[Onion Man]

Okay, so over the last 20 years I've gone from only running mods out of books and from websites to writing my own to doing mostly improv, and I'm curious about other GM's and how they go about running their campaigns.

Normally (I've run more D&D than anything else), what I arrive at a table with is an area map, a "dungeon" map, a backup "dungeon" flowchart for if things go way off the rails (illusion of free will), and a stack of 4x6 notecards full of encounter snippets, stat blocks, puzzles, and loot.  For the most part I don't even bother pre-writing boxed text, after all I most likely made it up and I'm very likely to remember it and there's a good chance that it'll need to be improvised to fit whatever the players have done to go off the rails.

I've always found that space sci-fi and highly nautical games are the easiest to implement the illusion of free will, particularly the old West End Star Wars, but it seems like most anything can be broken down into a node map with path costs and the less flavor text I write up the easier it is to move a scenario from the woods to the sewers to a cliffside to an abandoned factory without stumbling on anything.

What's everybody else do to keep things moving and keep their players interested without doing dozens of times more prepwork than if your players would just be predictable?

[wylie]

in writing my own adventures, I make a note of the basics and see where the players go

players will always think of that one thing a GM overlooks

even in written mods, I try to give free reign.  I ran Bad Moon a few years ago, and the players insisted on tracking the Yakuza smugglers. I let them.

I have done the path break down, and learned to keep it simple as possible

it can help to dole out various jobs like rules checker, initiative tracker, and so on

bottom line, expect the unexpected

[nakano]

I tend to focus on the overall plot of a run.  Things like the timeline of events, major npc agendas etc, because as previously mentioned, the hell if I can guess where my players will take things.  Know your world, know NPC motivations and you will seldom be caught unprepared. 

[Elizara Dane]

I remember the first time I really GMd something of my own creation. It was the best lesson in futility that I ever learned. I watched as the friends I had played with for years rode roughshod over the game I had lovingly crafted over months of dreaming as if it were the most natural thing in the entire world. During that game I threw out pages of preconstructed scenes and places and created a new world on the fly. I learned something that day that I had learned in school years earlier, do it all the night before.

Now, the only solid thing in any Run I write is the meet. After that I might think of a place or to that I guess my players may go and think about what should happen there just in case but anything other than that is for the players to decide. When it comes to Precanned adventures I treat it like surgery, the players get to divert when they want to but when needed I just stitch them back on to the main atrery and let the natural flow take 'em the rest of the way.

[Tex Muldoon]

i have a little red notebook and a little black notebook. Red is when everything is happening as i expected and black is full of ideas that i thought of to help get it back on track. lots of page holders in the black one. Also i am on black notebook number 3

[Yorick]

i tend to write loose outlines for a mission, and then fill in details on the fly, and use opposition from a stack of premade goons adjusted for the situation. a few paragraphs is usually enough.

it works fairly well. in general, i like to give vague clues every so often, gradually revealing a larger picture that becomes a dangerous run late in the campaign. its kind of frustrating to have those clues ignored, which usually makes the eventual confrontation that much more dangerous. seems my players never bother to investigate the weird stuff i put in the world either (like a magically active ares symbiont implant that looked like a larva, they just sold it to aztecnology).

i also have a policy of reducing the risk the first time a player does something stupid, and pointing the risk out to them. if they do it again, they were warned and get a consequence. this is useful when dealing with players who are new to the game (or even new to the edition in some cases).

[Walks Through Walls]

My notes for the last couple runs I have made an overview of what is the plot.
Then I make any special notes about the main scenes.
Then I put down twist #1
Usually followed by twist #2
I then leave the rest of the page blank for the moment.
I then do a scene by scene layout with a detailed description of the area for when the characters get there. (and they usually do eventually get there)
Next I work out major NPCs and write up their motives and stats etc.
Usually about this time I have thought up a couple more twists or possible additions and add them to page one.
I write the meet in detail and then just descriptions for other scenes, and I name people and places ahead of time because I find I am terrible at making up names off the top of my head. (I had a couple of NPCs who got named frick and frack because I had to come up with names off the top of my head.)
Then I work the rest of the adventure fairly free hand as things go.
I also generally write up the legwork section so I know what the characters can find out about what is happening and how easily.
Then when the game starts I just roll my eyes when the players head off into left field and improvise and see where it takes us.

[Crash_00]

My general GM method is pretty much the same for all games, but it works extremely well for SR. I give mild attention to the details that the players will know from the get go, as this is what they will plan their ideas around, and I focus roughly 80% of my attention into the unknowns that the players will encounter.

For example, in SR I will grab a blueprint and do a mild detail of the security system available at the location. Then I focus on things such tracking bugs, tails, enemies, ect. that will come into play. Most of these are things that you can bring into play no matter where/what the runners decide to do. I find this lets me keep the game moving and challenging without making the runs cakewalks when they hit everything right and it lets me just ignore things if they are having a rough time.

The only real thing that I do to speed things up is pre-roll NPC rolls. I've coded a die rolling program that I use and I roll about a dozen rolls for attack dice pools that grunts will use commonly, two dozen if its a very long fight. I note the number of hits in each roll. I'll usually do this  in a 7 point spread so that I'm ready if the grunt is wounded or has a few bonuses.

I cannot begin to express how much this speeds up combat. Even my players are like wow, that was fast.

[skulldier]

In my Shadowrun games, I just come up with the story of what is going on in the city/world. For the players, I take as much of their backstories and use that material to make things personal for them. But as the 'macro' story develops, it may or may not weave in and out of the character's lives since I let them do whatever they want. Luckily, with the mission-based style of Shadowrunning, if I need them to encounter a part of the larger story, I'll make it a part of a mission.

