Planning vs. Winging It

[Mr. Death]

A question for the GMs in the audience: How thoroughly do you plan out your games? Do you have set-pieces in mind when you start a scenario, signposts, if you will, for big events? Or do you just lay out the state-of-the-world and count on the players to make it interesting? Or some combination of both?

Me, I tend to have some kind of framework in mind for a given scenario--the badguy, his/her goals, what they're going to do to try and accomplish them, what NPCs are going to be involved, some cool set-piece parts I expect to happen, and a final confrontation. I try my best to tailor the scenarios so I can anticipate what the characters will do (and, occasionally, nudge them in a given direction with a fate point), though if they come up with something I wasn't expecting, I also do my best to roll with it.

What are some of your thought processes when you plot out a game?

[Ophidimancer]

I lay out general plot points, but I'm pretty flexible about things deviating from there.  I have to be, since my players tend to derail my plans as a matter of course.  The art is in taking the side plots they create and weaving them back in to my plot seamlessly.  I have varying degrees of success in making that transition seamless.

[eri]

Totally winging it. 

...

Wait, now that I think about it, maybe not entirely. I make a lot of NPCs and give them all goals and stuff. But I just gave the players a "starting point" when we started and just let the NPCs react to whatever the PCs do (and occasionally to what the other NPCs do). I had a lot of plot ideas before we started, um, sometime last summer I think, and I haven't had to invent a new plot since (I thought I would have had to, but apparently my players like their plots slow... go figure). I have a list of emergency NPCs for when I need a new person (just a name, three word personality and a colour (or description), nothing fancy) to drop into play, a list of emergency plot-hooks if things manage to wind to a halt without them discovering a new plot all on their own (I've only had to use one!) and a list of emergency riddles.

[AxGrinder]

I have found that our GM's plan quite a bit, but as we are a group of inevitable weirdos we always make the easy stuff way harder than it has to be and the hard stuff totally odd-ball.  Which is why I had to have one figure out die modifiers for my pitcher character throwing pool balls at the heads of Canadian zombies... (she was marvelously successful) and why I had another group totally botch breaking down a door (basically the door won).  Rule of thumb for the GM--never let them roll for anything that you think it would be totally ridiculous for them to fail at...

Though throwing a situation that the characters would have difficulty with is fair game.  We once had to elicit information from a little girl in a playground and it was the hardest part of the whole evening.  We all look like scary creeps--why would a little girl talk to us???

[Jimmy]

I like to use a mix of plotting and improv. I tend to set up flavoured text for different encounters that I WANT in the story, and just outline possible outcomes for different conflicts, whether combat or social. I tend to structure my write ups into scenes and chapters, with a bottom section to each scene in note form suggesting where the players could gravitate to from here or ideas for possible complications due to player interaction (such as the party just shooting up the house instead of interrogating and questioning).

I've gamed with my usual group for over 10 years now so I'm pretty adept at predicting how they'll behave and can plan accordingly, but they occaisonally get more creative than usual. I know one player is always going to take money over honour for example, while another is always going to want to shoot his way out rather than sneak past. Leads to interesting set ups of scenarios where the characters themselves are the main antagonist to an objective.

Player 1 Our spaceship doesn't have shields? So what? We've got a big gun!

Player 2 Engineering! Shut down power to the main battery! Quickly!!

Player 1 Ok, I've going to try and reroute power to guns and get them online again!

Player 3 I'm leaving the cockpit and heading to the escape pods...

With players like this I don't NEED to plan anything more than the bare bones haha.

[Sanctaphrax]

Nothing ever goes the way I plan it, so I usually don't bother to plan more than a scene ahead.

Sometimes I plan things a bit further in advance, but I always end up winging it anyway.

[UmbraLux]

A question for the GMs in the audience: How thoroughly do you plan out your games? Do you have set-pieces in mind when you start a scenario, signposts, if you will, for big events? Or do you just lay out the state-of-the-world and count on the players to make it interesting? Or some combination of both?

I create NPCs with agendas and resources.  Toss the PCs into the mix where they'll run across at least one opposing agenda and see what happens.  Next session I look at the new situation and see what NPCs need to do to further their goals.  Rinse and repeat.

What are some of your thought processes when you plot out a game?

5WH:  Who?  What?  Where?  When?  Why? and How?

Ask those questions about the NPCs, the situation, and the agendas.  Generally, a couple of them stick out and give me ideas. 

