You're not allowed to do that because I don't have anything prepared for it

>You're not allowed to do that because I don't have anything prepared for it

Learn to prepare or learn to wing it.

Give 'im some practice in the latter.

I have a theory, that very young DM's can "do anything" because their imaginations are not constrained, and neither is their players' ... but a young adult DM has a much harder time with "doing anything" on the fly, because their adult minds are much more organized and rely on context. This again changes as DM's get older.
>age 10-16: no problem being creative on the fly, limited in experience and realism
>age 16-30: much more difficulty in being creative on the fly. Strive for realism.
>age 30-50: rarer, but DM skills have developed. Tend to be much more formulaic in story design, but can utilize such to be creative when needed with less prep.
>age 50+ Grandmaster DMs. Rare. Approach with reverence and respect. Gifts of root beer are appreciated. Will blow your mind with their tales of Adventure and Drama, Halcyon Summers and Despairing Woe. Use a coaster in their homes, or your suffering will be legendary.

To be fair, this makes sense in games that rely heavily on battle mats (or VTT maps), figures (or tokens), and complex stat blocks.

This is why a lot of 3.x adventures onwards are more like branching paths than a true sandbox. You can go to balanced encounter site A or balanced encounter site B, but you're strongly encouraged not to stray too far.

It would be unreasonable to expect a 3.x/4E/5E DM to run an old school hexcrawl where the party can do literally anything or go anywhere. You can't just say there are some 5 HD monsters or a 3rd-level magic-user, you have to work that stuff out (stats and special abilities and CRs and...).

Kudos to people who try, like those running West Marches games, but it's still very much a compromise between planning and free exploration, with a lot of prep between sessions.

>that's a good idea user, but your character isn't smart enough to have thought of it
>you can't discuss strategy OOC, that's metagaming

>"You can't leave the table until the scheduled break."
>"Next scheduled break is in two hours."

I wouldn't trust an old guy to run a game. He's probably a grognard.

An old guy wouldn't trust you to play in a game, you're confirmed a dumb faggot.

Struck a nerve, didn't I?

While It's true that a good GM should be able to improvise, It's also true that there's no shame in admitting something surprised you and you aren't prepared to deal with It at the moment.
The question is: is your GM a friend or an obstacle to you?

Things that never happen, the post.
To hear you guys, most GMs are freaking soviet kommissars.

What actually probably happens with situations like the OP complains about:
>GM: "Okay, I'd like to run a campaign set in my custom world, and I have a map-"
>That Guy: "What's the farthest town away from where we are?"
>GM: "Erm, Snowholme I guess, why?"
>That Guy: "I start heading there, LOL."
>GM: "Why don't we stay in the central kingdoms for now, I haven't planned that far ahead y-"
>That Guy: "UGGH RAILROAD SOME MORE WHY DON'T YOU?"

translation:
>we could do that but it'd probably suck, so i'll rather give it a pass
anyway, whether your GM is a fag or not depends on the scope of the enterprise

furthermore, improvised stuff is, on average, not as good as prepared stuff. if it was, movies wouldn't normally rely on scripts. however, emergent gameplay is an important part of RPGs, so it's a balancing act.

>Hey DM I'm just going to fly to the moon
"You can't do that, how the fuck are you flying?
>REEEEE DM STOP RAILROADING DON'T YOU KNOW YOUR JOB IS TO BE THE PLAYERS SERVANT! KNOW YOUR PLACE SLAVE!

This is how players on Veeky Forums act.

>Not letting them attempt to fly to the moon, where they die to the horrible void of space

Shit DM.

Can I do that next time?

>You can't just say there are some 5 HD monsters or a 3rd-level magic-user, you have to work that stuff out (stats and special abilities and CRs and...).
But you can?
It's the on the players to judge if they are out of their league and if they can handle the encounter or not.
If you are afraid of throwing a dragon at a 1st level party you're a shit DM. You can threaten players with something they know they can't handle without actually killing them. It's way more fun and easier to do than meticulously balanced encounters.

t. geriatric

Interesting observation that creativity becomes more constrained as the DM deepens their experience and rules knowledge. Not something I ever thought about before, but I think you might be on to something.

