modules suck to high shit for instance, but with tweaking and a good DM can usually be salvaged.
All in all using a module or other prewrites (including one pagers or screamsheets like Cyberpunk does)can be a great tool and timesaver well into the future if you find it helps.

>>95874455
You lose.

>>95876290
It has some neat ideas, but holy mother of story shittery.

>>95879185
Come back when you want to use terms with real definitions.

>>95879345
Two or three brain cells should be enough to parse that sentence. I believe in you, anon!

>>95879345
lol storyshitter btfo

>>95863765 (OP)
> How do you prep your sessions and campaigns?

Don’t try to anticipate every possible PC decision, that would be impossible. Instead try this:
1) find a system you’re comfortable ad libbing on the fly with.
2) when you are world building, lay it out like a travel guide and not a history, timeline, or explicit narrative. That way no matter where the players go you are already prepared with interesting places for them to visit and explore.
3) have a GM folder, keep in it generic NPC stats for: random pedestrian, merchant/innkeeper, security, elite security, local leader. Sooner or later PCs will at some point interact with everyone of these archetypes in a way that will warrant rolling dice so having them on hand is easier than having to completely build them from scratch. This also means that you have a baseline stat to adjust for VINPCs (Very Important Non Player Character)
4) also either keep a monster manual on hand, or transcribe into your GM folder the stats for any monsters that you like using/have minis for (to save time thumbing through the monster manual)
5) (optional) if you want to have an antagonist, make one that is proactive and has some kind of personal vendetta against the PCs specifically, (thus inclining them to go out of their way to harass the party instead of just waiting quietly in some lair for the PCs to show up)
6) abandon any ideas about a specific narrative playing out, so instead of trying to force the players onto a railroad, embrace Player agency and have them lead the story wherever it goes.

I find that if you let them off the Leash, players are more than capable of making their own narrative, they only need to know what they can do to know what they want to do.

The key to this prep work is explicitly so YOU, as the GM, know what the players can do, and to cut down on “loading time” (I.E. the time the GM needs to set up any particular scene or encounter) as much as possible to keep the momentum going.

I like having a fuckton of random tables and generic statblocks. This is easy to pull off for a lot of fantasy shit. It's going to be a pain to pull this off for Pokemon.

>>95879915
That sounds suspiciously like you’re trying to set up a sandbox.

>>95864258
>For themes and influences, I pick two principles from the Cultist Simulator franchise and combine them. Combining 2+ different themes makes your content come to life.
What a based idea. I'm using The Secret Histories in the inspo page for my setting and I can't believe I never thought of that.

>>95871393
/thread

>>95872488
Ideally this, but with less proactive players this may sometimes be an issue.

I find I can alleviate this somewhat by simply having underlings ask the party what they want them to be doing; it puts them in the mindset of actually making decisions without requiring quite the same investment as making those plans among themselves organically.

>>95871393
what is this from?

>>95880629
>I find I can alleviate this somewhat by simply having underlings ask the party what they want them to be doing
I did something similar in my last session. The party was deep in the wilderness, in the process of converting an abandoned hamlet into their base. We were down a player, so I had a dwarf hireling say that he wanted some clay so he could get a forge going.

They spent the session exploring a nearby lake, and fought some monsters made of demonically-possessed clay.

>>95864004
If playoids had any creativity or drive they'd be the ones GMing.

>>95863765 (OP)
I had overall campaign goal, and framework for scenario; luckily can improv somewhat, so basically if off rail just randomize: roll 2d6, number is how much, odd are good, even bad, double something special. Works mostly time you need to determine event, monster, random treasure etc, and surprisingly well if you are able to connect it to scenario

>>95864004
in a sandbox, yeah
it's lazy GM way, not saying that's wrong

>>95888467
False.

>>95864285
whats the flow chart editor chief?

>>95894557
...

In order of importance
>Campaign Journal / Scenario Update that has the current state of things and intended things to hit in a session.
>Area Maps / keys for any relevant locations players can reach
>Adversary roster for each location to keep things dynamic and logical
>Notecards with details for relevant NPCs with info on how to play then properly and any info they might be intended to deliver so I don't forget
I can make do with that alone, most of it can be done pretty quick, a lot of it is almost there already if you're playing a module. You just have to trim the fat.

>>95864407
You are wrong. The GM facilitates the story. You put all the pieces on the stage, and the "story" arises as a result of the player's actions. Anything else is not an RPG.

>>95895609
Right. But the GM has to describe everything to the players as it happens in an engaging way, and has to generate interesting places, people and objects for the players to find. So the GM _does_ have to tell the story and you're a fucking retard.