[Silverblaze]

I like telling a story,  I tend to plan the beggining, middle nad end of a long running game.
Each session I plan out some broad strokes that will happen independent of the characters.  I drop hints and plot hooks.

Some plots progress without players getting involved and spin wildly out of control.

I let the players go wild in most situations letting them make a lot of my plot for me.

I tailor each game to my players concepts and aspects and make sure plenty of side plots are available to them...those plots often spin off into new plots.  Sometimes those plots tie back into the main plot and some don't.

People running games simply must be able to wing it (improvise) and good games need some planning or they get slow and boring.

So, in short I do both, my players seem to like it.

[DFJunkie]

Usually I’ll come up with some enemies, some antagonists, some potential allies, and some color characters.  I’ll give the important NPCs goals, figure out where those goals will go absent PC intervention, throw a couple clues at the PCs, usually coupled with compels, and then go.  If I can get away with it I’ll come up with the final set piece ahead of time, that’s usually easier if the set piece involves some sort of big ritual that is specific to time and place. 

I also did a lot of city creation, so I’m rarely caught without an interesting venue for a conflict.  Depending on your definition of “winging it” I may not do so at all, but I rarely have a predetermined plot line that the PCs are expected to follow.

My primary thought processes are “how can I screw up their characters?”  Not in an “open season on PCs” way, but in a “how can their lives become more complicated” way.  Thus far I’ve forced the White Court Vampire to confront the monstrosity of her own actions, had the Knight of the Cross question his calling to the point where he hasn’t even drawn his sword for three sessions, and had the poor Wizard end up looking at some truly powerful Outsider magic with his sight.  I was particularly proud of that last one.  Oh, and my other big concern is “how in the hell do I motivate both the Knight and the Succubus to be interested in this?  My player decided she wanted to be Lara Raith’s illegitimate daughter, so in a pinch I can use “Lara’s Inscrutable Plans,” but I don’t like to lean too heavily on it. 

[Haru]

No plan survives the first contact with players.

That is the one rule of GMing that proves itself over and over again.

I'm with the winging-it crowd. What I mostly do, I try to play the NPC characters as authentic as I can. Which means I give them a background and plans, and then I play them out from there. Plans can be adjusted, depending on how and if the players intervene, so most of the time you will end up with things totally different from what you had planned out before. Which is a good thing, really. Usually as a GM, you know everything that is going to happen, and mostly the how and when and why is clear as well. This way, you can even as the GM enjoy the fresh input from your players and see where the game takes you.

I am currently in a tabletop game, where the GM hast written his own campaign in three parts, 100 pages 12pt each. I have all due respect for the work he's done, but too often when he is reading the description of a location or the monologue of an NPC when we meet him the first time, it feels too similar to reading a quest text in WoW.

[DFJunkie]

I am currently in a tabletop game, where the GM hast written his own campaign in three parts, 100 pages 12pt each. I have all due respect for the work he's done, but too often when he is reading the description of a location or the monologue of an NPC when we meet him the first time, it feels too similar to reading a quest text in WoW.

So how bad has the perverse desire to screw with his plot, regardless of your character's beliefs and goals, become?

One thing I try to plan out as much as possible is talking points and dialogue snippets for extremely old or alien beings.  Sometimes I have them speak idiomatic English if it’s going to be funny in a Buffyesque way, but if I want them to have a very specific voice or if I need to come up with weasely Fae statements I try to get some prep done. 

[Haru]

So how bad has the perverse desire to screw with his plot, regardless of your character's beliefs and goals, become?

We've not played too long, so it's still tolerable. I'd say it is at 30%, but rising. We'll see how it pans out

[JayTee]

I've only GM'ed a few times, and not on here, but I've found that planning things out is more work than is needed. I tend to develop an NPC's goals and motives for them, and then have them react to the actions of the players in  a way that makes sense for the NPC.

So, winging it, with a dash of planning.

[devonapple]

I've been mostly winging it, but my current adventure is suffering because I've not adequately plotted out the stakes/goals of the stakeholders very well, so I know they want the players to do things, but what those things are is not coming up organically from the game session.

[Jimmy]

Yeah I agree with most of you here, you need to at least have something concrete about the motivations of the antagonists involved. Winging it after that is easier, or you can end up just having a random mish mash of dungeon crawling monster stomping and no story. Memorable characters always makes for a good story.