I guess I am the opposite of a lot of people. I used to make up more as I went along, but I look at this more of a narrative than I used to, and believe the prep time and detail time is every bit ‘gming’ as the actual playing time.

I want my games to be ‘novel-quality’, or aspire to this now, as I get older and as gaming transforms from ‘hobby’ to ‘art’. I also freely admit that my particular vision as to what makes a fun game may be different than others. But especially with a long-term campaign and with the proper plotting of same, (Long-term, mid term, and short-term, and how they interrelate), I find the continual correspondence of detailed notation and better games to be an inescapable motivator.

Much in that line of thought is the creation of a setting wiki which continues to enrich the details of the campaigns. I believe that the 1/2 of the game that is spent at the game with the players (while probably far more than 1/2 the time taken) will always involve a large amount of reacting to the PC’s and improvising, and that it is a common mistake of GM’s to allow their plans to straightjacket the players.
But it is my belief (AND THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS THE TRUTH FOR EVERYONE)as long as this is controlled for, detail = versimilitude. And lack of details creates the opposite.

http://www.nbos.com/products/keep/keep.htm

I need to work on offering more hooks, and documenting what I’ve done, especially the latter…

@valadil – I can see how you benefit from prepping details in advance. I know that I describe attacks in detail even when I improvise them. I don’t prep those kinds of details, but I don’t skip them either.

Yet that is why it it so important to find the balance between improv and prep for your personal GMing style. I know GMs who run fabulous games from detailed notes, or by running modules after thorough readings. These GMs do not improvise, but they still run great games.

I like that you made the switch from low prep and high improv to detailed planning for the right reason: your style worked better with that approach. It is funny how I went in the opposite direction for the exact same reason, and it just goes to show how GMing is influenced by our personal strengths and styles.

Of course, it depends on system also– I know that I feel more comfortable throwing a dozen mooks at the PCs in Spirit of the Century than in 3e. (That’s probably because the threat of a mook drops so dramatically in 3e– a dozen goblins that can’t hit your teen level fighter isn’t very interesting at all– there’s no threat, so it’s just a time sink.)

Best session I ever had? I prepped it in about twenty minutes. I figured “Dang it. I only have twenty minutes to prepare, so I guess it’s going to be pretty railroaded today.”

When I got in there, I presented them with two options. Take a tunnel under a river that was known to contain an epic boss fight, or take the bridge half a mile downstream through enemy territory. All while every character was carrying a very heavy piece of machinery to bring back to a nearby town. I had scripted the tunnel. I mentioned the bridge just to avoid the appearance of railroading. Naturally, they went for the bridge.

On the way to the bridge, they met up with the games most terrifying monster. The kind where you just run away real fast when you see it. “This will get them to turn back,” I thought. Not so. Two players lured the monster away while the others forged on. They got to the bridge, and I put an entire regiment of enemy soldiers marching over it. “Surely this will get them to turn back!” I thought.

Not so! They got in touch with the other two players who had lured away the monster, and told them to lure it back! They lured the monster to the bridge, and it ate the entire regiment of enemy soldiers!

So really, the game that I prepped loosely, despite my attempts to keep it tightly on track, turned out to be way more fun than what I had anticipated when the players went off the rails. And of course, as per your suggestions in this article, I was easily able to reuse the cool boss fight that I had planned another time.

This really didn’t have much to do with the article I guess.

BUT STILL.

My GM style has changed greatly over the years. I used to be a stickler for detail. I would plan out every scene or encounter down to the pebbles on the road. It was a lot of work, too much work really. But my games were good and people were happy.

One day I realized that the extra detail was unnecessary. Over time I had experienced the players drifting from the story arc by leaps and bounds. Even when the course seemed obviously clear, the PCs would do something I least expected and didn’t plan for. Even when I planned for every possible contingency, the PCs would throw me for a loop. If I planned five different outcomes, the PCs would find number six at least half of the time. Why was I doing all of this extra work? Like an epiphany from the blue, my madness had to stop. I was burning out.

I decided to try an experiment. I would plan, in specificity, the opening scene of the campaign. I would have a general timeline of events or a blueprint for what course I expected the campaign or series to take. I had no set conclusions only broad ideas. I spent my time and energy on creating the NPCs and giving them distinct motivations and goals. I created (or borrowed) location maps or had general descriptions for areas I thought would pop up in the game. I might grab a picture online in order to spark my descriptions. The detail would come on the fly. I might note the key information needed to impart in a scene, but not in any specificity.

The game would be focused around the interaction of NPCs and PCs. The results of their teamwork or conflict would self-generate the story arc and prompt me for additional details. It took time to learn the ins and outs of spontaneous descriptions but with practice comes skill. As a result, my games are more PC driven and PC focused. The players have a great deal of input. Furthermore, I’ve found that the players don’t often realize that you’ve had to stray from what was expected and what actually happens. With practice, this becomes a seamless exercise and one that keeps me just as entertained as the players.

So I still do game prep. I just focus on what is important and worry less about fiddly details or plot arcs that are set in stone. I might have to toss a bone in the PC’s direction now and then, but with pro-active players, the details of the adventure just about write themselves.

And then that gives me another week to get the encounter stats, terrain, etc. generated :]

many times Player actions realy inspire me to other ideas or just that the consiquences of those actions take everything in a differnt Direction