My recommendation for people who are getting a lot of the "writers' block" feeling, either in-session or during prep, is to play some sessions in alternative systems - even if it's just one-off sessions. Bust out some Microscope, SotC, Baron Munchausen, Sorceror, Nobilis... whatever helps shake up your mindset and established paradigms.

>Struck a nerve, didn't I?
You tried to, but I think you crit failed and hit yourself instead

>To hear you guys, most GMs are freaking soviet kommissars.
Nah, I don't think it's that. I think things like the OP are just very inexperienced DM's who aren't that confident yet. Don't be too quick to judge, we were all there once.

>This is how players on Veeky Forums act.
Well, it's how strawmen on /tg act, but sure.

For every barrel there's a bad apple, as the saying goes that I just made up.

I'm not sure if I'm looking at Xerxes or the Genie of the Lamp.

>is your GM a friend or an obstacle to you?
Both - The best GM is a good friend who makes great obstacles.

>Hey DM I'm just going to fly to the moon
>"You can't do that, how the fuck are you flying?
If the player was clever enough to suggest throwing himself at the ground and missing, I'd let him roll for it. The ground, being rather large and slow, is hit on a 2+ obviously.

If you're the DM and you're in a literal worst case scenario where your players have thrown the biggest cureball imaginable, there's no shame in being like

>"okay, you do that, now let's take a break for a bit because i need some time to think of what to do next"

and then just take a short recess

>Both - The best GM is a good friend who makes great obstacles.
Good answer, but I asked about He himself as an obstacle or an adversary, not about his actions: obviously his job is to challenge you.
Given that we seem to agree.

When my players do something that I didn't prepare for, I always let them do it. But nothing will happen until they pick up the plot hook anyway.

No, definitely. Sometimes you just need a minute. Nothing wrong with that. I think the reaction was to the DM just giving a flat-out "no" and putting the players back on the railroad.

Okay, let's try it. Let's roleplay a roleplaying game
>Friends decide to good-naturedly go off-the-rail you had planned.
>"Hey DM! We decided to jump on the horses and head back to where the villains said they were from, instead of investigating what they were up to here in town."
Go.
Time of this posting, 3pm Pacific time.

3:05pm - everyone is talking and laughing, giving you a few minutes to tell them what happens next. Someone gets up to get a coke.

3:30pm - people are playing nintendo and fooling around on their laptops
>"HEY you need more time?"

I mean in terms of coming up with the monsters/characters and how much XP they're worth (I think the shift away from XP is because of how cumbersome it is now).

I can tell you right now that a fire lizard has 3 hit dice, does d8 damage and is immune to non-magical fire (another DM might decide something different). From there I can extrapolate its size, XP, and anything else I need. In later editions that's a process of modifying another monster or creating one from scratch, and doing a bunch of calculations.

Neither process is right or wrong, but the old school method definitely lends itself to creating encounters on the fly. As for gauging difficulty, hit dice are a little more convenient. Even with all the discussion of what hit points actually represent, I'll never understand why one unarmored 6' humanoid monster can take a single sword swing, yet another takes a dozen or more.

Still, sometimes the crunch and choose-your-own-adventure format of newer editions are a lot of fun, especially if done well (PotA I'm looking at you).

I had to pull one of these recently... NEVER GIVE YOUR PCS A ONE-WAY TICKET SOMEWHERE WITHOUT GIVING THEM CONTEXT FIRST/

has nothing to do with physical age

24 year old GM here, I tend to get a rough outline for how I want the story to go and then let the world flow naturally, making things up as it's needed.
I'm also just as flexible with the story, BBEG is supposed to be waiting in an office for them, but the PC's have derailed so hard they're in the wrong area altogether? That's fine, turns out at that very moment the BBEG was in that area for inspections.
I've never understood GM's who are so rigid with their times and what the story they want to tell that they're willing to ruin it for the players and themselves rather than making minor adjustments on the fly.

>samefagging this hard

>BBEG

>Ugh

BBEG is a long-standing and widely accepted term both within Veeky Forums and without. :)