You can of course plan the big lines of the campaign, but the more precise you get and far ahead of the present, the more you will either lose or railroad to not lose. Both suck
Me: Planning 1 session in advance.
My players: Getting through 1/3 of what I expected and planned for.
Honestly kind of a godsend when that happens.
Enlightened DMing is to simply set up all the pieces of the BBEG’s plan on the world stage in your head or documents, and throw the players at it. Obviously, ensure that the plan is something the players have enough tools and resources to overcome, and prepare for what their decisions will likely guide them towards in the next session, but…
Any old video game can run you through a story. Few video games give players choices. And no video game can be truly derailed.
Understanding that getting derailed is arguably the entire point of DnD, is DM Ascension.
Getting derailed is easy. Making it fun for everyone DM include is the challenge. That is both a skill, luck, and mental energy that not everyone can or want to put in sometimes.
But I am not agreeing with the point of dnd. The point is the exact same as videogames, other ttrpg games, other TT games period. Having fun. Its really as simple as that. Which is why everyone should aim to do something they have fun with.
Just saying thought. If derailing the DM is the fun of a player, it sounds more like belonging to a horror story.
Yeah, there’s a fine line here. The DM improvising something whimsical and funny on the spot can be enjoyable to everyone, but if the party is going out of their way to do their absolute best to derail and force DM to waste any and all prepared material they’re just dicks. The DM is still a player in the game doing it have fun too and doesn’t owe you a campaign that bends to all whims of the party without restraint.
Also, a good lesson for GMs is to try and write any prepared material in a way that allows it to later be reused if players manage to miss it. Just because the party didn’t investigate that one cave with a goblin ambush in it doesn’t mean they can’t run into a goblin ambush later down the line somewhere entirely different.
Yes and no. Sure recycling is good. I did it as much as I could. But sometimes you tailor make something that would be just as much effort recycling as starting over.
Mostly combat encounters taking the terrain into account. The best sort of combat.
I think the player types is important.
I’ve had players who will engage with stuff and make good things happen, and then I don’t need to play very much. They’ll see the awkward tavernkeeper and the village blacksmith and run cheering into ROM COM TIME. Can’t really plan for that.
But I’ve also had players who are just wallflowers. They don’t take initiative. They don’t push for their own goals. They’re timid and easily discouraged. “The tavern keeper doesn’t want to give you the staff. It was his grandfather’s, he says, and he doesn’t want to hand it out to just anyway.” “Uhh… uh… ok… i don’t know what to do. Can I charm person him?” “You can, but that’s an escalation and people will be mad if they find out.” “Oh nevermind I don’t know what to do.”
Meanwhile the other party got the staff by getting him and the blacksmith to finally go out on a date, and now they’re all on great terms.
The timid party needs more planning (but still only a session or two in advance) because otherwise they’re going to just stall out and get frustrated.
Maybe one day I’ll have a group that’s consistently engaged, thinks about the game between sessions, and knows the rules of the game reasonably well.
I just plan out the world and where the NPCs are, and what their goals are. I don’t really plan out what is going to happen with the story. I just let the players decide that, and have NPCs react appropriately to them when necessary.
Still things to prep. Encounters, maps, forces, terrain, ecosystem, descriptions, etc
Yeah, things that, so long as they don’t teleport somewhere for literally no god damn reason, will only change in response to something they do. If you plan for there to be a bandit camp in the, but they avoid it and set fire to the forest somehow, now forest bandits flee into the plains and set up camp again, interact with something there, or disband.
What is this word planning?
It’s that thing you do in the shower the night before the session and forget to write down “but it’ll be fine” and then you forgot half of it and only remember the dumb voice you gave the shop keeper. That, plus those notes you wrote down and you’re sure you knew what you had in mind but now you’re not sure what “damp lich” was supposed to mean.