But for the most part, I really feel that I'm there to facilitate the fun for everybody and I've been very lucky to have excellent (even if not 'expert gamers') players that really get involved in this story we're telling together.

[John Shull]

I am very involved in character creation for my games and it has two benifits.  I know what the character does and why he does it.  The first sounds simple but I have had quite a few characters created with an idea in mind that had to get recreated when it got to me for approval because it was, let's say, off target.  The why, however is the main thing.  Because when you know where you come from you know where your going.  Finishing unresolved business, scratching that unscratchable itch, being better than anyone at what you do, or finding a way out at last.  It makes runs transitory things and the characters true goals for his character clear.  It gives the GM the seed for what hero, anti-hero, gladiator, truth seeker you have and to see it sprout you just add tremendous amounts of adversity to unlock it. 

I consider this to be the core of gaming being on the same page about the characters and what they are about.  One thing that gets lost in running the characters is the question of 'cheating'.  The characters in game are not able to cheat ever.  Any advantage they come up with being fair or unfair is never cheating.  It is the nature of the game itself to find a ways to pull the wool over the eyes of your opponets, turn the tables on them, and put them down like dogs.  The characters are rewarded hansomly for making it happen.  The players are a different matter.  Using outside game info, bad accounting practices of gear, money, etc, and flat out working the GM like your Reggie Miller at the Finals.  This 'cheating' is what robs games.  When you have issues about this crop up in your game find a systematic way to root it out and keep it on track.  Sometimes you really have to bust a someones bad habits to make the game fun for everyone again.  Cause if the GM ain't happy ain't no one gonna be happy.

[Mystic]

Create senerio, come up with bad guys, give players rope, and let them hang themselves.

 

Just kidding...sort of. When I run my own personal games, I tend to set it up to almost a "choose your own adventure" kiind of thing. I always hated it when GMs tend to focus on getting us through a module and or trying to force the players to do something. So, I simply came up with a more dynamic and free flowing kind of adventure.

Instead of coming up with only one "adventure" I have several on tap. They get to pick and choose. And how they accomplish their objective depends on them. I only come up with the possible opposition and have them react how I think they should, trying to adapt to the runner's actions. Im also fond of letting them do whatever they want...but there will always be consiquences and rep is important; it will determine what kind of jobs the runners will be offered, good OR bad.

[Coldbringer]

I tend to have a very bare-bones outline of the scenario as a whole with a few detailed NPC that I feel are likely to come into play, I don't invest a lot of time into any one scene/encounter since its hard to predict just where a player is going to steer the game.  I might have a guess from knowing the player/character combo, but its always a losing bet.

Once in a great while I will have sort of a set piece planned out if I think there is no other place for a showdown, but again that is rare.

I have been doing a larger set of story arcs in my current game and I also keep notes on how if at all it links into the big bad for this leg of the campaign.

As far as keeping my notes I like a small notebook with a combo of lined and graph paper, great for quick maps and condition monitors.

[The Cat]

My players are infamous for getting attracted to some shiny object and getting themselves sidetracked or worse, they follow the most obvious red herrings until it completely runs out then try to pick up the trail of the same red herring again for a week.  They're a fun little group to plot for.

That being the case, I almost never have a "this path to the ending" setup.  I MAY have two or three possible paths written out, but that's more for my amusement and reference than any expectation they'll follow them, or even get close.    My process for creating a run is fairly straightforward because of them

1. Basic Plot Outline.  Exactly that, the plot just like I was going to write it as a story.

2. Select/Create NPCs for the run.

3. Timeline.  What every major NPC will be doing, where and when.  The timeline assumes NO PC interference.  It's a "perfect world" time table for the events of the run. Ideally, the timeline will change throughout the run as the PC interfere with events.  For my groups this is usually the most important step.

4. Incidental Encounters.  Red herrings, side missions, unrelated obstacles and GM amusements (strange things that have nothing at all to do with the run and maybe even the game itself).

Sticking just to those four, I can come up with, flesh out and be ready to run with something in just a few hours of typing.  It's flexible enough that if the PCs wander off on some side mission or get themselves fascinated by some decoy, they can either drag themselves back on track or be put back on track fairly easily, and it still maintains a real possibility of complete and utter failure, since the "bad guys" plot runs concurrent with whatever the PCs are up to because of the timeline.

[revaddict]

I'm with the Cat on this one.

I've been gaming--and mostly GMing--for 30 years now.  One of my pet peeves is the "illusion of free will" problem.  I know that giving true free will is a total pain in the butt for a GM to pull off, but from a player's standpoint, a game is just not satisfying if my actions don't have any real consequences.  Whenever I'm playing a game and I realize the GM is just herding the party into whatever scene he has predestined to happen, I just figure I could have stayed home and read a novel instead.  Why not if my input doesn't really matter and the GM is going to tell me whatever story he wants to tell anyway, right?

I've run plenty "illusion of free will" scenarios over the years, and I've outgrown them.  Even though giving players true free will takes more work and fast thinking on your feet, it's worth the effort.  They will feel satisfied that they really accomplished something, and you will look back on the game with fond memories of how they handled your scenario.

The military says that a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy.  (Actually I think that wisdom comes from Sun Tzu.)  The same is true of a GM's well-crafted scenario.  The players will always come up with something you didn't count on, and you need to be able to adapt.

[Cass100199]

The military says that a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy.

Murphy