Planning vs. Winging It

[admiralducksauce]

Yeah I agree with most of you here, you need to at least have something concrete about the motivations of the antagonists involved.

Exactly. As long as you know what HALF the people are doing, you can probably wing the rest. I always try to have a good opening scene, too. I have the most control over that part, anyhow. And keep scene changes snappy, don't give the players too much time to get off on tangents or run off into the sunset chasing random encounters.

[fantazero]

I'm running a Spirt of the Century game with my Dresden Group, and its my first time GMing, and I had like 10 pages of notes, and realized "This is crazy"
made a flow chart, and am trusting my players.

[Mij]

I do a lot of background development as far as the setting, locations, characters, and motivations go.

I do a moderate amount of planning as far as plot points.  I usually put together a plan that completes a plot arc, but don't get too involved in the details.

But, as Clausewitz says, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy" -- in this case, "enemy" being "players".  So I wing it from there.  I think the best part of gaming is when I've got a plan, and then one of the players says "What about ..." and I think "Dang, I wish I'd thought of that.  Now what will the reaction be?"

Mij

[zcthu3]

I tend to have a basic 'plot idea' at the beginning of a session. This may include an idea about what the NPC motivations are and/or what weirdness needs to be addressed etc. I then let the PCs interact and go with the flow.

[Harboe]

I used to plan things in detail, but then I took...

I've found that having stuff happen and then weaving a narrative on.the-fly works best for me.

One of my first campaigns had 8 players (an average sesssion had 6 of them present) and ~80 unique NPCs (plus a bunch of generic ones) and it was a "powergrab/political intrigue" campaign, so the amount of player schemes that I had to account for on-the-fly made it so that several plot hooks and events were either forgotten, skipped over or unnecessary.

The record for player schemes taking up time was one character attacking another (for reasons no one but that player understood... I still don't get it) which ended up filling the next three sessions with the aftermath of that decision.

Hell, the first session had four of the players spend 2 hours in a philosophical discussion. It was grand!

So, I'm very much the "uh, got an idea. Better work it in pronto!" kind of GM, which (I've been told) makes for a very entertaining game. I also keep a list of Aspects and make sure to make those key parts in keeping the plot going (my players don't buy off compels... ever).

[crystaril]

Yeah I don't think I've ever had a player buy off a compel either.  Which is great because my style of GM'ing is basically "Maximum Pathos!" I try to make sure every character gets a spotlight moment once in a while where the past comes back to bite them and make them make hard choices and learn all of each other's dark secrets.

For the campaign itself I came up with some major villains and a few second in commands for them, gave each group a motivation and end-goal (nothing super concrete.  "wants to do a city-destroying ritual" or "time magic shenanigans") and then give my players a strong opening scene and let them take the wheel.  I'm pretty much doing it like a CYOA.  "OK, this scene is done. These other three things are happening, where do you want to go?"  (to which they respond: "Let's split up gang!" 99% of the time but that's ok too.)  The important thing is that while they're working on a plotline the other plotlines continue to advance, so the major demon villain might be the one they're currently fighting but they've encountered issues and NPC's from the BCV and Fae plots, which will all come back in later.  This lets the threats level up with the players, without just feeling like I invented a stronger threat later.  And it makes them feel responsible when they prioritize things.

I also make sure to give them fallout reports, like the WCV discussing corpse disposal with the local ghoul-under-the-bridge after the players had a big fight with them, leaving several key WCV npc's wounded.  Consequences, people!

[AxGrinder]

Speaking of Maximum Pathos--one of my characters has gotten lot of play that way though it was unintentional on my part.  Mostly because I made her severely flawed.  She's cursed never to know happiness.  Which means the GM can throw all sorts of evil things her way and make it sound perfectly reasonable...  He loves that character!